Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks start amid continued fighting

Talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations were underway on Monday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for a ceasefire.

On the same day, the United Nations General Assembly started its meeting where in his opening speech, General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid of Maldives renewed his call for immediate ceasefire, the first since 1982, the BBC reported. 

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian delegation arrived at the Belarusian border to take part in the talks, the Russian presidential office said according to TASS, saying that ceasefire and withdrawal of troops would be the key issues of the meeting.

"The Kiev delegation arrived at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border to hold talks with Russia," the president's office stated on its Telegram channel.

The talks come against the backdrop of battles which continue to be waged in Ukraine.

Despite predictions by some military experts that Ukraine would fall within 2-3 days from a full-scale Russian invasion, no major city has fallen, the Kyiv Post reported.

Ukraine's Defence Ministry reported that approximately 5,300 Russian troops, although this number could not be independently verified.

The bulk of Russian ground forces are still more than more than 30 kilometres  north of Kyiv, the UK's Ministry of Defence said Monday.

According to the BBC, the latest toll for civilian deaths in Ukraine stands at 102, including seven children, with 304 people injured.

Ukraine's interior ministry, however, has said that at least 352 civilians had been killed since the invasion began.

Before yesterday's talks began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the European Union to grant his country "immediate" membership, the Kyiv Post reported.

"We appeal to the European Union for the immediate accession of Ukraine via a new special procedure," the 44-year-old leader said in a new video address.

The European Union's chief executive on Sunday had expressed unequivocal support for Ukraine becoming a member of the bloc, calling the country now under attack from Russia "one of us", Reuters reported.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in an interview hours after the 27-nation EU decided for the first time in its history to supply weapons to a country at war, said, "Indeed over time, they belong to us. They are one of us and we want them in," von der Leyen told Euronews.

Elsewhere in The United States, the CNN quoted White House press secretary Jen Psaki as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to put Russia's deterrence forces, which includes nuclear arms, on high alert are part of a wider pattern of unprovoked escalation and "manufactured threats" from the Kremlin.

"This is really a pattern that we've seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don't exist in order to justify further aggression – and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism," Psaki told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

Putin put Russia's nuclear forces on high alert after comments by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and others, the Kremlin has said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "unacceptable" remarks were made about possible "clashes" between Nato and Moscow over Russia's attack on Ukraine, the BBC reported.

Speaking to Sky News's Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Truss warned that if the Russian president was not stopped in Ukraine, there could be "conflict" between Russia and Nato.

Putin in a televised address on 24 February said that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.

Bank of Russia doubles interest rates

In an effort to halt the slump of the rouble, Russia more than doubled its interest rate to 20%, the BBC reported.

The increase of the key rate by 10.5 percentage points took it to an all-time high level.

The move came after the rouble sank 30% following Western sanctions, before going back to 20% down.

Further key rate decisions will be made taking into account risks posed by external and domestic conditions and the reaction of financial markets, as well as actual and expected inflation movements relative to the target and economic developments over the forecast period, the Bank of Russia was quoted by TASS as saying.

On another economic front, gas prices in Europe rose by more than 35% on Monday trading opened to $1,450 per 1,000 cubic metres, the TASS reported.

Meanwhile, the US on Monday prohibited US dollar transactions with the Russian central bank and fully blocked the Russian direct investment fund, senior administration officials told CNN.

The steps are meant to prevent Russia from accessing a "rainy day fund" that officials said Moscow had been expecting to rely upon during the invasion of Ukraine.

The sweeping new sanctions were taken with Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Canada, European Union and others.

 "No country is sanction proof," a White House official was quoted as saying by CNN. "Putin's war chest of $630 billion in reserves only matters if you can use it to defend his currency, specifically by selling those reserves in exchange for buying the ruble.

"After today's actions that will no longer be possible, and fortress Russia will be exposed as a myth."