Category Archives: Ukraine

Boris Johnson to hail Ukraine’s ‘finest hour’ in address to Kyiv parliament

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PM to be first world leader to address parliament since war began, as his chancellor faces questions over Infosys

Boris Johnson will hail Ukraine’s resistance against tyranny as an exemplar for the world as he delivers a virtual address to the country’s parliament on Tuesday.

Recalling Britain’s resolve during the second world war, the UK prime minister will say that “we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour”. He will say the bravery demonstrated by those who have sought to defend their country from Russian invaders means the war will come to be known as Ukraine’s “finest hour”, too.

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Civilians evacuated from Mariupol steelworks but hundreds still trapped

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About 100 people expected to reach Zaporizhzhia but efforts to rescue more survivors from horrific conditions delayed

A first group of civilians trapped for weeks inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks were expected to reach a Ukrainian-held city on Monday, but efforts to save more people from the horrific conditions inside the huge plant were held up.

Hundreds remain trapped in underground bunkers and tunnels beneath the sprawling industrial site – the last stronghold of resistance to Russia’s siege of the devastated southern port city – which Moscow’s forces resumed shelling overnight.

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EU comes to the crunch over Russia’s demands to pay roubles for gas

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Brussels commissioner says energy ministers accept bowing to Moscow’s demands would breach sanctions, as payment date looms

Europe is facing a crunch point in mid-May when EU member states will have to reject Moscow’s demands for fuel payments to be made in roubles – despite being without alternative gas supply, Brussels has warned.

Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy, said on Monday that the Kremlin’s demands had to be rebuffed despite the risks of an interruption to supply at a time that the shortfall cannot be made good.

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Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa hit by Russian rocket strike – as it happened

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Finland will decide to apply for Nato membership on 12 May, according to a local media report.

Citing anonymous government sources, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reports the decision to join will come in two steps on that day, with the nation’s president Sauli Niinistö first announcing his approval for the Nordic neighbour of Russia to join the western defence alliance, followed by parliamentary groups giving their approval for the application.

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Donbas nursing home residents evacuated after New Orleans fundraiser

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Ukrainian expat raises money to rescue last 12 residents of hospice in Chasiv Yar on frontline of Russian invasion

Elderly residents trapped at a nursing home near the frontline of war in eastern Ukraine are to be evacuated thanks to donations from a fundraiser held thousands of miles away in New Orleans in the US.

Ukrainian-born Katya Chizayeva, who now lives in the Louisiana city, organised the event at a restaurant after reading in the Guardian about the plight of residents at the facility in Chasiv Yar, a Donbas village just kilometres away from the frontline. A total of $8,000 (£6,351) was raised for the nursing home.

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Russia-Ukraine war: South Korea set to reopen embassy in Kyiv; Lavrov says Russia working to prevent nuclear war – as it happened

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German chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected criticism of Germany’s reluctance to send heavy weapons to Ukraine.

He said it was untrue that Germany was not showing leadership in attempts to supply the country.

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Russia’s trolling on Ukraine gets ‘incredible traction’ on TikTok

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US social media researcher says authentic-seeming accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers

Russia’s online trolling operation is becoming increasingly decentralised and is gaining “incredible traction” on TikTok with misinformation aimed at sowing doubt over events in Ukraine, a US social media researcher has warned.

Darren Linvill, professor at Clemson University, South Carolina, who has been studying the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll farm operation since 2017, said it was succeeding in creating more authentic-seeming posts.

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Republican: Biden’s $33bn Ukraine aid request likely to get swift approval

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Michael McCaul’s comments come while Nancy Pelosi leads a congressional delegation to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian president

Joe Biden’s $33bn request to Congress for more aid for Ukraine is likely to receive swift approval from lawmakers, a senior Republican said on Sunday, as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made a surprise visit to the war-riven country.

The president on Thursday had asked for the money for military and humanitarian support for Ukraine as it fights to repulse the Russian invasion now in its third month.

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‘I don’t feel safe here’: Transnistria fears could spark Moldova exodus

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Explosions in separatist-controlled region have heightened worries that country could be drawn into the Ukraine war

When a string of mysterious explosions hit government buildings in Transnistria, the Moscow-backed separatist region of Moldova, there was no immediate claim of responsibility. But for Pasha, a 24-year old journalist from the breakaway region’s capital, Tiraspol, this week’s blasts were a clear sign that it was time to get out.

“There was a chance that there would be more attacks, and it’s no fun waiting to find out where would be hit next,” he said. Adding to the uncertainty were growing rumours that men in the region would be mobilised to fight alongside Russian troops across the border in Ukraine.

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Ukraine hopes to evacuate more civilians from besieged Mariupol steelworks

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Zelenskiy said about 100 civilians evacuated after weeks sheltering in the Azovstal complex would arrive in Zaporizhzhia on Monday

Ukrainian authorities are planning to evacuate more civilians from Mariupol on Monday, after dozens were finally brought to safety following weeks trapped under heavy fire in the strategic port city’s Azovstal steel complex.

The civilians had been sheltering in bunkers beneath the steelworks that is the last redoubt for Ukrainian forces in Mariupol.

Two explosions were reported in the early hours of Monday in Belgorod, the southern Russian region bordering Ukraine. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the region’s governor, said in a social media post there were no casualties or damage. On Sunday Gladkov had said one person was injured in a fire at a Russian defence ministry facility in Belgorod, while seven homes had been damaged.

