Local residents sit on a bench near an apartment building destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 25, 2022. (Reuters)Russia-Ukraine War Crisis Live: The war in Ukraine has killed 136 children in the 31 days since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s office of the prosecutor general said Saturday in a message on the Telegram app. Meanwhile, Moscow signalled Friday it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east as Ukrainian forces went on the offensive to recapture towns outside the capital Kyiv.
In other news, about 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week on a Mariupol theater that was being used as a shelter, Ukrainian authorities said, in what would make it the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians yet.
Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi said in Lok Sabha that India is in the process of analysing the impact of Western sanctions on Moscow for India-Russia bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Meanwhile, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari justified the hikes in fuel prices, thrice in the last four days, saying that the oil prices had gone up within the international market owing to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which was beyond the Indian government’s control.
A Ukrainian firefighter sprays water inside a house destroyed by shelling, in Kyiv, Ukraine (AP photo)
Russia was conducting drills on islands claimed by Tokyo, Japanese media said on Saturday, days after Moscow halted peace talks with Japan because of its sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s Eastern Military District said it was conducting military drills on the Kuril islands with more than 3,000 troops and hundreds of pieces of army equipment, Russia’s Interfax news agency said Friday.
It did not say where on the island chain, connecting Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula and Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, the drills were taking place. Japanese media said they were on territory the Soviet Union seized at the end of World War Two that is claimed by Tokyo.
The war in Ukraine has killed 136 children in the 31 days since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine's office of the prosecutor general said Saturday in a message on the Telegram app.
Of the total, 64 children have been killed in the Kyiv region, the office said. A further 50 children have died in the Donetsk region, it said.Additionally, 199 children have been wounded. (Reuters)
➡️ Ukraine's Zelenskyy pushed for further talks with Russia as Moscow signalled it was scaling back its ambitions, focussing on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east after attacks elsewhere stalled.
➡️ Russia said the first phase of its military operation was mostly complete and it would focus on "liberating" Ukraine's breakaway Donbas region. Reframing his goals may make it easier for Putin to claim a face-saving victory, analysts said.
➡️ Three hundred people may have been killed in the bombing of a Mariupol theatre, local officials said. Russia said 1,351 of its
soldiers had died, while the U.N. said it had confirmed 1,081 civilian deaths in Ukraine.
➡️ It is "foolish" to believe Western sanctions could affect Moscow, as they will only unite Russian society, said ex-president Dmitry Medvedev.
➡️ Thousands of miles from Ukraine, Russia was conducting military drills on islands claimed by Tokyo, Japanese media said, days after Moscow halted peace talks with Japan because of its sanctions over the invasion.
➡️ About 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine, which had a prewar population of 44 million.
➡️ The UN is looking into allegations that civilians were forcibly moved from the besieged southern city of Mariupol to Russia.
Russia's ambassador to France was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry over an earlier embassy Twitter post that Paris deemed unacceptable, the foreign ministry said.
The Russian Embassy in Paris on Thursday had posted a picture depicting a body lying on a table called "Europe" with characters representing the United States and European Union jabbing needles into it.
"We made that clear today to the Russian Ambassador," the ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters. "We are trying to maintain a demanding channel of dialogue with Russia and these actions are completely inappropriate." Speaking to reporters in Brussels, President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the cartoons as false propaganda."It's unacceptable. We believe in a respectful dialogue and will continue it and that means respect on all sides. It's a mistake. It's been corrected and I hope it won't happen again. We demanded it."
Twenty-five years ago, Joe Biden visited Warsaw, Poland, with a warning: Even though the Soviet Union had collapsed, some of NATO's original members weren't doing enough to ensure the alliance's collective defense.
"Now it is time for the people of Western Europe to invest in the security of their continent for the next century," said Biden, then a US senator.
