The foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine are to hold talks in Turkey, as Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbour enters its third week.
Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba said ahead of today’s face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that his expectations were “limited”.
It comes after Ukraine accused Russia of bombing a children’s hospital – an attack Kyiv says is a “war crime”.
Ukraine says 17 people were hurt in the attack in Mariupol on Wednesday.
Footage has since emerged showing a building – which also housed a maternity ward – reduced to a shell, with a huge crater nearby.
The bombing has been widely condemned, with the UN Secretary General António Guterres describing the attack as “horrific”, and the US accusing Russia of a “barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians”.
But Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said the bombed hospital had been “turned into a military object by [Ukrainian] radicals”.
“The whole city remains without electricity, water, food, whatever and people are dying because of dehydration,” Olena Stokoz of Ukraine’s Red Cross told the BBC on Wednesday.
Russian warplanes also hit residential areas in overnight raids in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region, local officials said.
Ahead of Thursday’s talks in Antalya, southern Turkey, Mr Kuleba said: “Frankly… my expectations of the talks are low.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said that Kyiv was seeking an immediate “cessation of hostilities and the war against Ukraine by Russia”.
Meanwhile, Russia is demanding that Ukraine abandons its stated plans to join the Nato military alliance, and becomes a neutral-status state.
It also says Kyiv must accept Moscow’s jurisdiction over Crimea – the southern Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
And Russia is pressing for Kyiv to recognise two self-proclaimed rebel regions in eastern Ukraine.
Two previous rounds of talks held in recent days failed to find any breakthrough, although the two warring sides agreed on establishing humanitarian corridors to help evacuate civilians from several besieged cities.
Ukraine said it expected more civilians would be allowed to leave cities besieged by Russian troops later on Thursday.
BBC