Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in a call with Vladimir Putin urges a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions in Ukraine.
The Kremlin said that peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may get underway in Turkey on Tuesday and it was important that they would take place face-to-face, after what it described as a lack of major progress in negotiations so far, news agency Reuters reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan agreed in a telephone call on Sunday for Istanbul to host the talks, which Ankara hopes will lead to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Turkey report that the talks could begin as early as Monday, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that was doubtful as the negotiators would only be arriving in Turkey on Monday.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said that Ukraine has no plans to open any humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from besieged cities Monday because of intelligence reports warning of possible Russian “provocations” along the routes. Russia is increasingly concentrating on crushing Ukraine’s military in the east in the hope of forcing Kyiv into surrendering part of the country’s territory to possibly end the war.
Perhaps, Putin did not expect Ukraine to put up such a fight. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified a total of 977 civilian deaths during Russia’s military attack on Ukraine as of March 22, 2022. Of them, 81 were children. Furthermore, 1,594 people were reported to have been injured.
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