Trip is first time Ukrainian president and first lady have travelled abroad together since Russia invaded
Military honours, tributes and praise welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, to Poland in a rare wartime foray out of Ukraine for the country’s president.
While Zelenskiy has also travelled to the US, Britain, France and Belgium, the trip to Poland stood out because it was announced in advance and undertaken without the secrecy of past foreign trips.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Russia-Ukraine war coverage here
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Continue reading...Russian news agency reports Vladlen Tatarsky died in blast that also injured at least 16 people
We reported earlier on the Ukrainian claims of deaths as a result of Russian shelling in Kostiantynivka. Ukrainian officials have now put the death toll at six people, with a further eight wounded, Reuters says.
Zelenskiy’s office say 16 apartment buildings, eight private houses, a school and an administrative building were damaged. An official posted photos showing the partial destruction of buildings and craters from explosions on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the photos or the number of casualties.
Gershkovich’s unwarranted and unjust arrest is a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions. Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalised and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law.
Continue reading...Top Ukrainian official criticises the ‘symbolic blow’ of Russia assuming the rotating presidency. This blog is now closed
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has promised to increase the supply of munitions to the country’s forces, during a visit to the headquarters of Moscow’s troops fighting in Ukraine, according to footage published by the defence ministry on Saturday.
In the video published on Telegram, Shoigu presides over a meeting with senior military officers, including Gen Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, Reuters reports.
The volume of supplies of the most demanded ammunition has been determined. Necessary measures are being taken to increase them.
Continue reading...Zelenskiy meets UN nuclear chief Grossi in Zaporizhzhia region; criticism mounts of Russian plan to put nuclear weapons in Belarus
Continue reading...Senior US administration official says there are no signs Moscow intends to use its nuclear weapons
Ukrainian refugees are increasingly being targeted for sexual exploitation with an increase in interest in pornography claiming to feature refugees from the war-torn country, according to research.
Thomson Reuters has conducted the research, which has found that Ukrainian refugees may be victims of both traffickers on the ground and cyber-voyeurs.
Continue reading...Russia’s president says deal struck to station weapons on ally’s territory, according to Tass news agency
More than 5,000 former criminals have been pardoned after finishing their contracts to fight in Russia’s Wagner mercenary group against Ukraine, the founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday.
The Wagner group, originally staffed by battle-hardened veterans of the Russian armed forces, took on a much more prominent role in the Ukraine war after the Russian army suffered a series of humiliating defeats last year, Reuters reported.
Continue reading...Kyiv remains keen not to anger Beijing given its influence over Moscow, and Zelenskiy is open to a meeting
Hours after Xi Jinping wrapped up a state dinner hosted in a lavish 15th-century palace, where he extolled Beijing’s “positive role” in Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Russia sent a swarm of drones to Ukraine that killed seven people in a town south of Kyiv.
Commenting on the attack, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote: “Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes.”
Continue reading...Russian president flew in by helicopter and then drove a car in several districts of the city, site of one of the war’s bloodiest battles
The Financial Times’ Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon has tweeted that, according to the Kremlin, Putin visited the restored Mariupol philharmonic
Russian state media is reporting that Vladimir Putin has today visited a command post in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Russian state-owned news agency TASS said Putin held a meeting at a military command and control post in the Russian city.
Continue reading...Russia seized Crimea in 2014, eight years before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This blog is now closed
Ukraine has released details of overnight drone attacks by Russia.
Some hit the relatively peaceful region of Lviv in the west of Ukraine. Dnipro was also targeted, as was Kyiv, where air defences shot down all attacking drones.
Continue reading...ICC expected to open two war crimes cases; Xi Jinping planning to visit Putin in Moscow and also to speak to Zelenskiy
The international criminal court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will seek arrest warrants for several people, the New York Times reported citing sources unauthorised to speak publicly. The cases are the first international charges to be brought forward since the start of the conflict, the newspaper reports.
Britain declared that the UK’s security hinged on the outcome of the Ukraine war in an update to its foreign policy framework published on Monday. The UK will invest an extra £5bn in the armed forces over two years and increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.
Britain’s Royal Navy said it was escorting a Russian frigate and tanker in waters close to the UK having shadowed the vessels through the Channel on Sunday morning.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, is planning to visit Russia as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said, according to Reuters. Xi also plans to speak with Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the first time since the start of the war, according to the Wall Street Journal. China’s president is to speak virtually with his Ukrainian counterpart, probably after a visit to Moscow next week, the paper reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Negotiations began on Monday between UN officials and Russia’s deputy foreign minister on a possible extension to a deal allowing the safe export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, the Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva said.
Moscow does not object to renewing a deal allowing the safe export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports but only for a period of 60 days, half the term of the previous renewal, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin said.
The Italian government has said Russian mercenary group Wagner is behind a surge in migrant boats trying to cross the central Mediterranean as part of Moscow’s strategy to retaliate against countries supporting Ukraine, Reuters reports. Yevgeny Prigozhin responded: “We have no idea what’s happening with the migrant crisis, we don’t concern ourselves with it.”
The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Vladimir Putin and a staunch supporter of the war in Ukraine, met Russia’s president to discuss the war, according to reports.
Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said on Monday that relations between Russia and China were a major factor supporting global stability in the world today, Reuters reports, citing Russian state-owned news agency Tass.
