According to Ukrainian officials, Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as well as the cities of Kharkiv, Lutsk, Rivne and Zhytomyr. The Russian army continued to push towards Kyiv from the east and north-west, attempting to control the main road routes.
Ukraine’s emergency ministry said fuel-storage facilities were affected by the attack on Lutsk and officials were still trying to put out the fire. Yuri Pohulyako, the head of the provincial military administration, said the attack was carried out by cruise missiles launched from neighboring Belarus. There were no immediate details about casualties.
Meanwhile, Russian negotiators were due to arrive in Istanbul late on Monday, followed by a Ukrainian delegation during the night for the ceasefire talks scheduled for Tuesday morning.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said in a phone call on Sunday he urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Officials in Kyiv said they were prepared for a fresh attack by Russian forces. “They are preparing for a big push, it’s always the case before big talks with the Russians,” said a Ukrainian official close to the talks.
The official said the odds of success in the ceasefire talks have risen in recent weeks, “from 10% to 50% two weeks ago.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said over the weekend that, to his knowledge, there was a diplomatic back channel between Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I don’t want to go into the details of this process. It looks like they are negotiating serious issues, serious issues,” Mr. Kavusoglu said at a conference in Doha, Qatar.
Both the Russian and Ukrainian sides had explored several options about the venue and format for the next round of talks, people close to the talks said, but agreed over the weekend that neutral Turkey would be the optimal location.
However, Western officials see some signs that Russia is ready to see a peaceful resolution of the conflict. “No one thinks that a diplomatic solution is likely in the next few days or a few weeks,” a senior EU official said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that there had been no significant breakthrough in talks so far, and no progress had been made on a possible meeting between the two presidents.
Ahead of Tuesday’s talks, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said humanitarian corridors would not be open to evacuate civilians on Monday after Ukrainian intelligence agencies reported possible Russian attacks. Recent efforts have focused on evacuating civilians from the southeastern cities of Melitopol and Mariupol to Bardiansk and Zaporizhzhya.
Mr Zelensky said in an interview with independent Russian journalists over the weekend that he was ready to talk about neutrality in an effort to meet one of Russia’s main demands on Ukraine. Kyiv has said it is ready to issue a formal statement to refrain from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in exchange for security guarantees from foreign partners.
Minutes before the interview was published by Russian outlets, the country’s communications censors issued a statement blocking its publication.
“If there is such a reaction, it means that we are doing everything right. They are nervous,” Mr Zelensky said in a speech on the Telegram messaging app.
He said the ceasefire talks in Istanbul were important and that Ukraine was still pushing the West to impose further sanctions on Russia, including blacklisting all Russian public officials as well as law enforcement and the military elite.
Mr. Zelensky also addressed people in areas currently occupied by the Russian army or those on the front lines of battle.
“I want to thank our people in Kherson, Slavutik and other cities who do not stop resisting the occupiers,” he said.
Ukraine is trying to take back Russian gains as Moscow shifts its focus to control a swath of the country’s south and east.
Ukrainian forces said on Sunday they pulled Russian troops out of Trostyanet in the northeast near the Russian border, potentially opening a road to the provincial capital of Sumy, which has been besieged by Russians.
There are indications to Western officials that Russia is strengthening its position to regain the offensive, and Mr. Zelensky urges the West to provide its forces with the heavy weapons needed to fight the better-armed Russian army. did.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, in the southeast of the country, Ukrainian troops blocked Russian advances east of Zaporizhzhya and north of Donetsk.
In the south, Ukrainian forces are focused on the defense of Krivi Rih and Mykolaiv. Fighting continues in the Cherkasy region, south of Kyiv.
According to an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Ukraine’s air defense systems thwarted attacks in the Boryspil and Vasilkov districts of the Kyiv region. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces shot down Ukrainian planes near the city of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv.
Mikhailo Podolik, Mr Zelensky’s adviser, said the city of Mariupol was subject to carpet-bombing, writing on Twitter late Sunday that Russia had “only rockets, bombs and efforts to wipe Ukraine off the ground.”
The Trostyanets withdrew after Moscow, after facing stiff resistance from Ukrainians in its initial, multifront offensive, said on Friday it would refocus its operations on the eastern Donbass region, where Russian forces hold a position of strength.
Russia continues to advance into the Donbass, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Monday, claiming that its forces had taken control of two villages.
Russian forces have dug into defensive positions in the north and around Kyiv, which they have failed to seize. Russia’s firepower is currently focused on Mariupol, a strategically important city that connects the Russian-controlled parts of the Donbass with Moscow-occupied territory in the south.
Jack Watling, a land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, said “repelling the Trostyanets” shows that the Ukrainians are capable of counterattacking, meaning that Russia cannot assume that once they are on the ground. If captured, they have secured it. , “This limits the amount of resource they apply to the space they are trying to take up at any one time.”
However, Western officials believe that Russia is now fortifying Ukrainian forces in the Donbass with new troops from the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, with the goal of encircling Ukrainian forces.
It is not clear how well these new Russian troops will be trained and whether they will have access to high-end weapons to gain a quick advantage against battle-hardened Ukrainian troops. The new battalion tactical group comes from Russia’s Eastern Military District, which experts say is the least combat-trained and well-equipped. However, refocusing the attack on a narrow front could solve some of the military problems that have plagued the Russian military and allowed its dominant air power to assert itself.
Western officials estimate that a fifth of the Russian military is no longer combat-effective and that morale is low. But they warn that the war is far from a victory for Ukraine.
“What we are not seeing is turning the tide, what we are seeing is some individual success,” said one official. The official said the creation of new Russian battalion tactical groups indicates Mr Putin is still going “all in”.
Brigadier General Kyrlo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said on Sunday that Russia sought to divide the country by merging the regions of the east and south under its control into a single state.
“This is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” he said.
In areas under its control, Russia is seeking to establish parallel authority and force people to reject the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, General Budanov said.
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week that even if a ceasefire is agreed, the West should move Ukraine to “strengthen the Ukrainian porcupine’s quills to make it indigestible to future Russian invaders.”
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We must support a free and democratic Ukraine in the long term.”
During a visit to Warsaw on Saturday, Mr Biden said the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine had ignited “a new fight for freedom” between democracies and autocrats. Mr Biden also called Mr Putin “a butcher” and appeared to be calling for his removal. A White House official later retracted Mr Biden’s remarks. A person familiar with the situation said Mr Biden’s remarks were not part of his planned remarks. Kremlin spokesman Peskov called the remarks “alarming” in comments to reporters on Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he does not use the same language that Mr Biden did as he continues to speak with Mr Putin, including a proposal to evacuate civilians from Mariupol.
“We want to stop the war that started in Ukraine without war,” Mr Macron said in an interview on French television. “If we want to do that, we cannot move through words or actions.”
Asked about Biden’s remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Oksana Markova said: “It is clear to us that Russia is a terrorist state, led by a war criminal. “
—Isabelle Coles and Jared Malsin contributed to this article.
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