Stakes rise as Putin says his war in Ukraine will continue

Bloomberg

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heads towards the two week mark, the stakes for both sides in the ground war look set to rise, with potentially catastrophic implications for Ukrainian civilians and greater challenges for the country’s so far remarkably successful defense.
President Vladimir Putin said again the war will continue until Ukraine accepts his demands and halts resistance, dimming hopes for a negotiated settlement. Putin says Ukraine must “demilitarize” and he has made clear his goal is to remove the current government.
In a call with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin also repeated his assertion that the “special military operation” he launched in Ukraine on February 24 is going to plan, according to a Kremlin statement.
Another failed attempt on Sunday to create safe passage for some 200,000 civilians trapped in the besieged eastern port city of Mariupol only underscored the humanitarian disaster that’s unfolding in Ukraine. In both cases, Ukraine accused Russian forces of violating a pause in fighting.The United Nations said more than 1.5 million people have fled the country since hostilities began.
Russia said early Monday there was fresh agreement for a temporary cease-fire to enable a humanitarian corridor in several cities. That was quickly disputed by the government in Kyiv.
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke with Putin in Moscow on Saturday, then flew onto Berlin to see German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Bennett spoke again with Putin on Sunday amid a flurry of phone calls by leaders to Putin and to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the effort to de-escalate a conflict that promises to exact heavy costs for Europe and the global economy, as well as for Ukraine and Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron also spoke with the Russian leader on Sunday to discuss the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
While Russia has committed almost all of the ground forces it assembled for the attack on Ukraine, it has been hobbled by poor planning and logistics. Still, it has yet to bring a fraction of its artillery, electronic warfare, drone and combat aircraft capabilities to bear.
During a pause to regroup, Russian forces launched no new major offensives for much of the weekend, while Ukraine’s military launched counter attacks near the northern city of Kharkiv and near Mariupol, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based non-profit.
In its daily report it said major Russian assaults on Kyiv and Kharkiv, as well as Mykolayiv and possibly Odesa in the south, were likely to resume. Ukraine’s state emergency service said Monday that residential areas of Mykolayiv were shelled overnight, causing fires to break out.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s defense ministry reported that eight cruise missiles hit Vinnytsia, about 250 km south west of the capital. Residents also fled Irpin, a Kyiv suburb, as it came under ground attack.
After a week in which Putin raised the alert status of his nuclear forces and his troops showed a willingness to risk radiation spillage by seizing nuclear power stations in live firefights, the stakes in the conflict only appear to be rising for both sides.
Russia has increasingly brought indiscriminate weaponry to bear in its attempts to capture Kharkiv and Mariupol.