Russia Ukraine War News Live: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks on a screen inside a so-called Russian War Crimes House alongside the World Economy Forum in Davos, Switzerland, May 22, 2022. (AP/PTI)Russia Ukraine War Live, Mariupol Fall to Russia: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the West to stop playing around with Russia and impose tougher sanctions on Moscow to end its “senseless war” in Ukraine, adding his country would remain independent, the only question was at what price.
Zelenskyy’s criticism of the West has mounted in recent days as the European Union moves slowly towards a possible Russian oil embargo and as thousands of Russian forces try to encircle two key eastern cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Meanwhile, Moscow pressed the West on Thursday to lift sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, seeking to shift the blame for a growing food crisis that has been worsened by Kyiv’s inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin told Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Moscow “is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizer on the condition that politically motivated restrictions imposed by the West are lifted,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call.
Local resident Anatolii Virko plays a piano outside a house likely damaged after a Russian bombing in Velyka Kostromka village, Ukraine, May 19, 2022. (AP)
The United States on Friday won the latest round of a legal battle to seize a $325-million Russian-owned superyacht in Fiji, with the case now appearing headed for the Pacific nation's top court.
The case has highlighted the thorny legal ground the US finds itself on as it tries to seize assets of Russian oligarchs around the world. Those intentions are welcomed by many governments and citizens who oppose the war in Ukraine, but some actions are raising questions about how far US jurisdiction extends.
Fiji's Court of Appeal on Friday dismissed an appeal by Feizal Haniff, who represents the company that legally owns the superyacht Amadea. Haniff had argued the US had no jurisdiction under Fiji's mutual assistance laws to seize the vessel, at least until a court sorted out who really owned the Amadea.
Haniff said he now plans to take the case to Fiji's Supreme Court and will apply for a court order to stop US agents sailing the Amadea from Fiji before the appeal is heard. (AP)
The Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk is the centre of fierce fighting in the east. Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk says it's holding out even though a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group went into a city hotel.
Stryuk said at least 1,500 people have been killed in Sievierodonetsk and about 12,000 to 13,000 remain in the city, where he said 60% of residential buildings have been destroyed.
Sievierodonetsk is the only part of the Luhansk region in the Donbas under Ukrainian government control, and Russian forces have been trying to cut it off from the rest of Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Stryuk said the main road between the neighbouring town of Lysychansk and Bakhmut to the southwest remains open, but travel is dangerous. He said only 12 people were able to be evacuated Thursday. (AP)
A South Korean volunteer fighter returned home from Ukraine on Friday saying he had to recover from injuries and was ready to face a police investigation on suspicion of breaking the law by defying a government ban on travel to Ukraine.
Volunteers from around the world have flocked to Ukraine to help it fight Russian forces that invaded on February 24. Russia calls its action in Ukraine a "special operation".
Rhee Keun, a former member of South Korean naval special forces who is also known as Ken Rhee, flew back to South Korea with media broadcasting his return live on television. "I haven't left the battlefield completely but came to recover from injuries. I want to go back ... because the war has not ended, there's still a lot to do," Rhee said at the airport.
Rhee said he was suffering from cruciate ligament injury in both legs. He was able to walk. (Reuters)
Ukraine full-back Oleksandr Zinchenko said his team hope to make their country proud when they take on Scotland in a World Cup playoff semi-final next week.
Ukraine play Scotland at Hampden Park on June 1 in a match that was postponed from March due to Russia's invasion. It will be Ukraine's first competitive match since the invasion began in February. The Ukrainian Premier League season was abandoned last month.
"The first period when it just started, it was so complicated to be focused on football," Zinchenko told BBC. "All my thoughts were with Ukraine, Ukrainian people. I would say for everyone, for every Ukrainian footballer ... I can promise all the Ukrainian people that every one of us is going to give everything to win the game and to make them proud of us and just maybe for a few seconds we would like to give them this smile." (Reuters)
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to stop playing around with Russia and impose tougher sanctions on Moscow to end its "senseless war" in Ukraine, adding his country would remain independent, the only question was at what price.
Zelenskyy's criticism of the West has mounted in recent days as the European Union moves slowly towards a possible Russian oil embargo and as thousands of Russian forces try to encircle two key eastern cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
"Ukraine will always be an independent state and it won't be broken. The only question is what price our people will have to pay for their freedom, and what price Russia will pay for this senseless war against us," said Zelenskyy in a late-night address on Thursday. "The catastrophic unfolding events could be still stopped if the world treated the situation in Ukraine as if it were facing the same situation, if the powers that be did not play around with Russia but really pressed to end the war." (Reuters)
Moscow pressed the West Thursday to lift sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, seeking to shift the blame for a growing food crisis that has been worsened by Kyiv's inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Moscow “is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizer on the condition that politically motivated restrictions imposed by the West are lifted," according to a Kremlin readout of the call.
