Russia says no breakthroughs in Ukraine peace talks. Here’s what you need to know

Russia poured cold water on the outcome of peace talks with Ukraine on Wednesday, saying there were no breakthroughs at the meeting in Turkey.

Tuesday’s talks in Istanbul were the most significant to date, Turkey’s foreign ministry said. Ukrainian negotiators proposed accepting neutral status and floated Canada as a potential security guarantor under an agreement.

Russia said it would drastically cut its military activity focused on Kyiv and Chernihiv, and would review the proposals. The Kremlin’s spokesperson addressed the outcome of the talks on Wednesday.

Here’s a round-up of what’s happening.

While acknowledging it was a “positive factor” that Ukraine submitted written proposals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there doesn’t appear to be an immediate path to peace.

“We can’t say there has been something promising or any breakthroughs,” he said in a call with reporters, emphasizing there is still a lot of work ahead following the talks.

Peskov said Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, has reported Ukraine’s proposals to President Vladimir Putin. Medinsky is scheduled to give an update on Wednesday, Peskov added.

In an overnight address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he took nothing Moscow said at the talks at face value.

“Ukrainians are not naive people,” he said. “Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”

A day after promising to scale back its operations around Kyiv and northern Ukraine, officials said Russia continued shelling around the capital on Wednesday.

Over the past 24 hours, there were 30 Russian shellings of residential areas and civilian infrastructure in regions around Kyiv, said Oleksandr Pavliuk, the head of the Kyiv region military administration.

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In Chernihiv, the other area where Russia had promised to scale back its operations, the bombardment only intensified over the past day, said Mayor Vladyslav Astroshenko.

“This is yet another confirmation that Russia always lies,” he told CNN in an interview. “They actually have increased the intensity of strikes,” with “a colossal mortar attack in the centre of Chernihiv.”

The ongoing barrage in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol has likely resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, the head of the UN human rights mission has told Reuters.

Almost 5,000 people, including about 210 children, have been killed in Mariupol since Russian forces laid siege to it a month ago, a spokesperson for Mayor Vadym Boichenko said on Monday. It was not immediately clear how the UN arrived at that number.

“We do think that there could be thousands of deaths, of civilian casualties, in Mariupol,” Matilda Bogner, head of the UN human rights mission in Ukraine, told Reuters.

Last week, Bogner said the UN received more information about mass graves in Mariupol, including one that appeared to hold 200 bodies. The agency is now calling them “improvised graves,” Reuters reported because the term “mass graves” may imply victims of a crime.

People have died in Mariupol from a range of causes, Bogner said, adding civilian casualties from the conflict were believed to be a “fairly small portion” of bodies in the improvised graves in parks and gardens.

While the fighting continues, an adviser to Ukraine’s president said Russia has redeployed some of its forces to the country’s east.

Moscow has moved its troops to try and encircle the Ukrainian forces there, said Oleksiy Arestovych, adding Russia left some of its forces near Kyiv to tie up Ukrainian troops trying to advance in the region.

Russian military officials have said they will focus their efforts on eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

It comes as Russia’s month-long campaign in Ukraine appears to have stalled due to stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces.

— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters.