New negotiations begin on Tuesday in Istanbul to try to end the war that has raged in Ukraine since the Russian invasion more than a month ago, while Ukrainian forces claim to resist Russian assaults on major cities and even have regained ground.
Russian negotiators arrived in Istanbul on Monday, where a previous negotiating session had already taken place on March 10, at the level of foreign ministers, but had not resulted in any progress.
5:04 am: Russia has no intention of using nukes in Ukraine, Kremlin says
Russia does not plan to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with US public broadcaster PBS on Monday. “We have no doubts that all the objectives of our special military operation in Ukraine will be achieved. We have no doubts about that,” Peskov said. “But any result of the operation, of course, is not a reason to use a nuclear weapon,” he added.
“We have a concept of security which states very clearly that only when there is a threat to the existence of the state in our country can we and will use nuclear weapons to eliminate the threat,” he explained.
3:04 am: Despite Ukrainian victories, the situation is tense
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation was tense in his country despite some military victories in the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian defenders chased Russian units from the town of Irpin, near kyiv, Zelensky said in a video speech posted on Telegram early Tuesday night.
However, fighting continues in this region and in other parts of the country, added the Ukrainian president.
Russian troops control the northern Kyiv region and have resources and forces, he explained.
The situation also remains “very difficult” in the regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donbass and southern Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky again called for tougher sanctions against Russia. Regarding a possible embargo on Russian oil deliveries being discussed in Europe, he said that there is now a lot of evidence that such a tightening of sanctions against Russia will only take place if Moscow uses chemical weapons. .
1:13 am: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine, a rehearsal of the war in Syria”
The Russian invasion in Ukraine is a “repeat” of Syria with a “multiplication of war crimes” for more than a month of conflict, Amnesty International warned during the presentation Tuesday in Johannesburg of its 2021-2022 report. “What is happening in Ukraine is a repetition of what we have seen in Syria,” said the secretary general of the NGO, Agnès Callamard. “We are in intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure, homes”, bombings of schools, she lambasted, accusing Russia of allowing humanitarian corridors to turn them into a “death trap”.
“Our researchers on site for ten days documented the use of the same tactics as in Syria and Chechnya”, including attacks targeting civilians and the use of ammunition prohibited by international law, added during a conference of parallel press in Paris, Marie Struthers, director of Amnesty Eastern Europe and Central Asia.