Despite the bombs raining down on Kiev and Kharkiv, diplomacy continues. Russia said it was ready on Wednesday to discuss a ceasefire with Ukraine on Thursday, which has sent emissaries to Belarus. It remains to be seen whether Vladimir Putin really intends to negotiate, while the human toll has been described as “amazing” by Washington.
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.
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.
Macron wants to “stay in touch” with Putin
The Secretary of State also emphasized a “human cost” already “staggering”. “Hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed and injured,” Blinken lamented at a press conference, and “the number of civilians killed and injured, the humanitarian consequences, will only get worse in the days to come.” are coming “.
French President Emmanuel Macron has meanwhile shown his desire to “stay in touch” 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 “.
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.
First Russian report
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 unveiled 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. American officials quoted by NBC News mentioned an estimate of 5,000 Russian soldiers killed.