Russia Ukraine War News Live: Firefighters work amid the debris of residential houses that were destroyed during shelling in a settlement outside Kharkiv as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, Ukraine, March 28, 2022. (Reuters)Russia Ukraine War Crisis Live: The United States and Russia are both headed to India to lobby its government, which has called for a ceasefire but not condemned Russia’s invasion. Meanwhile, British military intelligence said that Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.
Ukraine reacted with scepticism to Russia’s promise in negotiations to scale down military operations around Kyiv and Chernihiv as some Western countries expected Moscow to intensify its offensive in other parts of the country. Talks took place in an Istanbul palace more than a month into the Russian invasion.
US President Joe Biden is sending his top advisor and key person leading his administration’s economic sanctions on Russia to India, which so far has refused to toe the American line and maintained its own independent strategic position. The Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh, an Indian American, will be in New Delhi on March 30 and 31, the White House said Tuesday.
A woman holds a child next to a destroyed bridge during evacuation from the Irpin town, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine March 28, 2022 | Reuters
Ukraine President Zelenskyy said that while the signals from Tuesday's Russia-Ukraine peace talks are positive, only concrete results can be trusted.
British military intelligence said that Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.
Germany's economy minister said Wednesday he was triggering the early warning level for gas supplies amid Russia's continued demand to be paid in rubles.
Robert Habeck told reporters that this was the first of three warning levels and entails the establishment of a crisis team in his ministry that will heighten monitoring of the gas supply situation.
Habeck said he took the measure after Moscow indicated it would pass a bill to require payment in rubles despite the Group of Seven countries rejecting this demands on Monday. He said that Germany's gas storages are currently filled to about 25% capacity. (AP)
In the days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Twitter accounts shared messages of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
They attempted to deflect criticism of the war by comparing it to conflicts instigated by Western countries. Their commentary — along with tweets from other users who condemned it — made the hashtag #IStandWithPutin trend on Twitter in several regions around the world.
While some of the accounts said they were based in Nigeria and South Africa, the majority of those with a declared location on Twitter claimed to be from India and targeted their messages to other Indian users, researchers said. Read more
Luhansk region Governor says residential areas of Ukraine's Lysychansk were shelled by heavy artillery. (Reuters)
India has called for a "purposeful engagement" by Russia and Ukraine in the ongoing talks and expressed hope that an understanding can be reached soon towards immediate de-escalation of tensions.
Russia and Ukraine held the latest round of talks on Tuesday in Istanbul. Moscow said that it will significantly scale back military operations near Ukraine's capital and a northern city, as the outlines of a possible deal to end the grinding war which started on February 24.
"India remains deeply concerned at the ongoing situation, which continues to deteriorate since the beginning of the hostilities," India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti said. (PTI)
Today, the global media is focused on the war in Ukraine, with images and footage of death, destruction, agony and despair being beamed live for everyone who cares to see the havoc that a war causes. On February 24, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, NATO activated its multinational response force for the first time in the military alliance’s 73-year history. “NATO is responding to this crisis with speed and unity,” said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the grouping. “We must reset our collective defence and deterrence for the longer term; today we tasked our military commanders to develop options across all domains,” he said later.
In an extraordinary meeting of NATO members, formal requests were made by officials of eight Eastern European and Baltic nations on February 24, including Poland, to invoke Article 4 of NATO’s 1949 treaty. Article 4 allows any member nation to call for a consultation of the organisation’s governing body when “the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the parties is threatened”.
In Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, amid the deadly rumble of heavy Russian artillery, there is much that feels familiar. Not least a terrible feeling of dread.
Nearly 30 years ago, I was in Grozny, capital of Chechnya, a territory in southern Russia that dared declare independence from Moscow as the Soviet Union was breaking apart. The Chechens paid heavily for their presumption. The Russian army twice invaded and twice flattened the city in what has become a familiar Russian playbook for imposing control over outlying regions of the former Russian empire and bludgeoning people into submission.
Ukraine is very different from Chechnya, which was a small territory of just 1 million people in the North Caucasus. Ukraine is a sovereign nation with a population of more than 40 million, an armed force of over 200,000 troops and a capital city of 3 million or more inhabitants.
Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations about the naval mines that have been set adrift in the Black Sea, threatening shipping.
The Russian military has alleged that the Ukrainian military has used old naval mines to protect the coast against a Russian landing and some of them have been ripped off their anchors by a storm and left adrift.
Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev reaffirmed Tuesday that "the threat of Ukrainian mines drifting along the coastline of Black Sea states remains." The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry responded in a statement Tuesday, accusing Russia of using Ukrainian mines it seized after the 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and setting them adrift to "discredit Ukraine before international partners." (AP)
The UN food chief warned Tuesday the war in Ukraine has created "a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe" and will have a global impact "beyond anything we've seen since World War II" because many of the Ukrainian farmers who produce a significant amount of the world's wheat are now fighting Russians.
