Ukraine and Russia Prepare for Talks in Turkey as Russian Missiles Hit Cities

The Kremlin said negotiations so far haven’t yielded any breakthroughs, and Western officials have expressed doubts about whether Russia is ready to halt hostilities in Ukraine.

At the White House on Monday, President Biden said his comment suggesting Russian President

Vladimir Putin

shouldn’t continue to hold power reflected moral outrage he was feeling, and he said it didn’t hurt attempts to end the war in Ukraine.

“I’m not walking anything back,” Mr. Biden said of his remarks on Saturday, in which he said of Mr. Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The White House said shortly after he made the comment that he wasn’t calling for regime change.

“I wasn’t then nor am I now articulating a policy change,” Mr. Biden said Monday. “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel and I make no apologies for it.”

Earlier this month, Russian oligarch

Roman Abramovich,

who has become involved in attempts to end the war, and Ukrainian peace negotiators suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning after a meeting in Kyiv, people familiar with the matter said.

The Russian government previously has been accused of using poison to punish enemies. The Kremlin has denied involvement in such attacks and didn’t respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Ukrainian forces on Monday continued to counterattack Russian positions around Kyiv. Ukrainian troops took back the strategically important town of Irpin, north of Kyiv, which fell under Russian control earlier this month, according to Irpin’s mayor,

Alexander Markushin.

A senior U.S. official said Monday that the U.S. couldn’t independently verify that Irpin was back in Ukrainian hands.

Russian missiles struck Kyiv and the cities of Kharkiv, Lutsk, Rivne and Zhytomyr, according to Ukrainian officials. Russian forces continued to try to push toward Kyiv from the east and northwest, attempting to control key roadways.

Ukraine’s Emergencies Ministry said the strike on Lutsk hit fuel-storage facilities and authorities were still trying to extinguish the blaze. The head of the provincial military administration,

Yuriy Pohuliaiko,

said the attack had been carried out with cruise missiles launched from neighboring Belarus. There were no immediate details about casualties.

Russian forces also appeared to push farther into Mariupol, a strategically important city linking Russian-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas region with territory Moscow has captured in the south.

In an interview with Russian journalists over the weekend, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine could make a formal statement renouncing its aim of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in return for binding security guarantees from foreign partners.

Ukraine’s neutrality would need to be ratified in a referendum, Mr. Zelensky said, since the country’s constitution currently sets out its aspirations to join NATO and the European Union.

Mr. Zelensky said Russian troops would have to withdraw from Ukrainian territory before a referendum could be held, since a fair vote wasn’t possible under foreign military occupation.

“No one will ever recognize the results of a referendum if there are troops or illegal armed formations on the territory of the country,” he told the journalists.

Mr. Zelensky said that countries acting as guarantors of Ukraine’s security would need to make legally binding commitments that are ratified by their parliaments. He pointed to the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which Ukraine renounced nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees from Russia, the U.S. and the U.K., noting that Russia had invaded Ukraine anyway and Western countries hadn’t prevented it.

He reiterated that Ukraine’s government won’t step down, nor accept demilitarization of the country, rejecting two of Russia’s war aims.

The office of Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

said he urged Mr. Putin in a phone call Sunday to accept a cease-fire with Ukraine.

However, Western officials see few signs that Russia is willing to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict. “No one thinks there is the chance of a diplomatic solution in the next few days or even few weeks,” said a senior European Union official.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that there had been no significant breakthroughs in negotiations, and no progress on a potential meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that a meeting between the two presidents now would be counterproductive.

Authorities in Kyiv said they were bracing for renewed attacks by Russian forces. “They are preparing for a major push, it is always like this ahead of big negotiations with Russians,” said a Ukrainian official close to the talks.

The official said the chances of success in cease-fire talks had grown in recent weeks, “from 10% two weeks ago to 50%.”

Turkish Foreign Minister

Mevlut Cavusoglu

said over the weekend that, to his knowledge, there was a diplomatic back channel between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky.

“I don’t want to go into the details of this process. It seems that they have been negotiating serious issues, serious items,” Mr. Cavusoglu said.

Both Russian and Ukrainian sides had explored several options regarding the venue and format for the next round of talks, people close to the negotiations said, but agreed that Turkey would be the optimal location.

Ahead of Tuesday’s talks, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister

Iryna Vereshchuk

said humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians wouldn’t be open Monday after Ukrainian intelligence reported possible Russian attacks. Recent efforts have focused on evacuating civilians from the southeastern cities of Melitopol and Mariupol through Berdyansk and into Zaporizhzhia.

Several minutes before Mr. Zelensky’s interview was to be published by the Russian outlets, the country’s communications censor issued a statement forbidding its publication. The interview was still accessible on the Latvia-based news website Meduza.

“If there is such a reaction, it means we are doing everything right. They are nervous,” Mr. Zelensky said in a speech on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that the cease-fire talks in Istanbul were important and that Ukraine was still pushing for the West to impose further sanctions on Russia, including the blacklisting of all Russian public officials as well as law-enforcement and military elites.

Ukraine is seeking to roll back Russian gains as Moscow shifts its focus to controlling a swath of the country’s south and east.

Ukrainian forces said Sunday they drove Russian troops out of Trostyanets, in the northeast near the Russian border, potentially opening a road to the provincial capital of Sumy, which is encircled by the Russians.

The retaking of Trostyanets comes after Moscow, having faced stiff resistance from the Ukrainians in its initial, multifront offensive, said Friday that it would refocus its campaign on the Donbas region, where Russian forces hold a position of strength.

In the southeast of the country, Ukrainian troops blocked the Russian advance east of Zaporizhzhia and on positions north of Donetsk, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

In the south, Ukrainian forces are concentrated on the defense of Kryvyi Rih and Mykolaiv.

Ukrainian air-defense systems repelled attacks in the Kyiv-area districts of Boryspil and Vasilkov, according to a Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had shot down Ukrainian jets near the city of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv.

Russia has continued making advances in Donbas, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen.

Igor Konashenkov

said Monday, claiming its forces had taken control of two villages.

Russian forces have dug into defensive positions in the north and around Kyiv, which they have failed to seize. Russia’s firepower is currently concentrated on Mariupol.

Western officials believe that Russia is now reinforcing in Donbas with fresh troops from the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, with the goal of encircling Ukrainian forces.

It isn’t clear how well trained these new Russian troops will be and whether they will have access to enough high-grade weaponry to make quick gains against battle-hardened Ukrainian troops there. The new battalion tactical groups come from Russia’s eastern military district, which experts say is the least battle-trained and well equipped. However, refocusing the attack on a narrower front could solve some of the logistical problems that have dogged Russian forces and allow their dominant air power to assert itself.

Western officials estimate that as much as a fifth of the Russian force is no longer combat-effective and that morale is low. But they warn that the war is far from won for Ukraine.

“What we are not seeing is turning the tide, what we are seeing is some individual success,” one official said. The creation of new Russian battalion tactical groups indicates that Mr. Putin is still going “all in,” the official said.

—Isabel Coles and Jared Malsin contributed to this article.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com, Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com