Steven Seagal is isolated voice in backing Russian president as Gérard Depardieu, Silvio Berlusconi and others condemn invasion
At an upscale restaurant in Moscow, the bubbly was flowing as guests in cocktail dresses and expensive suits danced the night away.
They had gathered on Sunday for the 70th birthday of Steven Seagal, the American-born actor best known for playing hard-bitten cops and commandos in action movies.
Continue reading...Alexander Dvornikov has record of brutality against civilians in Syria, say US officials; Zelenskiy adviser praises UK prime minister’s ‘timely’ visit
A school and several apartment buildings were hit by shelling in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Dnipro regions early on Sunday morning, wounding one person and causing a fire, officials said.
A school and a high-rise apartment building were shelled in the city of Sievierodonetsk in the besieged region of Luhansk, the region’s governor said.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy calls for oil embargo on Russia as Boris Johnson pledges more military aid during Kyiv visit
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has warned his country “does not have time to wait” while pushing for an oil embargo on Russia in his latest national address. He also said he is committed to pressing for peace despite Russian attacks on civilians that have stunned the world, and renewed his plea for countries to send more weapons ahead of an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east.
Zelenskiy said his country is ready for a tough battle with Russian forces amassing in the east of the country. “This will be a hard battle; we believe in this fight and our victory. We are ready to simultaneously fight and look for diplomatic ways to put an end to this war.”
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, pledged a major new infusion of British arms and financial aid during a surprise trip to Kyiv on Saturday. Johnson said the UK and its partners and allies will provide support so that “Ukraine will never be invaded again”. The UK confirmed it will send 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems.
Johnson praised Zelenskiy’s “resolute leadership and the invincible heroism”. “Putin’s monstrous aims are being thwarted,” Johnson said. The reputations of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his government have been “permanently polluted” by war crimes against civilians in Ukraine, he added.
Russia’s withdrawal from northern Ukraine has left evidence of “disproportionate targeting” of civilians, mass graves, the use of hostages as human shields, according to the latest British intelligence report. The report also claimed Russian forces continue to use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to inflict casualties, lower Ukrainian morale and restrict freedom of movement.
Five people have been killed in east Ukraine shelling, according to the Donetsk governor. Four were reported killed in the city of Vugledar, and one in the town of Novomikhaylovka.
In the town of Borodianka, north-west of Kyiv, rescue teams sorted through the rubble of houses destroyed in Russian bombardments, looking for those missing. Heavy Russian bombardment has razed residential buildings and Ukrainian authorities are attempting search, clear-up and, hopefully, some rescue activities.
Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange with Russia on Saturday, the third such swap since the start of the war, with 12 soldiers confirmed to be coming home, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, wrote online.
A total of 4,553 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Saturday, fewer than the 6,665 who escaped on Friday, Vereshchuk said. Ten humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from embattled areas across the country had been agreed on Saturday.
The European Commission is pledging €1bn to support Ukraine and countries receiving refugees fleeing the war following Russia’s invasion, said the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen.
The Czech Republic has delivered tanks, multiple-rocket launchers, howitzers and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine among military shipments that have reached hundreds of millions of dollars and will continue, two Czech defence sources told Reuters.
The Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, met Zelenskiy earlier on Saturday, following a visit to the city of Bucha to the north-west of Kyiv, where mass civilian graves and street killings by Russian forces were discovered last week.
Russia has reorganised the command of its battle operations in Ukraine, installing a new general with extensive experience in Russian operations in Syria, according to a western official. The commander of Russia’s southern military district, Gen Alexander Dvornikov, now leads the invasion, the source told the BBC, adding: “We would expect the overall command and control to improve.”
Continue reading...Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of occupied Melitopol, says the battle for Donbas is also a fight for global security
The sun was shining in Zaporizhzhia on Saturday and teams of city workers were out planting flowers on roadside borders. Market stalls were doing a healthy trade in everything from food and drink to electronics, and there were even a few cafes and bars open.
But the frontlines are barely a half-hour drive from this industrial city, and much of the region of which it is the capital is under Russian occupation. Underneath the calm exterior, most people here – and across the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine – are anxious about what lies in wait in the coming days and weeks.
