‘WE CAN'T TRUST THE WORDS OF PUTIN WAR MACHINE'

POSITIVE SIGNALS IN UKRAINE PEACE TALKS NOT REFLECTED BY BOMBS ON GROUND, SAYS ZELENSKY | Calm in Kyiv but outside there’s no end in sight to Russian onslaught

- Nicholas Cecil

VLADIMIR PUTIN was accused today of “military, diplomatic and KGB games” with a pledge to de-escalate his war near Kyiv as part of peace moves — as some Russian units were being forced to return to Belarus because they have lost so many soldiers.

Britain issued a strong warning not to “trust what is coming out of the mouth of Putin’s war machine” after Russian deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin said the Kremlin had decided to “radically reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions” to boost trust at peace talks towards reaching an agreement to end the conflict.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in a late night address to the nation, said: “We are hearing positive signals from the negotiating table but positive signals do not silence the explosions of Russian bombs.”

On the ground, the governor of Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region said he saw no let-up in Russian attacks despite the promise by Moscow to scale down military operations there. “Do we believe in it (the promise)? Of course not,” said Viacheslav Chaus.

“The ‘decreased activity’ in the Chernihiv region was demonstrated by the enemy carrying out strikes on the city of Nizhyn, including air strikes, and all night long they hit Chernihiv.”

Shelling could be heard outside Kyiv overnight but the Ukrainian capital itself was not shelled by Russian forces.