LVIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks on Monday even as Moscow’s forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment that the Red Cross said has created “nothing short of a nightmare” for the civilian population.
Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, produced no lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting.Ahead of the talks, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces shelled several suburbs of the capital.
Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework when they heard a loud explosion and ran to take shelter. In the southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest suffering, the city council didn’t say how many people were in the convoy of cars headed westward for the city of Zaporizhzhia. But it said a cease-fire along the route appeared to be holding.
“We have no information at all,” Koldash said. “We know nothing. It looks like we are living in a deep forest.”Associated Press video showed debris from a damaged residential building and another building that a young man named Dima described as an elementary school.The Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. The claim could not be independently verified.