Russia-Ukraine War LIVE Updates: Ukraine realizes it can’t join NATO, says Zelenskyy

President Emmanuel Macron said France is offering protection from the French embassy and asylum to the anti-war activist who interrupted a news program on Russia’s state television, holding a poster protesting the war in Ukraine.

An independent human rights group that monitors political arrests identified the woman as Marina Ovsyannikova. The group, OVD-Info, posted on its website that Ovsyannikova, who identified herself as an employee of the station, was taken into police custody.

Macron said he will “propose this solution in a direct and very concrete manner” to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their next phone call.

He condemned any detention of journalists and hoped that Ovsyannikova’s situation will be clarified “as soon as possible.”

Macron spoke after visiting on Tuesday a facility housing Ukrainians fleeing war in western France. The country is getting ready to welcome “at least” 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war, he said. (AP)

The war in Ukraine is likely to be over by early May when Russia runs out of resources to attack its neighbour, Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, said late on Monday.

Talks between Kyiv and Moscow - in which Arestovich is not personally involved - have so far produced very few results other than several humanitarian corridors out of besieged Ukrainian cities.

In a video published by several Ukrainian media, Arestovich said the exact timing would depend on how much resources the Kremlin was willing to commit to the campaign.

"I think that no later than in May, early May, we should have a peace agreement, maybe much earlier, we will see, I am talking about the latest possible dates," Arestovich said. (Reuters)

Kyiv mayor has said that four people were killed in air strikes on the capital on Tuesday morning, news agency Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with embassy officials and community organisations involved in Ukraine evacuation

#WATCH Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with embassy officials and community organisations involved in #Ukraine evacuation pic.twitter.com/rRSxw3iqP6

— ANI (@ANI) March 15, 2022

External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday shared the details of Operation Ganga in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing Budget Session of the Parliament, saying despite challenges, govt ensured safe return of over 22,000 Indians from Ukraine.

He said, “At the direction of the Prime Minister, we launched Operation Ganga, thereby undertaking one of the most challenging evacuation exercises during an ongoing conflict situation.” He also said that Indians were dispersed across Ukraine, posing logistical challenges for the government.

Strikes on residential areas in Kyiv killed at least two people early on Tuesday morning, emergency services said, as Russian troops intensified their attacks on the Ukrainian capital.

The casualties came after a strike hit a 16-storey building in the Sviatoshynsky district, the emergency service said in a Facebook post, adding that 27 people had been rescued from the construction. 

Another residential building in the Podilsk area also came under attack, the emergency service said, causing "a fire" that "started on the first five floors of a ten-storey residential building on Mostytska street as a result of ammunition fire." (DW)

'Massive destruction' at Dnipro airport after shelling, say Ukraine authorities. Meanwhile, Kyiv mayor says that a 36-hour curfew will be imposed in the city from late Tuesday. (AFP)

Women and girls pay the highest price in all crises and conflicts from Myanmar and Afghanistan to the Sahel and Haiti, and “the horrifying war in Ukraine now joins that list,” the head of the U.N. women’s agency said Monday.

Undersecretary-General Sima Bahous told the opening session of the Commission on the Status of Women’s annual meeting that with every passing day the war is damaging the lives, hopes and futures of Ukrainian women and girls.

And, she added, the fact that it is between “two wheat and oil producing nations threatens food security and access to essential services the world over” and “this, too, will impact women and girls the hardest.” (AP)

The war is likely to be over by May when Russia runs out of resources to continue its onslaught, according to an adviser to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff.

"I think that no later than in May, early May, we should have a peace agreement, maybe much earlier, we will see, I am talking about the latest possible dates," Oleksiy Arestovich was quoted as saying by DW.

"We are at a fork in the road now: there will either be a peace deal struck very quickly, within a week or two, with troop withdrawal and everything, or there will be an attempt to scrape together some, say, Syrians for a round two and, when we grind them too, an agreement by mid-April or late April." Even once peace is agreed, skirmishes could continue for a year, according to Arestovich.

A wounded pregnant woman who was taken on a stretcher from a maternity hospital that was bombed by Russia last week has died, along with her baby, The Associated Press has learned.

Images of the woman, whom the AP has not been able to identify, were seen around the world, personifying the horror of an attack on civilians.

She was one of at least three pregnant women tracked down by AP from the maternity hospital that was bombarded Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The other two survived, along with their newborn daughters.

Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about a damaged power line at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), now external power supply has been restored, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said, according to a report in ANI.

The fate of hundreds of planes leased by Russian airlines from foreign companies grew murkier Monday after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law letting the airlines register those planes and continue flying them.

Russian state media said the law will let Russian airlines keep their fleets and operate foreign planes on routes within Russia.

Many of the planes used by Russian airlines are leased from foreign companies, including several in Ireland, a member of the European Union. Last month, the EU banned the sale or leasing of planes to Russia as part of sanctions to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. It gave leasing companies until March 28 to end current contracts in Russia. (AP)

• A Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighbourhood, killing one person, Ukraine's emergency agency said.
• In an area outside Kyiv, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting and was hospitalised, the network said.
• A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, local authorities said.
• Airstrikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also reverberated overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.
• Nine people were killed in a rocket attack on a TV tower in the western village of Antopol, according to the region's governor.

• A convoy of 160 civilian cars left the encircled port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported, in a rare glimmer of hope a week and a half into the lethal siege that has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.
• Overnight, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital.
• Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed when the Russians struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft plant and produces many of the world's biggest cargo planes.
• Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.

The UN's top court said it will give a judgment Wednesday on Ukraine's charge that Russia falsely justified its invasion by accusations of genocide, Agence France Presse reported.

Kyiv filed the case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, demanding that the tribunal order an end to the offensive. It accuses Russia of illegally trying to justify its war under an international convention by falsely alleging that Ukraine committed genocide in regions held by pro-Russian separatists.

Russia declined to turn up to a hearing at the UN court on March 7. The court in The Hague said in a statement it would announce its judgment on Wednesday at 1500 GMT.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to make a statement on the situation in Ukraine at 2:30 pm in the Parliament on Tuesday.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is threatening the global food supply and putting developing countries, especially the world’s poorest, at risk, the United Nations chief and the head of the U.N. food agency warned.

More than 40 African and least-developed countries import at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and 18 of them import at least 50%, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters. These countries include Egypt, Congo, Burkina Faso, Leban, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, he said.

In 2022, Ukraine’s GDP will shrink by at least 10 per cent if the war ends soon, The Kyiv Independent quoted the IMF as saying. However, the war-torn country can lose 25-35 per cent of its GDP by the end of the year if the war continues at the current pace.

The European Union announced late Monday that the 27-nation bloc has approved a new set of sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

France, which holds the EU presidency, said the bloc “in consultation with our international partners, has approved a fourth package of sanctions targeting individuals and entities involved in the aggression against Ukraine, as well as several sectors of the Russian economy.”

The French presidency said in a statement that the bloc also approved a declaration to the World Trade Organization “on suspending the application of the most-favored-nation clause for Russia and suspending the examination of Belarus’ application for accession to the WTO.”

Altogether, EU restrictive measures now apply to a total of 862 individuals and 53 entities.