Ukraine war: Kremlin accuses West of lack of will to negotiate

After almost a year of aggressive war against Ukraine, Russia has accused the West of a lack of will to negotiate. The West is not open to peace initiatives, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a TV interview on Sunday, the state news agency Tass reported. For this reason, the West will probably not support a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden, said Peskov. Russian troops invaded the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.

From the point of view of the attacked Ukraine and Western countries, there is no basis for negotiation because Russia is sticking to its conquests in Ukraine and wants to overthrow the Kiev leadership. The Belarusian head of state Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly suggested a meeting between the presidents of Russia and the USA. As a location, he suggested the Belarusian capital of Minsk, where a peace plan that had long since failed was negotiated under Franco-German mediation in 2015.

Putin wants to give a speech to the nation in Moscow this Tuesday. Peskov announced that the Kremlin chief would talk about the “military operation” and its effects. The term war is still avoided in Russia. US President Biden is expected to give a speech in Poland’s capital Warsaw, a neighboring country of Ukraine, on the same day.

Ukrainian prosecutor general calls kidnappings genocide

Ukraine has in turn accused Russia of genocide for the forced resettlement of Ukrainian nationals. “When we talk about genocide in Ukraine, we have to talk about the forced deportation of Ukrainians and Ukrainian children,” Attorney General Andriy Kostin told RTL and ntv on Sunday. “Forced resettlement is clear evidence of genocide.”

Moscow itself speaks quite openly of “de-Ukrainization,” said Kostin. “When such messages are sent by the aggressor’s high-ranking politicians, then this is not just about war propaganda, it is a clear incitement to commit atrocities.” The kidnapping of adults and children is legally considered a form of genocide.

Moscow denies deportations. The departure of many Ukrainians to Russia is presented as an escape from the combat zone. The government in Kiev accuses the Russian army of preventing an escape to the Ukrainian side. Before Russian troops withdrew from the Kherson region last fall, many Ukrainians were taken to Crimea or Russia.

The kidnapping of children is also denied by the Russian side, despite evidence to the contrary. When children are taken to Russia, the reason is often medical treatment or recreation. Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova told President Vladimir Putin last week that she had adopted a 15-year-old boy from the devastated city of Mariupol.

Shells fall in the eastern Ukrainian city of Druzhkiva

According to local authorities, several Russian shells fell in the city of Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine. Two residential buildings were damaged during the night, said the governor of the contested Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko. Initially, he did not provide any information about injuries or fatalities. Druzhkivka is far behind the front, but is still being repeatedly fired at with rockets, Kyrylenko wrote on the Telegram network.

According to a report by the “Ukraiinska Pravda” news portal, a total of eight Ukrainian administrative areas have been shelled since Saturday. These included the Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts, all of which are close to the front lines. In western Ukraine, in the capital of the Khmelnytskyi region, according to the authorities, a military object was hit by a longer-range missile. Another rocket hit near a station. The blast damaged several homes and schools.

On Sunday morning, air alerts were intermittent in eastern and southern Ukraine, with no reports of actual attacks. The Russian war of aggression against the neighboring country has been going on for