Destroyed Russian tanks are seen, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in the Sumy region, Ukraine, March 7, 2022 (Irina Rybakova)

EA on China Radio International: War in Ukraine is Not About “Regime Change” in Russia

Tuesday’s Coverage: Putin Pulls Back on His Invasion, Limits Operations Near Kyiv and Kharkiv

UPDATE 1845 GMT:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has expressed his “general readiness” to act as a guarantor of Ukraine’s security.

Ukraine’s call for a security guarantee — analogous to NATO’s Article 5 commitment for collective defense against an attack — from Germany, Turkey, the US, the UK, France, and other countries is a central part of its proposals in talks with Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has also supported the security guarantee.

UPDATE 1800 GMT:

Vladimir Putin has withdrawn his demand that European countries pay for gas in roubles, propping up the Russian currency.

The German Government said Putin told Chancellor Olaf Scholz by phone that transactions will continue to be in euros.

The payments will be made to Gazprom Bank, which is not yet affected by international sanctions.

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom has said that deliveries to Europe have continued at about the same level as those before the invasion.

UPDATE 1750 GMT:

UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has told the UN Human Rights Council that Russia’s attacks, killing civilians and destroying hospitals, may constitute war crimes.

Bachelet said her office has verified 77 incidents in which medical facilities were damaged, including 50 hospitals and spoke of “credible allegations” that Russian forces had used cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine at least 24 times.

She summarized, “Homes and administrative buildings, hospitals and schools, water stations and electricity systems have not been spared….Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.”

UPDATE 1730 GMT:

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, says the agency is unable to reach some of its employees in besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine.

“Some managed to get out. Some are inside and we can’t communicate with them at this point. Those are my colleagues,” Grandi said.

He called for “firm commitments” of no fighting so evacuations can be completed.

UPDATE 1720 GMT:

In a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, US President Joe Biden has pledged another $500m in budgetary assistance to Kyiv.

The aid is on top of $800 million in additional military assistance announced by Biden last week during his trip to Ukraine’s neighbor Poland.

UPDATE 1455 GMT:

The mayor of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, says 250 to 300 civilians were killed this week as the Ukraine military retook the town from Russian forces.

Oleksandr Markushyn said about 50 Ukrainian troops were slain, with some bodies trapped under rubble. He said the Russians continued to shell overnight.

UPDATE 1425 GMT:

Russian forces hit a Red Cross warehouse in besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine port city of Mariupol.

A Red Cross spokesperson said, “We do not have a team on the ground in Mariupol so we have no other information, including on potential casualties or damage. We can say that we had already distributed all aid supplies in the warehouse.”

Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman,< announced the attack. She said casualties have not been confirmed.

Denisova added, “This is another war crime of the Russian army in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and a gross violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.”

Maxar has posted a satellite image showing damage from a strike on the northern end of the warehouse, between March 19-22, and on the southern end between March 23-26. Satellite data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System detected explosions in the area on March 20 and every day between March 22-25.

UPDATE 1040 GMT:

The Kremlin has poured cold water on any advance in talks with Ukraine on an end to the Russian invasion.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow has not seen anything promising, much less a breakthrough, in Ukrainian proposals.

Peskov welcomed the tabling of proposals in written form, but said a long period of work lies ahead.

UPDATE 0910 GMT:

The UN High Commission for Refugees reports the number of Ukrainian refugees since the Russian invasion is now 4,019,287 million — about 1 in 11 Ukrainians.

More than 6.5 million civilians are displaced within the country.

UPDATE 0820 GMT:

Poland has announced plans for sharp cutbacks in import of Russian energy.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference, “We will impose a total embargo on Russian coal, and I hope that by April, May at the latest, we will have completely exited from Russian coal. We will do everything to stop using Russian oil by the end of this year.”

UPDATE 0747 GMT:

Despite Russia’s declaration that it is pulling back from the area near Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, attacks continue.

Chernihiv Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko said:

The night was just as we expected, that [everything Russia promised] is a lie from the beginning till the end, that’s why at night we had some serious shelling at night. And the Russians were trying to destroy all possible means of crossing Desna River towards Kyiv.

Atroshenko noted that the Russians, unable to overrun the city, have shelled and besieged it: “The locals live in a real humanitarian crisis for weeks with no electricity, no heating, no water, only in some areas of the city there’s [natural] gas. Thousands of buildings are destroyed.”

Regional Governor Viacheslav Chaus added, “The ‘decreased activity’ in the Chernihiv region was demonstrated by the enemy carrying out strikes on Nizhyn, including air strikes, and all night long they hit Chernihiv.”

UPDATE 0741 GMT:

Russian forces are shelling the city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine this morning, causing widespread damage to residential areas.

