Putin says some ‘positive shifts’ in talks with Ukraine

Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Friday there were some “positive shifts” in talks with Ukraine, a view that was rejected by the other side just hours later, leaving little hope for the devastating assault launched by Moscow to relent anytime soon.

Putin’s remarks and the rebuttal by Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba came as western powers issued strong warnings to Moscow as fears of a possible chemical attack arose.

“There are certain positive shifts, negotiators from our side reported to me,” Putin told his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a televised meeting in Moscow.

He added that negotiations are “now being held on an almost daily basis”.

But Kuleba, Ukraine’s top diplomat, said he doesn’t see progress in Russian-Ukrainian talks and reiterated that the country could compromise on neutral status — an offer by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky that Putin likely alluded to — if there were security guarantees.

“There was zero progress in talks, so it’s hard for me to understand what kind of progress president Putin is referring to,” Kuleba said on Bloomberg Television.

Ongoing talks don’t impact Russia’s behaviour on the ground, he said, adding that a meeting between Putin and Ukraine’s president would be helpful.

At the United Nations, tensions rose further, with the United States accusing Russia of using the Security Council as a platform to promote disinformation by alleging “biological activities” in Ukraine.

“This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” said Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. “We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the UN Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation,“ Dalton added.

The Russian request for the Security Council meeting, tweeted Thursday by its first deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, followed a US rejection of Russian accusations that Ukraine is operating chemical and biological labs with U.S. support, AP reported.

As the diplomats faced off at the United Nations Security Council, US president Joe Biden warned Moscow Russia will pay a severe price if it used chemical weapons. Ruling out any direct intervention by the United States to halt Russia’s advance in Ukraine, Biden said that such conflict pitting the NATO alliance against the Kremlin “is World War II”.

His comments came after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday accused the Kremlin of trying to establish a pretext to use chemical weapons during its invasion by making unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine had been developing weapons of mass destructions.

In Ukraine, Russia widened its offensive on Friday, striking airfields in the west and an industrial city in the east, while the huge armored column that had been stalled for over a week outside Kyiv was on the move again, spreading out into forests and towns near the capital.

With the invasion now in its 16th day, Russia appeared to be trying to regroup and regain momentum, with expanded bombardment and a tightening of its stranglehold on cities like Mariupol, the strategic seaport where civilians struggled to find food amid an intense 10-day-old siege.

For his part, Ukrainian president Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had “reached a strategic turning point”, though he did not elaborate. “It’s impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it,” he said via video from Kyiv.

He also said authorities were working on establishing 12 humanitarian corridors and trying to ensure food, medicine and other basics get to people across the country.

Western and Ukrainian officials have said Russian forces have struggled in the face of stiffer resistance and heavier losses than anticipated, along with supply and morale problems. So far, they have made the biggest advances on cities in the south and east while stalling in the north and around Kyiv.

While Russian forces continued to launch airstrikes in urban areas such as Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, they also pounded targets away from the main battle zones.