Biden, now president, speaks again in Warsaw Saturday as European security faces its most precarious test since World War II. The bloody war in Ukraine has entered its second month, and Western leaders have spent the week consulting over contingency plans in case the conflict mutates or spreads. (AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday formally approved a law which says people found guilty of spreading fake news about the work of officials abroad can be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail, Interfax news agency said.
The penalties are similar to those allowed under a law adopted earlier this month which aims to punish those who spread false information about the Russian armed forces, the agency said.
The law was enacted after the invasion of Ukraine. Interfax cited a senior legislator as saying the new law was needed because people were spreading false news about Russia's embassies and other organizations operating abroad. (Reuters)
Mariupol's city government says the Kremlin's main political party has opened a political office in a shopping mall on the outskirts of the besieged city.
According to the post on the city's Telegram channel, the United Russia office is distributing promotional materials as well as mobile phone cards for an operator that functions in the nearby Russia-backed separatist regions.
Mariupol's communication links have been all but severed since the siege began in early March. Cell phone, television and radio towers have been targeted in Russian airstrikes and artillery barrages. (AP)
The deputy head of Russia's military general staff says that 1,351 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine.
Col.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi also said Friday that 3,825 have been wounded. Nato estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine.
The Russian figure did not appear to include the Moscow-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, and it was not clear whether the toll encompassed Russian forces not part of the Defense Ministry, such as the National Guard. (AP)
“Like sex in Victorian England . . . race is a taboo subject in contemporary polite society.” This is how the late R J Vincent, a highly regarded British international relations theorist, began his 1982 article, ‘Race in international relations’. Behind the diffidence about race, he said, there lurk dire apprehensions about racial divisions in international affairs. Apparently, Alec Douglas-Home, British prime minister in the early Sixties, was among the few politicians to publicly acknowledge such forebodings. Douglas-Home is reported to have said, “I believe the greatest danger ahead of us is that the world might be divided on racial lines. I see no danger, not even the nuclear bomb, which could be so catastrophic as that”.
His fears were not unfounded. It was during his brief tenure as prime minister (1963-64) that radical Black American leader Malcolm X appealed to the leaders of newly-independent African countries to place the issue of the persecution and violence against Blacks on the UN agenda. “If South African racism is not a domestic issue,” he said, “then American racism also is not a domestic issue.” US officials worried that if Malcolm X were to convince just one African government, US domestic politics might become the subject of UN debates. It would undermine US efforts to establish itself as leader of the West and a protector of human rights.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added Russia's AO Kaspersky Lab to its list of communications equipment and service providers deemed threats to US national security.
Kaspersky is the first Russian company listed. US officials have long said that running Kaspersky software could open American networks to malign activity from Moscow and banned Kaspersky's flagship antivirus product from federal networks in 2017. Moscow-based Kaspersky has consistently denied being a tool of the Russian government.
In naming Kaspersky, the FCC announcement did not cite Russia's invasion of Ukraine or recent warnings by President Joe Biden of potential cyberattacks by Russia in response to US sanctions and support of Ukraine. Kaspersky said in a statement that it was disappointed in the FCC decision, arguing it was "made on political grounds." (Reuters)
The United States is expanding efforts to help Ukrainian refugees. It has agreed to accept up to 100,000 people escaping from the war and to increase support for Eastern European nations that have taken in most of the people fleeing Russian forces.
It’s a modest number relative to the need, with an estimated 3.6 million refugees and millions more displaced within Ukraine. It’s also modest by historical standards, far less than the number who came from Southeast Asia decades ago.
Here is a look at the situation.
Ukrainian national Anna Horodetska, 30, had been looking forward to her wedding in March, with Delhi High Court lawyer Anubhav Bhasin, 33. The couple had decided to go for a low-key affair in South Delhi instead of a big fat Indian wedding.
Then, Russia invaded her country.
Hiding in a bunker in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv soon after the invasion began, Anna spoke over the phone to Anubhav, who told her to stay put. But she decided she had to reach India one way or the other.
