Category Archives: Russia

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 88 of the invasion

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Russian airstrikes hit Mykolaiv and Donbas regions; only Ukraine can decide its future, says Polish president

Russian airstrikes hit Ukrainian forces in the Mykolaiv and Donbas regions, targeting command centres, troops and ammunition depots, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The ministry said air-launched missiles hit three command points and four ammunition depots in the Donbas. In Mykolaiv, in the south, Russian rockets reportedly struck a mobile anti-drone system near the settlement of Hannivka.

Severodonetsk is one of Russia’s “immediate tactical priorities”, the UK Ministry of Defence said on Sunday. Russia is deploying Terminator tanks to the area, the MoD has said.

Severodonetsk has been attacked from “four separate directions”, said the region’s governor. Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces had not succeeded in breaking into the city.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of blocking the export of 22m tonnes of food. The Ukrainian president also said an energy crisis would swiftly follow a food crisis if Ukraine was not given help to unlock its ports.

Only Ukraine has the right to decide its future, the Polish president told lawmakers in Kyiv on Sunday. Andrzej Duda said: “Worrying voices have appeared, saying that Ukraine should give in to Putin’s demands. Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future … nothing about you without you.” Duda became the first foreign leader to give a speech in person to the Ukrainian parliament since Russia’s invasion.

Russia’s state gas company, Gazprom, halted gas exports to Finland, which refused Moscow’s demands to pay in roubles for Russian gas after western countries imposed sanctions. Gasum, Finland’s state-owned energy company, said it would use other sources, such as the Balticconnector pipeline, which links Finland to its fellow EU member Estonia.

Ukraine has suggested it is willing to resume talks with Russia. Speaking on Saturday, Zelenskiy said: “Discussions between Ukraine and Russia will undoubtedly take place … under what format I don’t know … but the war will be bloody, there will be fighting and [it] will only definitively end through diplomacy.” He added: “We want everything back. And the Russian Federation doesn’t want to return anything. That’s why the ending will be at the negotiating table.”

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Ukrainian man drives 3,700km to be reunited with parents and fiancee – who live just 10km away

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Only a 10-minute drive apart but cut off by war, Serhi Belyaev took a perilous road trip to be with his loved ones again

It is a 10-minute drive from Serhi Belyaev’s house in the village of Tsyrkuny to his fiancee’s home in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. A quick spin west on Soborna Street, over the E40 motorway on to the Lesia Serduika highway, and you are there. That was, until the war came.

It took just hours for Russian forces to sweep into Belyaev’s village on 24 February, as they advanced on Kharkiv, the closest major Ukrainian city to the Russian border.

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Zelenskiy signals readiness for new talks if Mariupol troops are not harmed

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Ukrainian leader tells TV station ‘there are things that can only be reached at the negotiating table’

Ukraine has suggested that it is willing to resume talks with Russia as Moscow claimed to have taken full control of the besieged city of Mariupol – its biggest prize since it invaded Ukraine in February.

Speaking to a television channel on Saturday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that “discussions between Ukraine and Russia will undoubtedly take place”.

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UK under pressure over Alexander Lebedev sanctions after Canada move

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Labour says the case for the British government to follow Ottawa’s lead is ‘extremely strong’

The British government is under pressure to impose sanctions on Alexander Lebedev after Canada targeted the former KGB agent in a fresh wave of restrictions against Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The billionaire Russian businessman, who little more than a decade ago bought the UK’s Evening Standard and Independent newspapers, was named in Ottawa’s latest sanctions announced on Friday.

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Only diplomacy can end Ukraine war, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy

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Country’s president emphasises need for talks to resume with Russia after previous negotiations stalled

Ukraine’s president has said the war can only be resolved through diplomacy, despite the current suspension of negotiations.

“Discussions between Ukraine and Russia will undoubtedly take place,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with a Ukrainian television channel.

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Ukraine war: Russia bans 963 Americans from country; Finland holds talks with Turkey over Nato bid – live

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Joe Biden among those banned after signing $40bn aid package for Ukraine; Finnish president says he held ‘open and direct’ talks with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

I am now handing over the blog to my colleague Geneva Abdul in London. Thanks for following along

Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik has told European Council President Charles Michel that Bosnia needs to maintain neutrality and will not join EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

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Russia halts gas supplies to Finland as payments row with the west escalates

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Russia cut off gas to Bulgaria and Poland last month amid an energy payments dispute sparked by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

Russia has halted providing natural gas to neighbouring Finland, which has angered Moscow by applying for Nato membership, after the Nordic country refused to pay supplier Gazprom in roubles.

Gazprom Export has demanded that European countries pay for Russian gas supplies in roubles because of sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but Finland refuses to do so.

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UK and allies discuss arming Moldova with ‘Nato standard’ weapons

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Foreign secretary Liz Truss wants to protect the country south-west of Ukraine from Russia

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has disclosed that the UK has begun discussions with its international allies about sending modern weaponry to Moldova to protect it from Russia.

She said that she wants to see the country, which is to the south-west of Ukraine, “equipped to Nato standard.”

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Russia ‘takes control of Azovstal steel plant’; gas supply to Finland to be cut – as it happened

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Plant was last part of Mariupol in Ukrainian hands; Gazprom will suspend gas sales to Finland from Saturday. This blog is now closed

Serhiy Gaidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has given a short update on the situation in Severodonetsk. He writes on Telegram:

The Russians are shelling Severodonetsk very powerfully. Up to 15,000 people remain in bomb shelters. Wells in the old districts of the city were preserved to provide people with water. All mobile towers are de-energized. 70% of high-rise buildings are destroyed or damaged, many of them need to be demolished and new ones built.