Continue reading...While investigators uncover the remains of civilians, heartbroken families wait nearby to reclaim their loved ones
Sometimes the dead have more to say than the living. Those lying beneath the soft, yellow earth in the grounds of the church of Andrew the Apostle, in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, have many terrible stories to tell.
In a deep mass grave, a forearm and hand, the fingertips turning black, lay under a foot at a sickening angle; another man’s arm looked like it was clawing its way out of the disturbed soil in an attempt to escape his fate.
Continue reading...Premier League champions’ global partner Marathonbet is one of around 20 firms cleared to operate in Russia
Manchester City football club faces scrutiny over its official global betting partner Marathonbet, which is approved by the Kremlin for its gambling operations in Russia.
Marathonbet, which was established in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in 1997, is one of around 20 firms approved in Russia for betting, according to Kremlin federal tax office documents seen by the Observer.
Continue reading...Intelligence believes Russia’s president may see US backing of Ukraine as direct affront, giving him further incentive to meddle
Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in American politics, US intelligence officials have assessed.
Intelligence agencies have not found any evidence Putin has authorized measures like the ones Russia is believed to have undertaken in the 2016 and 2020 elections in support of Donald Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Continue reading...Two leaders will ‘discuss UK’s long-term support to Ukraine’ and Johnson will set out new aid package, says No 10
Boris Johnson is meeting the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy during an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have said.
A picture posted on Twitter by the embassy of Ukraine to the UK showed the two leaders sitting across a table in the capital, with their respective flags in the background.
Continue reading...The Ukrainian embassy to the UK shared a photograph of the two leaders in talks on Saturday afternoon
Here are some images from across Ukraine over the past 24 hours.
Continue reading...Governor issues warning as US says Moscow likely planning to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers in east
Residents remaining in eastern Ukraine’s embattled city of Luhansk must evacuate, the governor has said as shelling intensifies and Russia bolsters its forces.
Ukraine has been warning that Moscow is withdrawing from areas to the north of Kyiv in order to focus its offensive military operations on the country’s east. Moscow, which initially justified its invasion by claiming to need to protect Russian-speaking civilians in the self-proclaimed republics in Donbas, has confirmed the change in strategy.
Continue reading...Germany is bracing for supplies to be cut by Moscow in retaliation for sanctions or as part of an energy embargo
In Germany, they call it “Day X”. Businesses up and down the land are making contingency plans for what is seen as a growing likelihood that Russian gas will stop flowing into Europe’s biggest economy.
“It would be a disaster – one which would have seemed almost unthinkable just two months ago, but which right now feels like a very realistic prospect,” the owner of a hi-tech mechanical engineering company in western Germany said. The firm produces everything from battery cases for electric cars to train clutch systems.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy calls for ‘firm global response’ to Kramatorsk station attack; 10 humanitarian corridors agreed for Saturday
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described a missile strike on a railway station in eastern Ukraine as a Russian war crime and called for a “firm global response”. At least 52 people, including five children, were killed in the missile strike on Kramatorsk train station. The US believes Russia used a short range ballistic missile on the train station. Russia has denied responsibility.
Ten humanitarian corridors have been agreed for Saturday for people from besieged regions, including the city of Mariupol, according to Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The governor of Luhansk earlier called for more evacuations, warning that shelling had increased over recent days and that more Russian troops had arrived in the region.
Russian air activity is expected to increase in the south and east of Ukraine, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which said Russian operations continue to focus on the Russian-controlled territories in Donbas, as well as Mariupol and Mykolaiv, supported by continued cruise missile launches into Ukraine by Russian naval forces.
A curfew will be in place in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa from Saturday evening until Monday evening, in response to the shelling of the train station in Kramatorsk, and the threat of a missile strike.
Two UN agencies have called for urgent action to help an estimated 1,000 seafarers stranded in Ukrainian ports and waters with dwindling supplies.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War says Ukrainian forces retain control of defensive positions in eastern and south-western Mariupol. Russian forces are continuing to attempt to redeploy units in eastern Ukraine. However, such troops are “unlikely to enable a Russian breakthrough and face poor morale”, ISW says.
