Ukraine conflict 'will have no winner', UN says on 100th day of fight

KYIV/MOSCOW－The United Nations said on Friday there would be no victor from the Russia-Ukraine conflict as it entered its 100th day and the fighting still shows no sign of easing.

"We have witnessed for 100 days what is lost: lives, homes, jobs and prospects," said Amin Awad, assistant secretary-general and United Nations crisis coordinator for Ukraine, in a statement.

Russia's "special military operation" began on Feb 24.

"In just over three months, nearly 14 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes, the majority women and children," Awad said.

In developments on the battlefield, both sides shifted their military focus to the northeastern part of the Donetsk region and the western part of the Lugansk region following the end of the battle in Mariupol, with Russia taking control of the Azovstal steel plant and the city.

Current military action is centered around two strategically important cities in Lugansk, namely Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

The Ukrainian side has confirmed that heavy fighting continued in Severodonetsk. Serhiy Hayday, head of the Lugansk regional military administration, recently said that Russia is gaining control of most of the city, while Ukrainian forces are still showing resistance.

'Certain results achieved'

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia had achieved some results from its military campaign in Ukraine.

"Certain results have been achieved," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Western officials on Thursday in the Slovakian capital Bratislava that the fighting faced an "inflection point" depending on whether the West can provide the weapons to subvert the huge advantage in equipment and troops that Russia has in the east.

The global community has been closely monitoring how the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to remodel the global economy, energy landscape as well as diplomatic and military ties.

The cost of oil, which began to rise sharply at the start of the year, spiked after the conflict began. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, agreed on Thursday to significant oil output increases in July amid calls for the alliance to help contain the surging oil prices.

The group agreed to increase oil production by 648,000 barrels per day in July.

This comes after the European Union recently agreed on an embargo on Russian oil. The bloc formally approved the decision on Friday.

On the diplomatic front, Western countries have been sanctioning Moscow since the conflict began. In the latest retaliatory move, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it was summoning the heads of US media outlets in Moscow to a meeting next Monday to notify them of tough measures in response to US restrictions against Russian media.

"If the work of the Russian media, operators and journalists is not normalized in the United States, the most stringent measures will inevitably follow," ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Agencies - Xinhua