Speaking of “friends”, it is notable that US senators were visiting Stockholm on the day the “historic” decision was announced. Not rank-and-file congressmen, but leader of the Senate Republicans Mitch McConnell. Sweden has not yet joined the alliance, but the Americans are already dictating to the Swedish authorities what to say to their people. And this is just a demo of what is in store for them.

More than 200 years of neutrality, which guaranteed the Kingdom’s security and prosperity, are now history.

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Russia may scrap age limits for soldiers to bolster Ukraine invasion force

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Legislation would allow recruitment of older professionals as military faces infantry shortage

Senior Russian officials have proposed a new law that would eliminate age limits for military contract soldiers, in another sign the country is facing a shortage of infantry to continue its offensive in Ukraine.

Two members of the ruling United Russia party who introduced the law said the move would enable the military to utilise the skills of older professionals.

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Cosmopolitan no more: Russians feel sting of cultural and economic rift

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Magazines, production lines and consumer choices suffer as isolation from the west bites

A trip to the mall in Russia is a different experience today than it was just a few short months ago.

“When I had my first child, there was all this choice. Mothercare, Zara, you name it,” said Evgenia Marsheva, a 33-year-old architect. But when she went shopping in Moscow this month for her newborn, many of those large retail brands had been shuttered.

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Intense fighting around Severodonetsk as Zelenskiy says Donbas is ‘hell’

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Russian forces thought to be trying to cut one of the main supply routes to Ukrainian defenders in the area

Intense fighting has been reported around the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk as Russian forces appear to be stepping up an offensive to encircle its Ukrainian defenders.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk – known collectively as the Donbas – were being turned into “hell” and warned that what he called the “final stage of the war” would be the bloodiest.

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Russian soldier says he will accept punishment for Ukraine war crime

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Tank commander Vadim Shysimarin, 21, tells court he was ‘nervous’ and ‘didn’t want to kill’ unarmed civilian

A Russian tank commander who pleaded guilty earlier this week to shooting dead an unarmed Ukrainian civilian has said he will accept any punishment from the court, on the third day of the first war crimes trial resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Vadim Shysimarin, 21, told courtroom No 201 of the Kyiv tribunal that he “was nervous about what was going on” on the day 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov died and that he “didn’t want to kill”.

Artem Mazhulin, AFP and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Putin’s daughter flew to Munich ‘more than 50 times’, investigation suggests

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Investigation also suggests president’s youngest daughter is in a relationship with ballet dancer Igor Zelensky

Since the start of his military campaign against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has railed aggressively against pro-western Russians, whose appetite for European cuisine and climates meant “their mentality is there, not here, with our people”.

Yet his own daughter’s enthusiasm for sojourns to western Europe at least matches that of the oligarch “scum and traitors” he has decried, a joint investigation by independent Russian media outlet iStories and German magazine Der Spiegel suggests.

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Twenty-five ethnic Pamiris killed by security forces in Tajikistan protests

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Escalating tensions erupt into regime-backed violence against the minority group in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan

At least 25 people were killed on Wednesday by security forces in Tajikistan during a protest in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO), where the Tajik regime has targeted the Pamiri ethnic minority.

The deaths mark an escalation of violence in the region. Conflict between the central government and the Pamiri has continued for decades, with the cultural and linguistic minority ethnic group suffering human rights abuses, as well as discrimination over jobs and housing.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy says Donbas is ‘completely destroyed’ – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. Please join us again in a few hours when we will launch a new live blog

The UK’s ministry of defence has issued its daily public intelligence briefing on the situation with Russia and Ukraine, and this morning it is concentrating on the situation within Russia’s military. The ministry claims that Lieutenant General Serhiy Kisel has been suspended for failing to capture Kharkiv and Vice Admiral Igor Osipov has been suspended from commanding the Black Sea Fleet. It says:

A culture of cover-ups and scapegoating is probably prevalent within the Russian military and security system. Many officials involved in the invasion of Ukraine will likely be increasingly distracted by efforts to avoid personal culpability for Russia’s operational set-backs.

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Ukraine war has stoked global food crisis that could last years, says UN

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Shortages of grain and fertiliser could cause ‘mass hunger and famine, says chief, as World Bank pledges another $12bn to ease shortfall

The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine has helped to stoke a global food crisis that could last years if it goes unchecked, as the World Bank announced an additional $12bn in funding to mitigate its “devastating effects”.

UN secretary general António Guterres said shortages of grain and fertiliser caused by the war, warming temperatures and pandemic-driven supply problems threaten to “tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity”, as financial markets saw share prices fall heavily again on fears of inflation and a worldwide recession.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used his nightly address to claim that Russia’s use of laser weapons to down drones to save stocks of conventional missiles “indicates the complete failure of the invasion” and that mistakes had been made at the highest level. He compared their use to propaganda efforts by Nazi Germany promoting a “wunderwaffe” or “wonder weapon”. Russia has claimed it is using a new generation of laser weapons to burn up drones.

Zelenskiy said he had signed a decree to extend martial law by 90 days in order to allow further time to expel invasion forces. The decree needs to be approved by parliament.

Sweden and Finland have formally submitted their applications to join Nato but Turkey blocked an early move to fast-track the Nordic countries’ requests, demanding they extradite “terrorists” and that the alliance respect its concerns. US president Joe Biden said Washington would in the meantime work with Finland and Sweden in the event of the “threat of aggression”.

The US embassy in Kyiv has resumed operations, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said after nearly three months of closure. A small number of diplomats will return initially to staff the embassy, according to a spokesperson.

G7 finance minister will meet in Brussels on Thursday hoping to find a solution for Kyiv’s budget troubles as the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to roil the global economy. The US has already pledged a $40bn aid package to fill Kyiv’s coffers and military stores.

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