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Vladimir Medinsky, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that the negotiations were constructive and that Russia is taking steps to de-escalate the conflict. He appeared to suggest that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could meet in person if a peace agreement were signed.
Here’s what to know
On front lines, Ukrainian commander boasts Russians have been repelled
Return to menuNORTH OF KYIV, Ukraine — The soldiers lined up throughout the trenches, each taking a position at firing ports where small openings revealed views of the field beyond.
Just recently, there was shelling in this area, they said. Booms could still be heard in the distance. But for the past two days, it has been largely quiet, as the Ukrainians boast of victories over Russian forces they claim to be pushing farther and farther from the capital.
A military convoy transported a small group of journalists to this position north of Kyiv on Tuesday morning under the condition that everyone turn off their phones to avoid tracking and withhold the exact location of the visit from their reports.
Standing in the network of trenches on the outskirts of a forested area, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander overseeing the defense of Kyiv, handed out medals to soldiers and described significant gains by his forces in recent days.
More than 95 percent of the city of Irpin, north of the capital, where intense fighting sent thousands of displaced people fleeing for their lives, is now under Ukrainian control, he said. Civilians fleeing from Irpin in recent days have described horrific scenes of violence and said the fighting intensified over the weekend.
He could not estimate the number of Russians still present in Irpin, but Ukraine’s “national police and the national guard are there,” he said.
“We are doing everything so that this process ends as quickly as possible,” Syrsky said.
The territory that Ukraine now controls is “much bigger” than it was at the start of the invasion, he added, noting that Ukrainian forces have pushed toward the borders of the Chernihiv and Zhytomyr regions.
Despite their territorial gains, the Ukrainians are “losing thousands of shells every day,” he said. He called on foreign nations to provide air defense systems, antitank weapons and artillery training to Ukrainian forces.
Still, it’s the Russians who have experienced the most “significant losses,” he said, “in terms of weapons, technical equipment and personnel.”
They are now “much farther than during the first days of our fight.”
Volodymyr Petrov contributed to this report.
Kazakhstan, a Moscow ally, invites businesses leaving Russia to set up shop
Return to menuThree months ago, Kazakhstan asked Russia to intervene to help quell rare anti-government protests — but the politically repressive former Soviet state is now looking to position itself as an alternative home base for companies exiting Russia.
“If there is a new iron curtain, we do not want to be behind it,” Kazakhstan’s deputy foreign minister Roman Vasilenko told the German newspaper Die Welt on Monday, referring to the Cold War-era division limiting contact between the Soviet Union and the West.
Vasilenko said companies should consider moving production to Kazakhstan — not to appease the West or avoid sanctions against Russia — but because the country is a good place to do business.
“All companies with a good reputation that want to move their production here are welcome,” he said, according to a Reuters translation.
Kazakhstan is part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — a Moscow-led alliance between Russia and some former Soviet states asserting that, similar to NATO’s Article 5, a serious attack against one member is an attack against all. Russian troops were among the CSTO forces deployed in January after Kazakhstan asked Moscow and the organization for help.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left many Central Asian countries — that remain economically and politically tied to Moscow decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse — performing a delicate balancing act.
Kazakhstan has so far slightly distanced itself from Russia: It rejected Moscow’s request to contribute troops to the offensive, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prewar recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk — areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists since 2014 — as independent. The government similarly did not recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in early March called for Kyiv and Moscow to negotiate an end to the war.
Kazakhstan is a major exporter of oil, and much of it is sent out via Russia through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which has been exempted from the U.S. ban on Russian oil and gas imports.
Russia expels 10 diplomats from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
Return to menuRussia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it expelled 10 diplomats from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — several weeks after the three former Soviet states, which are NATO and European Union members, blacklisted 10 Russian diplomats, Reuters reported.
Last week, Latvia, which expelled three diplomats, said it was adding 25 Russian celebrities to its barred-entry list. Many of those on the list attended a Moscow event where people gathered to support the invasion of Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
Latvia’s Foreign Ministry said March 24 that people on the list will not be allowed to enter for an “indefinite period of time.”
Last week, Poland announced it was expelling 45 Russians it claimed were spies “pretending to be diplomats,” describing the move as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and policies toward Poland and its allies.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, vowed that the Kremlin would “respond appropriately” if its diplomats were expelled from Poland, according to state-owned news outlet RIA Novosti.
Russia says it will ‘drastically reduce’ military activity around Kyiv, Chernihiv
Return to menuRussia’s military said Tuesday that it will “drastically reduce” its activity in the areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv, following talks with Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul.
“In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal — reaching an agreement and signing of the aforementioned agreement — a decision was made to drastically reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions,” Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said in televised remarks.
“We presume that the main decisions will be made in Kyiv and that conditions should be created for further work,” he added. “The General Staff of the Russian armed forces will report in more detail upon the return of our delegation to Moscow.”
The leader of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia received a clearly formulated position of the Ukrainian side “confirming its desire for a neutral and nuclear-free status” as well as proposals that will be “studied and brought to the attention of the country’s leadership.”
Missile strike leaves huge hole in Mykolaiv government office
Return to menuODESSA, Ukraine — A missile struck the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration building Tuesday morning, Mykolaiv’s governor said.
Vitaliy Kim shared a photo of the building, where his office is located, on his Telegram channel. The photo shows a large hole through the center of the structure, which is Mykolaiv’s main government building.
Ukraine’s emergency services said that seven people died and 22 were injured in the attack. Many people have been rescued from the rubble, it said, and search and rescue operations were continuing at the scene.
The governor said most people who work in the building had been evacuated.
