Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has issued an ultimatum to Ukraine to meet his country's proposals — including surrendering territory controlled by Russia — or allow their fate to be “decided by the Russian army”.
The warning was issued on Monday, the same day Ukraine’s Foreign Minister said his nation wanted a summit to end the war, although he did not expect Russia to take part.
“Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” Mr Lavrov said, according to state news agency Tass.
“The point is simple: fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday he was open to talks, although Ukraine and its western allies dismissed the offer as Moscow's forces battered Ukrainian towns with missiles and rockets.
Russia continues to demand that Ukraine recognises its conquest of a fifth of the country but Kyiv says it will fight until Mr Putin's forces withdraw.
Mr Lavrov said it was “objectively impossible” to maintain normal communication with US President Joe Biden and his US government.
“It is no secret to anyone that the strategic goal of the United States and its Nato allies is to defeat Russia on the battlefield as a mechanism for significantly weakening or even destroying our country,” Mr Lavrov said.
“It is objectively impossible to maintain normal communication with the Biden administration, which declares the infliction of a strategic defeat on our country as a goal.”
-
A building burned from a strike as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Bakhmut. Reuters -
Antonina, a refugee from Bakhmut in Donetsk region, with dogs she rescued in Izyum, Kharkiv. AFP -
A resident gives her neighbours hot food brought by volunteers in Izyum. AFP -
A Ukrainian soldier salutes as he works to build a bunker with sand in Bakhmut. Reuters -
Volodymyr Kovalov, 77, carries tree branches attached to his bike as he collects wood for heating and cooking in Kherson region. AFP -
A local resident takes pictures of a destroyed monastery in Dolyna, eastern Ukraine. AFP -
A decoy dummy made with the clothes of a Russian soldier at the entrance of a destroyed cinema in Kamyanka, eastern Ukraine. AFP -
Destroyed houses in the city of Kamyanka. AFP -
Caesar, 50, a Russian who joined the Freedom of Russia Legion to fight on the side of Ukraine, stands in front of a destroyed monastery in Dolyna. AFP -
An employee stands next to a shelter at a stainless pipes plant in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region. AFP -
Ivan and Iryna Kalinin before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Iryna, who was pregnant, was killed in a Russian air strike on Mariupol's maternity hospital. Ivan returned to the occupied city to rebury his wife and baby. AP -
Natalia, 67, sits inside her house that was damaged in a Russian military strike, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldiers ride in a military vehicle in Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk enclave. AP -
Smoke billows from a building on fire after a Russian attack in Bakhmut. AP -
Sasha and her grandfather stand outside their home in Bakhmut. AP -
Ukrainian soldiers set up a barricade in Bakhmut. AP -
Nastya carries her cat as her mother Anna says goodbye to neighbours with whom they lived for months in a basement during Russian attacks in Soledar, a city in the Donetsk enclave of Ukraine. AP -
Anna and Nastya in the basement during a Russian attack nearby. AP -
A Ukrainian soldier is wheeled on a stretcher at a hospital in the Donetsk enclave. AP -
A woman looks a building damaged by Russian shelling in Kherson. AFP -
Oleksandra Koshkina, 85, sits in a car as she returns to her village of Torske, in the Donetsk enclave. Reuters -
A resident of Bakhmut walks along an empty street. Reuters -
A street market in Bakhmut. Reuters -
A Ukrainian soldier poses for a picture in the Donetsk enclave. Reuters -
Officials tend to a patient on a plane carrying Ukrainian Jewish refugees as they wait to disembark at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. AFP
On Monday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AP his government wanted a “peace” summit within two months at the UN, with Secretary General Antonio Guterres as mediator.
The UN was cautious in its response.
“As the Secretary General has said many times in the past, he can only mediate if all parties want him to mediate,” UN associate representative Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said on Monday.
Mr Kuleba said Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow.
However, other nations should feel free to engage with Moscow, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia, he said.
Mr Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the US last week.
He revealed that the US government had made a special plan to ensure the Patriot missile battery was operational in the country within six months. The training usually takes up to a year.
Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023, Mr Kuleba said.
“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti in reply that Russia “never followed conditions set by others. Only our own and common sense”.
Mr Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24, calling it a “special operation” to “denazify” and demilitarise Ukraine, which he said was a threat to Russia.
Ukraine and the West have called the invasion an imperialist land grab.
The war is now in its 11th month, marked by many embarrassing Russian battlefield setbacks and Ukraine’s successful defence of most of its land.
In the latest attack to expose gaps in Russia's air defences, a drone believed to be Ukrainian penetrated hundreds of kilometres through Russian airspace on Monday, causing a deadly explosion at the main base for its strategic bombers.
Russian forces have been engaged for months in fierce fighting in the east and south of Ukraine, to defend the lands Moscow proclaimed it annexed in September and which make up the broader Ukrainian industrial Donbas region.
The Ukrainian top military command said on Monday that Russian forces carried out 19 attacks over the past day in the area.
Russia's defence ministry said it had advanced its positions in the region, and its missile troops and artillery had hit 63 Ukrainian units in the previous day.
In his nightly video message on Monday, Mr Zelenskyy called the situation along the front line in Donbas “difficult and painful”.
“Bakhmut, Kreminna and other areas in Donbas … require a maximum of strength and concentration,” he said.
“The occupiers are deploying all resources available to them — and these are considerable resources — to make some sort of advance.”
