An airport building is turned into one-stop shop for life essentials and legal support
“Thank you very much Ireland,” said Kate Kolva, waving a little blue and yellow flag in the arrivals hall at Dublin Airport.
As she waited to collect her best friend’s mother, Ukrainians with no family connections with the country were all too easy to identify.
Continue reading...Bombing close to Lviv follows Kremlin warning that supply lines were ‘legitimate targets’; town of Volnovakha ‘ceases to exist’ after bombardment
Russia has escalated its war in Ukraine with a strike on a major military base in western Ukraine, reportedly killing 20 people, only hours after the Kremlin warned that western supply lines into the embattled country were “legitimate targets”.
Two large explosions were seen on Sunday at the base in Yavoriv, a garrison city 12km (7.5 miles) from the Polish border. The rocket attack took place at 5.45am.
Continue reading...Cross-party group expresses unease about the fund’s stake in HSBC, which has held shares in Moscow’s oil and gas giants
Trustees of the pension fund for members of parliament have agreed to sell all investments linked to Russia after a cross-party group of more than 60 MPs raised concerns about connections to Russian oil and gas companies.
The trustees met last Thursday, having received the MPs’ letter, and agreed to act immediately to ensure the fund was cleansed of both direct and indirect Russian interests.
Continue reading...Families torn apart as younger Russians opposing war in Ukraine fall out with older relatives reliant on diet of state propaganda
On day three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Gogh realised her mother was slipping away from her.
“I noticed on the phone that mum was starting to parrot the government’s narrative about this war – that this was all the fault of Nato, that Russia had no choice but to defend itself,” said Gogh, 28, a fashion consultant originally from a small town in Siberia who moved to Moscow.
Continue reading...Prince Charles was a patron of trust set up by friend of Putin to back the Russian Mariinsky theatre
A UK charity set up to support one of Russia’s oldest theatres has closed. The Anglo-Russian Opera and Ballet Trust, founded in 1992, raised millions for Russian arts organisations and boasted the Prince of Wales as its patron.
The charity was set up by conductor Valery Gergiev, a high-profile friend of Vladimir Putin, with the main goal of supporting St Petersburg’s Mariinsky theatre – one of the best-known cultural institutions in Russia – and promoting its work in the UK.
Continue reading...Evacuees queue for hours but still can’t get past bureaucratic chaos – and flights to Britain leave with empty seats
Inside the cavernous confines of the airport in Iași, Romania, volunteers were offering food, drink and translation services to the continuous influx of Ukrainians fleeing war.
Those arriving knew that bagging a place on a flight required patience, tenacity and no little luck. Routes to Italy, Austria, Poland and Ireland were all fully booked. Yet one destination stood out.
Continue reading...Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford tell UK government they want to ‘maximise’ their contributions
Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford have said Scotland and Wales are willing to become “super sponsors” for Ukrainian refugees.
The UK government is to launch a scheme where individuals and organisations can sponsor refugees to come into the country, but the Scottish and Welsh first ministers told Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, they wanted to “maximise” their contribution and act as “super sponsors”.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Groysman suggests worry over safety of families who have fled could disrupt those left behind to fight
Red tape holding up refugees from reaching the UK could be distracting husbands and fathers left behind to fight Russian forces as they worry about the safety of their families who have fled, a former prime minister of Ukraine has said.
Volodymyr Groysman was Ukraine’s premier between 2016 and 2019, and has been warning about the threat from the Kremlin for many years.
Continue reading...Prime minister to host summit of Joint Expeditionary Force as he seeks to bolster European resilience
Boris Johnson is preparing to embark on a series of meetings with Nordic and Baltic leaders as he seeks to bolster European resilience after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The prime minister will host a summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) in London, where he will urge leaders to work together to ensure no further nations fall victim to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggression, No 10 said.
Continue reading...Ukraine’s president says the capital will only fall to Russian troops if it is completely destroyed, while Moscow warns western shipments of arms to Ukraine could be attacked
In an early morning update on Telegram, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services (SES) said rescuers in Kharkiv had recovered the bodies of five people including two children, who were killed when Russian bombs hit a residential building in the village of Slobozhanske, outside the city.
