BORODYANKA/LVIV– Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for fleeing civilians, both sides said after talks on Thursday, in their first sign of progress on any issue since the invasion.
But while Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the talks had made “substantial progress,” Russian invasion forces surrounded and bombarded Ukrainian cities as the conflict entered its second week.
A Ukrainian negotiator said the talks had not yielded the results Kyiv hoped for, but the two sides had reached an understanding on evacuating civilians.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, brushing aside worldwide condemnation of the invasion, said his military operation was going according to plan and hailed his soldiers as heroes in a televised address.
Ukrainian soldiers and civilians kept up their resistance to the Russian onslaught, and the capital Kyiv and other main cities remained in their hands on Thursday evening.
But the humanitarian crisis deepened, with the United Nations saying one million people had now fled their homes. Most were seeking refuge in Poland and other neighbours to the west.
Those who stayed were enduring shelling and rockets strikes on several cities, often on residential areas. Swathes of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city with 1.5 million people, have been blasted into rubble.
After the talks at an undisclosed location, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said they envisaged a possible temporary ceasefire to allow the evacuation of civilians and the creation of humanitarian corridors.
They had also reached an understanding on the delivery of medicines and food to the places where the fiercest fighting was taking place. The negotiators will meet again next week, the Belarusain state news agency Belta quoted Podolyak as saying.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier Kyiv and Moscow could find a way out of the war if the Kremlin treated Ukraine on an equal footing and came to talks with a will to negotiate in good faith.
“There are things in which some compromises must be found so that people do not die, but there are things in which there are no compromises,” Zelenskiy said in a televised interview, saying he was willing to have an open conversation with Putin.
SOURCE: REUTERS
