A former UK diplomat has said the Russian public will soon start to wonder 'what the Ukraine invasion is about' when they see "mother's sons" in body bags coming home.
Russia and Ukraine have kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks even as Moscow’s forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment.
Meanwhile, a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the encircled port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported, in a rare glimmer of hope a week-and-a-half into the lethal siege that has pulverised homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.
The aftermath of Russian artillery shelling on a residential area in Mariupol where a rocket hit a house, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine, is seen in this screengrab from a video uploaded on social media on March 10, 2022. Armed Forces of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES.
ARMED FORCES OF UKRAINE
The latest negotiations, which were held via video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first in a week.
The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying the negotiators took “a technical pause” and planned to meet again on Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with government members via a video link in Moscow, Russia March 10, 2022. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Krem.
SPUTNIK
The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days.
Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, produced no lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting.
When asked by Nigel Farage what Vladimir Putin’s “way out” of the war is and how he will show the Russian people he has achieved something, Former UK diplomat Charles Parton said: “It’s very hard to see.
"The effects that are going to be on the Russian people as sanctions really start to bite, the Ruble has plummeted, inflation is going to go in the opposite direction.
“People are going to start wondering there in Russia, what it’s all about.
“Particularly as the body bags come back.
“However hard you try to find that, people will know that mothers have lost sons etc.
“I find it very difficult to see any way out other than through continued repression”
The war expanded on Sunday when Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border, that previously served as a crucial hub for co-operation between Ukraine and Nato.
The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and raised fears that Nato could be drawn into direct conflict with Russia.
