Russia launches new attacks after peace promise

The governor of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region says there is no let-up in attacks by Russia, despite its pledge to reduce military activity there.

The governor, Viacheslav Chaus, took to the Telegram messaging app to denounce Russia’s promise.

“Do we believe in it? Of course not,” he said, adding Russia had bombarded Chernihiv “all night long”.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators made no “breakthroughs” in Tuesday’s peace talks, the Kremlin has said.

“What is positive is that the Ukrainian side has at least started to specifically formulating and putting on paper what it is proposing. Until now we had not managed to achieve that,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“As regards the rest, we cannot put it this way, at the present state, there have been any breakthroughs, anything very promising,” he said, adding that a lot of work was still to be done.

Ukraine said it had proposed to become a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees. A key aim of Russia’s invasion was to stop Ukraine joining the Nato alliance and Russian officials said the talks had moved to a practical stage.

On Tuesday, Russia said it would cut back operations around Chernihiv and the capital, Kyiv, in an effort to “boost mutual trust” in the peace talks.

Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister, Alexander Fomin, said the country would “radically, by several times reduce the military activity” in those regions.

However, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv just a few hours later.

Kyiv’s deputy mayor, Mykola Povoroznyk, said the capital itself had not been shelled overnight, although gunfire had been heard from battles around the city.