By NEBI QE­NA and YURAS KAR­MANAU-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russ­ian forces pound­ed ar­eas around Kyiv and an­oth­er Ukrain­ian city overnight, lo­cal of­fi­cials said Wednes­day, just hours af­ter Moscow pledged to scale back mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in those places. The shelling fur­ther tem­pered op­ti­mism about pos­si­ble progress in talks aimed at end­ing the pun­ish­ing war.

Rus­sia did not spell out what ex­act­ly a re­duc­tion in ac­tiv­i­ty would look like, and while the promise ini­tial­ly raised hopes that a path to­ward end­ing the bloody war of at­tri­tion was at hand, Ukraine’s pres­i­dent and oth­ers cau­tioned that the com­mit­ments could mere­ly be blus­ter.

Moscow, mean­while, re­act­ed cool­ly Wednes­day to Kyiv’s pro­posed frame­work for a peace deal, with Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov say­ing it was a “pos­i­tive fac­tor” that Ukraine has sub­mit­ted its writ­ten pro­pos­als but adding that he saw no break­through.

The British De­fense Min­istry said heavy loss­es have forced some Russ­ian units to re­turn to Be­larus and Rus­sia to re­group but that Moscow would like­ly com­pen­sate for any re­duc­tion in ground ma­neu­vers by us­ing mass ar­tillery and mis­sile bar­rages. And the Russ­ian mil­i­tary re­port­ed a new se­ries of mis­sile strikes on Ukrain­ian ar­se­nals and fu­el de­pots over the past 24 hours.

As the war un­leashed five weeks ago by Moscow ground on, so, too, did the fall­out be­yond Ukraine’s bor­ders. The Unit­ed Na­tions said the num­ber of refugees flee­ing the coun­try has now sur­passed a stag­ger­ing 4 mil­lion, while Eu­ro­pean in­dus­tri­al pow­er­house Ger­many is­sued a warn­ing over its nat­ur­al gas sup­plies amid con­cerns that Rus­sia could cut off de­liv­er­ies un­less it is paid in rubles.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy re­act­ed with skep­ti­cism to Rus­sia’s an­nounce­ment at talks in Is­tan­bul on Tues­day that it would re­duce mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty near the cap­i­tal and the north­ern city of Cherni­hiv.

“We can call those sig­nals that we hear at the ne­go­ti­a­tions pos­i­tive,” he said in his night­ly video ad­dress to the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. “But those sig­nals don’t si­lence the ex­plo­sions of Russ­ian shells.”

That skep­ti­cism ap­peared well placed by Wednes­day morn­ing.

“The so-called re­duc­tion of ac­tiv­i­ty in the Cherni­hiv re­gion, was demon­strat­ed by the en­e­my strikes in­clud­ing air strikes on Nizhyn, and all night long they were shelling Cherni­hiv,” said the re­gion­al gov­er­nor, Vi­ach­eslav Chaus. “Civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture fa­cil­i­ties, li­braries, shop­ping cen­ters, many hous­es were de­stroyed in Cherni­hiv.”

Olek­san­dr Pavliuk, the head of the Kyiv re­gion mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, said Wednes­day that Russ­ian shells tar­get­ed res­i­den­tial ar­eas and civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture in the Bucha, Brovary and Vysh­horod re­gions around the cap­i­tal.

They weren’t the on­ly at­tacks by Moscow.

Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry spokesman Maj. Gen. Ig­or Konashenkov said Wednes­day that the mil­i­tary tar­get­ed fu­el de­pots in two towns in cen­tral Ukraine with air-launched long-range cruise mis­siles. Russ­ian forces al­so hit a Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces head­quar­ters in the south­ern Myko­laiv re­gion, he said, and two am­mu­ni­tion de­pots in the east­ern Donet­sk re­gion.

Donet­sk is in the east­ern in­dus­tri­al heart­land of Don­bas, where the Russ­ian mil­i­tary says it has shift­ed its fo­cus. Top Russ­ian mil­i­tary of­fi­cials have said twice in re­cent days that their main goal now is the “lib­er­a­tion” of Don­bas, where Moscow-backed rebels have been bat­tling Ukrain­ian forces since 2014.

Some an­a­lysts have sug­gest­ed that the Krem­lin’s ap­par­ent low­er­ing of its aims and the pledge to re­duce ac­tiv­i­ty around Kyiv and Cherni­hiv may mere­ly re­flect the re­al­i­ty on the ground: Its ground troops have be­come bogged down and tak­en heavy loss­es in their bid to seize the cap­i­tal and oth­er cities.

Still, the out­lines of a pos­si­ble deal to end the war came in­to view at the lat­est round of talks Tues­day in Is­tan­bul.

