Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Belarus closed a deal Thursday to allow the establishment of humanitarian corridors to allow besieged citizens to flee the fighting.
A Russian negotiator, lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, confirmed the agreement and said it would be implemented soon, according to international media.
But the agreement was the sole progress made in the second round of talks, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russian forces have captured the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson and by Thursday had also surrounded the port city of Mariupol, also on the Sea of Azov. There are Jewish communities in both.
The city of Kharkiv remained under heavy missile fire on Thursday, as did the capital, Kiev, and other smaller cities.
UN Opens War Crimes Probe Against Russia
The United Nations International Court of Justice Prosecutor, meanwhile, has opened an “immediate” investigation into alleged Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity dating back to 2013.
The move followed a petition by 39 countries that are parties to the Rome Statute — including Canada and France — to request the probe.
“These referrals enable my Office to proceed with opening an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine from 21 November 2013 onwards,” ICJ Prosecutor Karim AA Khan said Wednesday in a statement.
The prosecutor added that the probe would encompass “any past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person”.
Putin Maintains Invasion ‘Going to Plan’
Russian President Vladimir said Thursday at the televised opening of a national security council meeting that Moscow’s “military operation” is “going to plan” and that the operation is rooting out “neo-Nazis.” He added that he will “never give up on [his] conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.”
According to a Kremlin readout of a 90-minute phone call on Thursday between the Russian president and his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, Putin said Moscow “intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups,” Al Jazeera reported.
After the call, a senior Macron aide who requested anonymity told reporters, “The expectation of the president is that the worst is to come, given what President Putin told him.
“There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,” the aide said. The Russian leader, he noted, “wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine. He will, in his own words, carry out his operation to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine to the end.
“You can understand the extent to which these words are shocking and unacceptable and the president told him that it was lies,” the aide added.
Zelensky Appeals to NATO for Fighter Planes
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged NATO members on Thursday to give his country the means to fight an aerial battle, saying, “If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!”
NATO has steadfastly refused to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
“If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” Zelensky warned.
