Ukraine, Russia resume talks as fighting intensifies

Lviv (Ukraine): Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks on Monday, even as Russia's military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraine's capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyiv's suburbs.

After an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATO's doorstep, the talks raised hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.

"Everyone is waiting for news. We will definitely report in the evening," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a new video address.

The negotiations taking place by video conference are the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first held in a week. The previous discussions took place in person in Belarus, and did not produce breakthroughs to end the fighting in Ukraine or lasting agreements on humanitarian routes. "Communication is being held, yet it's hard," Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted along with a photo of the two sides meeting by video link. Earlier, Podolyak said the negotiators would discuss "peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees."

Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for their invasion. Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said. Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.