Latest updates as of 10:18 p.m. on Sunday:
- Russian forces have left the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, home to workers at the defunct nuclear plant of Chornobyl, after taking control of it Saturday, the mayor said early on Monday.
- For 30 seconds, the 2022 Oscar ceremony went silent for Ukraine in a tribute that started with words from the Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis and ended with a plea for anyone watching to do whatever possible to send help to those in the war-torn nation.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law Sunday that bans reporting on military movements that have yet to be announced or approved. Journalists who violate the law, which doesn’t differentiate between Ukrainian and foreign reporters, could face three to eight years in prison.
- U.S. President Joe Biden clarified on Sunday he is not calling for regime change in Russia, after his statement Saturday saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
- Ukraine will insist on sovereignty and territorial integrity at the next round of peace negotiations with Russia, set to take place in Turkey, President Zelenskyy said late on Sunday.
- Russia is maintaining a distant blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast which is effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade, British military intelligence said on Sunday.
Ukraine is prepared to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of a peace deal with Russia but such a pact would have to be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in remarks aired on Sunday.
Zelenskyy was speaking to Russian journalists in a 90 minute video call, an interview that Moscow authorities had pre-emptively warned Russian media to refrain from reporting. Zelenskyy spoke in Russian throughout, as he has done in previous speeches when targeting a Russian audience.
Zelenskyy said Russia’s invasion had caused the destruction of Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine, and said the damage was worse than the Russian wars in Chechnya.
“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it. This is the most important point,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine refused to discuss certain other Russian demands, such as the demilitarization of the country.
Speaking more than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Zelenskyy said no peace deal would be possible without a ceasefire and troop withdrawals.
He ruled out trying to recapture all Russian-held territory by force, saying it would lead to a third world war, and said he wanted to reach a “compromise” over the eastern Donbass region, held by Russian-backed forces since 2014.
Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine with the aim of demilitarizing its neighbor. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
On early Monday, Russian forces have left the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, home to workers at the defunct nuclear plant of Chernobyl, after completing their task of surveying it, the mayor said.
On Saturday, the Kyiv regional governor said Russian forces had taken control of the town just outside the safety exclusion zone around Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, where Ukrainian staff still manage the plant.
“They completed the work they had set out to do,” Yuri Fomichev, the mayor of the northern town, said in an online video post. “They surveyed the town, today they finished doing it and left the town. There aren’t any in the town right now.”
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
'Humanitarian catastrophe'
Zelenskyy focused on the fate of the eastern port city of Mariupol, under siege for weeks. Once a city of 400,000 people, it has undergone prolonged Russian bombardment.
“All entries and exits from the city of Mariupol are blocked,” Zelenskyy said. “The port is mined. A humanitarian catastrophe inside the city is unequivocal, because it is impossible to go there with food, medicine and water,” he said.
“I don’t even know who the Russian army has ever treated like this,” he said, adding that, compared to Russian wars in Chechnya, the volume of destruction “cannot be compared.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for a failure to open humanitarian corridors.
Zelenskyy pushed back against allegations from Moscow that Ukraine had curbed the rights of Russian speakers, saying it was Russia’s invasion that wiped Russian-speaking cities “off the face of the earth.”
He also dismissed as “a joke” allegations made by Russia that Ukraine had nuclear or chemical weapons.
Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Matthias Williams, Editing by William Maclean and Pravin Char
– With files from the Canadian Press
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