Russia said it was ready on Wednesday to discuss a ceasefire with Ukraine the next day, despite the continuation of Russian strikes on several Ukrainian cities. Washington lamented the “staggering” human toll of the conflict.
Ukrainian emissaries were already heading to “the place of negotiations” in Belarus for a second session of discussions with their Russian counterparts, announced the Ukrainian presidency.
These talks, which will focus in particular on a ceasefire, will begin Thursday morning in a determined place “together” located “not far from the border with Poland”, said Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinski.
Initial discussions on Monday, also in Belarus, had yielded no tangible results, Kiev having demanded an immediate end to the invasion, while Moscow had seemed to expect a surrender.
“Support diplomatic efforts”
The United States will “support diplomatic efforts” by Ukraine to obtain a ceasefire with Russia, even if “it is much more difficult to achieve this when the shots ring out and the tanks advance”, reacted the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken.
The Secretary of State also emphasized an already “staggering” “human cost”. “Hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed and injured,” Mr. Blinken lamented at a press conference, and “the number of civilians killed and injured, the humanitarian consequences, will only worsen in the coming months. coming days”.
French President Emmanuel Macron has shown his desire to “stay in contact” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in order to “convince him to give up arms”, launching in a televised address a vibrant “we are not at war against Russia”.
ICC investigation
At the same time, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution which “demands that Russia immediately cease to use force against Ukraine”, only five countries opposing it and 35 abstaining, including China, out of the 193 members of this organization.
In this text, the UN asks Moscow to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all its military forces” from Ukrainian territory and “condemns Russia’s decision to increase the alerting of its nuclear forces”.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, had previously denounced an ongoing “genocide” in his country, perpetrated by Russia.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced on Wednesday evening the “immediate opening” of an investigation into the situation for war crimes.
First Russian report
On the ground, on the seventh day of Vladimir Putin’s offensive in Ukraine, Russian airborne units landed in Kharkiv, the country’s second city, located in the east 50 km from the border with Russia, said the Ukrainian army.
After several bombings in the city center the day before, which killed at least 21 people according to the regional governor, buildings housing security forces and the university were hit. At least four people were killed and nine injured. The OSCE announced on Wednesday evening the death the day before of a Ukrainian member of its local mission during the “bombing” of Kharkiv.
Independence Square was the target during the day of an airstrike which shattered the windows of the town hall and destroyed businesses, noted an AFP journalist. In Kiev, 500 km further west, whose inhabitants who did not flee have been preparing for an assault for days, relative calm reigned on Wednesday, after the television tower had been targeted the day before.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he “sincerely admires the heroic residents” of towns who are resisting Russian forces and their advance. According to him, nearly 9,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the past week, a figure that cannot be verified immediately.
Moscow for its part revealed on Wednesday its first toll of Russian soldiers killed in the offensive in Ukraine, announcing the death of 498 of its soldiers and specifying that 1,597 others were injured there.
The port of Mariupol in the viewfinder
Several localities northwest of the capital, including Bucha and Gostomel, were however bombarded, the regional authorities deplored. Survival was organized in the Kiev metro transformed into an air raid shelter. The capital’s mayor, ex-boxer Vitaly Klitschko, called on all residents to resist: “Kiev is holding and will hold”.
Bombings also took place in Zhitomir, 150 km further west. AFP saw people digging through the rubble of a small market on Wednesday. At least three people were killed there and a dozen injured, according to residents of the city.
In the south, the Russian military claimed complete control of Kherson, but the situation there remained uncertain. The mayor of this city, Igor Kolykhaïev, spoke of a “humanitarian disaster”.
Further east, in Mariupol, the main Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov, “it is deteriorating from hour to hour”, testified one of its inhabitants, Maryna, 28, according to whom the city center has been pounded.
If it took control, the Russian army could ensure territorial continuity between its forces coming from Crimea and those arriving from the separatist territories further north. In this context, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday the establishment of humanitarian corridors to allow the exit of civilians from the most exposed Ukrainian cities, in particular Kiev, Kharkiv and Mariupol.
World Bank suspends aid
US President Joe Biden said overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday that Vladimir Putin, whom he called a “dictator”, was now “more isolated than ever from the rest of the world”, against a backdrop of strong international pressure and sanctions. unprecedented economics.
Among these measures, the EU confirmed on Wednesday that seven Russian banks would, from March 12, be excluded from the Swift messaging system, a key cog in international finance. The World Bank has announced the immediate suspension of all its aid programs in Russia and Belarus.
Result of the conflict: the prices of hydrocarbons and aluminum, of which Russia is a major exporter, soared, with oil prices at their highest for almost a decade.
The Russian authorities are trying for their part to avoid financial haemorrhage and panic: the ruble has lost in a few days more than a third of its value in foreign currencies. Russian planes can now only land in a handful of countries. Jobs, wages and bank loans are potentially at risk. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday acknowledged “a serious blow”, but predicted that the Russian economy would “stay on its feet”.
Navalny calls for demonstrations
At the diplomatic level, the European Union is organizing an extraordinary meeting of the foreign ministers of its member states on Friday with their American, British and Canadian counterparts, present in Brussels as part of a NATO meeting.
And US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel from March 3 to 8 to Belgium, Poland, the Baltic States and Moldova to reaffirm his country’s support for Moscow.
In Russia, the opponent Alexeï Navalny, from his prison, called on his fellow citizens to demonstrate every day, calling Putin a “completely crazy little tsar”. Dozens of people were arrested in the evening during rallies against the invasion of Ukraine organized in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp