Vladimir Putin says war ‘going to plan’ as France fears ‘worst is to come’ in Russia-Ukraine conflict

The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and it was not immediately clear how they would work. A Russian negotiator, nationalist politician Leonid Slutsky, confirmed the initiative and said it would be implemented soon.

The two sides met after the fall of the first major Ukrainian city to Russian forces, with Mr Putin apparently unwilling to heed a global clamour for hostilities to end as the war entered its second week.

Mr 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.

Mr Zelenskyy 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!” Mr Zelenskyy 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 Mr 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.

At the talks at an undisclosed location on the Belarus-Poland border, both sides shook hands across a table at the outset, the Ukrainian delegates in military attire and the Russians in more formal suits.

A first round of talks on Monday also yielded no breakthrough, and Kyiv says it will not accept any Russian “ultimatums”.

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, Mr Zelenskyy said: “You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.”

Thirty-three people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, authorities said.

French President Emmanuel Macron believes “the worst is to come” in Ukraine after a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin who appears intent on seizing “the whole” of the country, an aide to the French leader said.

“The expectation of the president is that the worst is to come, given what Mr Putin told him,” a senior aide to the French leader told reporters on condition of anonymity.

“There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,” the aide added, adding that Mr Macron told Mr Putin he was making a “grave mistake”.

The French leader himself later tweeted that in the conversation Putin showed he “refuses… to stop his attacks against Ukraine”.

But the 44-year-old, who was at the heart of diplomatic efforts to avoid the conflict and has stayed in touch with Putin even after the invasion, vowed to continue contacts “to avoid the worst”.

“My determination is and will remain total,” he said just hours before he is expected to confirm he is running in presidential elections next month.

In a grim assessment of the 90-minute talks, the third time they have spoken since last Thursday, the aide indicated that Putin had shown no mood for compromise.

Mr Putin “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.”

In response to Putin’s claim of “de-Nazification”, Mr Macron replied that “either you are telling yourself stories or you’re looking for a pretext,”, according to his aide.
“In any case, what you’re saying does not match with reality and can in no way justify the violence of what you’re doing today, nor that your country is going to pay a very high price because it will end up an isolated, weakened country under sanctions for a long time,” Macron continued.

The aide said that Macron had also called Mr Putin’s claims “lies”.

Mr Zelenskyy claims thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed since Mr Putin shocked the world by invading Ukraine, purportedly to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” a Western-leaning threat on his borders.

Moscow said Wednesday that it has lost 498 troops, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Mr Putin praised their sacrifice.

The Kremlin has been condemned for likening the government of Mr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, to that of Germany in World War II.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russian troops seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.

Russian armoured columns from Crimea — annexed by Moscow in 2014 — pushed deep into the region around Kherson, triggering fighting that left at least 13 civilians dead.

Nine Ukrainian soldiers were also killed, the Kherson regional administration said.

Russian troops are also besieging the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

“They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad,” Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russia’s second city, now re-named Saint Petersburg.

Ukrainian authorities said residential and other areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been “pounded all night” by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

Oleg Rubak’s wife Katia, 29, was crushed in the rubble of their family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, by a Russian missile strike.

“One minute I saw her going into the bedroom. A minute later there was nothing,” Rubak, 32, told AFP amid the ruins in the bitter winter chill.

“I hope she’s in heaven and all is perfect for her,” he said, adding through tears, “I want the whole world to hear my story.”

UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths urged Russia to allow relief workers to help Ukraine’s people.

“Protect civilians, for God’s sake, in Ukraine; let us do our job”, he told AFP in Geneva.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency urged Russia to “cease all actions” at Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, including the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

SBS