Author J K Rowling is pushing back after Russian President Vladimir Putin dragged her into a rant against Western efforts to "cancel" Russian culture.
"Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics," the Harry Potter author said Friday in a tweet linked to an article about jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
Putin earlier compared recent Western criticism of Russia with efforts to "cancel" Rowling over her views on transgender issues. Rowling has been criticised after saying she supported transgender rights but did not believe in "erasing" the concept of biological sex.
"The notorious cancel culture has become a cancellation of culture. Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov are excluded from concert posters, and Russian writers and their books are also banned," Putin said during a videoconference with cultural figures. (AP)
Moscow signalled it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the East as Ukrainian forces went on the offensive to recapture towns outside the capital Kyiv.
In an announcement that appeared to indicate more limited goals, the Russian Defence Ministry said the first phase of its operation was mostly complete and it would now focus on the eastern Donbass region, which has pro-Russia separatist enclaves.
Reframing Russia's goals may make it easier for President Vladimir Putin to claim a face-saving victory, military analysts said. (Reuters)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has again appealed to Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but says Ukraine would not agree to give up any of its territories for the sake of peace.
In his nightly video address to the nation Friday, Zelenskyy appeared to be responding to Col. Gen Sergei Rudskoi, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, who said Russian forces would now focus on "the main goal, the liberation of Donbas." Russian-backed separatists have controlled part of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine since 2014, and Russian forces have been battling to seize more of the region from Ukraine, including the besieged city of Mariupol.
Rudskoi's statement also was a suggestion that Russia may be backing away from trying to take Kyiv and other major cities where its offensive has stalled. Zelenskyy noted that Russian forces have lost thousands of troops but still haven't been able to take Kyiv or Kharkiv, the second-largest city. (AP)
European Union leaders urged Russia on Friday to fully respect its obligations under international law and abide by recent order by international court of justice under which told Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
"Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine grossly violates international law and is causing massive loss of life and injury to civilians," the leaders of the 27-nation EU said in a joint statement.
"Russia is directing attacks against the civilian population and is targeting civilian objects, including hospitals, medical facilities, schools and shelters. These war crimes must stop immediately," they said. (Reuters)
Staff on duty at Chernobyl's Russian-held radioactive waste facilities have not been rotated in four days and Ukraine cannot say when that will change because of fighting in the town where many of them live, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday.
"Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency today that there had been no rotation of technical staff at (Chernobyl) since 21 March and it did not know when it might next take place," the IAEA said in a statement. Staff now on duty replaced a shift that was there for more than three weeks. (Reuters)
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday Russian forces had effectively surrounded the northern city of Chernihiv and were bombarding areas where residents were stuck without electricity, heating and water.
Chernihiv's mayor, Vladyslav Atroshenko, said bombing had destroyed a bridge linking the city to Ukraine's capital to the south, severing the main route for humanitarian aid and the evacuation of wounded people.Reuters could not confirm the accounts from Chernihiv, which lies near the border with Belarus.
Russia's defence ministry earlier said its forces had "blocked" Ukrainian cities, including Chernihiv, to tie down the Ukrainian military while Russia focused on taking control of the eastern Donbass region. (Reuters)
The deputy head of Russia's military general staff says that 1,351 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine. Col.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi also said Friday that 3,825 have been wounded.
NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine. The Russian figure did not appear to include the Moscow-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, and it was not clear whether the toll encompassed Russian forces not part of the Defence Ministry, such as the National Guard. (AP)
A senior White House official said on Friday India's position at the United Nations over the crisis in Ukraine has been "unsatisfactory" but was also unsurprising given its historical relationship with Russia.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, director for the Indo-Pacific on the White House National Security Council, told an online forum hosted by Washington's School of Advanced International Studies India needed alternatives to continued close ties with Russia.
"I think we would certainly all acknowledge and agree that when it comes to votes at the UN, India's position on the current crisis has been unsatisfactory, to say the least. But it's also been totally unsurprising," she said. (Reuters)