Russian forces pounded areas around Kyiv and another Ukrainian city overnight, local officials said Wednesday, just hours after Moscow pledged to scale back military operations in those places. The shelling further tempered optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending the punishing war.
Russia did not spell out what exactly a reduction in activity would look like, and while the promise initially raised hopes that a path toward ending the bloody war of attrition was at hand, Ukraine's president and others cautioned that the commitments could merely be bluster.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted with skepticism to Russia's announcement at talks in Istanbul on Tuesday that it would reduce military activity near the capital and the northern city of Chernihiv. Some analysts have suggested that the Kremlin's apparent lowering of its aims and the pledge to reduce activity around Kyiv and Chernihiv may merely reflect the reality on the ground: Its ground troops have become bogged down and taken heavy losses in their bid to seize the capital and other cities.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said Moscow would in the meantime “fundamentally ... cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations.” He added that “of course the door to diplomacy will always be left ajar, but I don’t think you can trust what is coming out of the mouth of Putin’s war machine.”
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