Russia hits Ukraine military facility, says negotiations in progress  

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. AFP file photos

Kyiv, Ukraine — A huge plume of black smoke rose from a fuel storage facility in the village of Kalynivka outside Kyiv on Friday, AFP reporters saw, as Russia said it had destroyed Ukraine’s largest remaining  military fuel storage facility  with Kalibr cruise missiles.

“On the evening of March 24, Kalibr high-precision sea-based cruise missiles attacked a fuel base in the village of Kalynivka near Kyiv,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement. 

The conditions for the ceasefire and of the negotiations are very clear for both governments, according to the Russian Ambassador to the Philippines Marat Pavlov during the Ambassador’s Forum held in Manila.

“There should be a neutral and a nuclear-free status for Ukraine. It’s also important the mandatory demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state. Recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic, which took place after the pro-Western Ukrainian governments failed to fulfill the Minsk Agreement and continued to persecute the majority-Russian speaking people in the Donbas region,” Ambassador Pavlov added.

“…but we should achieve this through negotiations, which are in progress, except that the US and NATO continued interference and sending more weapons and even foreign combat agents in Ukraine every time Zelensky says Kiev is ready to compromise,” Moscow’s top diplomat in Manila added.

The envoy also said the trust-building should be mutual. 

Amid the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, US President Biden approved an additional $800 million weapons delivery to Ukraine, bringing in the total to $1 billion in just the past week, and a total of $2 billion since the start of the Biden Administration. The US has also increased sanctions on Russia, including freezing over $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves, which Moscow’s foreign secretary Lavrov calls “Thievery.” 

Ukraine confirmed the strike, saying it had hit around 8 pm (0600 GMT) in the village some 40 kilometers south-west of Kyiv. 

Kyiv’s emergency ministry said there was no threat of the fire spreading outside the oil depot. 

“We saw the explosion, it was very big,” a security guard at the facility said at a checkpoint near the depot, asking not to be identified. 

“Fortunately, there were no casualties,” he said. 

Moscow’s announcement of the strike came on the 29th day of what Moscow has termed a “special military operation” in Ukraine. While Russia and Ukraine have set up humanitarian corridors, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded 977 killed and 1,594 injured since the start of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. 

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JPV