War in Ukraine: Russia launches new attacks after peace promise

MARCH 30: 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 present state there have been any breakthroughs, anything very promising," he said, adding that a lot of work was still to be done.

Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv held three hours of discussions in Istanbul on Tuesday aimed at bringing to a close more than a month of fighting in Ukraine.

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.

US and Ukrainian officials say Russia is continuing to reposition forces away from Kyiv, probably as part of an effort to refocus on eastern regions.

Russia's pledge to cut back military activity was met with scepticism. "Ukrainians are not naive people," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight video address.

Mr Zelensky said that initial signs from the peace talks were "positive", but added that they did not "drown out" the explosions of Russian shells.

Other countries also reacted with caution. US President Joe Biden said: "I don't read anything into it until I see what their actions are."

Leaders from UK, France, Germany and Italy also urged the West not to drop its guard against Russia.

In his comments on Telegram, Mr Chaus said Russian forces had been "carrying out strikes on [the city of] Nizhyn, including air strikes, and all night long they hit [the city of] Chernihiv".

The BBC has not been able to confirm this independently.

One resident of Chernihiv told the BBC: "This night was rough. We heard there was fighting all night in the suburbs, away from the city centre. We heard artillery. But there was no aviation tonight."

The mayor of Chernihiv city, Vladyslav Atroshenko, said Russia's pledge to ease its assaults on Kyiv and Chernihiv would be good news if it could be trusted.

He told the BBC that as recently as Tuesday, "inhuman artillery shelling of several residential areas of the city took place, where about 35 people were hospitalised, where people lost their legs and some people were killed".

In other developments:

-Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that shelling of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol will only end when Ukrainian troops surrender

-Germany has declared an "early warning" over possible gas supply disruption amid a payments stand-off with Russia

-More than four million people have now fled Ukraine to escape Russia's invasion, according to the latest United Nations figures.