The Internal Affairs Ministry tweeted, “We have significant destruction of residential high-rise buildings. There are probably people under the rubble.”

Russian forces also carried out three strikes on an industrial facility in the Khmelnytsky region in western Ukraine, causing fires.

UPDATE 0735 GMT:

Adding to the assessment of problems with Russia’s ground offensives, including in northern Ukraine, UK defense intelligence assesses:

Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.

Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganising its units in forward areas within Ukraine.

Russia will likely continue to compensate for its reduced ground maneuver capability through mass artillery and missile strikes.

Russia’s stated focus on an offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk is likely a tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.

UPDATE 0710 GMT:

Kyiv Deputy Mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said on TV this morning, “The night passed relatively calmly, to the sounds of sirens and the sound of gunfire from battles around the city, but there was no shelling in the city itself.”

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Vladimir Putin has given up on his “Plan A” in the invasion of Ukraine: the capture of the capital and largest cities, forcing the downfall of the Zelenskiy Government with the detention and/or killing of its leaders.

Amid Ukraine-Russia talks in Istanbul, Turkey, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin announced the effective surrender of Putin’s ambition. He said Moscow had decided to “fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” to “increase mutual trust for future negotiations to agree and sign a peace deal with Ukraine”.

But officials in Ukraine and other countries responded warily to the statement, pointing to a “Plan B” in which the Russia military tries to regroup — having lost an estimated 20% of invasion forces — and occupy much of southern and eastern Ukraine.

A US official cautioned:

We believe any movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv is a redeployment, not a withdrawal.

And the world should be prepared for continued major offensives against other areas of Ukraine….They are shifting gears….No one should mistake that for Russia ending the conflict.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, noting that Ukrainians are “not naive people”, saw “no reason to trust the words of certain representatives of a state that continues to fight for our destruction”. He called for the international community to strengthen sanctions against Russia: “They must be effective. Not just for headlines in the media that sanctions have been imposed, but for real peace. Real.”

US President Joe Biden responded, “I don’t read anything into it until I see what their actions are.” The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of a ploy to “deceive people and deflect attention”: “What Russia says, and what Russia does, and we’re focused on the latter.”

The UK military summarized, “It is almost certain that the Russian offensive has failed in its objective to encircle Kyiv…[but] it is highly likely that Russia will seek to divert combat power from the north to their offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.” The Government asserted, “We don’t want to see anything less than a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory.”

Russia’s lead negotiator in the talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, bolstered the cautious reactions. He said Moscow’s promise to “drastically reduce” military operations is not a ceasefire, with “a long way to go” before any agreement to halt the invasion.

In a Tuesday night intelligence report, Ukraine’s military said the Russian withdrawal from near Kyiv and Chernihiv, 100 miles to the north, is only “a rotation of individual units” to “mislead the [Ukrainian] military leadership”.

A Draft Proposal at the Ukraine-Russia Talks

The fourth set of Ukraine-Russia talks discussed a substantial political, military, and economy in which Kyiv would nominally declare non-aligned status while drawing closer to other countries in and beyond Europe.

Ukraine negotiator Oleksander Chaly said on national TV, “We will not host foreign military bases on our territory, as well as deploy military contingents on our territory, and we will not enter into military-political alliances.”

In return, Ukraine would enter into a treaty for “security guarantees” — analogous to NATO’s Article 5 for collective defense against attack — with countries such as the US, UK, Turkey, France, and Germany.

Significantly, Russia also would accept Kyiv’s accession to the European Union.

Regarding the Russian occupation, there will be a 15-year consultation period on the status of Crimea, held by Moscow’s forces since 2014. However, neither side spoke publicly about the Russian proxy areas in parts of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s Mass Killing in Mykolaiv

Amid the talk of withdrawal and negotiations, Russia maintained its attacks on civilian areas on Tuesday. At least nine people were killed and 22 wounded in a strike on the regional administration building in Mykolaiv.

The rocket attack targeted the leadership of the region and city, just to the north of the coastal corridor seized by Russian forces. But regional governor Vitaly Kim was not in the office, having overslept.

President Zelenskiy spoke of the attack as he addressed the Danish Parliament.

There were no military ambitions in Mykolaiv, the people in Mykolaiv presented no threat to Russia.

And even then, like all the Ukrainians, they became the targets for the Russian troops.

There was no sign of relief for about 160,000 civilians from the Russian siege of the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

Putin brushed off French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to organize humanitarian missions during a Tuesday phone call.

An aide to Macron said “conditions are not in place at this stage”. Russia’s position remained tough, with Putin saying “he would think about it”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Putin demanded Mariupol’s surrender, saying “Ukrainian nationalist militants” must lay down their weapons before any humanitarian aid is allowed.