Ukraine says Russia pounding Donbas
Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says lifting Western sanctions on Russia is part of the ongoing peace talks
KYIV: Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Saturday but failed to capture three target areas, Ukraine’s military said, while Moscow said Western sanctions on Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine were impeding peace negotiations.
The Russians were trying to capture the areas of Lyman in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a daily update. “Not succeeding - the fighting continues,” it said.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in remarks published early on Saturday, said lifting Western sanctions on Russia was part of the peace talks, which he said were difficult but continued daily by video link.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted since the Russian invasion began on February 24 that sanctions needed to be strengthened and could not be part of negotiations. He said on Friday there was a high risk the talks would end because of what he called Russia’s “playbook on murdering people”.
Russian troops accused of committing atrocities Ukraine accuses Russian troops of atrocities in areas near the capital, Kyiv, that they previously occupied. Moscow denies the claims.
Lavrov said that if the United States and other Nato countries were truly interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, they should stop sending weapons to Kyiv.
In Washington, US President Joe Biden’s proposed $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, including $20 billion for weapons, has received bipartisan support. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday she hoped Congress would pass the package as soon as possible.
The war has turned cities to rubble, killed thousands and forced 5 million Ukrainians to flee abroad. After failing to capture the capital, Russia is now focusing on the east and south of Ukraine.
Moscow hopes to take full control of the eastern Donbas region made up of Luhansk and Donetsk, parts of which were already controlled by Russianbacked
separatists before the invasion.
Moscow said on Saturday its artillery units had struck 389 Ukrainian targets overnight. The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region said air defences had prevented a Ukrainian aircraft from entering the region, and as a result shelling had hit parts of an oil terminal, Russian news agencies reported.
Britain’s defence ministry said on Saturday that Russia had been forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from failed advances in northeastern Ukraine.
Russia to quit space station over sanctions The head of Russia’s space programme said Moscow will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS), state media reported, a move it has blamed on sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine.
“The decision has been taken already, we’re not obliged to talk about it publicly,” Tass and RIA Novosti reported Roscosmos general director Dmitry Rogozin as saying in an interview with state TV on Saturday. “I can say this only - in accordance with our obligations, we’ll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a year’s notice.” Rogozin earlier this month threatened to end Russia’s mission unless the US, European Union and Canada lifted sanctions against enterprises involved in the Russian space industry.