RUSSIA,UKRAINE,FRANCE: Ukraine and Russia made tentative progress in talks Monday but failed to reach a deal on creating “humanitarian corridors” from pummelled cities, as the bloodshed from Moscow’s invasion mounted.
Kyiv said there had been “positive results” from the third round of negotiations, focused on giving civilians evacuation routes from besieged towns, but Russia said its expectations from the talks were “not fulfilled”.
The comments dimmed hopes of a respite for terrified civilians who have been fleeing under a hail of shelling and mortar fire, with women and children among those who have been killed.
The bloodshed continued on day 12 of the war, with 13 people killed in shelling on an industrial bakery in the town of Makariv and the mayor of the town of Gostomel killed while delivering bread to civilians.
The UKraine invasion has pushed more than 1.7 million people across Ukraine’s borders in what the UN calls Europe’s fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II.
International sanctions intended to punish Moscow have done little to slow the invasion, and energy-hungry Western nations are still weighing up whether to ban Russian oil imports.
The conflict pushed oil prices to a near 14-year high, while gas prices also rocketed and stock markets around the world plunged over concerns about the effect on the global economy.
Ukraine had earlier rejected a Russian proposal for humanitarian corridors from the cities of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol and Sumy, as many of the routes led straight into Russia or its ally Belarus.
Meanwhile,While most of the world is shunning President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the few leaders keeping an open line of communication is French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron’s diplomatic efforts to prevent the war failed, but he’s not giving up: the two men have spoken four times since Russian forces attacked Ukraine on February 24, and 11 times over the past month.
The French leader, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, is now one of the few outsiders with a view into Putin’s mindset at the time of the largest military invasion in Europe since World War II.
Macron’s relentless push for dialogue reflects France’s post-World War II tradition of carving out its own geopolitical path and its refusal to blindly follow the United States.
– TIMES NEWS EXPRESS, JAPAN TODAY