“They waited until people got to work to hit it,” Kim said on Telegram. “And I overslept.”
If confirmed, it would mark the largest Russian attack on the southern city’s downtown since the start of the war.
Mykolaiv, a city of about 500,000 some 70 miles east of Odessa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, has held a front line against Russian forces for weeks. The Ukrainian military’s stand there has delayed any plans to assault the strategic port of Odessa, which hasn’t faced a major attack since the start of Russia’s invasion.
It would not be the first time that Russians have launched missiles at state administration buildings — Kharkiv’s was hit during the first week of the invasion.
“At the very least, this means that the occupiers have reconsidered coming to Mykolaiv,” Kim said on Telegram. “If you plan to take something, you need an operational hub. … They figured out that they can’t take this city and decided to send me — or all of us — a greeting.”
Sean Penn back in Ukraine, meets with governor of Lviv
Return to menuAmerican actor and filmmaker Sean Penn has returned to war-torn Ukraine, he tweeted on Monday.
Penn, 61, met with Maksym Kozytsky, the governor of Lviv, a city in the far west of the country near the border with Poland that until recently had been a relative haven for journalists, diplomats and humanitarian workers. On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that it had struck what it said were military targets in Lviv, claiming it used long-range and high-precision missiles.
Penn said he was in Lviv with Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), a crisis response organization he co-founded. He tweeted that he would be “strategizing with local governance & NGO’s to scale up our in-country programs.”
The actor and activist was on the ground last month in Ukraine filming a documentary on the Russian invasion. He also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
I was in Lviv, Ukraine today with CORE team, strategizing with local governance & NGO’s to scale up our in-country programs. Good meeting with Gov. Maksym Kozytskyy. To learn more go to https://t.co/snKeUz99Fm or text “CORE” to 24365 to donate. pic.twitter.com/ASHavYHlvy
— Sean Penn (@SeanPenn) March 28, 2022Ahead of the Oscars ceremony Sunday, Penn called for a boycott of the event if Zelensky, a former actor, was not asked to address the crowd. Penn went so far as to say he would smelt his own awards if Zelensky wasn’t on the program.
“Ukraine is the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost,” Penn said in a statement to The Washington Post during his visit to Ukraine in February. “If he doesn’t relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind,” he added.
Penn has a long history of political activism and humanitarian efforts around the world, including relief work after Hurricane Katrina, a 2010 earthquake in Haiti and major floods in Pakistan in 2012. A vociferous critic of George W. Bush’s administration and the Iraq War, Penn also traveled to Iraq ahead of the U.S. invasion to protest Bush’s planned military strike, for which he received a torrent of condemnation in American media.
Abramovich appears at talks in Turkey a day after poisoning allegation
Return to menuRoman Abramovich appeared Tuesday at negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in Turkey, a day after an associate said the Russian oligarch suspected he was poisoned at a previous round of talks, along with members of the Ukrainian delegation.
The Kremlin denied any connection to the alleged incident. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed it Tuesday in a conference call with reporters as “part of the information sabotage” of the West.
But in comments to a Ukrainian news channel, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba advised anyone at the negotiations “not to eat or drink anything, and preferably avoid touching any surface.”
Abramovich — who faces sanctions in Europe and put the Chelsea soccer club he owns up for sale over his ties to the Kremlin — has positioned himself as a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv. The Kremlin said Tuesday that he was not an official member of Russia’s delegation.
The associate said that Abramovich has since recovered from the alleged poisoning that sickened him and two Ukrainian peace negotiators. The three men were stricken with peeling skin, red eyes and painful tearing — symptoms consistent with chemical weapons poisoning — after a meeting in early March. A fourth person present did not report falling ill.
The investigative collaborative Bellingcat and the Wall Street Journal first reported the allegations.
The associate said it was suspected that a “third party” carried out the alleged poisoning, suggesting it may not have been the Russian government.
How Ukraine’s Internet is still working despite Russian bombs and cyberattacks
Return to menuA young girl singing “Let it Go” from Disney’s Frozen movie in a bomb shelter. A Ukrainian band in full combat gear offering to live-stream with pop star Ed Sheeran. And shots of civilians climbing on Russian tanks to brazenly wave the Ukrainian flag.
These videos and others have dominated social media feeds around the world since Russia began its invasion at the end of February and have helped fuel a global movement of Western support for Ukraine.
But how are so many people still online? Despite being attacked by a major military power with vaunted cyber capabilities, Ukraine’s Internet is still largely intact, allowing the millions of people who remain in the country to communicate, and giving the world a front-row seat to the devastating war.
Here’s how Ukraine has managed.
Three humanitarian corridors set for Tuesday; U.N. urges cease-fire
Return to menuThree humanitarian corridors, agreed on by Russia and Ukraine, will operate Tuesday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a daily video update — including one route directly from the besieged city of Mariupol for citizens who can leave in private vehicles.
“Three humanitarian corridors have been agreed on for today,” Vereshchuk said. They will operate from the cities of Melitopol, Mariupol and Enerhodar, all to Zaporizhzhia in the southeast of the country, she added.
In addition to a route for people able to flee Mariupol in private cars, 34 buses have been sent “to evacuate Mariupol residents from the city of Berdyansk,” Vereshchuk said. Berdyansk, about 50 miles southwest of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, has been a stop on the main evacuation route. On Monday, 880 Mariupol residents were evacuated from Berdyansk, she added.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Kirill Timoshenko confirmed the three humanitarian exit routes for Tuesday in a Telegram post. He added that “humanitarian cargo” has also been sent to Melitopol and Enerhodar.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres
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