Demonstrators carry a banner during a protest against Russia's massive military operation in Ukraine, in Nicosia, Cyprus February 27, 2022. (Reuters)Russia Ukraine Crisis Live: Dozens of people were killed in rocket strikes by Russian forces on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Monday morning, Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said. “Kharkiv has just been massively fired upon by grads (rockets). Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded,” he said in a post on Facebook.
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Meanwhile, talks between Ukraine and Russia have started at the Belarussian border, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters via text message on Monday. Earlier the Ukrainian president’s office said Ukraine’s goal for the talks was an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.
UN rights boss Bachelet has said that at least 102 civilians, including seven children, have died in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. Moreover, 304 have been injured. She, however, added that the real figure may well be “considerably higher”. In other news, post a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has decided to send Union Ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen VK Singh to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation mission and help students, government sources said.
People attend an anti-war protest outside the Russian Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, on Saturday. (Photo: Reuters)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening called a second high-level meeting on the Ukraine crisis after it was decided in an earlier meeting to send four Union ministers to the neighbouring countries of the war-hit nation to coordinate efforts to evacuate Indian students stranded there.
Modi had chaired a meeting on Sunday evening as well and had asserted that the safety and evacuation of Indians from Ukraine, attacked by Russia, is a top priority for his government.
Union ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and V K Singh will be going as "special envoys" of India, government sources had earlier said. (PTI)
Russia has closed its airspace to carriers from 36 nations, including European countries and Canada, responding in kind to their move to close their respective airspaces to all Russian aircraft.
The move, announced Monday by the state aviation agency, follows a decision by the EU and Canada over the weekend to close their skies to the Russian planes in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. (AP)
As Russia continues its assault into Ukraine’s territory, a parallel war is being fought on social media, with both sides rallying for the support on Twitter and Facebook. For instance, with its memes and advisories against misinformation, an official Ukrainian Twitter account (@Ukraine) has amassed over 1.4 million followers.
Amid disinformation and propaganda, the conflict has brought scrutiny over tech giants’ policies, which are largely built upon providing a democratic space with free speech for all. Read explainer by Sonal Gupta
US cuts off Russian central bank, sanctions state investment fund, in hard-hitting retaliation for Ukraine invasion, reports AP.
Websites of several Russian media outlets were hacked on Monday, with a message condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine appearing on their main pages.
The developments reflect a growing anti-war sentiment among Russians. Protests against the devastating attack on Ukraine have been taking place all across the country for four days now, and nearly 1 million people signed an online petition demanding to stop the war.
The state news agency TASS, the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, St. Petersburg news isite Fontanka, and a number of others suffered from the hacking attack on Monday afternoon. The independent news site Meduza posted screenshots of a message, signed by the hacker group Anonymous and “indifferent journalists in Russia”, that appeared on the main pages of some of the hacked websites. (AP)
The State Department has closed the U.S. Embassy in Belarus and is allowing non-essential staff at the U.S. Embassy in Russia to leave the country due to the war in Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of operations at the Minsk embassy and the authorized departure from Moscow in a statement on Monday.
“We took these steps due to security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces in Ukraine,” he said. (AP)
Dozens of people were killed in rocket strikes by Russian forces on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Monday morning, Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said. "Kharkiv has just been massively fired upon by grads (rockets). Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded," he said in a post on Facebook. (Reuters)
MEA Jaishankar says, “Discussed the Ukraine developments with @RauZbigniew of Poland. Appreciate Poland’s facilitation of evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine. His words of support in that regard are very welcome.”
The European Union is preparing to grant Ukrainians who flee the war the right to stay and work in the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, senior EU and French officials said, thanking volunteers at the borders for helping those who arrive.
At least 300,000 Ukrainian refugees have entered the EU so far, and the bloc needs to prepare for millions more, they said. EU members Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary have land borders with Ukraine. (Reuters)
Russian forces and Pro-Russian separatists in the town of Stanytsia Luhanska in the Luhansk region of Ukraine
More than half a million refugees have now fled Ukraine for neighbouring countries, says Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N. refugee agency.
Talks between Ukraine and Russia have started at the Belarussian border, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters via text message on Monday. Earlier the Ukrainian president's office said Ukraine's goal for the talks was an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. (Reuters)
Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency said on Monday, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere as Moscow's diplomatic and economic isolation deepened.
After four days of fighting and a Russian advance that has gone more slowly than some expected, a Ukrainian delegation arrived at the border with Russian ally Belarus for ceasefire talks with Russian representatives, the Ukrainian presidency said. It was not clear whether any progress could be achieved.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday launched the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two and put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a barrage of Western-led reprisals.
Blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian authorities said. But Russian ground forces' attempts to capture major urban centres had been repelled, they added.
Russia's defence ministry, however, said its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported. The plant's operations continued normally, it said. (Reuters)
The campaign by the United States and its allies to build economic pressure on Russia also showed more signs on Monday of having an impact.
Russia's central bank announced Monday it was more than doubling its key interest rate to 20 percent because the Russian economy's situation had "drastically changed".
The value of the ruble also continued to collapse against the dollar and the euro on the Moscow Stock Exchange on Monday. And the European Central Bank warned Monday that the European subsidiary of the Russian state-owned Sberbank was facing bankruptcy. The Kremlin has brushed off sanctions, including those targeting Putin personally, as a sign of Western impotence. (AFP)
Zelenskyy has called for 'immediate' EU membership for Ukraine, reported AFP. He also said that Ukraine will release prisoners with military experience if they are willing to join the fight against Russia, Reuters reported.
Ukraine's president Volodymr Zelenskyy has urged Russian soldiers to lay down their weapons and desert as Ukrainian and Russian delegations were set to hold talks on Moscow's invasion, reports AFP
Ukraine's Presidential office on Monday said a delegation arrived for talks with Russia on the border with Belarus. It's unclear whether they'll lead to any breakthrough.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office said it would demand an immediate cease-fire. It wasn't immediately clear what the Kremlin was ultimately seeking, either in the talks or, more broadly, from its war in Ukraine. (AP)
UN rights boss Bachelet has said that the toll for civilian deaths in Ukraine is 102, with 304 injured. She, however, added that the real figure may well be “considerably higher”. (Reuters)
The Russian military says that residents of the Ukrainian capital can use a safe corridor to leave the city if they want.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Monday that Kyiv residents can safely use a highway leading to Vasylkiv just southwest of the Ukrainian capital. The statement came as fighting raged in various parts of the Ukrainian capital, with Ukrainian authorities saying that they were fighting small groups of Russian forces in various sectors of the capital. (AP)
They file into neighbouring countries by the hundreds of thousands - refugees from Ukraine clutching children in one arm, belongings in the other. And they're being heartily welcomed, by leaders of countries like Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania.
But while the hospitality has been applauded, it has also highlighted stark differences in treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, particularly Syrians who came in 2015. Some of the language from these leaders has been disturbing to them, and deeply hurtful.
"These are not the refugees we are used to...these people are Europeans," Bulgarian President Rumen Radev told journalists earlier this week, of the Ukrainians. "These people are intelligent, they are educated people...This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists..." "In other words," he added, "there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees."
Syrian journalist Okba Mohammad says that statement "mixes racism and Islamophobia". (AP)