The top diplomats of Russia and Ukraine failed to make even a hint of progress Thursday in their first face-to-face meeting since the Russian invasion began, while Russian bombardments spread more carnage in a two-week-old war that Ukraine estimated had already inflicted $100 billion in damage.
The Russian side, which has refused to call the conflict a war, insisted that it would not end until Ukraine was “demilitarized,” dousing flickers of hope that the meeting in Turkey of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, might lead to even a brief cease-fire. Mr. Lavrov later told reporters that was not even discussed.
“The broad narrative he conveyed to me,” Mr. Kuleba said afterward, “is that they will continue their aggression until Ukraine meets their demands, and the least of these demands is surrender.”
Across swaths of Ukraine, the fighting continued and suffering deepened, especially in besieged and bombarded cities like Mariupol in the southeast and Chernihiv in the north.
Near Kyiv, Russian forces gained control of the town of Bucha and moved southwest in an attempt to encircle the capital. They were also approaching Kyiv from the east, with heavy fighting involving a line of Russian tanks reported in the suburb of Brovary, according to videos posted online on Thursday.
In Mariupol, 70 bodies have been buried since Tuesday, without coffins, in a mass grave, according to video recorded by The Associated Press, and local...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...