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Diplomacy and threats collide on 14 April 2022
Summary
A look back at the day Turkey said it was still working on a Zelenskyy–Putin meeting, as Moscow warned of strikes on Kyiv and Western arms deliveries.
What did diplomacy look like on 14 April 2022, seven weeks into Russia's invasion of Ukraine? It ran alongside sharp warnings from Moscow and fresh Western commitments to Kyiv.
On 14 April 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Turkey was still working on organising a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The statement came as part of the peace negotiations in the war.
Threats from Moscow
The previous day, 13 April, the Russian defence ministry said it would begin targeting Ukrainian "decision-makers", including Zelenskyy, and command centres in Kyiv if Ukrainian forces continued to attack Russian territory. Also on 13 April, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said U.S. and NATO vehicles carrying weapons on Ukrainian territory were "legal military targets".
Western support
On 13 April, the United States announced a further $800m (€740m) in weapons, ammunition and other security assistance for Ukraine. The package included 11 Mi-17 helicopters, 18 155mm howitzers, 300 more Switchblade drones and radar systems able to track incoming fire and pinpoint its source. As reported at the time, some officials in the Biden administration had considered such a step too risky in terms of escalation only a few weeks earlier.
On 12 April, the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia visited Kyiv, including the Mariinskyi Palace, to send a signal of European solidarity with Ukraine and discuss continued political and military support. They also visited sites of alleged war crimes in nearby Borodianka. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had also proposed joining them, but Kyiv regarded the trip as unwelcome. This was believed to be because of his close ties with Russia in earlier political posts. Another report dated 13 April also recorded the four presidents arriving in Kyiv and meeting Zelenskyy.
On 12 April, US President Joe Biden used the word "genocide" for the first time to describe events in Ukraine, at an event in Iowa. Zelenskyy called the gesture the real words of a real leader; he had first used the word himself on 3 April to describe the massacre in Bucha. Colombian President Iván Duque, in an interview on 13 April, also said that what was happening in Ukraine was genocide and must stop.
Other developments
On 12 April, Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Viktor Medvedchuk, described as a key pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and oligarch, had been detained in a Security Service of Ukraine special operation. Zelenskyy planned to use him in a future exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
In the Polohy district, a five-hour battle took place on 12 April as Ukrainian forces tried to retake the area. According to Colonel Ivan Arefiev, spokesman for the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, local territorial defence units took part of the district, but Russian reinforcements forced them to withdraw.
The war's effects reached food markets as well. On 14 April, Egypt's Minister of Agriculture, El Sayed El Quseir, announced that India had approved Egyptian wheat imports, because of the shortage caused by the Russian invasion.
