LVIV (UKRAINE), Mar 14:
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks today as Russia’s military forces bombarded Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine with a punishing assault that the Red Cross said has created “nothing short of a nightmare” for the country’s civilians.
After an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATO’s doorstep, the talks raised hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.
“Everyone is waiting for news,” Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a new video address on the 19th day of the war.
The negotiations, which took place by video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first held in a week. Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, did not produce lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting in Ukraine.
The two sides expressed some optimism in the past few days. Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said over the weekend that Russia was “listening carefully to our proposals.” He tweeted Monday that the negotiators would discuss “peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.” The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours. Podolyak said the negotiators took “a technical pause” and planned to meet again Tuesday.
Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for their invasion.
Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine’s largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world’s biggest cargo planes.
Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-storey apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said. Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.
A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia’s stalled attempt to take the capital, local officials said.
Airstrikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the remains of a four-storey residential building on a street of apartments and shops. Ukrainian emergency services said a strike hit the building, leaving smoldering piles of wood and metal. It was unclear whether there were casualties. (PTI)
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