There are openings for a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine, which has now reached its fourteenth day ( HERE all the articles on the war).
Having set aside the negotiations on the Belarusian borders which so far have produced only the opening of very fragile humanitarian corridors, there is expectation for the first high-level meeting: that of Thursday between the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers Dmytro Kuleba and Serghei Lavrov in Antalya, in Turkey, with the mediation of Erdogan.
In view of the meeting, Moscow lists its objectives : Donbass an independent state, recognition of Russian Crimea and a demilitarization and "denazification" of Ukraine.
Kiev, for its part, opens the negotiations: "Willing to discuss neutrality, but we will not give a single centimeter of territory to Moscow", said Ihor Zhovkva, deputy chief of staff of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, specifying that the precondition for a negotiation is a ceasefire. Zelensky himself, in an interview with Bild, while not talking about details, says he is "ready to take certain steps and to compromise". But "I will not betray Ukraine", he clarifies, returning to ask for a meeting with Putin, "only with a direct conversation can we put an end to this war".
After all, according to Zelensky, the Kremlin's aims go much further. "I am sure - he said - that Poland is also at risk", together with Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic countries, because Putin "wants to disintegrate Europe, just like Ukraine".
Beijing also cheers for dialogue, which today, accusing NATO and the US, has confirmed the iron alliance with Moscow.
MARIUPOL DRAMA - On the war front, Moscow continues its advance. Dramatic day in Mariupol, where there are now 1,170 civilian victims. Today a hospital was bombed, the pavilions of the maternity ward and the pediatric ward hit.
Car wrecks in the completely gutted courtyard. A disaster whose images immediately went around the world, arousing general indignation: pregnant women in a state of shock carried away on a stretcher, others with their faces full of blood helped out by family members and rescuers.
And so in an instant the hopes of a less bloody day vanished after the opening of six humanitarian corridors. "The maternity ward no longer exists, many women were injured and killed," said the number two of the national police Vyacheslav Abroskin, citing eyewitnesses.
"Children and women under the rubble", Zelensky thundered, accusing the Russians of "a direct attack on the maternity hospital, an atrocity." And launching yet another appeal to the West for a no fly zone: " accomplices in these crimes, it seems to me that you are losing humanity ”.
The toll of the attack on the hospital is not yet known, we are talking generically of dozens of injured. But it is just yet another hard blow to a city under siege, in "apocalyptic" conditions, as the Red Cross has observed. Even today the attempt to mass evacuate from Mariupol failed, which, according to Deputy Mayor Sergiy Orlov, counts 1,170 civilians who have died since the beginning of the conflict and dozens of people buried in mass graves. With residents without water, heating and electricity.
THE OTHER CORRIDORS AND KIEV UNDER SIEGE - The exchange of accusations continues on the humanitarian corridors: "400 thousand citizens held hostage by Moscow", attacks Kiev. For the Kremlin, on the other hand, it is all the fault of the "horrible actions of the Ukrainian nationalists, who force civilians to stay in order to build barricades".
The other escape routes open for 12 hours are in Sumy in the north-east, in Enerhodar in the south. It did not go well in the Kharkiv area, where according to Kiev the humanitarian convoys were "hampered by Russian bombing". Ditto in Kiev, where the passage of 50 buses from the Bucha suburb was blocked.
Meanwhile, the Russian tanks are getting closer and closer to the capital. In the event of a siege, "we can only last a week", estimates Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Which speaks of a war that reached 10 kilometers from the center, with Russian armored vehicles that "have been around for two weeks" and soldiers who "try to make their way into the neighborhoods".
ALARM IN ANOTHER PLANT - Meanwhile, after Chernobyl, the alarm also goes off in the evening for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The systems of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Aiea) that monitor the plant have stopped transmitting data, the IAEA said.
There was a similar outage from the Chernobyl site yesterday. The director of the IAEA Rafael Grossi "said he was worried about the interruption of the data flow to the agency's headquarters in Vienna from the two sites, where there is a large amount of nuclear material", reads the press release. Aiea.
(Unioneonline / L)