Some Russian military units have experienced major losses, a senior US defence official said, and the Pentagon estimates Russia’s combat power is between 80% and 85% of pre-invasion levels.
Continue reading...The mayor of Kramatorsk says there were 4,000 people, most of them elderly, women and children, at the station at the time of the attack
The President of the European Commission and EU representative Josep Borrell appear to be on their way to Kyiv this morning.
Ursula von der Leyen shared a photo of herself stepping off a Ukrainian train alongside the caption “looking forward to Kyiv”.
We have significant losses of troops. And it’s a huge tragedy for us.
Continue reading...Chancellor declines to endorse claim by Boris Johnson during London visit that goal will be achieved by mid-2024
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said his country is doing all it can to wean itself off Russian energy, but declined to endorse a claim by Boris Johnson that it would stop importing Russian gas by the middle of 2024.
Scholz said only that the goal would be achieved very soon, and that Germany would stop using Russian coal by the summer and Russian oil by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Survivors in Yahidne recount writing names of the dead on wall during Russian occupation north of Ukrainian capital
Residents of a village north of Kyiv have said that more than 300 people were trapped in a school basement for weeks by Russian occupiers, scrawling the names of the dead on a peeling wall.
Halyna Tolochina, a member of the Yahidne village council, struggled to compose herself as she went through the list, scribbled in black on the plaster either side of a green door, in the gloomy warren where she said she and hundreds of others were confined.
Continue reading...Ninety-three countries vote to suspend Russia amid ‘grave concern’ about abuses; Kremlin spokesman says number of Russian soldiers lost is a ‘tragedy’
Russia is focusing on an impending offensive operation in eastern Ukraine with the aim to take control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukraine’s ministry of defence has said, corroborating western intelligence report.
Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces said some withdrawn Russian units are now located in “tent camps” in a number of regions bordering Ukraine.
Continue reading...UK and Ukrainian ministers met to view missile systems and armoured vehicles that could be used in next phase of fighting
Britain is preparing to announce a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine and has demonstrated new missile systems and armoured vehicles that it believes can help Kyiv in the next phases of fighting.
Junior defence ministers Jeremy Quin and James Heappey invited Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Volodymyr Havrylov to Salisbury Plain on Wednesday, where they discussed what extra weapons the UK could supply.
Continue reading...State news agency publishes article decrying ‘Ukrainianism’ as an ‘artificial anti-Russian construct with no civilisational substance’
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”.
After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal purges and “re-education” that western officials said could provoke further abuses on the ground.
Continue reading...The BBC has confirmed the location west of Kyiv and found satellite images showing bodies on the ground
Soldiers fighting for Ukraine appear to shoot a Russian prisoner of war outside a village west of Kyiv in a video posted online.
The footage was originally shared on social media app Telegram. The New York Times said it had verified the video and the BBC said it had confirmed the location north of the town of Dmytrivka and found satellite images showing bodies on the ground.
Continue reading...Zelenskiy says sanctions unveiled by west have ‘a spectacular look. But this is not enough’, as fears mount of large-scale Russian offensive
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said new sanctions by the west against Russia do not go far enough and will be seen by invading forces as a “permission to attack”, as fears of an assault on the east of the country intensify.
It comes after the US, UK and EU unveiled a raft of new sanctions targeting Russian banks and the country’s elites. The US measures include a ban on investing in Russia as well as sanctions on president Vladimir Putin’s adult daughters. The EU sanctions include a ban on coal imports and restrictions on banks.
The Pentagon said a “small number” of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained in the United States to operate the deadly Switchblade drones that Washington is supplying to Kyiv. The troops were already in the US before Russia invaded.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby offered some optimism about the Ukraine resistance. “Of course, they can win this. And if you look at what they’ve been able to do just thus far, Mr Putin has achieved exactly zero of his strategic objectives inside Ukraine,” he said.
Nato foreign ministers will meet in Brussels on Thursday for two days of talks on providing support to bring an end to the war.
US sanctions against two of Russia’s largest banks are “a direct blow to the Russian population [and] ordinary citizens”, Tass news agency cited Russia’s US ambassador as saying on Wednesday. Anatoly Antonov made his remarks after Washington hit Sberbank and Alfabank.
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