Russia lists ‘goodwill gesture’ for talks
RUSSIA, UKRAINE, VATICAN CITY: Russia on Wednesday said it is ‘interested in ending military operations’ in Ukraine if its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agrees to ‘conditions’ put forward by Moscow at negotiations, Russian media RT reported quoting Kremlin.
The Kremlin also said that it has halted the attack on Kyiv as a ‘goodwill gesture’ to promote peace talks. “Withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kyiv region is a gesture of goodwill to create conditions for negotiations, during which serious decisions are possible,” the Kremlin said.
Russia has removed about two-thirds of its troops from around Kyiv, mostly sent back to Belarus with plans to redeploy elsewhere in Ukraine, a senior US official said on Monday. “They have about a third left of the forces that they had arrayed against Kyiv,” the official said.
While Russia calls withdrawal of troops a gesture of goodwill, Western military analysts told AFP the ‘failed Kyiv siege’ is a “significant defeat for the Russians”.
Meanwhile,Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday condemned hesitancy in Europe over stopping Russian energy imports, claiming that some leaders were more concerned with business losses than with war crimes.
Addressing the Irish Parliament, Zelenskyy said new “rhetoric” about sanctions had emerged, “but I cannot tolerate any indecisiveness after everything we have gone through and everything that Russia has done to us”.
Zelenskyy alleged that Russia was using hunger as a weapon in its war and an instrument of domination.
He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to cut off vital food supplies for people in Ukraine and also further afield by preventing cargo from being exported.
Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Pope Francis on Wednesday condemned “the massacre of Bucha” and kissed a Ukrainian flag sent from the town where tied bodies shot at close range littered the streets after Russian troops withdrew and bodies poked out of a mass grave at a church. The deaths in Bucha, outside Kyiv, have triggered a global outcry and pledges of further sanctions against Moscow from the West.
“Recent news from the war in Ukraine, instead of bringing relief and hope, brought new atrocities, such as the massacre of Bucha,” Francis said at the end of his weekly audience in the Vatican’s auditorium. Meanwhile, Amid mounting global accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the United States on Wednesday announced a new set of sanctions targeting President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters Mariya Putina (Vorontsova) and Katerina Tikhonova, and said it was toughening penalties against Russian banks.
The United Kingdom piled on asset freezes against two major banks, a ban on British investment in Russia and a pledge to end dependency on Russian coal and oil by yearend.
The European Union was also expected to soon take additional steps, including a ban on new investment in Russia and an embargo on coal, after the recent evidence of atrocities emerging in the wake of the retreat by Russian forces from the town of Bucha.
– INDIAN EXPRESS,
THE HINDUSTAN TIMES