Category Archives: Ukraine

Ukraine president addresses parliament; Putin a ‘war criminal’, PM says – as it happened

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Australian contribution to become more critical as Scott Morrison pledges extra $25m in military assistance to Ukraine; Sydney rainfall tops record set in 1956; flood and hazardous surf warnings across NSW; nation records 32 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Parliament has passed legislation that can stop deadly mitochondrial disease in babies, using a partial DNA donation. It passed in the Senate scramble last night. Here’s the background:

Communities in the northern rivers region of NSW are going to get some reprieve from the rain today as the east coast low drifts away from the coast.

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Australia to send armoured vehicles to help fight Russia

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Ukrainian president’s address to federal parliament came after Scott Morrison called Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal’ in strongest condemnation yet

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has told the Australian parliament that his country is “undefeatable” against Russia as long as it can count on the support of the global community.

In a virtual speech to MPs and senators in Canberra, the Ukrainian president requested Australia send Bushmaster armoured vehicles to assist in the fight against Russia, saying they would “do much more for our common freedom and security than staying parked on your land”.

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Jets linked to Russian oligarchs appear to have kept flying despite sanctions

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Exclusive: Guardian data investigation finds flurry of movement after invasion of Ukraine, with many flights to UAE

Private jets linked to Russian oligarchs and officials appeared to continue flying into and out of EU and UK airports despite flight bans and sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Guardian data investigation found.

The investigation, in collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), identified and tracked jets linked to sanctioned businesspeople and officials including Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Igor Shuvalov, a former Russian deputy prime minister.

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Russia may be committing war crimes in Ukraine, UN human rights chief says

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Michelle Bachelet said the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure indicates the rules of war have ‘not been sufficiently adhered to’

Ukrainian cities have been pounded by airstrikes and heavy shelling in Russia’s five-week-old invasion, killing civilians and destroying hospitals in acts that may amount to war crimes, the top United Nations human rights official has said.

Michelle Bachelet, addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, called on Russia to withdraw its troops.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Putin demands Mariupol surrender; Ukraine accuses Russia of attacking Red Cross – live

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The Kremlin says Ukrainians in Mariupol ‘must lay down their arms’ for the shelling to end; Ukraine claims a Red Cross building in Mariupol has been bombed

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has just released its latest intelligence report, claiming Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.

The full report, published just after 6am GMT, reads:

Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.

Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganising its units in forward areas within Ukraine.

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UK politics: Boris Johnson grilled by MPs at liaison committee – live

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Latest updates: the PM is facing questions at the liaison committee, which is comprised of the chairs of the Commons select committees

Betts asks Harrington how many people have actually arrived in the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Harrington says it is too early to say, but he says he may be able to tell the committee at the end of the week.

Harrington said that he agreed it took too long to fill in a visa application form. He said at the weekend he spent just under under an hour filling out one out himself, and he was in a more comfortable situation than the refugees who have to fill them out. He said the government was looking at what it can do to make the forms shorter.

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Putin promotes Chechen leader with ties to murder of Kremlin critic

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Ramzan Kadyrov promoted to lieutenant-general for his role in invasion of Ukraine

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has promoted Ramzan Kadyrov to lieutenant-general for his role in the invasion of Ukraine, which the Chechen leader is using to showcase his loyalty to Moscow and his own impunity.

This week Kadyrov claimed that a key ally linked to the 2015 murder of the Russian opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, was injured fighting in the besieged port city of Mariupol.

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Yandex helps websites pushing false news make millions in advertising

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Yandex-delivered ads found alongside misinformation and propaganda about Ukraine on Russian-language news sites

A Russian tech giant mostly owned by western investors is helping websites pushing false claims about the war in Ukraine to make thousands of dollars every day through digital advertising.

Yandex is considered Russia’s equivalent to Google, running both a search engine and an extensive digital advertising business. Its deputy CEO, Tigran Khudaverdyan, resigned this month after the European Union imposed sanctions on him.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: western officials urge caution over Russia’s peace talk promises – live

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Concern Putin might be using peace talks to play for time as Russian negotiators say troop withdrawals not a ceasefire

Vladimir Putin’s main spokesman has said that sanctions on trade and oligarchs were akin to “total war” against Russia, and that the west has pushed the Kremlin “into the corner” with Nato expansion, as officials prepare for the resumption of peace talks with Ukraine on Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov said in an interview on American television PBS that the punitive sanctions levelled against Russia were “quite unfriendly” and made the country feel as it were at war with the US and its western allies.

Unfortunately, those conditions, they are quite unfriendly. And they are enemy, enemy-like for us. We entered the phase, the phase of a total war. And we in Russia, we will feel ourselves amongst war, because Western European countries, United States, Canada, Australia, they actually — they actually — they are leading war against us in trade, in economy, in seizing our properties, in seizing our funds, in blocking our financial relations.

And we have to adapt ourselves to new reality. You have to understand Russia. You have to understand Russia.”

