Kyiv, 14 April 2022: diplomacy amid threats

What did diplomacy look like on 14 April 2022, when the war in Ukraine was in its second month and threats and offers of talks were issued almost side by side? The day's reports, and those of the days just before it, show a conflict that was widening in its political reach.

Talk of a summit

On 14 April 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Turkey was still working on organising a potential meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The statement placed Turkey in the role of a go-between in the peace negotiations.

Warnings from Moscow

The offer of mediation came against a hardening Russian tone. On 13 April, the Russian defence ministry said it would begin to target Ukrainian "decision-makers", including Zelenskyy, and command centres in Kyiv if Ukrainian forces continued to attack Russian territory. The same day, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said U.S. and NATO vehicles transporting weapons on Ukrainian territory were "legal military targets".

Those warnings followed an announcement of new Western help. On 13 April, the United States said it would send a further $800 million in weapons, ammunition and other security assistance to 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.

Solidarity in Kyiv

The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – Andrzej Duda, Gitanas Nausėda, Egils Levits and Alar Karis – were in Kyiv and met Zelenskyy. As reported, they visited the Mariinskyi Palace to send a strong signal of shared European solidarity with Ukraine and to discuss continued political and military support. The leaders also visited sites of alleged war crimes in nearby Borodianka.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had also offered to travel with them, but, as reported, the trip was unwelcome in Kyiv. The reason was believed to be his close ties with Russia in earlier political posts.

The word "genocide"

On 12 April, U.S. 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, describing the massacre in Bucha. By 13 April the debate had travelled further: Colombian President Iván Duque, responding to Biden's description, said that what was happening in Ukraine was genocide and must stop, calling it madness. That came after Colombia raised its energy production to help meet Western needs once all supplies from Russia were cut off.

Arrests and fighting

On 12 April, Zelenskyy reported on Telegram that Viktor Medvedchuk, described as a key pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and oligarch, had been detained in an operation by the SBU. Zelenskyy planned to use him in a future exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.

On the ground, a five-hour battle was fought in the Polohy district as Ukrainian forces tried to liberate the area. Colonel Ivan Arefiev, spokesman for the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said local territorial defence brigade units had taken part of the district but were forced to withdraw when Russian reinforcements arrived.

Beyond the battlefield

The war's effects also reached food supplies. On 14 April 2022, Egypt's Minister of Agriculture, El Sayed El Quseir, announced that India had approved Egyptian imports of wheat, owing to the shortage caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Taken together, the reports show a day on which a possible Zelenskyy–Putin meeting was being discussed even as Moscow issued threats against Kyiv's leadership and Western arms deliveries, and as the economic consequences spread to countries far from the front.