Russian servicemen march during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, Monday, May 9, 2022. (AP Photo)Russia Ukraine War Highlights: Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday asserted that there was no doubt the military operation in Ukraine will achieve results, news agency TASS reported. He was speaking after overseeing the annual military parade on Moscow’s Red Square to mark the 77th Victory Day.
In his speech earlier, Putin said that the military action in Ukraine was a “timely” and “necessary” response to Western policies. He went on to say that troops and volunteers fighting in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region were fighting for their Motherland, Reuters reported. “The death of every soldier and officer is painful for us,” he said. “The state will do everything to take care of these families.”He finished his speech with a rallying cry to the assembled soldiers: “For Russia, For Victory, Hurrah!” Russia’s ‘Victory Day’, marks the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany during World War 2 in 1945. Massive military parades are held across the country and President Putin delivers his annual address from Red Square.
Meanwhile, Russian forces bombed a village school in eastern Ukraine killing about 60 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The governor of the Luhansk region said about 90 people were sheltering at the school in Bilohorivka on Saturday when it was bombed, AP reported.
Italian Premier Mario Draghi meets with US President Joe Biden this week in Washington as Europe faces another “whatever it takes” moment with Russia's war in Ukraine raging on its eastern flank.
Both Rome and Washington will emphasise their historic friendship and shared desire to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia's two-month-old invasion when the leaders meet on Tuesday. Energy, climate change and promoting global economic prosperity also are on the agenda. Still, there are differences in tone over the war, and public sentiment in Italy against sending arms to Ukraine is growing.
Draghi is pushing for even a limited truce to allow talks to resume, mindful also of the impact on Italy should the war spill over Ukraine's borders. Statements by Biden and his emissaries have been more aggressive, suggesting both regime change and the goal of weakening Russia.
These differences reflect not only Italy's geographic closeness to the fighting, but also its historic political and economic ties with Russia. Italy gets 40 per cent of its natural gas from Russia, and economic trade last year amounted to 20 billion euros. (AP)
Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery were conducting "storming operations" on the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, news agency Reuters quoted Ukrainian Defense Ministry as saying on Monday. The last of the civilians were evacuated from the plant Sunday night and around 2,000 fighters are believed to be holed up inside its bunkers.
While Defence Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk provided no other details or evidence, he said warned of future attacks by Russian bombers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday there was no doubt Moscow's "special military operation" in Ukraine would achieve its result, according to TASS news agency.
Putin was speaking after overseeing the annual military parade on Moscow's Red Square to mark the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. "All plans are being fulfilled. A result will be achieved - on that account, there is no doubt," he was quoted as saying. (Reuters)
Victory Day in Russia marks the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945. But this year, the May 9 anniversary comes at a time when Russian forces have intensified attacks against Ukraine and Moscow has faced criticism and condemnation for its aggression.
The commemoration of the anniversary also comes at a time when President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the war with Ukraine is similar to the circumstances that the Soviet Union faced when Hilter invaded in 1941. Putin has called Ukrainians “Nazi”-inspired nationalists and projected the war as a battle against these forces. Neha Banka takes a look at what Putin's speech means. Read here
The Biden administration ramped up a national security probe into Russia's AO Kaspersky Lab antivirus software earlier this year amid heightened fears of Russian cyberattacks after Moscow invaded Ukraine, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The case was referred to the Commerce Department by the Department of Justice last year, a fourth person said, but Commerce made little progress on it until the White House and other administration officials urged them to move forward in March, the three people added.
At issue is the risk that the Kremlin could use the antivirus software, which has privileged access to a computer's systems, to steal sensitive information from American computers or tamper with them as tensions escalate between Moscow and the West. (Reuters)
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Monday that Ukraine defeating the Russian army was very possible, while calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to come to terms with the fact that Moscow has lost in the long run.
"It is very possible that Ukraine will break the Russian army to the extent that they either have to go back to pre-February or they have to effectively fold in on itself," Wallace told an audience in the National Army Museum in London.
"He (Putin) must come to terms with how he's lost in the long run, and he's absolutely lost. Russia is not what it was." (Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin evoked the memory of Soviet heroism in World War Two on Monday to urge his army towards victory in Ukraine. Addressing massed ranks of servicemen on Red Square on the 77th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, Putin condemned what he called external threats to weaken and split Russia, and repeated familiar arguments he had used to justify its invasion - that NATO was creating threats right next to its borders.
He directly addressed soldiers fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine which Russia has pledged to "liberate" from Kyiv. "Defending the Motherland when its fate is being decided has always been sacred," he said. "Today you are fighting for our people in Donbas, for the security of Russia, our homeland." (Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the military action in Ukraine was timely and necessary response to Western policies. (Reuters)
In his annual ‘Victory Day’ address, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that troops and volunteers fighting in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region were fighting for their Motherland, Reuters reported. “The death of every soldier and officer is painful for us,” he said. “The state will do everything to take care of these families.”He finished his speech with a rallying cry to the assembled soldiers: “For Russia, For Victory, Hurrah!”
