A peace deal under which Ukraine abandons its Nato aspirations in return for Russian withdrawal and western security guarantees appeared to inch closer on Wednesday even as Vladimir Putin’s troops were accused of killing people queueing for bread in a northern Ukrainian city.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suggested talks were making progress despite continued bloodshed and fears from some EU leaders that the Kremlin was toying with Kyiv.
“The negotiations are not easy for obvious reasons,” Lavrov told RBC News. “But nevertheless, there is some hope of reaching a compromise. “Neutral status is now being seriously discussed seriously along, of course, with security guarantees. This is what is now being discussed at the talks. There are absolutely specific wordings and, in my view, the sides are close to agreeing on them.”
In a video address in the early hours of Wednesday, Zelenskiy had also suggested that there was room for compromise, with Russia taking up “more realistic” positions. “Any war ends with an agreement,” he said.
Slovenia’s prime minister, Janez Janša, who visited Zelenskiy in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday evening, told the Guardian that a “draft framework” was being worked on, with Ukraine’s president willing to change the country’s constitution to drop hopes of Nato membership.
Janša, who had travelled by train to Kyiv with the prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic, said he feared Russia was merely seeking to “put the focus on a side theatre, and pictures from the negotiations, not the pictures from the killing grounds”. “An old trick”, he said.
Biden has called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal,” in the sharpest condemnation yet of Russian actions by a US official since the invasion of Ukraine.
The White House had been hesitant to declare Putin’s actions those of a war criminal, saying it was a legal term that required research.
But in a speech in which he pledged more aid to help Ukraine fight Russia, the US president said Russian troops had bombed hospitals and held doctors hostage. /Argumentum.al