David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, told the UN Security Council that already high food prices are skyrocketing.
His agency was feeding 125 million people around the world before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, and Beasley said it has had to start cutting their rations because of rising food, fuel and shipping costs. (AP)
The first glimmer of hope for Ukraine may have emerged from Istanbul, but no one’s taking any chances in Rzeszow. This small town in southeastern Poland, with a population of just 2 lakh and a city about 10 km wide, continues to be the hub of a massive military transfer operation that has enabled Ukraine to put up an unexpectedly resolute defence against Russia.
At the heart of Rzeszow is City Hall, which has Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag in the front along with the white-and-red of Poland. And, it’s through Rzeszow’s civil airport, barely 100 km from the border, that weapons shipped from the West are transported to Ukraine, which then make their way to the frontlines — from Kyiv to Mariupol.
Marek Swierczynski, a top military analyst in Poland, told The Indian Express that Rzeszow “has become the main spot” for the transfer of weapons that have stalled Russia’s advances across the front. Once military equipment lands at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, it is loaded onto trucks and other local vehicles, and taken to Ukraine through E40, the longest east-west highway in Europe.
➡️ Share markets and global borrowing costs surged on signs of progress in talks. Ukrainian bonds and Russia's roubles also benefited, while the oil price dropped.
➡️ Russia retaliated in what it has called an "economic war" with the West by offering to buy back $2 billion Eurobonds maturing next month in roubles rather than dollars.
➡️ Holcim, the world's biggest cement-maker, said it was exiting the Russian market; Japan will ban the export of high-end cars and luxury goods to Russia; Germany wants to end all fossil fuel imports from Russia.
➡️ Moscow's invasion has been halted on most fronts by strong resistance, with Ukrainians recapturing territory.
➡️ A Russian rocket hit an administration building in Mykolaiv, killing at least 12 people.
➡️ Russia said it destroyed a fuel depot.
➡️ Defence Minister Shoigu said Russia had degraded Ukraine's military and would respond if Nato supplied planes and air defence systems.
➡️ Russia is promising to scale down military operations around the capital Kyiv, while Ukraine for its part is mooting the adoption of neutral status, in confidence-building steps that may help de-escalate the five-week war.
➡️ Ukraine proposed not joining alliances or hosting bases of foreign troops.
➡️ The talks in Istanbul began with a "cold welcome" and no handshake. They are set to continue today.
➡️ Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich was there.
➡️ The United States is sceptical of Russia's seriousness in pursuing peace.
➡️ Russian President Putin and French counterpart Macron talk again by phone.
➡️ Ukrainian President Zelenskiy will address Australia's parliament on Thursday.
US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, who has been the architect of sanctions against Russia, is likely to visit India on Thursday for bilateral meetings, sources said on Tuesday.
South Block sources said that Singh, one of the key officials crafting the sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, will brief the Indian establishment on the “scale and scope” of the sanctions.
“The Americans and the Europeans have been asking the Indian officials to make sure that Russia is not able to circumvent the sanctions… Singh will be able to convey the urgency of the implementation of sanctions,” a source said.
Ukraine reacted with scepticism to Russia's promise in negotiations to scale down military operations around Kyiv and another city as some Western countries expected Moscow to intensify its offensive in other parts of the country.
"Ukrainians are not naive people," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Tuesday."Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbass, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result."
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said that Russia's promise to curtail military operations in some areas was "probably a rotation of individual units and aims to mislead." (Reuters)
Russia announced Tuesday it will significantly scale back military operations near Ukraine's capital and a northern city, as the outlines of a possible deal to end the grinding war came into view at the latest round of talks.
Ukraine's delegation at the conference, held in Istanbul, laid out a framework under which the country would declare itself neutral and its security would be guaranteed by an array of other nations.
Moscow's public reaction was positive, and the negotiations are expected to resume Wednesday, five weeks into what has devolved into a bloody war of attrition, with thousands dead and almost 4 million Ukrainians fleeing the country. (AP)
US President Joe Biden Tuesday appeared to be unconvinced on the Russian announcement that it is scaling back its operations in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
"We'll see. I don't read anything into it until I see what their actions are," Biden told reporters at the White House when asked about the Russian announcement on Tuesday that it will fundamentally scale back its military operations near Kyiv and another northern city in Ukraine.
"We'll see if they follow through on what they're suggesting. There are negotiations that have begun and continued today. One in Turkey and others," he said, adding that he had a meeting with the heads of state of France, Germany and the Great Britain. (PTI)