Ukraine's military is warning that there is a “high probability of missile strikes” amid Russia's war on the country. The warning came on Monday just ahead of Russia's planned Victory Day parade in Moscow.
The Ukrainian military's general staff also said that in Russian-controlled areas of Zaporizhzhia, Russian troops had begun the “seizure of personal documents from the local population without good reason.”
Ukraine said Russian troops seized the documents to force the local people to take part in Victory Day commemorations there. Ukraine's military also warned that Russia had located some 19 battalion tactical groups in Russia's Belgorod region, just across the border. (AP)
Patron, an expert bomb finder and perhaps Ukraine's smallest fighter, has been honored by the country's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, The New York Times reported.
Russian forces bombed a village school in eastern Ukraine killing about 60 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, as Russia prepared to mark the Monday anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
The governor of the Luhansk region said about 90 people were sheltering at the school in Bilohorivka on Saturday when it was bombed. "As a result of a Russian strike on Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, about 60 people were killed, civilians, who simply hid at the school, sheltering from shelling," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
There was no response from Moscow to the news. In the southern port of Mariupol, which has endured the most destructive fighting of the 10-week war, the deputy commander of the Azov regiment holed up in the Azovstal steel plant pleaded with the international community to help evacuate wounded soldiers. (AP)
Russia is set to celebrate ‘Victory Day’, which marks the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany during World War 2 in 1945. Massive military parades will take place across the country and President Vladimir Putin will deliver his annual address from Red Square.
Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday that its high-precision missiles had destroyed weapons and military equipment supplied to Ukrainian forces from the United States and unspecified Western countries at a railway station near the town of Soledar. The ministry also said that it had destroyed six depots storing missile and artillery weapons in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv regions while its air defences shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 warplane. (Reuters)
Russian shells struck the oil refinery at Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, damaging production facilities, the governor of Luhansk region said. Serhiy Haidai, writing on his Telegram channel, said the strike was one of a recent series of attacks and had damaged facilities, including areas where crude oil is received and mixed with other elements of the refining process. Haidai said persistent artillery fire was preventing firefighting teams from working. (Reuters)
US President Joe Biden met with his G7 counterparts and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine and new measures to punish Moscow. Biden, who has lauded unity among the Group of Seven large economies in standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was scheduled to meet by video conference with his fellow leaders at 11:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT) from his home in Delaware, where he is spending the weekend. A White House official said the meeting was underway.
The White House said the leaders would discuss adding to the sanctions that Western countries have imposed on Russia since its Feb. 24 invasion. "They will discuss the latest developments in Russia's war against Ukraine; the global impact of Putin's war; showing support for Ukraine and Ukraine's future; and demonstrating continued G7 unity in our collective response, including building on our unprecedented sanctions to impose severe costs for Putin's war," the White House said in a statement. (Reuters)
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday told CBS that Congress needs to pass by the end of the month a bill that would give Ukraine $33 billion in military and humanitarian aid. (Reuters)
US first lady Jill Biden met Ukrainian refugees in eastern Slovakia on Sunday, the last full day of her tour of Romania and Slovakia to visit US servicemen deployed there and women and children who fled Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Biden spoke to families, volunteers and local authority workers at a refugee centre in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice, one of the main transit points for over 400,000 Ukrainian refugees who have crossed the border to Slovakia.
The United Nations says 5.8 million people in total have fled Ukraine since Russia started what it describes as a "special military operation" in Ukraine on Feb. 24. "When the war started we understood that nowhere in Ukraine is safe," Viktoria Kutocha, a teacher who fled the western city of Uzhhorod with her 7-year old daughter, told Biden. (Reuters)
The president of the German parliament Baerbel Bas arrived in Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine with the prime minister and to commemorate victims of World War Two, a German parliament official said on Twitter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier gave an emotional address for Victory Day, when Europe remembers the formal surrender of Germany to the Allies in World War Two, saying that "evil has returned" to Ukraine, but it wouldn't be able to escape responsibility.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to take part in a G7 virtual discussion later on Sunday on the war in Ukraine that will be attended by Zelenskiy. Ahead of the G7 meeting Enrico Brissa, Bundestag's chief of protocol, posted on Twitter pictures of Bas arriving by train to meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. (Reuters)
Ukrainian troops retreated from the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, the governor of Luhansk region said on Sunday, confirming previous reports that it had been taken. The head of Russia's republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, had said on Sunday his troops had taken control of most of Popasna.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukraine television that Ukrainian troops had retreated to take up more fortified positions, adding: "Everything was destroyed there." Russian forces launched a new ofensive push in April along most of Ukraine's eastern flank, with some of most intense attacks and shelling taking place recently around Popasna in the Luhansk region. (Reuters)