Ukraine’s del­e­ga­tion of­fered a de­tailed frame­work for a peace deal un­der which a neu­tral Ukraine’s se­cu­ri­ty would be guar­an­teed by a group of third coun­tries, in­clud­ing the U.S., Britain, France, Turkey, Chi­na and Poland. Among oth­er things, the Krem­lin has de­mand­ed all along that Ukraine drop any hope of join­ing NA­TO.

Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion head Vladimir Medin­sky said ne­go­tia­tors would take them to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and then Moscow would pro­vide a re­sponse, but he did not say when.

Russ­ian Deputy De­fense Min­is­ter Alexan­der Fomin said Moscow would in the mean­time “fun­da­men­tal­ly ... cut back mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in the di­rec­tion of Kyiv and Cherni­hiv” to “in­crease mu­tu­al trust and cre­ate con­di­tions for fur­ther ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

The talks had been ex­pect­ed to re­sume on Wednes­day, but with what Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Mev­lut Cavu­soglu called “mean­ing­ful” progress made, the two sides de­cid­ed to re­turn home for con­sul­ta­tions.

De­spite the ap­par­ent signs of progress, Ze­len­skyy warned the world and his own peo­ple not to get ahead of them­selves.

“Ukraini­ans are not naïve peo­ple,” he said. “Ukraini­ans have al­ready learned dur­ing the 34 days of the in­va­sion and dur­ing the past eight years of war in the Don­bas that you can trust on­ly con­crete re­sults.”

West­ern coun­tries al­so ex­pressed doubts about Rus­sia’s in­ten­tions.

“We judge the Russ­ian mil­i­tary ma­chine by its ac­tions, not just its words,” British Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Do­minic Raab told Sky News on Wednes­day. “There’s ob­vi­ous­ly some skep­ti­cism that it will re­group to at­tack again rather than se­ri­ous­ly en­gag­ing in diplo­ma­cy.”

He added that “of course the door to diplo­ma­cy will al­ways be left ajar, but I don’t think you can trust what is com­ing out of the mouth of Putin’s war ma­chine.”

An as­sess­ment from Britain’s Min­istry of De­fense said that Rus­sia’s fo­cus on the Don­bas re­gion “is like­ly a tac­it ad­mis­sion that it is strug­gling to sus­tain more than one sig­nif­i­cant ax­is of ad­vance.”

“Russ­ian units suf­fer­ing heavy loss­es have been forced to re­turn to Be­larus and Rus­sia to re­or­ga­nize and re­sup­ply,” the min­istry said in a state­ment Wednes­day. “Such ac­tiv­i­ty is plac­ing fur­ther pres­sure on Rus­sia’s al­ready strained lo­gis­tics and demon­strates the dif­fi­cul­ties Rus­sia is hav­ing re­or­ga­niz­ing its units in for­ward ar­eas with­in Ukraine.”

Pen­ta­gon spokesman John Kir­by said the U.S. has de­tect­ed small num­bers of Russ­ian ground forces mov­ing away from the Kyiv area, but it ap­peared to be a repo­si­tion­ing of forces, “not a re­al with­draw­al.”

In re­sponse to Moscow’s pledge, U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and his sec­re­tary of state, Antony Blinken, said they would wait to see what Rus­sia’s ac­tions are.

Blinken added that Russ­ian in­di­ca­tions of a pull­back could be an at­tempt to “de­ceive peo­ple and de­flect at­ten­tion.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. In the tense buildup to the in­va­sion, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary an­nounced some units were load­ing equip­ment on­to rail cars and prepar­ing to re­turn to their home bases af­ter com­plet­ing ex­er­cis­es. At the time, Putin sig­naled in­ter­est in diplo­ma­cy. But 10 days lat­er, Rus­sia launched its in­va­sion.

West­ern of­fi­cials say Moscow is now re­in­forc­ing troops in the Don­bas in a bid to en­cir­cle Ukraine’s forces there. And Rus­sia’s dead­ly siege in the south con­tin­ues, with civil­ians trapped in the ru­ins of Mar­i­upol and oth­er dev­as­tat­ed cities. The lat­est satel­lite im­agery from Maxar Tech­nolo­gies showed hun­dreds of peo­ple wait­ing out­side a gro­cery store in be­sieged Mar­i­upol amid re­ports of food and wa­ter short­ages.

Even as ne­go­tia­tors gath­ered Tues­day, Putin’s forces blast­ed a gap­ing hole in a nine-sto­ry gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing in a strike on the south­ern port city of Myko­laiv, killing at least 14 peo­ple, emer­gency au­thor­i­ties said.

“It’s ter­ri­ble. They wait­ed for peo­ple to go to work” be­fore strik­ing the build­ing, said re­gion­al gov­er­nor Vi­taliy Kim. “I over­slept. I’m lucky.”

This sto­ry has been up­dat­ed to cor­rect that face-to-face talks are not ex­pect­ed Wednes­day.

Kar­manau re­port­ed from Lviv, Ukraine. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.