Ukraine ceasefire talks take place as fighting appears at stalemate

Another round of talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire in Ukraine are taking place in Turkey.

The discussions between Ukrainian and Russian delegations come as the fighting appeared to be at a stalemate, with the two sides trading control of a town in the east and a suburb of the capital.

Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, north west of Kyiv, from Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday as he sought to rally the country.

“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” Mr Zelensky said in his night-time video address to the nation. “We can’t express our emotions now. We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”

In a speech at the start of the discussions in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said progress in the talks could pave the way for a meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

“We believe that there will be no losers in a just peace. Prolonging the conflict is not in anyone’s interest,” Mr Erdogan said. “As members of the delegations you have taken on a historic responsibility. The whole world is awaiting the good news that will come from you.”

The delegations are scheduled to hold two days of talks in a government building adjacent to the 19th-century Ottoman palace Dolmabahce on the shores of the Bosporus.

Earlier talks between the sides, held in person in Belarus or by video, failed to make progress on ending the month-long war that has killed thousands and driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including almost 4 million from their country.

Ahead of the talks, the Ukrainian president said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, in comments that might lend momentum to negotiations.

Mr Zelensky said over the weekend that compromise might be possible over “the complex issue of Donbas”, the hotly contested region in the country’s east.

It is unclear how that might be reconciled with his stance that “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt”.

Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of joining Nato, which Moscow sees as a threat.

Mr Zelensky, for his part, has stressed that Ukraine needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.

As fighting raged throughout the country, the mayor of Irpin, which has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, said the city had been “liberated” from Russian forces.

A senior US defence official said the US believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.

The official said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.

The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasising ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years.

Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was gaining control of the Donbas.

The possible face-saving exit strategy for Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised Ukrainian fears the Kremlin aims to split the country, forcing it to surrender a swathe of its territory.

In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians back in other sectors.

In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the capital, Associated Press reporters saw the remains of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago.

In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers who had moved farther west but no sign of Russian troops.

Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine’s military said in a post om Tuesday.

It said the Orthodox church – the country’s majority religion – was the most affected but that mosques, synagogues, Protestant churches and religious schools were also destroyed.

A cyberattack knocked Ukraine’s national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline on Monday.

The chief of Ukraine’s state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed “the enemy” without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off from telephone, internet and mobile service to ensure coverage for Ukraine’s military.

Also on Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region was hit by a missile, the governor said, in the second attack on oil facilities in the region near the Polish border.