Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s request for dialogue to end the war in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said yesterday that “there are no agreed talks” between Putin and Scholz, but that “Putin was and remains ready to make contacts.” This came in response to what the German newspaper “Tagesspiegel” reported yesterday about Schulz, that he will talk to Putin “again because it is necessary to talk,” adding that the Russian president “is responsible for withdrawing forces from Ukraine to end this terrible and senseless war that has left Hundreds of thousands of lives have already been lost.”
On the ground, Russian forces continue to advance in eastern Ukraine, while there are conflicting reports about controlling the town of Blahodatny, located in the Donetsk region. Yesterday, the Ukrainian General Staff said that the Kyiv forces “repelled attacks near… Blahodatny” and thirteen other locations in the Donetsk region, but the Russian private military group “Wagner” announced shortly after that its units had taken control of this town. “Blahodatne is now under our control,” said the head of the group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
On the other hand, Moscow accused, through television pictures published yesterday, Kyiv of launching a “deliberate missile attack” on a civilian hospital in the city of Novoydar in the Lugansk region, and no people or ambulances appeared.
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