On the ground, the situation remains tense after the bombardment of a pediatric hospital by Russia. But on the diplomatic front, talks are to take place for the first time since the start of the conflict on Thursday between the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine. And if Western officials are not “optimistic”, the two countries have seemed ready to make a move to find a compromise.
Russia and Ukraine agreed on Wednesday on ceasefires to allow the establishment of humanitarian corridors around areas hard hit in recent days by fighting, which has forced civilians to remain sometimes for days hidden in cellars. At least 35,000 civilians were evacuated Wednesday from Sumy, Enerhodar and areas near the capital Kiev, via three humanitarian corridors, announced the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
Several corridors were also planned in order to let the inhabitants of towns to the west of the capital retreat towards Kiev. The local authorities, however, deplored that around fifty evacuation buses in this region were stopped.
No regime change, swears Moscow
Russian diplomacy also affirmed that Russia was not seeking to “overthrow the government” of Ukraine, contrary to what Russian officials had claimed for two weeks. A softening in the tone which comes after President Zelensky suggested, in an interview with the American television channel ABC, to no longer insist on Ukraine’s membership of NATO, one of the questions invoked by Moscow to justify the ‘invasion.
In the same interview, he also said he was ready for a “compromise” on the status of the separatist territories in eastern Ukraine, whose independence Vladimir Putin unilaterally recognized.
A change in position which could fuel the discussions scheduled to begin Thursday around 10:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. Paris time) in Antalya, Turkey, between the Russian Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov – who arrived on site on Wednesday – and Ukrainian Dmytro Kuleba, with their counterpart Turkish Mevlüt Cavusoglu as mediator.
Despite these diplomatic negotiations, the situation remains critical on the ground. On Wednesday, Russian forces bombed a pediatric hospital, an attack constituting “a war crime”, denounced Volodymyr Zelensky. The mayor of Mariupol, for his part, said that 1,207 civilians had been killed in nine days, an assessment impossible to verify immediately. And as Russian forces continue to encircle Kiev from the north, east and south, the conflict, according to US intelligence, risks becoming even bloodier for civilians.