For a couple of decades, we were telling the collective west that we are afraid of your Nato’s moving eastwards. We too are afraid of Nato getting closer to our borders with its military infrastructure. Please take care of that. Don’t push us into the corner. No.

Now we said, listen, guys, we are not happy with this coup in Ukraine. And you have guarantees by Poland, by France and by Germany. You would probably remember the document with the signatures of the relevant foreign ministers. No reaction.

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‘The world is waiting for good news’: Russia-Ukraine peace talks press on in Turkey

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Politicians from the warring countries descended on Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace for another round of negotiations

Sipping on a tulip-shaped glass of Turkish black tea, Roman Abramovich sat on the sunlit terrace of Istanbul’s Shangri-La hotel on Tuesday afternoon and talked intently with the Ukrainian negotiating team.

Despite the seafood and burger restaurant’s extensive menu and large fridge advertising its stock of dry-aged meat, the Russian oligarch did not appear to eat during the entire meeting. Less than 24 hours had passed since he was reported to have suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning.

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Russia vows to ‘radically reduce’ military activity in northern Ukraine

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Experts and western diplomats voice caution over pledge on first day of face-to-face talks in Istanbul

Russia has pledged to drastically cut back its military activity in northern Ukraine to help advance peace talks, but experts and western diplomats expressed doubts that the move was more than a ploy to dress up setbacks on the ground.

Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, said after talks in Istanbul on Tuesday that Moscow wanted to “increase mutual trust, create the right conditions for future negotiations and reach the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”, and that the Kremlin would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.

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Ukraine gives medal to soldier who told Russian warship to ‘go fuck yourself’

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Roman Hrybov, released in a prisoner swap, was stationed on Snake Island when he told a Russian invader to ‘go fuck yourself’

A Ukrainian soldier who told an officer on a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself” at the start of the invasion has been released as part of a prisoner exchange, and awarded a medal for his services, the Ukrainian ministry of defence said on Tuesday.

Roman Hrybov, a Ukrainian border guard, was serving on Snake Island – a rocky outcrop south of the port of Odesa – when it came under Russian air and sea bombardment on the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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UN official concerned over videos showing apparent abuse of PoWs in Ukraine

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One video shows a man with a blue armband shooting three prisoners in the leg in Malaya Rohan’

A senior UN official has said they have seen videos purporting to show the abuse of prisoners of war on both sides in Ukraine, as Russia raised the mistreatment of its soldiers at the first day of the latest peace talks.

Matilda Bogner, head of the UN’s human rights office in Ukraine, said a number of videos of the abuse of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners were being examined, adding that “on the face of it, it does raise serious concerns”.

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UK must seize chance to repair relations with EU, says thinktank head

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Director of Chatham House says Britain’s role in Ukraine crisis is an opportunity to work more formally with Brussels

Britain should use its leading role in the Ukraine war urgently to repair its relations with the EU by offering to help strengthen European security both via Nato and rapidly evolving EU defence plans, the director of Chatham House, Dr Robin Niblett, has proposed.

That will require working more formally with Brussels on foreign policy and defence, including issues such as cyber, intelligence and disinformation, said Niblett, who heads Britain’s leading foreign policy thinktank.

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‘I’m not walking anything back’: Biden defends comment that Putin can’t stay in power – US politics as it happened

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The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack is expected to discuss Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tonight, before it officially considers holding in criminal contempt of Congress two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.

The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.

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‘I make no apologies’: Biden stands by ‘Putin cannot remain in power’ remark

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President says he was not calling for regime change but was expressing personal ‘moral outrage’ over Russia’s invasion

Joe Biden on Monday defended the unscripted remarks he made at the end of an important speech in Poland at the weekend, in which he said that Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, which had prompted hurried efforts by other senior figures in the administration to play down the comment in the face of international criticism.

The US president, when questioned on Sunday after attending church following his return to the White House, denied that he was seeking “regime change” as a new policy.

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Abramovich and Ukrainian MP may have been poisoned this month

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Russian billionaire and Rustem Umerov had symptoms consistent with poisoning earlier in March, says source

The latest round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, set to begin in Istanbul on Tuesday, have been overshadowed by claims that the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and other members of an informal Russian-Ukrainian negotiating group suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning during an informal round of talks earlier this month.

The allegations surfaced on the eve of the first face-to-face peace talks in weeks, amid fears that the Kremlin was not ready to compromise, despite the stiff resistance its forces have encountered since the invasion began.

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As Russia tries to focus its offensive, Ukraine seeks to scattergun

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Analysis: overstretched Russian forces are trying to concentrate on the east, but Kyiv is doing its best not to let them

Russia’s military may have announced a change of plan at the end of last week to focus on the “liberation of Donbas”, but the apparent decision reflected the reality that Moscow’s initial multi-front invasion plan has failed in the face of dogged resistance from Ukraine.

The advance on Kyiv became bogged down after less than a week, particularly to the north-west of the city. If Ukraine’s declaration that it has retaken the heavily contested town of Irpin’ on Monday is correct, the advance may now even be going into reverse.

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