Russian forces fired two rockets at a school in Avdiivka, according to the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, Andriy Yermak. One local resident was killed in the attack. Yermak also reported on Telegram that one civilian was killed and four people were injured in a rocket attack on Znob-Novhorodske in Sumy region.
Zelenskiy has awarded the Hero of Ukraine to Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a soldier who was executed by machine gun fire on camera after being captured by Russian soldiers. Zelenskiy said: “Today I conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine upon Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a soldier. A man whom all Ukrainians will know. A man who will be remembered forever. For his bravery, for his confidence in Ukraine and for his ‘Glory to Ukraine!’”
Continue reading...Combatant seen in graphic 12-second clip circulated on Telegram had initially been wrongly named Tymofiy Shadura
Ukraine’s security services have concluded that the prisoner of war killed by Russian soldiers in a clip that spread quickly across Ukraine and much of the world is Oleksandr Igorevich Matsievskyi, bringing an end to the dispute over his identity.
In the graphic 12-second clip that first circulated on Telegram last Monday, a detained combatant is seen standing in a shallow trench smoking a cigarette. The soldier, in uniform with a Ukrainian flag insignia on his arm, says “Glory to Ukraine” and is then apparently shot with automatic weapons by a group of Russian soldiers.
Continue reading...Both sides claim hundreds of enemy troops killed in past 24 hours. Follow all the latest developments
The Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar, said on Sunday that he believed the deal allowing Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea will be extended from its 18 March deadline.
The initiative, brokered between Russia and Ukraine by the UN and Turkey last July, was intended to prevent a global food crisis by allowing Ukrainian grain blockaded by Russia’s invasion to be exported safely from three ports.
Zakharova’s statement is noteworthy and supports several of ISW’s longstanding assessments about deteriorating Kremlin regime and information space control dynamics. The statement supports several assessments: that there is Kremlin infighting between key members of Putin’s inner circle; that Putin has largely ceded the Russian information space over time to a variety of quasi-independent actors; and that Putin is apparently unable to take decisive action to regain control over the Russian information space.
It is unclear why Zakharova – a seasoned senior spokesperson – would have openly acknowledged these problems in a public setting. Zakharova may have directly discussed these problems for the first time to temper Russian nationalist milbloggers’ expectations regarding the current capabilities of the Kremlin to cohere around a unified narrative – or possibly even a unified policy.
Continue reading...UK Ministry of Defence says capture of city has become ‘highly challenging’ for the mercenary group
Russian forces have made progress in the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut, a key target of Moscow’s months-long campaign in eastern Ukraine that has resulted in many casualties, the Associated Press reported.
Their assault , however, will be difficult to sustain without further harsh losses, UK military officials said in an assessment on Saturday.
Continue reading...After criticism law was similar to Russian legislation used to stifle dissent, ruling party says it will withdraw bill
Georgia’s ruling party has said it will drop its bill on “foreign agents” after fierce opposition culminated in two nights of violent protests and criticism that the draft law would limit press freedom and undercut the country’s efforts to become a candidate for EU membership.
The Georgian Dream party said in a statement it would “unconditionally withdraw the bill we supported without any reservations”. It cited the need to reduce “confrontation” in society.
Continue reading...Ukrainian forces ward off numerous assaults in and around besieged eastern city, says military, while resupply routes become ‘increasingly limited’
Western states delivering fighter jets to support Ukraine defending itself against Russia is “only a question of time”, Latvia’s prime minister has said.
Speaking to German news magazine Der Spiegel, Krišjānis Kariņš said his own country would not hesitate to send jets to Kyiv “if we had any.”
Across the whole of Europe we need a lot more reservists: trained people who can be deployed at the shortest notice.”
The lethality of the standard-issue MPL-50 entrenching tool is particularly mythologised in Russia. Little changed since it was designed in 1869, its continued use as a weapon highlights the brutal and low-tech fighting which has come to characterise much of the war.
One of the reservists described being ‘neither physically nor psychologically’ prepared for the action.
Continue reading...With Russian forces closing in, police try to persuade remaining citizens to get out and access routes come under fire
• Russia–Ukraine war: latest updates
War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are “White Angels” and “Dark Angels”, the “road of life” (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the “Invincibility Centre”.
The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly.
Continue reading...Moscow says details need to be analysed after western leaders say Beijing lacks credibility to act as mediator
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has claimed that overnight its forces shot down 11 Iranian-made Shahed drones. It also confirmed that an officer of Ukraine’s emergency services was killed in Khmelnytskyi.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Continue reading...Putin makes claim in TV address; mercenary boss and Ukraine make conflicting claims over control of Yahidne village
German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday reacted with scepticism to a Chinese ceasefire proposal for the war in Ukraine.
“When I hear reports – and I don’t know whether they are true – according to which China may be planning to supply kamikaze drones to Russia while at the same time presenting a peace plan, then I suggest we judge China by its actions and not its words,” he told German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk in an interview.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president shows steel and emotion in marathon press conference, as Joe Biden says having China as peacemaker is ‘just not rational’
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has cautiously welcomed China’s peace plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv to mark the first anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale attack, the Ukrainian president said he “wanted to believe” Beijing was interested in a “fair peace”. That meant not “supplying weapons to Russia”, he said, adding: “I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening. This is priority number one.”
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