Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

Europe prepares fresh Russia sanctions as US warns Moscow plans to annex parts of east Ukraine

Posted on by

European Commission expected to propose sixth package of sanctions this week as hopes rise of more Mariupol evacuations

The European Union was preparing sanctions on Russian oil sales over its invasion of Ukraine after a major shift by Germany, Russia’s biggest energy customer, that could deprive Moscow of a large revenue stream within days.

Attempts to increase economic pressure on Russia come amid hopes of more evacuations from the besieged city of Mariupol, while the US warned that Moscow was preparing to formally annex the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the country’s east.

Continue reading...

Ukraine names 10 Russian soldiers in alleged human rights abuses in Bucha

Posted on by

Prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova says ‘more than 8,000 cases’ of suspected war crimes identified

Ukraine’s prosecutor general has named 10 Russian soldiers allegedly involved in human rights abuses during the month-long occupation of Bucha.

Iryna Venediktova also told German TV that that Ukranian investigators had identified “more than 8,000 cases” of suspected war crimes since Russia’s invasion, which included accusations of “killing civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture” and “sexual crimes”.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv rocked by missile strikes during UN chief’s visit, Ukraine responds to ‘heinous act of barbarism’ – live

Posted on by

Two cruise missiles strike Ukrainian capital, injuring at least ten; officials respond to attack

More than 8,500 alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine are under investigation, Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office has said.

A total of 8,653 cases have been reported and 217 children have been confirmed to have been killed, the office added.

Unfortunately this is the type of step, the type of almost weaponising energy supplies that we had predicted that Russia could take in this conflict.

And we have been working for some time now, for months, with partners around the world to diversify natural gas supply to Europe to — in anticipation of and to also address near-term needs and replace volumes that would otherwise come from Russia.”

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 64 of the invasion

Posted on by

Vladimir Putin warns against western intervention in Ukraine; Liz Truss says the war must be a ‘catalyst for change’; António Guterres visits Kyiv

Russia’s foreign affairs ministry has issued a stern warning to western countries over encouragement given to Ukraine to strike within Russian territory. The spokesperson Maria Zakharova said: “[F]urther provocation prompting Ukraine to strike against Russian facilities will be met with a harsh response.”

The Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak has defended Ukraine’s right to strike inside Russia, saying “Ukraine will defend itself in any way, including strikes on the warehouses and bases of the killers in Russia. The world recognises this right.”

The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has repeated the assertion that it is legitimate for Ukraine to target logistics within Russian territory, saying: “If Ukraine did choose to target logistics infrastructure for the Russian army, that would be legitimate under international law.”

Wallace also suggested the UK would be supplying Ukraine with weaponry that can strike Russian naval forces in the Black Sea. Russia’s Black Sea fleet retains the ability to strike Ukrainian and coastal targets, despite its “embarrassing losses”, Britain’s defence ministry said in its latest intelligence report.

Russia’s defence ministry said its missiles had struck four Ukrainian military targets overnight, destroying two missile and ammunition depots near the settlements of Barvinkove and Ivanivka in the east of the country.

The southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, which Russia claims to have captured, will transition to using the rouble from 1 May, according to Russian state media.

The head of Ukraine’s parliament energy committee, Andriy Herus, has tried to reassure the country that energy supplies are secure for the summer.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, is in Ukraine and has visited Borodianka to see the destruction there.

Efforts are under way to get emergency contraception into Ukrainian hospitals as quickly as possible, as reports of rape after the Russian invasion continue to rise.

More than 8,500 alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine are under investigation, Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office has said.

Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of Nato, has said in Brussels “if they decide to apply, Finland and Sweden will be welcomed with open arms to Nato”.

The Financial Times is reporting some of Europe’s largest gas importers are preparing to acquiesce to Russian demands that energy must be paid for in roubles. It says Gas distributors in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia are planning to open rouble accounts at Gazprombank in Switzerland.

Germany’s Bundestag lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a petition on support for Ukraine, backing the delivery of weapons including heavy arms to the country to help it fend off Russian attacks.

The UK government has released figures stating that about 27,100 people had arrived in the UK as refugees under the Ukraine visa schemes as of Monday. UNHCR states that 5,372,854 people have fled Ukraine for abroad since Russia’s latest invasion began on 24 February.

Continue reading...

UN secretary general describes war in Ukraine as ‘absurdity’ in 21st century

Posted on by

António Guterres visits Borodianka outside Kyiv where Russian forces are accused of massacring civilians

The UN secretary general has described the war in Ukraine as “an absurdity” in the 21st century on a visit to the scene of civilian killings outside Kyiv, as Russia warned the west that increasing arms supplies to Ukraine would endanger European security.

António Guterres was touring Borodianka on Thursday, where Russian forces are accused of massacring civilians before their withdrawal, on his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the invasion on 24 February, before talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Continue reading...

How worried should Europe be as Russia starts cutting off gas supplies?

Posted on by

Analysis: Putin is determined to use resource as a weapon, as shown in move to cut off Poland and Bulgaria

The unavoidable truth looming over Europe’s response to the invasion of Ukraine is that Russian gas heats the continent’s homes and powers its industries.

While European leaders have vowed to wean themselves off Kremlin-controlled supplies, both of gas and oil, the reality is that this is very hard to do in short order. There will be at least one more cold winter to come before major energy-hungry economies that rely heavily on Russia, such as Germany and Italy, can tap other sources.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: Putin warns of ‘lightning fast’ retaliation if west intervenes; Mariupol commander makes urgent plea – live

Posted on by

Russian president says he has ‘all the tools’ to respond and will use them ‘if needed’; Mariupol commander says 600 injured in Azovstal steel works

On the issue of gas supplies to Poland, government figures yesterday were anxious to reassure the public in Poland that the country could cope if Russia cut off supplies.

The Polish Press Agency last night was carrying the following quotes. Anna Moscow, head of the ministry of climate and environment, said:

Poland has the necessary gas reserves and sources of supply that protect our security – we have been effectively independent of Russia for years. Our warehouses are 76% full. There will be gas in Polish homes.

The Baltic Pipe gas pipeline will also be commissioned in a few months. The decision to build it was made by the PiS government and has been consistently implemented in recent years. This is another element of Poland’s energy security.

The men detained on 21 and 22 April are suspected of espionage activities for the Russian secret services. The material collected by the military counterintelligence service (SKW) indicates that a Russian and a Belarusian, acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence against Poland, carried out activities aimed at identifying the functioning of the Polish Armed Forces, including the presence of the army in the Polish-Belarusian border zone.

Continue reading...

Russia’s war in Ukraine threatens to spill over in dangerous new phase

Posted on by

Analysis: Mysterious explosions in Moldova raise possibility of new Putin gambit after early failures

A series of mysterious explosions in Moldova have raised the threat of Russia’s war in Ukraine spilling over into new territory, with unpredictable consequences.

The blasts destroyed radio antennas in a Russian-garrisoned sliver of eastern Moldova along the Ukrainian border, Transnistria, which had been peaceful since a brief conflict in 1992 waged by Kremlin-backed separatists against the Moldovan army.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: about 15,000 Russian troops killed since start of invasion, says UK; Nato is ‘in essence engaged in war with Russia’, says Lavrov – live

Posted on by

UK defence secretary says, alongside death toll, Russians have lost over 2,000 armoured vehicles; Russian foreign minister says western weapons are a ‘legitimate target’

The visit of US secretary of state Antony Blinken and US defence secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv had been kept tightly under wraps in advance for security reasons. Some images from the meeting have been sent to us via the newswires.

The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has just been speaking to the media at the Poland-Ukraine border. He has been meeting officials from Ukraine. He told reporters:

Our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us to win the current battle and also build for tomorrow. We talked about security force assistance. And we talked about training.

Continue reading...

Blinken due to meet Zelenskiy in first wartime visit by top US officials to Ukraine

Posted on by

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin will join secretary of state in Sunday’s meeting as Russia continues attacks in south and east Ukraine

Kyiv prepared for its first wartime visit from two top US officials as Russia continued its bombardment of Ukraine, including a deadly strike in the port city of Odesa, that all but buried hopes of a truce for Orthodox Easter.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he would meet with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, in Kyiv on Sunday. The White House declined to comment.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 60 of the Russian invasion

Posted on by

Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Kyiv on Sunday as Russia continues attacks on southern and eastern Ukraine

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, will travel to Kyiv to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday. It will be the first high-level US trip to the city since the war began on 24 February.

