...as per the report below, there is increasing hope for...

...as per the report below, there is increasing hope for resolution as the West baulks at providing jets to Ukraine and further sanctioning Russia after Putin appears to back down. The news that the West wants to hear- that Putin has no intention to overthrow Zelensky - no Putin puppet Government. The news Putin wants to hear - Ukraine not getting admission into NATO.
A ceasefire now looks possible , which is why markets roared back in the best day this year and for awhile too, But oil and gold must be casualties as the world awaits a peaceful resolution. Money does not buy Peace .

Fighter jet fiasco could push Zelensky to the negotiating table
Hans van LeeuwenEurope correspondent
Mar 10, 2022 – 3.38am


London | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with the West to “send us planes” after the US refused to countenance a Polish proposal to supply fighter jets, drawing an explicit boundary around how far Western support will go.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris will visit Poland on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) to discuss how to provide military assistance to Ukraine, as the European Union stepped up sanctions and Britain announced it would likely send anti-aircraft weapons.

Ukrainian reservists with the kind of anti-tank weapon being supplied by Western powers.  AP
Poland on Tuesday revealed it was unwilling to send Ukraine its 28 Soviet-era MiG-29 jets without NATO or US involvement, to avoid becoming the focus of any Russian retaliation. And the US quickly signalled it was unwilling to become directly engaged, saying this was a decision for Poland.

This seems to have exposed the threshold of Western willingness to support Ukraine militarily, for fear of attracting Russian retaliation and of being fully drawn into the conflict.

The apparent disarray and hesitancy may prompt Mr Zelensky to step up his reported back-channel negotiations with Moscow, amid increasingly intolerable civilian bloodshed and destruction in key Ukrainian cities.


Publicly, he continues to excoriate the West for not supply air cover or fighter jets. “How much longer will the world be an accomplice in ignoring terror?,” he tweeted on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT). “Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have the power, but you seem to be losing humanity.”
Conditional neutrality

A day earlier Mr Zelensky, though, admitted to a US television interviewer that “NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine” - a sign his government may be preparing to accept Russia’s demand that Ukraine become strictly neutral.

On Wednesday, Mr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, Igor Zhovkva, told Bloomberg that Ukraine was ready to discuss neutrality, but only with a security guarantee - one that would presumably have to come from both Russia and the US.

Meanwhile, the revelation of the West’s boundaries of support for Ukraine will be an encouraging sign for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces a choice about how far to push his invasion before he starts negotiating an end to the war.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Kremlin did not want to overthrow the Ukrainian government and would prefer to use dialogue to achieve its aim of ensuring Ukraine did not join NATO.

“Some progress has been made” in talks to resolve the conflict, she said.

Some media reports suggest Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is acting as a broker between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky.
He is also said to be liaising with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, looking for a landing zone for the negotiations, which reportedly no longer involve regime change in Kyiv.

Mr Scholz used a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say there was “no sense” in a military solution to the conflict, and the two sides had to sit down to talks.

Sanctions bite

There are reports Germany has begun pushing back against proposals for further sanctions, including adding Russia’s largest financier Sberbank to the SWIFT ban or topping up the Russian energy boycotts.

The EU on Wednesday introduced new sanctions on Belarusian banks, banned exports of maritime navigation and radio communication technology to Russia, put more business chief and MPs on its sanctions list, and included crypto assets in its list of sanctioned transactions.

Britain extended its sanctions to cover Russian-owned aircraft, including private jets. The government also plans to supply Ukraine with high-tech laser-guided anti-aircraft missiles, but would not reveal how it would train Ukrainian soldiers to use them.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the financial and other sanctions already announced - which the US and Britain extended to oil imports on Tuesday - represented “economic war on Russia”.

The economic fusillade is having an impact. Trade in the rouble recommenced on Wednesday, with the currency losing another 10 per cent, briefly touching a record low of 120 to the US dollar.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the Kremlin might consider cutting gas supplies to Germany, which may further test west European resolve.
Military peril

On the military front, meanwhile, Russia on Wednesday allowed six humanitarian evacuation corridors, as it continues to bombard major cities, destroy civilian buildings and infrastructure, and mass troops for what looks like an attack on the capital Kyiv.

Both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefires around those corridors, with the Ukrainians particularly concerned about Russian breaches on the roads out of Mariupol, the most heavily besieged city.

Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergy Orlov said 1170 people had been killed, and residents were living in sub-zero conditions without water, heat or power. People were melting snow for water and burning firewood to cook, he said, describing the conditions as “medieval”.

The city authorities said a Russian air strike had hit Mariupol children’s hospital, inflicting “colossal” destruction and leaving children “under rubble”. Municipal authorities in the second-largest city Kharkiv said a similarly intensive bombardment was still going on there.

The Ukrainian government has also accused Russia of endangering the safety of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl.
The electricity supply to Chernobyl - which is under Russian military control - has been cut off, according to Ukrainian state power operator Energoatom.

This raised fears of a malfunction of the cooling system, but the International Atomic Energy Agency said the plant’s heat-removal system could still function without electrical supply, so there was “no critical impact on safety”.


The perils for Mr Putin of remaining in Ukraine were highlighted on Wednesday, as citizens of the occupied town of Kherson held a mass demonstration against the invasion, reportedly forcing the Russian military to make more than 400 arrests.
The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that up to 2.2 million Ukrainians have now fled the country.

BUT

like Lenny Kravitz says It Ain't Over Until Its Over