Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba met on Thursday in Turkey, the highest-level contact between the two countries since the war began on Feb. 24.

Dmytro Kuleba said on the eve of his talks with Russia's Sergei Lavrov that his expectations were low. Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky said Moscow "will not concede a single negotiating point".

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the meeting in a Turkish Mediterranean resort “will open the door to a permanent cease-fire.”

Russia's war in Ukraine entered the third week on Thursday with none of its stated objectives reached, despite thousands of people killed, more than two million made refugees and thousands cowering in besieged cities under relentless bombardment.

Ahead of those talks, artillery fire was heard on the western edge of Kyiv, Deputy Interior Minister Vadym Denysenko said. He told Ukrainian TV channel Rada that residents had a “rather difficult” night on the outskirts of the capital in which Russian forces started by targeting military sites but then hit residential areas.

Hospital attacked
An airstrike on a hospital in the port city of Mariupol killed three people, including a child, the city council said Thursday, as Russian forces intensified their siege of Ukrainian cities, as the top Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met for the first time since the war began.

The attack a day earlier in the besieged southern port city wounded 17 people, including women waiting to give birth, doctors and children buried in the rubble. Bombs also fell on two hospitals in another city west of the capital.

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris. “A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express horror at the strike. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”

In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook. He said there were no injuries.

The World Health Organization said it had confirmed 10 people died and 16 were injured in attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began. It was not clear if its numbers included the assault on the hospital in Mariupol.

The Biden administration warned Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine and rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development there.

UK announced that from Tuesday, Ukrainian nationals with a passport or ID card will be able to apply for a visa entirely virtually, without having to visit a visa application centre.

Russia leaves Council of Europe
Russia left the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation. In a statement, the country's ministry of foreign affairs said European Union and Nato states were "unfriendly towards Russia", accusing them of misusing their majority on the council's committee of ministers.

The Russian ministry claimed these states "continue their policy of destroying the Council of Europe and the shared humanitarian and legal space in Europe".

The Council of Europe is Europe's oldest political body, which emerged after World War II, aims to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the continent.
-Reuters/AP/BBC