Zelenskiy, at a press conference on Saturday held in an underground metro station, said Ukraine will ask the US for more heavy weapons to defeat Russia. “As soon as we have [more weapons], as soon as there are enough of them, believe me, we will immediately retake this or that territory, which is temporarily occupied,” Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine’s president also spoke at length about possible peace negotiations with Russia, saying if Moscow kills any Mariupol defenders – or goes forward with the independence referendum in the partly occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – Ukraine will suspend peace negotiations with Moscow.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. A three-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Eighteen more were wounded.

Separate strikes in Girske, a village in the eastern Lugansk region, killed six civilians, the region’s governor, Sergiy Gayday, said.

Two Russian generals were killed near Kherson, the Ukrainian ministry of defence said in a statement. Another is in critical condition. The Ukrainian military on Friday hit the command post of Russia’s 49th army near the occupied regional capital, the ministry said.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged steel mill in Mariupol wasn’t immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

Another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed on Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organised buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227km (141 miles) to the north-west.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War has released its latest analysis, warning that Russian forces will likely increase the scale of ground offensive operations in the coming days. It predicts that Russia will likely continue attacking south-east from Izyum, west from Kreminna and Popasna, and north from Donetsk via Avdiivka or another axis. Russian forces will attempt to starve out the remaining defenders of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and will not allow trapped civilians to evacuate, it adds.

Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be two recently excavated mass grave sites next to cemeteries in two towns near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to conceal the slaughter taking place there. The Kremlin has not commented on the images.

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets on Saturday, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

The UK Ministry of Defence released an intelligence update detailing accusations that Russia is planning to conscript Ukrainian civilians in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Nearly 5.2 million people have fled Ukraine due to the war. The number of Ukrainians leaving the country since Russia’s invasion is now 5,163,686, the UN refugee agency says.

A third of Russian gas exported to the European Union could be affected because of the war, says the head of Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz.

Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Continue reading...

In Mariupol, Putin now rules a wasteland pitted with mass graves

Posted on by

The inevitable end to the brutal siege shows Russia’s logistical strengths – but also why invasion is ultimately so futile

The city of Mariupol is now effectively in Russian hands. Although some Ukrainian troops continue to hold out at the Azovstal steelworks, the Russians have felt able to redeploy the forces used to assault the city. They leave behind an apocalyptic landscape that in many respects stands as a symbol of Russia’s strategic failure in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin set out to reanimate a Russian empire but has instead found himself master of a wasteland above ground and a mass grave beneath.

That Mariupol would be a target for the Russian military had been obvious since 2014, when Russian proxies initially seized the city and tried repeatedly to retake it after being driven out. A major industrial centre and port on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol would be economically vital to any annexed territory and in any case was on the main supply route from Rostov into southern Ukraine. The Russians assigned a significant force to take the city, though their composition shows that it was not Russia’s primary objective. The siege was prosecuted by troops from the 150th Rifle Division and 810th Naval Infantry Brigade reinforced with Chechen Rosgvardia and conscripted fighters from occupied Donetsk.

Continue reading...

Russian forces accused of secret burials of Mariupol civilians in mass graves

Posted on by

Mayor says corpses thrown into mass grave which appears to be visible on newly released satellite images

Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Russia has been hiding evidence of its “barbaric” war crimes in Mariupol by burying the bodies of civilians killed by shelling in a new mass grave, the city’s mayor said on Thursday, as a US satellite imagery company released photos that appeared to match the site.

The mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said Russian trucks had collected corpses from the streets of the port city and had transported them to the nearby village of Manhush. They were then secretly thrown into a mass grave in a field next to the settlement’s old cemetery, he said.

Continue reading...

Russia plans to hold sham independence vote in southern Ukraine, Zelenskiy says

Posted on by

Ukraine president warns citizens against handing over personal information, as satellite images of mass graves emerge near Mariupol

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of planning to “falsify” an independence referendum in the partly occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, telling Ukrainians there not to give personal information to occupying forces.

