INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Moscow next week to meet Russia&s President Vladimir Putin and then head to
Ukraine for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Guterres will head to Moscow on Tuesday and meet Putin as well as having a working
meeting and lunch with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Eri Kaneko, Guterres& associate spokesperson, told a news briefing in New
York on Friday.He hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently,& Kaneko said.He will meet with Zelenskiy on
Thursday, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and staff at UN agencies to discuss the scaling up of humanitarian assistance efforts, the UN
spokesperson&s office said in a statement.Guterres had asked to meet the leaders of both nations in separate letters handed to their
countries& permanent missions to the United Nations.Guterres on Tuesday called for a four-day Orthodox Easter humanitarian pause in fighting
in Ukraine beginning on Thursday to allow for the safe passage of civilians from areas of conflict and the delivery of humanitarian aid to
hard-hit areas.The secretary-general is not so much disappointed that his own personal call was not heeded, but more that there has been no
truce, that civilians cannot leave besieged areas and that the aid that the U.N
and our partners are ready to deliver to these besieged areas cannot go in,& Kaneko said on Friday.Guterres will further those discussions
during his visit to Moscow, the spokesperson added.Moscow&s invasion of Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European country since 1945, has
killed or wounded thousands
More than 12 million people need humanitarian assistance in the country today, Guterres has said.Since starting what it calls a special
operation to demilitarize Ukraine, Russia has bombed cities to rubble and the bodies of hundreds of civilians have been found in towns after
It denies targeting civilians and says, without evidence, that signs of atrocities were staged.Western countries and Ukraine accuse Putin of
unprovoked aggression.The post U.N
chief to meet Putin and Zelenskiy next week first appeared on Ariana News.
