The 34th day of war in Ukraine saw Russian missiles strike a target near the city of Nikopol, situated downriver from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant; Ukrainian forces retake the town of Irpin near Kiev; and scheduled ceasefire talks between Russian negotiators and a Ukrainian delegation set to start in Istanbul. 

The Tuesday morning missile strike on the southern town along the Dnieper River just north of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, which triggered air raid sirens but no reported casualties, as well as the return of combat hotspot Irpin to Ukrainian control, lends credence to reports of a Russian refocus on securing eastern Ukraine. 

So does the ongoing humanitarian debacle in Mariupol, where an estimated 160,000 people are trapped. “Unfortunately, we are in the hands of the occupiers,” the mayor of that southern seaport city, Vadym Boichenko, told CNN on Monday, 

Ukraine’s president, the indefatigable Volodymr Zelensky, will keep talking even to those who are not especially keen on listening, like the Russian censors who made sure the interview he gave to five Russian journalists grabbed as few headlines as possible. His remarks were said to have included the conditions under which Ukraine could accept neutrality following the exit of Russian forces from the country’s territory, and will likely be part of today’s ceasefire negotiations in Turkey. 

One major Russian newspaper that published the remarks, Novaya Gazeta, did so in apparent violation of Moscow’s new “foreign agents” law and was summarily shuttered: “Friends, the working conditions of journalists in Russia are deteriorating day by day: independent media are being closed, new bans are being introduced,” that newspaper’s home page says. 

Russia’s Kommersant apparently bowed to the censor’s demands and has not ceased publication. It reported today that Bloomberg has announced the suspension of its activities in Russia and Belarus, a decision made “due to the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24.” For its part, Bloomberg said in a statement that it suspended its operations in the two countries “following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.” 

The Danish beer brewer Carlsberg also says it is winding down operations in Russia and will take a “substantial” non-cash impairment charge in doing so, Reuters reported.

The war has so far cost Ukraine more than $560 billion, the Daily Mail reported, with 5,000 miles of roadways now in ruins. While the capital, Kiev, has thus far largely been spared the kind of destruction being visited on other large cities, the devastation countrywide is piling up as the war drags on. There are reports of renewed missile and airstrikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city — and which the Guardian newspaper now calls the “second most shelled city in Ukraine.” As more Russian bombs fall, “It feels like history is repeating itself,” the newspaper quotes a local poet as saying. 

If common sense, or poetry, can’t be prevailed upon to stop a war, there’s always le téléphone. France’s Emmanuel Macron reaches out to the Kremlin frequently, but whether his “unending Russia diplomacy” is effective remains to be seen, the New York Times observes. Mr. Macron has clocked 17 phone conversations with Vladimir Putin in the past four months and one personal meeting in Moscow, something that if nothing else fills the French president with enough hubris to scold an American president with a tad more foreign policy experience than he. 

In none of those phone calls, it can be assumed, did Mr. Macron refer to the Russian despot as “a butcher,” as President Biden just did in Poland. “I wouldn’t use this type of wording because I continue to hold discussions with President Putin,” Macron said during an appearance on a French television show. Far be it for an American commander-in-chief to inadvertently complicate the phone life of a young French leader facing elections.

In the same period, Mr. Macron has spoken 25 times to President Zelensky, and rendez-voused with him in Kiev and Brussels. But if mission no. 1 is, as he says, “securing a ceasefire,” then something must be missing from the equation — like a chair for him today in Istanbul? 

The view from Britain, at least as expressed by the Guardian newspaper in an article that compared Mr. Macron to Napoleon, is that France has an imperial view of France’s place in the world — an outlook that did not end very elegantly for Napoleon. At least they named an airport after Charles de Gaulle.