INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
With peace talks between Russia and Ukraine set to take place in Turkey this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy insisted on the
territorial integrity of his country after earlier suggesting he was ready for a compromise.Zelenskiy said in his video address to the
Ukrainian people late on Sunday that in talks due to take place in Istanbul his government would prioritise the ''territorial integrity& of
Ukraine.But in comments made to Russian journalists earlier in the day Zelenskiy adopted a different tone, saying Ukraine was willing to
assume neutral status and compromise over the status of the eastern Donbas region as part of a peace deal.In the video call that the Kremlin
pre-emptively warned Russian media not to report, Zelenskiy said any agreement must be guaranteed by third parties and put to a
referendum.Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state
We are ready to go for it,& he added, speaking in Russian.Even with talks looming, Ukraine&s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov,
said Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiming to seize the eastern part of Ukraine.In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South
Korea in Ukraine,& he said, referring to the division of Korea after World War Two
Zelenskiy has urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off Russian forces.In a call with Putin on Sunday,
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan agreed to host the talks and called for a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his office said
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators confirmed that in-person talks would take place.Top American officials sought on Sunday to clarify that
the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, after President Joe Biden said at the end of a speech in Poland on
Saturday that Putin &cannot remain in power&.United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Biden had simply meant Putin could not be
&empowered to wage war& against Ukraine or anywhere else.After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major
Ukrainian city and signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to focus on securing the Donbas region, where Russian-backed
separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years.A local leader in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People&s Republic
said on Sunday the region could soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, just as happened in Crimea after Russia seized the Ukrainian
peninsula in 2014.Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia & a vote that much of the world refused to
recognise.Budanov predicted Ukraine&s army would repel Russian forces by launching a guerrilla warfare offensive.Then there will be one
relevant scenario left for the Russians, how to survive,& he said.Ukraine&s foreign ministry spokesperson also dismissed talk of any
referendum in eastern Ukraine.All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void and will have no legal
validity,& Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters.lsquo;CRUEL AND SENSELESSMoscow says the goals for what Putin calls a &special military operation&
include demilitarising and &denazifying& its neighbour
Ukraine and its Western allies call this a pretext for unprovoked invasion.Ukraine has described previous negotiations, some of which have
taken place in Russian ally Belarus, as &very difficult&.The invasion has devastated several Ukrainian cities, caused a major humanitarian
crisis and displaced an estimated 10 million people, nearly a quarter of Ukraine&s population.Tatyana Manyek, who crossed the Danube by
ferry into Romania on Sunday with other refugees, said people in her home city of Odesa were &very afraid& but she would have stayed were it
not for her daughter.It would be very difficult to provide the child with basic living conditions
That&s why we decided to leave,& she said, clutching a pet dog.In his Sunday blessing, Pope Francis called for an end to the &cruel and
senseless& conflict.HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORSRussia has continued to move additional military units to the Ukraine border and is launching
missile and air strikes on Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure, including in the city of Kharkiv, the Ukrainian military said on
Sunday night.Ukraine also raised concerns about the safety of the Russian-occupied defunct nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, the site of the
world&s worst civil nuclear accident in 1986.Russian forces have created a risk of damaging the containment vessel constructed around the
station&s wrecked fourth reactor, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk
She urged the United Nations to dispatch a mission to assess the risks.Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said Russia had
started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage centres
Appearing to confirm that, Russia said its missiles had wrecked a fuel deposit on Saturday as well as a military repair plant near the
western city of Lviv.The mayor of Slavutych, the town created and built to house the plant&s staff in the aftermath of the 1986 accident,
said early on Monday that Russian forces that took over the town at the weekend had now left.Yuri Fomichev said in an online video post that
the troops &completed the work they had set out to do& and were gone
He originally said three people had been killed in clashes.The United Nations has confirmed 1,119 civilian deaths and 1,790 injuries across
Ukraine but says the real toll is likely to be higher
Ukraine said on Sunday 139 children had been killed and more than 205 wounded so far in the conflict.Vereshchuk said 1,100 people were
evacuated from frontline areas, including the southern city of Mariupol, after Ukraine and Russia agreed to set up two &humanitarian
corridors.The encircled port, located between Crimea and eastern areas held by Russian-backed separatists, has been devastated by weeks of
Thousands of residents are sheltering in basements with scarce water, food, medicine or power.The post Ukraine insists on territorial
integrity as talks loom first appeared on Ariana News.