Russia’s top uniformed officer, General Valery Gerasimov, visited dangerous frontline positions in eastern Ukraine last week in a bid to reinvigorate the Russian offensive there, the New York Times has reported citing Ukrainian and US officials. The Guardian could not immediately confirm the report.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that the county is working to prevent nuclear war, Reuters reported. In an interview with Italian TV, Lavrov said: “Western media misrepresent Russian threats. Russia has never interrupted efforts to reach agreements that guarantee that a nuclear war never develops”.

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Angelina Jolie makes surprise visit to Ukraine

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Hollywood actor and UN envoy met refugees in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, its regional governor said

Hollywood actor and UN humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, the Lviv regional governor said on Telegram.

According to Maksym Kozytskiy, Jolie – who has been a UNHCR special envoy for refugees since 2011 – had come to speak to displaced people who have found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Volodymyr Zelenskiy vows ‘Ukraine will be free’; Moscow says threat of nuclear war must be kept to minimum – live

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Russia’s foreign ministry says nuclear war ‘should never be unleashed’, as its forces regroup for battle for eastern Ukraine

Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that its artillery units had hit 389 Ukrainian targets overnight.

The figure, reported by Russian news agency Interfax, includes 35 control points, 15 arms and ammunition depots, and several areas where Ukrainian troops and equipment were concentrated, it said.

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Depleted Russian units that failed to take Kyiv are merging, says MoD

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Forces to be redeployed over smaller areas with simplified command structure, says UK military report

Russian troops have been forced to merge and redeploy units from their “failed advances” in Ukraine’s north-east, the UK Ministry of Defence has said, as both Kyiv and Moscow deal with serious losses on the frontline in the Donbas region.

“Russia hopes to rectify issues that have previously constrained its invasion by geographically concentrating combat power, shortening supply lines and simplifying command and control,” a British military intelligence report released early on Saturday said.

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Ukraine refugees flock to Germany after being put off by UK red tape

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Ease of finding accommodation and work lures 10 times the number who have made it to Britain

When it became clear to Liliia Fomina that the war raging outside her hometown of Zaporizhzhia would continue not just for days, but months or even years, she decided that she wanted to flee to the UK. A sponsor in Windsor was found, and on 18 March the 29-year-old applied for a British visa for herself and her five-year-old son Lev.

The pair sheltered with friends of friends in a village near Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, and waited: one week, two weeks, three weeks. By the time her visa finally came through, after almost a month of uncertainty, the lawyer had changed her mind.

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Foreign Office investigates reports of captured Briton paraded on Russian TV

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Footage shows injured man, who gives his name as Andrew Hill, being questioned by Russian forces

The Foreign Office is investigating reports that a British national has been detained by Russia after a video emerged showing a man in camouflage clothes being questioned.

In the video, reportedly shown on Russian television, the man appears to give his name as Andrew Hill. He speaks with an English accent, has his arm in a sling, a bandage around his head, and blood can be seen on his hand.

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Ukraine claims ‘colossal’ Russian losses have taken place in the effort to fully capture the eastern Donbas region – as it happened

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A checkpoint at the Russian village of Krupets in the Kursk region came under fire, according to Kursk’s governor Roman Starovoyt. The RIA news agency reports he said there were no casualties, and fire was returned. Krupets is close to the Ukrainian border, near the Sumy region in the north-east of the country.

The UK’s international trade minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan has been interviewed on Sky News in the UK. She stressed again that the UK government did not support British people going over to Ukraine to fight.

The Foreign Office is working very closely with those in Ukraine, both to make sure that, you know, the identification is correct. And indeed to work with local authorities and to support families here. As we’ve set out right from the beginning, we don’t want British nationals to go and fight.

But there are many, many ways in which so many people, and I think the heartfelt, genuinely heartfelt, anxiety and appalment that Putin has illegally invaded and is now continuing to bombard those areas where he had stepped away from, is something that quite rightly horrifies the British public.

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Facebook moderators call on firm to do more about posts praising Bucha atrocities

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Company insists any content glorifying violence against Ukrainians not allowed, but moderators say lack of guidance means they feel forced to leave up some content

Facebook moderators have called on the company to let them take action against users who praise or support the Russian military’s atrocities in Bucha and across Ukraine.

Almost a month after evidence of widespread murder and mass graves was uncovered by Ukrainian forces taking the suburb of Kyiv, the social network still has not flagged the atrocity as an “internally designated” incident, the moderators say.

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Ukraine accuses Russian forces of seizing 2,000 artworks in Mariupol

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City council is reportedly preparing materials to initiate criminal proceedings over mass cultural looting

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of seizing “over 2,000 artworks” from museums in the occupied city of Mariupol and moving the pieces to areas of the Russian-controlled Donbas region.

“The occupiers ‘liberated’ Mariupol from its historical and cultural heritage. They stole and moved more than 2,000 unique exhibits from museums in Mariupol to Donetsk,” the Mariupol city council said in a statement posted on its Telegram channel on Thursday.

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UK to send 8,000 soldiers to eastern Europe on expanded exercises

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British army also deploying tanks in joint action with Nato and Joint Expeditionary Force

About 8,000 British army troops will take part in exercises across eastern Europe to combat Russian aggression in one of the largest deployments since the cold war.

Dozens of tanks will be deployed to countries ranging from Finland to North Macedonia this summer under plans that have been enhanced since Russia invaded Ukraine.

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