Following a Russian suggestion made during talks in Istanbul on May 16, the two countries exchanged 1, 000 prisoners of war on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, their largest exchange in three years.
But any confidence built by that gesture may have been dissipated by Russia’s launching of its largest long-range aerial attacks against Ukrainian civilians during the same three days.
At least 16 civilians were killed when Russia launched more than 900 kamikaze drones and 92 missiles. At least 800 drones were used in the Tula, Alabuga, and Tatarstan regions of Russia as a result of days of Ukrainian strikes on the country’s military infrastructure.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Tuesday that Germany might supply Ukraine with the 1, 000km- (620-mile) -range Taurus missiles it has asked for at any time, without warning Russia, strengthening Ukraine’s ability to devastate Russian military factories.
Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz declared that Ukraine’s weapons would not be subject to range restrictions. Additionally, Merz announced that Germany would support Kyiv in developing long-range missiles of its own on Wednesday as Volodymyr Zelenskyy made the announcement as the president of Ukraine visited Berlin.
The Kremlin has reacted with alarm. If such choices are made, they will inevitably go against our political goals, according to spokesman Dmitry Peskov. In response to European nations’ actions preventing a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia requested a UN Security Council meeting.
Yet even before the announcements by Germany, the prospect of any “peaceful settlement” had been dealt a blow by the drone and missile exchanges between Moscow and Kyiv.
Russia’s drones landed in cities, igniting the skyline with exploding apartment blocks, unlike Ukraine’s.
Less than their typical rate, the Ukrainian defenders managed to down 82 percent of the drones. Military intelligence sources told The Economist that Russia was flying its drones at an altitude of more than 2km (1.3 miles), out of the range of mobile heavy machinegun units, and had adapted the drones to use Ukraine’s own internet signal for navigation, immunising them from electronic interference.
Russia continued to launch ground attacks in eastern Ukraine, asserting that it had taken control of six settlements in the Sumy, Kharkiv, and Donetsk regions. In preparation for a wider ground offensive, Russia also built a salient close to Pokrovsk, its main target this year.
“There is currently no indication that they are seriously considering peace or diplomacy. There is, in fact, strong evidence that they are putting together new offensive operations. In his Monday evening address, Zelenskyy stated that Russia is anticipating a protracted war.
Even United States President Donald Trump got angry with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a man he openly admires.
Putin has been the subject of a post by Trump on his social media platform that read, “Something has happened to him.” He has become “absolutely crazy”!
Trump told reporters, “We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities”.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, criticized the US president’s response, citing “emotional overstrain of everyone.”
The next diplomatic steps
Despite a proposal from Russia, Ukraine has continued to pursue diplomatic relations by writing a memorandum outlining its conditions for a ceasefire on May 27.
By Thursday morning, neither Kyiv nor Washington had received a reciprocal memorandum that Russia was supposed to submit.
Pope Leo XIV had offered the Vatican as a venue for the next round of talks that are to follow this exchange of memorandums, but Lavrov thought it “somewhat inelegant when two Orthodox countries would use a Catholic venue to discuss the root causes of the crisis”, preferring to return to Istanbul.
Russia has urged a conditional ceasefire that addresses “the root causes of this conflict and how they must be removed like a malignant tumour.” One of those “root causes” of the conflict is considered to be Ukraine’s division with the Moscow Patriarchate and the construction of an autocephalous church in Kyiv.
Another is the use of the Russian language. Although Ukraine is largely bilingual, a law requiring use of Ukrainian by public servants was passed in 2019. Russia calls that discriminatory, but it did not ban Russian.
“Ukraine, which lies beyond the constitutional borders of the Russian Federation, is home to millions of people who speak Russian. Speaking about Ukrainian territory that is outside the Kremlin’s control, Lavrov said at a press conference on May 23 that it is their native language. He claimed that it would be illegal to leave them to the junta government in Kyiv, which has forbid them from speaking. “We cannot allow this to happen under any circumstances”.
The Zelenskyy government’s very existence is another “root cause,” according to the Kremlin.
Even though the Ukrainian parliament has extended his presidency and the constitution allows him to continue in power after his constitutional term, Russia insists Zelenskyy is illegitimate.
Zelenskyy himself offered to resign last February, if that meant Russia pulled back its troops and Ukraine were allowed to join NATO.
Trump rejected NATO membership for Ukraine in a peace plan he gave to Kyiv on April 17 and made the offer to the US, not Russia.
However, Poland’s charge d’affaires in Ukraine, Piotr Lukasiewicz, stated at the VOX Ukraine conference on May 24 that it supports Ukraine’s membership of NATO and the EU.
He said relations had evolved during the three-year war. Due to economic and political interests, we are now convinced that Ukraine should be a political, economic, and social partner for security reasons. NATO should be a part of Ukraine. This is our strategic, political, historical and civilizational interest”, Lukasiewicz said.
The buffer zone between Moscow and Moscow
Putin and local officials held a televised news conference on May 20 for his first visit to Kursk since it had been secured from a Ukrainian counter-invasion. One asked him to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s neighbouring Sumy region. He addressed Putin, “Sumy must be ours.”
Putin made the announcement that a buffer zone would be established inside Ukraine the following day, a claim he first made in March of last year.
A military expert told the Russian state-owned news agency TASS that Russian troops were advancing along a 15km- (9-mile-) wide front in Sumy to establish that buffer zone.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former head of Russia’s National Security Council and deputy head, went a day later. The buffer zone might look like this if the Zelenskyy government receives more military aid, he wrote on his Telegram channel and shows a map with almost all of Ukraine in shade.
More sanctions for Russia
Trump criticized Putin on Sunday, saying that Russia “deserves full-scale pressure, everything that can be done to limit their military capability.”
Even though the Sunday-to-Monday overnight attacks on Ukraine were bigger and more deadly than the attacks of the day before, Putin resisted trying to limit that capability through further sanctions after speaking with him on the phone the following day.
He now faces pressure to introduce sanctions if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire. Russia can anticipate decisive action from the US Senate “if nothing changes.” Our bill will isolate Russia and make it a trading hub, according to Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.
Meanwhile, Europe is preparing an 18th package of sanctions against Russia.
Johann Wadephul, Germany’s foreign minister, stated in a statement to ARD on Sunday that those sanctions would be a response to Russia’s most recent attacks on Ukraine’s cities.
Last week, the Reuters news agency exclusively reported that Ukraine has requested secondary sanctions against Western companies that sell high-tech products from Russia to third parties and those who purchased Russian oil from countries like India and China. Ukraine also reportedly asked the EU to take sanctions decisions by majority decision, to prevent Russophilic members from derailing them.
Even Russia-leaning bloc members, including Hungary and Slovakia, are following the EU’s plan to completely boycott Russian energy exports by 2027, according to EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen.
He most recently presented a progress report to members of the European parliament. “By 2022, half of the coal we imported into the EU was Russian. We completely stopped importing it. Oil imports decreased from 27% to 31%. And gas – from 45 percent in 2022 to 13 percent today”, Jorgensen said on May 22, lamenting the fact that the EU still paid Russia 23 billion euros ($26bn) last year for energy.
Source: Aljazeera
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