It also said workers had visited 40 separate addresses to dispose of unexploded ordnance.
Continue reading...Eugene Shvidler has stepped down as a director of Ervaz, the steel company accused of possibly supplying steel for tanks
In March 2000, five of Russia’s richest oligarchs met in a suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London to discuss a multibillion-pound merger involving some of the biggest assets in the world aluminium industry.
The tycoons - one of whom arrived from a legal hearing in the House of Lords - discussed Russian politics, the aluminium wars in their country in the 1990s and the creation of the industrial giant Rusal.
Continue reading...German chancellor Olaf Scholz and French president Emmanuel Macron called for an immediate ceasefire on call
Vladimir Putin did not show a willingness to end the war with Ukraine during a call on Saturday with French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz, a French presidency official said.
Scholz and Macron called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine during the 75-minute phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, a German government spokesman added.
Continue reading...From Russia’s threat of nuclear weapons to the patriotic courage of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an A to Z of how the world has changed
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been described by politicians and commentators as a watershed moment in modern history, a turning point comparable in importance to the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and even the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.
Whether this portentous view of the war turns out to be justified, only time – and future historians – will tell. But there’s no doubt that in the violent, tumultuous days after 24 February, the established international order has been shaken and, in some respects, upended in extraordinary, unexpected and often unwelcome ways.
Continue reading...Labour MP Stephen Kinnock calls for Sergei Brilev of state-controlled Rossiya 1 to be banned from UK and have assets frozen
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest news
One of Russia’s most popular television news presenters, who has been accused of being a propagandist for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has British citizenship and a family flat in west London.
Sergei Brilev has been reporting on the war in Ukraine on the state-controlled Rossiya 1, which tightly follows the Kremlin’s messaging. The channel describes the war as a “special military operation” launched to protect Ukrainian citizens from “abuse and genocide”.
Continue reading...Satellite images show Russian forces edging closer to Kyiv, only 7,000 evacuated from besieged cities, and Ukraine fears Belarus will enter war as well
Continue reading...Bates only took one question before he was interrupted by the pilot asking passengers to take their seats. Shortly thereafter the feed your live-blogger was using to follow the mid-flight briefing cut out.
Asked to elaborate on what consequences Russia could face if it used chemical weapons against Ukraine, Bates deferred to the president’s remarks and said the “meaning was unmistakable”.
Continue reading...Fears claims of plot to use birds to spread disease could be pretext for biological attack by Russia itself
Russia has accused Ukraine and the US at the UN security council of a plot to use migratory birds and bats to spread pathogens, raising alarm among other council members that the accusations could be intended to provide cover for future Russian use of biological weapons.
The Russian permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, delivered a lengthy account of the alleged biological weapons plot, and said the birds, bats and insects supposedly intended to spread disease would cross Ukraine’s western border.
Continue reading...Versailles declaration says Russia’s war in Ukraine has heralded ‘tectonic shift in European history’
EU leaders have announced their intention to collectively rearm and become autonomous in food, energy and military hardware in a Versailles declaration that described Russia’s war as “a tectonic shift in European history”.
At a summit in the former royal palace, the 27 heads of state and government said on Friday that the invasion of Ukraine had shown the urgent need for the EU to take responsibility for its own security and to rid itself of dependencies on others.
Continue reading...Mariana Vishegirskaya, wearing same dotted pyjamas, is photographed holding newborn daughter
One of the pregnant women pictured escaping the ruins of the Mariupol maternity ward bombed by Russia has given birth to a daughter.
Mariana Vishegirskaya, wearing the same dotted pyjamas she was pictured in as she struggled down the stairs of the devastated hospital, was photographed on Friday by the Associated Press lying in a hospital bed holding her newborn daughter, Veronika.
Continue reading...Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump in 2019, reveals details of then president’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian counterpart
At an Oval Office meeting with the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in 2017, Donald Trump asked his national security adviser if US troops were in Donbas, territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists, which Vladimir Putin last month used as pretext for a full and bloody invasion.
Describing the meeting in a new book, the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, writes: “An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia.”
Continue reading...