Russia accuses NATO of war while bombing Ukraine, demands territory for talks | Russia-Ukraine war news

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is continuing his shuttle diplomacy to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine. After passing through Kyiv and Moscow, he visited Beijing on Monday.

Ukraine’s allies NATO and the European Union distanced themselves from the mission, saying Orban had not taken any initiative on their behalf. Russia initially rejected Orban’s efforts, but said they could prove “very valuable.”

“He has shown his political will for dialogue. We take this very, very positively. We believe that it can be very useful,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

This represented a change from his original assessment.

Orban visited Kyiv on July 2, immediately after Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the European Union, and Moscow three days later.

Peskov said at the time: “We expect nothing” from Orban’s visit to Kyiv, adding that he was obliged to represent “the interests of Brussels and not the national interests of Hungary”.

Orban, a populist who is often at loggerheads with the EU, has called for a ceasefire as a first step toward peace talks. Both Moscow and Kyiv have rejected this, saying it would give the other side the opportunity to regroup militarily.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has tied his agreement to a ceasefire to tough conditions.

“We must ensure that the other side agrees to take steps towards demilitarization that are irreversible and acceptable to the Russian Federation,” Russian state news agency Tass quoted him as saying in Astana, Kazakhstan, where a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was taking place. “A ceasefire without this agreement is impossible.”

Putin outlined his conditions in a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14.

“Ukrainian troops should be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions,” he said, referring to two republics proclaimed by Russian-backed separatists that are not internationally recognized. One of them is a region known in Ukraine as Luhansk.

Putin also specified that Ukraine must completely cede these territories, only part of which is occupied by Russian troops.

“As soon as Kyiv declares that it is ready for such a decision, begins an actual withdrawal of troops from these regions and officially rejects plans to join NATO, a ceasefire and the start of negotiations will follow immediately, literally at the same moment, on our part,” the president said.

Putin added that at one point Russia was ready to negotiate Ukrainian sovereignty over Zaporizhia and Kherson in exchange for Russian access to Crimea through those territories, but that offer is off the table after Russia formally annexed the four regions in September 2022.

A day after his speech in Astana, Putin met with Orban in Moscow to discuss the Hungarian prime minister’s ceasefire proposal, but he reiterated the conditions of June 14.

However, Orban was not deterred and wrote a letter to EU heads of state and government on Tuesday urging them to support his call for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

“There is now a good chance,” the German news agency dpa quoted Orban as saying in the letter.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping continued his mission in Beijing on Monday, he appeared to support Orban’s call.

“It is in the interests of all parties to end hostilities and find a political solution as soon as possible,” China’s state broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi as saying.

“We really appreciate your peace initiative,” Orban replied, referring to a Chinese peace proposal made a year after the war began. Among other things, China had proposed a ceasefire and an end to sanctions.

Russia attacks Kiev

As Xi and Orban spoke, Putin’s forces fired waves of deadly missiles into Ukraine, killing at least 36 people.

Two of these deaths occurred when two rockets hit the Ochmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, destroying the toxicology department.

The two waves of attacks included at least 44 missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said. 32 of them were shot down.

Amid a global outcry over the attack, Russia sought to deny blame, saying the hospital was hit by a NASAMS anti-aircraft missile.

Sanad, Al Jazeera’s verification unit, said: “Our review of circulating videos showing the moment a missile hits the Ukrainian children’s hospital shows that the missile is the Russian KH-101 missile.”

The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia was most likely to blame.

“Analysis of the video footage and an on-site assessment indicate with a high degree of probability that the children’s hospital suffered a direct hit and was not damaged by an intercepted weapons system,” said mission leader Danielle Bell.

Putin also used Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow on Monday and Tuesday to portray himself as a peacemaker in the war he started.

Modi gave Putin a rare moment of recognition on the world stage, describing India-Russia relations as “a people-to-people partnership” and hugging the isolated Russian president in front of the cameras.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said they viewed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as “one of the highest priority platforms for both Moscow and New Delhi.”

In his speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14, Putin described the BRICS group as potentially “one of the central regulatory institutions of the multipolar world order.” It consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Lavrov also said Russia supports India’s application for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Ukraine’s allies carried out their own diplomatic show of force.

The 75th NATO summit began in Washington on Tuesday with the announcement that the alliance would send a senior official to Kyiv to “deepen Ukraine’s institutional ties with the alliance,” as Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, put it.

Opening the summit, US President Joe Biden said the US and its European allies would provide air defense systems to Ukraine. As part of this effort, the US announced on July 4 that it would withdraw $2.2 billion in air defense interceptor missiles for NASAMS and Patriot systems.

Slow progress on the ground

The map of Russian gains in Ukraine has not changed much over the past week, although there has been heavy fighting at Chasiv Yar, a key Ukrainian stronghold on the Eastern Front that protects the low-lying lands to the west.

On July 3, Russian troops captured an area called Kanal Microraion, which forms the easternmost point of Chasiv Yar, said the Ukrainian Khortytsia force defending the area. That meant Russian troops had reached the Seversky Donetsk-Donbass Canal, which runs through the city and which Ukrainians use as a natural defense line.

A Ukrainian brigade confirmed that the canal had become a line of contact following the Russian advance on July 3.

But on Monday, Ukrainian troops appeared to be making a comeback. Geolocated footage showed them fighting on a street in the western part of the Kanal microdistrict on the east side of the canal.

Another area of ​​heavy fighting was the northern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a new incursion on May 10, apparently in an attempt to divert Ukrainian forces and weaken the defenses of Chasiv Yar.

Kharkiv Armed Forces spokesman Yuriy Povkh said on Thursday that a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group crossed the border from Russia and entered the village of Sotnytskyi Kosachok, where it was attacked by Ukrainian forces.

North of the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces repelled a platoon-sized mechanized attack.

Ukraine also continued to carry out deep attacks against Russia.

On Friday, the drones attacked a gunpowder factory in Kotovsk in Russia’s Tambov region, 400 kilometers from Ukraine, and struck a large oil depot in Rostov-on-Don, sparking a fire there.

On Sunday, Ukrainian drones attacked an ammunition depot in Sergeyevka, Voronezh region. The Security Service of Ukraine said the depot contained rockets, artillery shells and tank shells. Geolocated footage showed secondary explosions at the site.

Sources in the Ukrainian security service also said on Tuesday that they had attacked the Akhtubinsk military airfield in the Astrakhan region, a power substation in Yudino in the Rostov region and an oil depot in Kalach-on-Don.