A Russian Crimea, an independent Donbas and a neutral Kiev - Moscow's demands

After 12 days of war and two unsuccessful attempts at rapprochement, Russian and Ukrainian representatives met today for the third consecutive time to try to negotiate a ceasefire in the conflict. Or at least the establishment of safe humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from the country. In this vein, the second of the meetings - held in Belarus on Thursday - resulted in agreement on a temporary cessation of hostilities to clear regions such as Kiev and Mariupol, although it was not long before both sides were exchanging accusations about the breakdown of the ceasefire. 

While Ukraine blamed Russia for shelling civilians on evacuation routes, Moscow claimed that the ceasefire was sabotaged by "Ukrainian nationalists". In any case, as the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denounced on Monday, Russian missile fire in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, as well as in the cities of Mariupol and Mykolaiv, is still a reality today. 

"Heavy fighting is going on outside Kiev, where the enemy is trying to wipe out [northwestern cities] Gostomel, Bucha, Vorzel and Irpin, and is killing civilians with extreme violence," wrote Kiev Mayor Vitali Klichko on his Telegram account. 

Today, in the border region of Belovezhskaya Pushcha between Poland and Belarus, delegations from both countries met for the third time to discuss military, political and humanitarian issues. According to the EFE news agency, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the Ukrainian President's Office, said that the meeting made little progress on "the logistics of humanitarian corridors". 

In the same line of diplomacy, the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers, Sergey Lavrov and Dmitro Kuleba, respectively, as well as their Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, will meet this Thursday in the southern Turkish city of Antalya. The meeting, the first between the two officials since the conflict began on 24 February, will consolidate Ankara's mediating position between Kiev and Moscow. "Our most urgent goal is the cessation of fighting," the Ottoman minister said during his announcement. 

Meanwhile, in an interview by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov for Reuters news agency, the Russian official set out clearly and concisely Moscow's demands for an "immediate" ceasefire. "We are completing the demilitarisation of Ukraine, and we are going to achieve it, but if they stop their military action right now, no one will continue firing," Peskov said as a first requirement: the cessation of Ukrainian armed resistance.

The Moscow official also demanded official recognition by Kiev of the annexation of Crimea to Russian territory, as well as the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. "We are not taking Lugansk and Donetsk away from Ukraine. They do not want to be part of Ukraine, but that does not mean they should be destroyed," the Kremlin spokesman said. Finally, Peskov called for a change in the Ukrainian constitution to consolidate the country's neutral position on the international stage. 

In parallel, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed establishing humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from several Ukrainian cities - such as Kiev, Mariupol, Kharkov and Sumy - and "take them to Russia" or Belarus. A measure that the spokesperson of the Kiev presidency has described as "completely immoral", and which the government has described as "unacceptable".

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of Ukrainian refugees who have been forced to leave the country now stands at more than 1.73 million, and if the attacks and bombings continue as at present, this figure could rise to 5 million people. This was the estimate of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, who criticised Moscow for its "systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure". 

For this reason, following the meeting of EU development ministers, the High Representative also announced the granting of aid of around 100 million euros to help both Ukraine and Moldova to deal with one of the most serious European humanitarian crises of the century. 

Meanwhile, the UN and the government in Kiev have warned that more than 900 Ukrainian localities are without water, heating and electricity supplies, and that humanitarian corridors are increasingly a necessary measure to ensure the survival of hundreds of thousands of people. 

In search of new legal avenues to end the conflict, a Ukrainian delegation travelled today to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague (Netherlands), where it argued for more than three hours about Moscow's misinterpretation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as the Kremlin justified its entry into Ukrainian territory as a response to the genocide perpetrated in the Donbas against the Russian-speaking population. 

Moscow announced today that it had drawn up a list of countries that have carried out "unfriendly" actions against Russia, whose national companies will henceforth require government permission to operate on Russian soil. This list has become part of the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 5 March 2022 "On the temporary procedure for meeting obligations to certain foreign creditors", and will allow Russian debtors to meet their foreign currency obligations with roubles - a currency that is currently undergoing a sharp devaluation process. 

Among the countries on the list are the 27 members of the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, Britain, Australia and even the Chinese territory of Taiwan.