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What is happening in Ukraine - in the reports of Elena Kostyuchenko. Now on Medusa

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this is Meduza's mailing list, where we briefly talk about the main events related to the war in Ukraine that took place during the day.

Negotiations in Istanbul look different today than they did yesterday

While yesterday's talks in Istanbul initially left a sense of at least some rapprochement between the parties, the official comments that followed put the situation in a more realistic and pragmatic light.

Already on Tuesday evening, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that the signals from the negotiation platform "can be called positive", but they "do not drown out the explosions of Russian shells." “Of course, we see no reason to trust the words that come from certain representatives of a state that continues to fight for our destruction,” he said.

In Russia, among the pro-government speakers, the “steps towards” Ukraine announced yesterday (albeit of disputed significance) met with understanding not from everyone - in particular, Ramzan Kadyrov once again called for the capture of Kiev, and later even called the wording of the head of the negotiating group of the Russian Federation, Vladimir, “wrong” Medinsky.

On Wednesday morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Medinsky would "additionally clarify" Russia's position on the talks. Medinsky clearly tried to present yesterday's news as a Russian achievement - his explanation boiled down to the fact that Ukraine, in its proposals , allegedly finally expressed its readiness to fulfill Russia's "fundamental requirements", which Moscow, according to him, insisted on for years (not to join NATO, not to place foreign military bases on its territory, and so on).

Finally, today the Russian Ministry of Defense abandoned the rhetoric about the "dramatic reduction" of military activity in the Kiev and Chernigov directions for the sake of "increasing mutual trust." According to today's version, we are talking about a "planned regrouping" and preparation for the "final stage of the operation to liberate the republics of Donbass." This is what we expected yesterday . It is also worth recalling that the offensive in the Kiev and Chernigov directions was already stopped, and Ukraine launched counterattacks.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine announced today that Russia is withdrawing the units that suffered the “greatest losses” in order to understaff them, but does not give up trying to capture (or at least surround) Kiev and Chernihiv.

RBC sends employees on vacation. Sources speak of government pressure

According to Meduza's sources, RBC sends employees on vacation, either in some departments, or in all departments, except for the news department. Sources say that journalists from the political bloc will definitely go on vacation from Monday. They attribute this decision of the leadership to pressure from the authorities, because of which, according to one of them, “it became impossible to work.”

Editor-in-chief Petr Kanaev told Meduza that he only offered to take a vacation for those employees who have less work to do due to the fact that events in Ukraine dominate the agenda. About forced vacations, according to him, we are not talking.

Judging by the materials of RBC , the editorial office complies with the requirements of the Russian authorities to cover the war, calling it a special operation and using official Russian statements as sources.

Elena Kostyuchenko posts on Meduza

Novaya Gazeta, whose editorial office is based in Moscow, after the introduction of military censorship in Russia, continued to work under new conditions, but the other day, having received a second warning from Roskomnadzor, it decided to suspend publication until the end of the “special operation”. Read what newspaper employees say about what happened.

Reports from Ukraine by Novaya Kostyuchenko correspondent are the most important publications about the war in Russian. Due to censorship, the newspaper was forced to publish these texts in an abbreviated form, and then to remove some of them. Today, with the permission of Elena Kostyuchenko and editor-in-chief of Novaya Dmitry Muratov, we are publishing them in full. These reports are from the border of Ukraine with Poland , from Odessa , from Nikolaev and from Kherson .

No war. Your Medusa