Kyiv: Volodymyr President Zelensky said the week of his government “carefully” remembering Russian requests about Ukrainian neutrality, key battle points as negotiators for both parties preparing to end the war during a brutal month.
“This negotiation point can be understood for me and is being discussed, it is being studied carefully,” Zelensky said during interviews with several independent Russian news organizations.
The United Nations estimates that at least 1,100 civilians have died and more than 10 million have been transferred in the awesome war that has been going longer than expected by Moscow leaders.
New talks – starting in Turkey on Monday or Tuesday, according to conflicting reports – came after the Russian army said it would begin to focus on East Ukraine in moving some analysts from Moscow’s ambition.
But US President Joe Biden questioned the interpretation – and may have agreed with the upcoming conversation by saying in Warsaw that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
Ad-libbed comments – White House quickly tried to return – trigger anger in Moscow and sowed extensive concerns in Washington and abroad, seemingly weakening Biden’s own efforts on European visits to underline unity made carefully to support Kyiv.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned that any escalation “in words or action” could endanger his efforts in talks with Putin to agree to evacuate civilians from the destroyed Mariupol port city.
Intense diplomacy or constantly convincing sanctions have persuaded Putin to stop the war.
But when Russia faced serious tactical and logistical problems, Ukrainian intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov said Putin might try to divide the country in fashion like Korea – to “impose the separation line occupied and not inhabited”.
“After the failure to capture Kyiv and remove the Ukrainian government, Putin changed its main operational direction. This is South and East,” he wrote on Facebook. “This will be an effort to establish South and North Korea in Ukraine.”
Russia can try to build a quasi-state occupation zone with its own currency, he said, adding that Ukrainian forces can thwart the plan.
A neutral Ukraine?
The main request from Putin, even before his troops rolled into Ukraine on February 24, was that he let go of his intention which was stated to finally join NATO.
The Kremlin earlier this month said Sweden and Austria offer a neutrality model that can be adopted by Ukraine.
Kyiv rejected the proposal, and in an interview with Russian journalists, Zelensky accused Putin to drag negotiations and extend the conflict.
The NATO Agreement in 1949 gives European rights to apply for membership, and US State Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman said in January that “We will not slam the door with NATO open policy.”
But NATO members said the Ukrainian membership was a choice that was far at best. Kyiv to join 30 Western Alliance members, NATO will be committed to helping to defend it against attacks in the future.
The new talk round came when Russia had a de facto control over the Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk who proclaimed themselves in the region of the country’s East Donbas.
The head of the separatist region of Lugansk Ukraine said it might have a referendum to be part of Russia – steps immediately slammed by Kyiv.
When Russian troops continued the siege of the awesome Mariupol – the main obstacle for Moscow’s ambition to get unbroken control of Donbas to the Crimean Peninsula – the population had told terrible destruction and death scenes.
Ukraine made a new encouragement to get civilians on Sundays, with a help route agreement for people to go by car or bus, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Some previous attempts to build a safe outgoing route for 170,000 civilians trapped in the city had fainted in the middle of pointing fingers.
Macron said the week he would talk to Putin in the next two days to regulate the “ceasefire and then withdraw the total troops (Russia) in a diplomatic way” to allow full evacuation.
“If we want to do that, we cannot increase both in words or action,” he told French broadcasters 3, moved to contact Biden’s harsh words against Putin.