Kyiv - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for talks with Vladimir Putin, on Saturday. They were the “only chance for Russia to minimize the damage done with their own mistakes”, he said. The two sides are currently holding negotiations remotely, but none have been at the presidential level.

So far, like previous rounds, the negotiations have yielded little progress. “This is the time to meet, to talk, time for renewing territorial integrity and fairness for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Facebook. “I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow. Russia’s losses will be such, that several generations will not recover.”

Several rounds of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow have taken place both in-person and virtually since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. Russia’s top negotiator said Friday that Moscow and Kyiv had brought their positions “as close as possible” on a proposal for Ukraine to become a neutral state. But Mikhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelensky taking part in the negotiations, said his country’s position had not budged.

“The statements of the Russian side are only their requesting positions,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.“All statements are intended, inter alia, to provoke tension in the media. Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulae. “Russia has requested that its neighbor never join the Western NATO military alliance, as well as demanding its “demilitarisation” and “denazification.”

“...will fight to the last bullet.”
Zelensky noted that the 200,000 people Putin gathered in and around a Moscow stadium on Friday for a flag-waving rally was about the same number of Russian troops sent into Ukraine three weeks ago. Zelenskyy then asked his audience to picture the stadium filled with the thousands of Russians who have been killed, wounded or maimed in the fighting. Zelensky said Russian forces were blockading Ukraine’s largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” with the aim of persuading Ukrainians to cooperate with them.

He said Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in the center and southeast of the country. “This is a totally deliberate tactic,” Zelenskyy said in his night-time video address to the nation, filmed outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office in the lamplight behind him. He said more than 9,000 people were able to leave besieged Mariupol in the past day, and in all more than 180,000 people have been able to flee to safety through humanitarian corridors.

There was still no information about the number of people who had died when a theatre in the city sheltering civilians was bombed, he said. He accused Russian forces of blocking aid around hotspot areas, saying “they have a strict order to do everything, so the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian cities turned into reason for Ukrainians to work together with the occupiers”. “This is a war crime!” Zelenskyy added. His comments came as fighting has reached the center of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defense of the region around Ukraine’s capital, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city and vowed: “We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet.”

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko told The BBC, “They were really active today. Tanks and machine-gun battles continue. Everybody is hiding in bunkers.” Over 80% of residential buildings are damaged or destroyed, he said. “There’s no city center left. There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war,” he says. The rescue effort at the city’s theater, where hundreds are believed trapped, was ongoing. The city lies at a strategic point between two Russian-controlled regions on the Sea of Azov, putting it in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.

Meanwhile, satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed Russian forces building berms around military vehicles and equipment northwest of Kyiv. British intelligence earlier said Russia was shifting tactics toward a war of attrition since its plan to overrun Ukraine quickly has faltered.

“Ukraine etc.; it’s all my country.”
As Russian troops rained lethal fire on Ukrainian cities, Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally to lavish praise on his Russian forces. Russia’s president addressed the packed Moscow stadium Friday, saying the Kremlin’s troops had fought “shoulder to shoulder” and supported each other. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he told the cheering crowd.

The invasion has touched off a burst of antiwar protests inside Russia, and the rally was surrounded by suspicions it was a Kremlin-manufactured display of patriotism. The event happened as Russia has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home.

Police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium for the Moscow event, which included patriotic songs such as “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”
Putin’s appearance marked a change from his relative isolation of recent weeks, when he has been shown meeting with world leaders and his staff either at extraordinarily long tables or via videoconference.

Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the eighth anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine. Those reports could not be independently verified.

Seeking to portray the war as just, Putin paraphrased the Bible to say of Russia’s troops: “There is no greater love than giving up one’s soul for one’s friends.” Taking to the stage where a sign read “For a world without Nazism,” he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a baseless claim that they are “neo-Nazis.” Putin continued to insist his actions were necessary to prevent “genocide” — an idea flatly rejected by leaders around the globe. Video feeds of the event cut out at times but showed a loudly cheering crowd that broke into chants of “Russia!”

In the wake of the invasion, the Kremlin has clamped down harder on dissent and the flow of information, arresting thousands of antiwar protesters, banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instituting tough prison sentences for what is deemed to be false reporting on the war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation.”

The rally unfolded as Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said the two sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status. In remarks carried by Russian media, he said the sides are now “halfway” on issues regarding the demilitarization of Ukraine.