Claims of war crimes in the Ukraine city mount up as residents tell of a month of fear
It was, said Taras Schevchenko, like a scene from a film.
At 6am on the morning of 24 February, from the vantage point of the kitchen window of his fifth-storey apartment overlooking Gostomel airport, on the northern outskirts of the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Schevchenko watched as about 20 Russian helicopters flew into vision, spilling paratroopers on to the tarmac below.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps says invasion is ‘wake-up call’ but onshore wind plan seems to have been scaled down
A cabinet minister has rejected calls for the UK to consider rationing energy, as a plan to drastically increase onshore wind power also appeared to be significantly scaled back.
The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had been a “massive wake-up call” for western nations about their dependence on imported oil and gas, which European countries are now trying to wean themselves off.
Continue reading...Seeing the tricolour as tainted, they took the ‘blood’ out to leave blue and white, then found others had done so too
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest developments
When Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, anti-war Russians such as Kai Katonina, a 31-year-old designer who lives in Berlin, joined protests around the world. Katonina held up a sign that read “No to war”, but few in the crowd knew that they (Katonina’s preferred pronoun) were Russian.
They said: “Onlookers thought we were Ukrainians because our people look the same. It was crucial for us to stand apart and show that Russians also oppose the war. We needed to identify ourselves.”
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. Read the latest live developments in the Russia-Ukraine war here.
Russian chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky has said Russia’s position on Crimea and Donbas remains unchanged and that peace talks had not progressed enough for a leaders’ meeting.
Medinsky’s comments appear to be a rebuttal of earlier reports suggesting Moscow had “verbally” agreed to key Ukrainian proposals.
A Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia told media on Saturday that Russia had “given an official answer to all positions, which is that they accept the (Ukrainian) position, except for the issue of Crimea (which was annexed by Russia in 2014).”
Ukrainian forces liberating the town near Kyiv find streets littered with corpses of civilians and burned-out Russian tanks
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The retreat of Russian forces around Kyiv has left horrifying evidence of atrocities against civilians littered across the region’s suburbs and towns, turned into hellish war zones by Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
As Ukrainian armoured columns rolled into Bucha, a town north-west of the capital, they found streets blocked by burned-out Russian tanks and military vehicles, and strewn with the bodies of civilians whom locals said had been killed by the invading forces without provocation.
Continue reading...Russian retreat from Kyiv region reveals evidence of execution of civilians and mass graves; Kremlin has ‘accepted’ Ukraine’s position on all issues bar Crimea
Continue reading...Civilians fleeing in cars mown down in the town of Bucha, north-west of Kyiv, where 20 bodies were found on the streets
Halyna Tovkach, 55, is searching for the body of her husband, Oleg, 62. His death, she says, is part of a war crime in which Russian soldiers also killed two young boys and their mother.
The incident is said to have happened at 7.15 on the morning of 5 March in Bucha, a town north-west of Kyiv, when two families who were neighbours on Ivana Rudenka street tried to escape their hell.
Continue reading...Deputy defence minister says territory is ‘liberated from the invader’ as disturbing images in Bucha show bodies had been bound and hooded
At least 158 children have been killed and more than 254 injured in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, the country’s office of the prosecutor general has said.
The office said two of the fatalities were among 13 people killed when Russian forces fired at civilian cars on a highway in Chernihiv around 18 March.
Continue reading...Levin, who worked for Ukrainian news website and contributed to Reuters, found dead in village north of Kyiv
Maksim Levin, a photographer and videographer who was working for a Ukrainian news website and who was a longtime contributor to Reuters, has been killed while covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He leaves behind his wife and four children.
His body was found in a village north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on 1 April, the news website LB.ua, where he worked, said on Saturday.
Continue reading...Key city east of Kyiv has been liberated, says mayor, as Zelenskiy says Russians withdrawing ‘slowly but noticeably’
A key city east of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, has been recaptured from Russian forces, Ukrainian officials have said, but retreating troops were said to be heavily mining the lost territory in their wake.
The city of Brovary was said by its mayor to have been liberated with Ukrainian forces working to drive out the last Russian troops and clear the area of “military hardware”.