The warning came after Mariupol’s mayor accused Russia of hiding evidence of its “barbaric” war crimes by burying the bodies of up to 9,000 civilians in a new mass grave, allegations backed up by satellite images from US company Maxar.

Continue reading...

Putin orders blockade of Mariupol steelworks ‘so a fly can’t get through’

Posted on by

Russian president tells forces that storming last Ukrainian stronghold in port city would be ‘impractical’

Vladimir Putin has ordered his forces not to storm the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in the besieged city of Mariupol, after his defence minister admitted that the Russian army was still fighting thousands of Ukrainian troops there.

The Russian president described a plan to storm the Azovstal steelworks as “impractical” and called instead for Russian troops to blockade the area “so that a fly can’t get through”.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 55 of the invasion

Posted on by

Volodymyr Zelenskiy says ‘battle for Donbas’ has begun as Russia mounts anticipated offensive in the eastern part of Ukraine

Russia’s expected offensive in the eastern part of Ukraine has begun. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a “significant part” of the Russian army was now focused on taking control of eastern Ukraine. “Now we can already state that the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” he said in a video address.

Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak called it “the second phase of the war” and assured Ukrainians that their forces could hold off the offensive. “Believe in our army, it is very strong,” Yermak said.

There are now 76 Russian battalion tactical groups in the Donbas region of Ukraine and in the country’s southeast, a senior US defence department official said. Eleven of those groups were added over the last several days.

The first shipments of a new US military aid package have arrived at Ukraine’s borders, a senior Pentagon official said. Last week, the United States unveiled a $800-million tranche of equipment for Ukraine, including helicopters, howitzers and armoured personnel carriers.

Seven people were killed in strikes in the western city of Lviv. Maksym Kozytskyy, the governor of Lviv, said preliminary reports suggested there were four strikes there, three on warehouses that were not in use by the military and another on a car service station. “It was a barbaric strike at a service station, it’s a completely civilian facility,” he told a news conference.

The southern port city of Mariupol has not fallen to Russian forces, US officials said. “Our assessment is Mariupol is still contested,” the Pentagon official said. If Russian forces succeed in taking full control of Mariupol, that could free up nearly a dozen battalion tactical groups for use elsewhere in the Donbas.

About 1,000 civilians are reportedly hiding in underground shelters beneath the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, according to the city council. Most of the civilians are believed to be women with children and elderly people.

Shelling in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed four people, regional governor, Pavlo Kirilenko, said.

US president Joe Biden will on Tuesday hold a call with allies to discuss the Ukraine crisis, including on how to coordinate on holding Russia accountable, the White House said.

Despite urging from Zelenskiy, Biden has made no plans to visit Ukraine, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, adding that details would not be provided if that decision changed, for security reasons.

Family members of sailors who served onboard the Russian warship Moskva are demanding answers as the ministry has sought to suppress information about what happened to the ship or its estimated 510-strong crew.
The total number of dead, wounded and missing remains a state secret. A number of families have gone public saying they cannot find their sons who were serving onboard.

Two British fighters captured in Ukraine by Russian forces have been paraded on Russian state TV asking Boris Johnson to help free them, in a dramatic escalation of the propaganda war. Footage showed Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin calling on the British prime minister to help free them in exchange for Ukraine releasing the pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk.

Ukraine is hoping to receive candidate country status to join the European Union within weeks, Zelenskiy said. The European Union’s ambassador in Ukraine, Matti Maasikas, said he received a completed questionnaire from Zelenskiy just 10 days after the document was provided to Kyiv. “Extraordinary times take extraordinary steps and extraordinary speed,” he tweeted.



Continue reading...

Ukraine vows Mariupol troops will ‘fight to the end’ as surrender deadline passes

Posted on by

Russian forces edge closer to control of port city whose fall would deal economic blow to Kyiv and symbolic victory for Moscow

Ukraine has vowed that its forces will “fight to the end” in the besieged port city of Mariupol, after a Russian ultimatum for the remaining Ukrainian troops there to surrender expired.

Moscow is edging closer to full control of the city in what would be its biggest prize since it invaded Ukraine in February. Relentless bombardment and street fighting have left much of the city pulverised, killing at least 21,000 people by Ukrainian estimates.

Continue reading...