Ukraine advance ‘going to plan,’ says Putin

Local residents stand in front of a burning building after shelling by Russian forces in Ukraine’s second-biggest city of Kharkiv yesterday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s advance in Ukraine was “going to plan” and Kyiv appealed for Western military aid yesterday, even as the warring sides met for ceasefire talks. After the fall of a first major Ukrainian city to Russian forces, Putin appeared in no mood to heed a global clamour for hostilities to end as the war entered its second week. Putin again said Russia was rooting out “neo-Nazis”, adding during the televised opening of a national security council meeting that he “will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.” He earlier told French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow “intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups”, according to a Kremlin account of their call. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West to up its military assistance, after Nato members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone for fear of igniting a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia. “If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky told a news conference. “If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were “the only way to stop this war”. The EU has offered fighter jets already, and a source in Berlin said the German government was planning to deliver another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc agreed further to approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine — numbered by the United Nations at more than one million. Ukraine and Russia yesterday agreed to create humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians, in a second round of talks, negotiators on both sides said. “The second round of talks is over. Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have the results it needs yet. There are decisions only on the organisation of humanitarian corridors,” Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. Ukraine insisted on the need for humanitarian corridors, to get urgent supplies into cities and trapped civilians out. The invasion, now in its eighth day, has turned Russia into a global pariah in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sports and culture. The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to cower in basements. Addressing the Putin regime in a video statement, Zelensky said: “You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.” Thirty-three people died yesterday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, authorities said.