Continue reading...After recent seizures of aircraft and yacht, Grant Shapps grounds plane at Luton airport pending investigation
The transport minister, Grant Shapps, has said he has prevented the use of another private jet that has links to Russian oligarchs.
Shapps tweeted on Saturday: “We won’t stand by and watch those who’ve made millions through [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s patronage live their lives in peace as innocent blood is shed.”
Continue reading...Move would be highest-profile visit of a world figure since Vladimir Putin began invasion of Ukraine
Pope Francis has said he is considering visiting the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in what would be the most high-profile visit of a world figure since Russia invaded the country.
The head of the Catholic church was invited by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, along with Ukrainian religious leaders on 8 March.
Continue reading...Director of space agency Roscosmos says partnership will be restored only when ‘illegal sanctions’ are removed
Russia says it will end cooperation with western countries over the International Space Station until sanctions are lifted.
Russia’s space director said on Saturday that the restoration of normal ties between partners at the ISS and other joint space projects would be possible only once western sanctions against Moscow were lifted.
Continue reading...Prices of basics such as oil and wheat are shooting up and shortages are showing on supermarket shelves in Lebanon, Somalia and Egypt
When Lebanon’s Muslims sat down to their first iftar of Ramadan tonight, the meal in front of them will have cost significantly more than it did six weeks ago.
Continue reading...True list of casualties of war, which include museums, churches and a Holocaust memorial, likely to be much longer
The UN’s cultural agency has confirmed that at least 53 historical sites, religious buildings and museums have sustained damage during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is the latest list, but it is not exhaustive, as our experts are continuing to verify a number of reports” filed by Ukrainian authorities, a Unesco spokesperson told AFP as the body published a list of the 53 damaged sites in the north and east of the country.
Continue reading...If Moscow’s accusation is true, the airstrike would be first raid on Russian territory so far in the war
Russia has claimed that Ukraine sent attack helicopters across the border to strike an oil storage facility in what, if confirmed, would be the first raid on Russian soil since it launched its invasion.
Ukraine denied that it launched the attack, raising questions about whether Russian negligence may be to blame.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s wife, Akshata Murthy, has £690m stake in Indian IT firm, which is now moving staff out of Russia
Indian IT services company Infosys, in which the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife owns an estimated £690m stake and collects about £11.5m in annual dividends, is “urgently” closing its office in Russia.
Infosys’s decision to shut its Moscow office comes as pressure mounts on Sunak to answer accusations that his family is collecting “blood money” dividends from the firm’s continued operation in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Families, friends and survivors listen in silence to recordings from inside theatre where 90 people died
On the evening of 13 November 2015, about 1,500 concertgoers were watching the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan theatre in central Paris. At the beginning it was “a great show”, fans reported afterwards. Youngsters were dancing in the pit in front of the stage and on the balcony; some were buying drinks at the bar.
On Friday, for the first time, a French court heard audio recordings and saw photographs of what happened next. There was silence as the court was played three sound recordings from the Bataclan attack, one of a series of bombings and shootings across Paris that killed 130 people and injured more than 300.
Continue reading...The live stream of Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s acclaimed drama has ended but will be available to watch again from 2 April
The Royal Court theatre in London is presenting a day of solidarity with Ukraine that includes a reading on its main stage of Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s play Bad Roads, which explores the brutal effects of war on personal relationships. The reading, at 8pm on 1 April, will be livestreamed on the Guardian website – including in a captioned version – and available again on 2 April to watch for a week.
Bad Roads was first staged at the Royal Court in 2017 in a translation by Sasha Dugdale. Vorozhbit, an acclaimed Ukrainian playwright whose work has also been performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, wove documentary stories of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas into its impressionistic scenes. Bad Roads explores daily life under siege, hostage-taking, journalism on the frontline, PTSD and sex at a time of war.
Continue reading...Russian foreign minister meets Narendra Modi and praises India’s refusal to condemn Ukraine invasion
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has afforded Russia’s foreign minister the honour of a meeting as Sergei Lavrov praised India’s refusal to condemn the Ukraine invasion.
Lavrov, who is visiting the country, predicted Moscow and Delhi would find ways to circumvent “illegal” western sanctions and continue to trade.
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