Ever-increasing international pressure. ICC investigation, exclusion from the Football World Cup, new financial sanctions: the pressure on Russia increased again yesterday. Moscow is also on the dock at the UN General Assembly meeting in “emergency extraordinary session”. The Ukrainian president calls for the country to be banned from “all ports” and “airports in the world”.
Putin sets his conditions. Recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine: Vladimir Putin for his part laid down his conditions for stopping the invasion during an exchange with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, the current President of the European Union. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which met for the first time in Belarus since the start of the invasion, for their part returned for “consultations in their respective capitals”, after agreeing to want a “second round” of talks.
The battle for Kiev looms on the horizon. On the ground, the Ukrainian army claimed to have repelled several attempts by Russian forces to storm the outskirts of Kiev, while satellite images show a huge Russian military convoy stretching more than 60 kilometers north- west of the capital. In addition, at least eleven people were killed in Russian bombardments on residential areas of Kharkiv, the country’s second city.