NATO overestimates Russia’s military abilities, he said, about the security alliance’s reluctance to close the air space over Ukraine. “Close the sky, let civilians stop dying, let [Russia] prove that it knows how to fight, not bomb peaceful cities. That’s all we want. Close the sky — let the guys come down to earth in the end!”

Asked if nuclear powers UK and France would be part of this proposed new union, he said: “Unfortunately, today it is impossible to predict how Russian political elites make decisions. Therefore, if Ukraine manages to form this new union, we want it to accurately respond to all modern risks. After all, we will be in its centre as a country that has come under attack.”

He said “several countries” were interested in this alternative union, including the United States.

Polodyak said Ukraine was optimistic that Russia was ready to work towards a “compromise” after 21 days of its “special operation” that had, against its military planners expectations, come up against Ukraine’s resistance.

“We really see a desire to come up with some kind of compromise draft of agreements — I don’t say “peace agreement” yet. They, of course, did not expect the reputation that Russia will acquire in the world, that negative assessment, that single package [of sanctions] that is being introduced against them. All this brings them back to real politics,” he said.

“So, the main thing is that for us it is fundamentally not just a peace agreement, this does not suit us.”

He said Ukraine was negotiating “key basic points” that would be included in any agreement with Russia: “a ceasefire, an immediate withdrawal of troops and the signing of an agreement in which there will be security guarantees — and where a number of countries will act as guarantors. And within the framework of this package there will be an agreement with the Russian Federation that it also undertakes to guarantee Ukraine that there will be no next wars. And Russia will have to understand the risks it will face next. Without this, it is pointless to end the war.”

Asked if Ukraine was prepared to let go of Luhansk and Donetsk, and Crimea, Polodyak said:

“This is the [Russian] negotiating position. For us, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is unshakable. For us, de jure, these territories are the ARC [Autonomous Republic of Crimea] and ORDLO [Separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions]; we don’t know what LDNR is. For us, these territories legally remain part of Ukraine. But we temporarily lost effective control over them, and now the Russian administration is there. This is the status quo, I am ready to name it, but we cannot yet voice our positions at the negotiations, I repeat once again. Unlike the Russians, we stick to the agreements.”

People put up plastic sheets to cover the broken windows of their apartments after parts of a Russian missile, shot down by Ukrainian air defense, landed on an apartment block, according to authorities, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Civilians are continuing to bear the brunt of the war.

People sheltered at the Drama Theatre in Ukraine’s southern port city of Mariupol are being rescued alive from the rubble. The Kyiv Independent reported that 130 survivors had been rescued alive until late on Thursday.

Ukrainian authorities had said Russia bombed the theatre to ruins on Wednesday. They said upto 1,000 civilians, including women and children, were in the theatre’s bomb shelter when the Russian air strike took place. Reports suggest that the shelter might have withstood the attack.

Russian forces are bombarding Mariupol relentlessly. Briefing the Security Council on Thursday, Rosemary DiCarlo, the Under-Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said many residents of the city who have been unable to evacuate from the southeastern port city lack food, water, electricity, and medical care.

“There will be no winners to this senseless conflict,” she said, noting that the situation in the city was so bad that “uncollected corpses lie on city streets”.

Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, said that in less than three weeks, the number of those fleeing Ukraine into neighbouring countries has risen from 520,000 to over 3.1 million.

A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice range in Lviv, western Ukraine, Thursday, March 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Poland has become one of the largest refugee-hosting countries in the world, with close to 2 million refugees from Ukraine. Another 490,000 people have fled to Romania; 350,000 to Moldova; 280,000 to Hungary; and 228,000 to Slovakia, while others have moved to Russia or Belarus.

“With the current pace of refugee outflows, the capacities of the neighbouring countries are being tested and stretched,” he said, calling for more support.

Poland warned last week that its systems were near collapse and that it could not take anymore refugees.

“Neither the city nor the government can now cope with the wave of refugees from Ukraine,” said Warsaw’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, after a meeting of the Union of Polish Cities. “It is necessary to implement a system of European and international aid.”

Czech Republic Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Thursday that 270,000 refugees from Ukraine had crossed the border over the last three weeks, and that his country “is at the very limit of the number of refugees it is able to absorb without major problems”.

Sweden announced earlier this week that it would reintroduce border controls due to the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. In a press release on March 15, the Minister for Infrastructure Tomas Eneroth said the government assesses that “the situation may become so serious that it might be necessary to take immediate measures to maintain law and order and safeguard national security”.

I will be back on Monday with the next update.