Ukraine peace talks held as Moscow passes tit-for-tat measures

dpa Kiev Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine continued on Monday afternoon after a break, several Russian and Belarusian media reported. The dele...

dpaKievPeace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine continued on Monday afternoon after a break, several Russian and Belarusian media reported.The delegations from the two countries had met at noon after a considerable delay.In response to the decision by multiple countries to close their airspace to Russian aircraft, Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya announced that it was closing Russian airspace to 35 countries - including all EU member states and Canada - on Monday.The first diplomatic casualty of the airspace ban was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has had to cancel a trip to Geneva, where he was scheduled to attend a sitting of the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday.Despite the fact that peace talks were ongoing, Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine.Heavy fighting was taking place between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, with footage shared by a government official showing repeated missile attacks on a residential area.“The whole world should see this horror,” Anton Herashchenko, an advisor to the interior minister, wrote in a Facebook post alongside the video.Dozens were killed and hundreds injured, he said.Russia, on the other hand, has claimed that Ukrainian “nationalists” are shelling the cities.The Russian offensive on Ukraine’s capital city Kiev continued on Monday, the Ukrainian military said.In the north of the city, the Russian army was attempting to build a pontoon bridge to cross the Irpin River, the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said on Facebook. There was also another unsuccessful attempt to take the city of Irpin, just outside Kiev, they said.Russian news agency Interfax reported that Russian troops advanced from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson towards the city of Mykolaiv.Meanwhile, the Ukrainian state communications service said in a post on Telegram that a missile had hit a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv near the border with Belarus.Ukraine’s state energy company Energoatom dismissed claims by Russia that its troops had taken control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as fake news. “Currently, all four nuclear power plants are under the control of Ukraine and are operating normally.” Details of the military developments could not be independently verified.Latvia is to allow its citizens to join the fight against Russia’s military advances in Ukraine, after parliament in Riga unanimously passed the necessary legal framework on Monday.Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has reported 352 civilian deaths, including 14 children, since Russia began its attack in the early hours of Thursday.A further 1,684 people, including 116 children, were reportedly wounded as of Sunday night, according to ministry figures.Ukraine’s military said the “loss” of Russian personnel now stood at around 4,500 soldiers, and that Russian helicopters, tanks and other military vehicles had been destroyed.While Russia conceded that there have been deaths among its ranks during the fighting in Ukraine, it has not given a death toll.The Russian Defence Ministry also said it had switched the country’s deterrence forces to enhanced combat alert on Monday.Russia has faced a barrage of unprecedented international sanctions and an outpouring of support for Ukraine since Putin launched an invasion of that country on Thursday.On Sunday, Putin already raised the prospect of a nuclear escalation with the West over Ukraine when he ordered the country’s “deterrent weapons” be put on special alert.Western powers have responded with tough sanctions on Moscow and US President Joe Biden was due to speak to allies and partners by telephone to discuss the latest developments in the crisis on Monday.EU countries and other Western states have announced numerous sanctions on Moscow, including the exclusion of multiple Russian banks from the SWIFT financial transfer system.The United States has also imposed hard-hitting sanctions on the Russian central bank, banning US citizens and institutions from conducting transactions with the institution, a senior White House official said.The measures also mean that the central bank can no longer conduct business in dollars anywhere in the world, according to the official.These and sanctions imposed by other allies effectively block most of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves, worth $630 billion, meaning Moscow cannot use them to counter the economic consequences of the war, he said.He added that Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and Finance Ministry would also face sanctions, in a strategy aiming to “make sure that the Russian economy goes backwards, as long as President Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine,” the official said.South Korea said it plans to halt its exports of strategic goods to Russia amid Moscow’s ongoing attacks on Ukraine.Japan plans to impose sanctions on Belarus, as an ally of Russia, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.Tokyo’s sanctions are to target Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and other government representatives, Kishida explained.