Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday peace talks were sounding more realistic but more time was needed, as Russian air strikes killed five people in the capital Kyiv and the refugee tally from Moscow’s invasion reached 3 million.
Ukrainian officials have raised hopes the war could end sooner than expected, possibly by May, saying Moscow may be coming to terms with its failure to impose a new government by force and running out of fresh troops.
“The meetings continue, and, I am informed, the positions during the negotiations already sound more realistic. But time is still needed for the decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in a video address on Wednesday, ahead of the next round of talks.
In a hint of a possible compromise, Zelenskiy said earlier Ukraine was prepared to accept security guarantees from the West that stop short of its long-term goal of joining NATO. Moscow sees any future Ukraine membership of the Western alliance as a threat and has demanded guarantees it will never join.
War Update
US President Joe Biden will announce $800 million in new security assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday, a White House official said — the same day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to deliver a speech to the US Congress.
An Irish cameraman for Fox News and a Ukrainian working as a producer for the US television network have been killed in fighting near Kyiv, Fox News said. Two other Ukrainian journalists, as well as a US documentary filmmaker, have also been killed, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights chief Lyudmyla Denisova said.
Around 20,000 people managed to leave the besieged port city of Mariupol by driving along a humanitarian corridor agreed with Russian forces, a Ukrainian presidential aide said.
Russia has drawn up lists of 40,000 fighters from the Syrian army and allied militias to be put on standby for deployment in Ukraine, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says.
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