WAR IN UKRAINE: March 30, 2022
Lesia Revenok, 41, and her two teenage children arrived at the train station in Kyiv on Tuesday after escaping from Chernihiv. Credit: Ivor Prickett
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 35
Ukraine's military says a Russian pledge to scale back military operations in two key areas is "probably a rotation of individual units and aims to mislead.” It comes after Moscow announced it would "drastically reduce combat operations" around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv "to boost mutual trust.” The announcement followed peace talks between the two sides in Turkey, but it has been met with scepticism from Western leaders. US President Joe Biden says "let's see" what happens on the ground, while the UK says Russia will be judged by actions not words. Ukraine's President Zelensky says the "positive" signs do not "drown out" the sound of Russian attacks. His country's delegation laid out plans to become a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees at the talks - BBC summary
In one of the first reactions from the frontline in Ukraine, Viacheslav Chaus, governor of Chernihiv Oblast, told Ukrainian television that he has no faith in Russian pledges made at Istanbul peace talks. He described the situation in region as dire with lack of water, food, electricity. More than 200 people have reportedly been killed in attacks on Chernihiv. Separately, the Kremlin played down hopes of a breakthrough following talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegates in Istanbul yesterday, the BBC reports. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov says there was nothing very promising said or any breakthroughs achieved.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that “liberating Donbas” was Moscow’s main military goal. He told top military officials that Russia had largely completed the first stage of its operation and was shifting to “the main goal — the liberation of Donbas.”
Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine’s military said in a post Tuesday.
The U.S. plans to increase production of the anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to refill its stocks as it continues to send the systems to Ukrainian forces, CNN reported, citing defense officials.
Ambassador says German minister was against helping Ukraine, thought it would fall within hours, reports the Kyiv Independent. Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, said in an interview that German Finance Minister Christian Lindner was against supplying weapons to Ukraine or cutting Russia off the SWIFT messaging system after Russia launched the invasion on Feb. 24. Lidner thought Ukraine would collapse within several hours and was ready to talk to a puppet regime that would be installed by Russia, Melnyk told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. German Ministry of Finance denied the accusation in a comment to the Kyiv Independent.
“Every single time we hear Russia saying ‘we want peace,’ we know this means the opposite. Every single time they say ‘we are pulling back’ or ‘we want to finish this war’ - we know that this is exactly a lie and they just want to kill more and more Ukrainian people”
An Economist Intelligence Unit report, published last evening, finds the war will knock half a percentage point off of the unit's previous GDP forecast. The global economy is now expected to grow 3.4% in 2022. The decline is sharp in Europe — especially Italy and Germany, which are both reliant on Russian energy imports. Let's not forget the people of Ukraine. The consultancy wrote: "We do not believe that Ukraine's GDP will recover to pre-war levels for more than a decade."