New round of talks aims to stop the fighting in Ukraine

Kiev: Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, northwest of Kyviv, from Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Monday as he sought to rally the country.

“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” Zelensky said in his nighttime video address to the nation.

“We can’t express our emotions now. We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”

Ahead of the talks, to be held in Istanbul, the Ukrainian president said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and is open to compromise on the fate of the Donbas, the contested region in the country’s east.

As fighting raged throughout the country, the mayor of Irpin, which has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, said that the city had been “liberated” from Russian forces.

A senior U.S. defense official said the U.S. believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.

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