After their talks on Thursday, Biden and Macron said in a joint statement they were committed to holding Russia to account “for widely documented atrocities and war crimes, committed both by its regular armed forces and by its proxies” in Ukraine.
Biden said he was ready to speak with Putin “if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he’s looking for a way to end the war”, adding the Russian leader “hasn’t done that yet”.
Macron said he would continue to talk to Putin to “try to prevent escalation and to get some very concrete results” such as the safety of nuclear plants.
The International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to reach an agreement with Russia and Ukraine to create a protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, by the end of the year, the head of the UN atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview.
The head of Russia’s state-run nuclear energy agency Rosatom was later quoted by RIA news agency as saying Moscow had outlined its position on creating a safety zone and was now awaiting a response.
Repeated shelling around the Russian-held plant has raised concern about the potential for a grave accident just 500km from the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.
ATTACKS
Three people were killed and seven wounded in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson over the past 24 hours, the regional governor said on Friday.
The regional capital of Kherson – liberated by Ukrainian forces in mid-November – and other parts of the region have been bombarded 42 times in the same period, Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian forces also shelled a building in the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia, setting it ablaze, city official Anatoly Krutyev said.
Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports.
In a grisly development, several Ukrainian embassies abroad received “bloody packages” containing animal eyes, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Friday, after a series of letter bombs were sent to sites in Spain including Kyiv’s embassy in Madrid.
Russia has recently intensified a campaign to knock out power, water and heat supplies in Ukrainian cities. Ukraine and the West say the strategy deliberately intends to harm civilians, a war crime, something Moscow denies.
The attacks on infrastructure are likely to increase the cost to keep Ukraine’s economy going next year by up to US$1 billion a month, and aid to the country would need to be “front-loaded”, IMF head Kristalina Georgieva told the Reuters NEXT conference on Thursday.
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