Gunfire in Kyiv day after Russia says will ‘cut back’ military activity in area

A day after Russia said it would scale back military operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north, Ukraine officials have reported shelling around both cities.

Kyiv deputy mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said the capital itself had not been attacked but gunfire had been reported from the suburbs. Chernihiv governor Viacheslav Chaus scoffed at Moscow’s promises and said he saw no let-up in Russian attacks; “… all night long they hit Chernihiv,” he said.

“Do we believe it (the promise to reduce military activities)? Of course not,” Chaus wrote on Telegram, “The ‘decreased activity’ in the Chernihiv region was demonstrated by the enemy carrying out strikes on Nizhyn, including air strikes… all night long they hit Chernihiv.”

Russian negotiators said Tuesday Moscow would ‘radically’ reduce military activity in northern Ukraine, including near the capital Kyiv, after ‘meaningful’ peace talks in Turkey.

Negotiators said Russia would ‘fundamentally … cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv’ to ‘increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations’.

They did not, though, spell out what that would mean in practical terms.

The outcome of the talks was seen as the first positive step end Europe’s worst armed conflict in decades. Hopes were also raised that Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin could now meet.

Russia’s promise was, however, met with scepticism by Zelenskyy, who said the Ukrainian people were ‘not naïve’.

“Ukrainians have learned during these 34 days… and over the past eight years of war in Donbas… the only thing they can trust is a concrete result,” he said.

Zelenskyy said he had no reason to believe Russia’s announcement given what is happening on the ground. “We can call those signals that we hear at the negotiations positive,” he acknowledged but added, “… those signals don’t silence the explosions of Russian shells.”

Both the United States and the United Kingdom responded warily too; UK deputy prime minister Dominic Raab and US president Joe Biden both said they valued action over words.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken even suggested Russian indications of a pullback could be an attempt by Moscow to ‘deceive people and deflect attention’ as it tries to shake off a dogged Ukrainian military and re-focus efforts on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

There is precedence for that claim; last month Russia said troops at the Ukraine border would be withdrawn but the attack was launched just 10 days later.

“There is what Russia says and there is what Russia does, and we’re focused on the latter,” Blinken said in Morocco, “And what Russia is doing is the continued brutalization of Ukraine.”

Reports indicate Moscow is now reinforcing positions in the Donbas – one of two breakaway regions Russia is eyeing – in a bid to surround Ukraine’s forces.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US had detected small numbers of Russian forces moving away from Kyiv, but it appeared to be a repositioning and ‘not a real withdrawal’.