Ukraine and Russia were preparing on Monday for the first face-to-face peace talks in more than two weeks, with Kyiv insisting it would make no concessions on ceding territory as battlefield momentum has shifted in its favour.
Ukrainian officials played down the chances of a major breakthrough at the talks, due to be held in Istanbul after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan spoke to Russia's Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
Ukrainian officials have recently suggested Russia could now be more willing to compromise, as any hope it may have held of imposing a new government on Kyiv slipped away in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance and heavy Russian losses. "I don't think there will be any breakthrough on the main issues," Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said on Monday.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation" to disarm and "denazify" its neighbour. Kyiv and the West consider this a pretext for an unprovoked invasion. "The situation in the city remains difficult. People are beyond the line of humanitarian catastrophe," Boichenko said on national television. "We need to completely evacuate Mariupol."
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