The UN nuclear watchdog said its director-general has arrived in Ukraine Tuesday for talks with senior government officials on delivering "urgent technical assistance" to ensure the safety of the country's nuclear facilities.
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The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that Rafael Mariano Grossi's aim is to "initiate prompt safety and security support" for Ukraine's nuclear sites. That will include sending IAEA experts to "prioritized facilities" and sending "vital safety and security supplies" including monitoring and emergency equipment.
It said that Grossi will travel to one of Ukraine's nuclear power plants this week, but didn't say which one. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four active power plants and also is home to the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. Russian forces have taken control of Chernobyl and of the largest active power plant, at Zaporizhzhia.
Grossi said in a statement that "the military conflict is putting Ukraine's nuclear power plants and other facilities with radioactive material in unprecedented danger."
He added that "there have already been several close calls. We can't afford to lose any more time."
Fighting appeared stalemated on the ground in Ukraine Tuesday morning, with the two sides trading control of a town in the east and a suburb of the capital.
Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, from Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday as he sought to rally the country.
As fighting raged throughout the country, the mayor of Irpin, which has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, said the city had been "liberated" from Russian forces.
A senior US defense official said the US believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.
The official said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.
The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years.
Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was gaining control of the Donbas.
The possible face-saving exit strategy for Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised Ukrainian fears the Kremlin aims to split the country, forcing it to surrender a swath of its territory.
Putin's ground forces have become bogged down because of stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, combined with what Western officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food, fuel, and cold weather gear, and other problems. Moscow has resorted to pummeling Ukrainian cities with artillery and airstrikes.
In Stoyanka village near Kyiv, Ukrainian soldier Serhiy Udod said Russian troops had suffered heavy losses.
The Russians probably "thought it would be like Crimea," which the Kremlin annexed in 2014. "But here it's not like in Crimea. We are not happy to see them. Here they suffer and get killed."
In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians back in other sectors.
Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine's military said in a post Tuesday.
It said the Orthodox church – the country's majority religion – was the most affected but that mosques, synagogues, Protestant churches, and religious schools were also destroyed. Ukraine and the United States hold little hope of a breakthrough at the meeting later on Tuesday, the first direct talks between the two sides in more than two weeks, even though Russia's invasion appeared to have stalled on several fronts.
More than a month into the war, the biggest attack on a European nation since World War II, more than 3.8 million people have fled abroad, thousands have been killed and injured, and Russia's economy has been pummeled by sanctions.
In the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, nearly 5,000 people have been killed, including about 210 children, according to figures from the mayor.
Survivors have told harrowing tales of people dying from lack of medical treatment, bodies being buried wherever space could be found, and women giving birth in basements.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said of the talks in Turkey: "We are not trading people, land, or sovereignty."
"The minimum program will be humanitarian questions, and the maximum program is reaching an agreement on a ceasefire," he said on national television.
A senior US State Department official said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not appear ready to make compromises to end the war.
Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said that he doubted there would be any breakthrough.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said talks so far had not yielded any substantial progress, but it was important they continued in person. He declined to give more information.
In an address on Monday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country was prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, in comments that might lend momentum to negotiations.
Zelenskyy said over the weekend that compromise might be possible over "the complex issue of Donbas," the hotly contested region in the country's east. It's unclear how that might be reconciled with his stance that "Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt."
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of joining NATO, which Moscow sees as a threat. Zelenskyy, for his part, has stressed that Ukraine needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.
He also repeated calls for the West to go further in punishing Moscow for its invasion.
"We, people who are alive, have to wait. Doesn't everything the Russia military has done to date warrant an oil embargo?" he asked.
While Western countries have imposed a series of hard-hitting sanctions upon Moscow, Europe is heavily reliant on energy imports from Russia and has been so far reluctant to act to block them.
US and German government officials are due to meet in Berlin this week with energy industry executives to discuss ways to boost alternative supplies for Germany.
In besieged Ukrainian cities where conditions are desperate, the threat of Russian attacks has blocked exit routes for civilians, two Ukrainian officials said.
In Mariupol, the mayor said about 160,000 people were trapped.
"There is no food for the children, especially the infants. They delivered babies in basements because women had nowhere to go to give birth, all the maternity hospitals were destroyed," a grocery worker from Mariupol who gave her name only as Nataliia said after reaching nearby Zaporizhzhia.
As the humanitarian toll continues to rise, the United Nations said it had been able to bring food and medical supplies into Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city and one of its hardest hit.
"The enemy continues to vilely carry out missile and bomb strikes in an attempt to completely destroy the infrastructure and residential areas of Ukrainian cities," the Ukraine military's general staff said in a Monday briefing.
"[They] focus on fuel storage facilities in order to complicate logistics and create the conditions for a humanitarian crisis."
Tuesday's talks were to be the first in-person talks held since an acrimonious meeting between foreign ministers on March 10, a sign of shifts behind the scenes as Russia loses battlefield momentum.
"We have destroyed the myth of the invincible Russian army. We are resisting against the aggression of one of the strongest armies in the world and have succeeded in making them change their goals," Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
He said 100 people had been killed in the capital, including four children, and 82 multi-story buildings had been destroyed.
Russia's military signaled last week it would concentrate on expanding separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine, but Kyiv said Russian troops continued to try to surround the capital.
When the sides last met in person, Ukraine accused Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of ignoring pleas to discuss a ceasefire, while Lavrov said a halt to fighting was not on the agenda.
Since then, they have held talks via video link and publicly discussed a formula under which Ukraine might accept some kind of neutral status.
Yet neither side has budged over Russia's territorial demands, including Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014, and eastern territories known as the Donbas, which Moscow demands Kyiv cede to pro-Russian separatists.
A cyberattack knocked Ukraine's national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline on Monday. The chief of Ukraine's state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed "the enemy" without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off from telephone, internet, and mobile service to ensure coverage for Ukraine's military.
Also Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine's Rivne region was hit by a missile, the governor said, in the second attack on oil facilities in the region near the Polish border.
Ukraine's prosecutor general said at least 144 children have died in the war so far, most in Kyiv. The tally did not give a number for the besieged eastern city of Mariupol.
Bloomberg News said it has suspended its operations in Russia and Belarus. Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged $40 million, meanwhile, in support of Ukrainians and refugees.
Also on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched an effort to achieve a humanitarian cease-fire that would allow aid to be brought in and people to move around safely.
The Group of Seven major economies rejected a Kremlin demand that some countries pay in rubles for Russia's natural gas. That demand appeared designed to support the Russian currency, which is under pressure from Western sanctions.
Under a budget proposal released Monday by US President Joe Biden's administration, the US would spend $6.9 billion to help Ukraine fend off Russia's invasion and support NATO member countries.
They would also be used to "enhance the capabilities and readiness of US forces, NATO allies, and regional partners in the face of Russian aggression," the White House said.
Biden's proposal further outlines spending nearly $1 billion "to counter Russian malign influence and to meet emerging needs related to security, energy, cyber security issues, disinformation, macroeconomic stabilization, and civil society resilience."
The money was included in Biden's 2023 budget proposal, which funds the administration's priorities for the year and is subject to modification and approval by Congress.
Washington has stepped up aid for Ukraine following the invasion, including $2 billion in security assistance and new equipment, and $1 billion in humanitarian aid the White House announced last week.
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