Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that there were some “positive shifts” in talks between Russia and Ukraine, two weeks into Moscow’s military campaign in the country.
“There are certain positive shifts, negotiators from our side reported to me,” Putin told his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a televised meeting in Moscow.
He added that negotiations are “now being held on an almost daily basis.”
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have held several rounds of talks since Putin sent in troops to the country on February 24.
The talks have led to the opening of several humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from combat areas. Both sides have accused each other of blocking these efforts.
Some 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded two weeks ago, and another two million have been internally displaced by the war, the United Nations said Friday.
The UN Refugee Agency’s chief Filippo Grandi blamed the mass displacement on what he called a “senseless war” that began on February 24.
“The number of refugees from Ukraine, tragically, has reached 2.5 million today,” Grandi tweeted.
“We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine. Millions were forced to leave their homes by this senseless war.”
Paul Dillon, spokesman for the UN’s International Organization for Migration, said the 2.5 million people who had fled Ukraine included 116,000 nationals from other countries.
The UNHCR had been working on the estimate that four million people may eventually seek to leave Ukraine as the war continues.
But the agency said that given the scale of the exodus in less than three weeks, it would be no surprise if that figure was exceeded.
“It is quite possible that that planning figure of four million might be revised up,” UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters in Geneva, speaking via videolink from Poland, close to the Ukrainian border.
He said the number of refugees was “certainly unprecedented since World War II.”
Russian strikes hit civilian targets in central Ukraine’s Dnipro city on Friday, as Moscow’s troops edged closer to the capital Kyiv that, according to its Mayor Vitali Klitschko, has lost half of its estimated 3.5 million population since the war began.
“UNHCR repeats its call for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure,” Saltmarsh said.
“We are committed to stay and deliver assistance when and where access and security allow.”
Meanwhile, Britain on Friday slapped a fresh wave of sanctions on Moscow, targeting 386 members of Russia’s parliament who supported Putin’s devastating invasion of Ukraine.
The new sanctions against members of Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, ban them from traveling to Britain as well as accessing any assets they hold in the UK.
The lawmakers were sanctioned after they voted in February to recognize the breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, providing a pretext for the war, Britain’s foreign ministry said.
“We’re targeting those complicit in Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and those who support this barbaric war,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
“We will not let up the pressure and will continue to tighten the screw on the Russian economy through sanctions.”
The move came after the government on Thursday froze the assets of Chelsea Football Club’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich, the highest-profile oligarch yet sanctioned by any Western country.
Abramovich, 55, was one of seven more oligarchs slapped with new British restrictions over the invasion, including his former business partner Oleg Deripaska.
Russian vessels and aircraft are already barred from the UK.