Ukraine is one of the world's largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but the war and a Russian blockade of its ports has halted much of that flow, endangering world food supplies. Many of those ports are now also heavily mined. (Reuters)
Ukraine is desperately trying to export its vast stores of grain by road, river and rail to help avert a global food crisis but has no chance of hitting its targets unless Russia's blockade of its Black Sea ports is lifted, a government official said.
Before Russia sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, the country had the capacity to export up to 6 million tonnes of wheat, barley and maize a month but exports collapsed to just 300,000 tonnes in March and 1.1 million in April.
While the government wants to lift that to 2 million, it is hitting logistical bottlenecks ranging from a lack of train wagons, fuel and trucks to freight wagons using a wider rail gauge than its neighbours, obstacles that could take years and billions of dollars to overcome. At the moment, Ukraine has at least 20 million tonnes of surplus grain in silos and the APK-Inform agricultural consultancy estimates another 40 million could be available for export once the next harvest comes in this summer. (Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was glad some foreign companies had left Russia because home-grown businesses could take their place, and he warned the West that Moscow would still find ways to acquire advanced technology and luxury goods.
Putin has cast the invasion of Ukraine as a turning point in Russian history: a revolt by Moscow against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine says it is fighting for its survival. Besides the death and horror of war, the conflict and the West's attempt to isolate Russia as punishment have crimped global economic growth and triggered a wave of inflation as the prices of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soar.
Since the war, a host of major foreign investors - ranging from BP to McDonald's Corp - have exited just as the Russian economy faces its worst contraction since the years following the turmoil of the Soviet collapse. "Sometimes when you look at those who leave - thank God, perhaps? We will occupy their niches: our business, our production – it has already grown, and it will safely sit on the ground prepared by our partners," Putin said. (Reuters)
Russian gas giant Gazprom said on Thursday its board was recommending a dividend of 52.53 roubles per share on its 2021 results, up from 12.55 roubles for the previous year. It said the total payout will amount to 1.244 trillion roubles ($20.10 billion), or 50% of adjusted group net income, adding that this was a record high in Russian stock market history.
The 50% ratio was the same as before, but the payout was higher because of record earnings last year on the back of high oil and gas prices. After a volatile session in expectation of the dividend announcement, Gazprom's shares were up 9.4% on the news.
Gazprom said an annual general meeting of shareholders is due to approve the dividend on June 30. It set July 20 as the deadline for the list of eligible shareholders. A number of Russian companies, including the country's largest lender Sberbank, have decided or were instructed by the government not pay dividends, amid sweeping Western sanctions imposed after Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. (Reuters)
A World Health Organization assembly on Thursday voted to adopt a Western-led resolution condemning Russia's actions in Ukraine which it says led to a health emergency. The resolution was approved by 88 votes in favour and 12 against, with 53 abstentions, the meeting's president Hiroki Nakatani said prompting a standing ovation by the resolution's backers.
Typically, the WHO annual assemblies make decisions by consensus. A parallel proposal submitted by Russia which mimics the language of the original one has yet to be voted on by the member states.
McDonald's Russia said on Thursday it plans to reopen restaurants to the public from June 12 under a new brand that will be introduced separately, after the burger chain said it was selling to a local licensee. The fast-food company is selling its restaurants in Russia, exiting in opposition to Moscow's actions in Ukraine and ending more than three decades of the "Golden Arches" in the country. (Reuters)
Ukraine's richest man says he plans to sue Russia over what he said was $17 billon to $20 billion in losses caused by its bombardment of steel plants he owns in the devastated city of Mariupol.
The Azovstal steelworks suffered heavy damage from Russian bombing and shelling after the sprawling plant became the last bastion of defence in the southern port city. The Illich Steel and Iron Works, also owned by Akhmetov, was also badly damaged during Russian shelling of Mariupol.
"We will definitely sue Russia and demand proper compensation for all losses and lost business," Rinat Akhmetov, who owns the biggest Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest, told Ukrainian news portal mrpl.city in an interview. Asked how much money Metinvest had lost because of the damage to Azovstal and Illich, he said: "The replacement cost ... due to Russian aggression is from $17 to $20 billion. The final amount will be determined in a lawsuit against Russia." (Reuters)
At least four civilians were killed and several wounded in Russian shelling of the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine on Thursday, local authorities said. "The occupiers are shelling the regional centre again," Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Synehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app, urging residents to go to shelters.
Kharkiv, Ukraine's second biggest city, had been relatively quiet in recent days as Ukrainian forces regained territory around it and pushed back Russian troops. The city restarted its metro service on Tuesday and asked the hundreds of people who had used the underground as a bomb shelter to free up the train carriages. (Reuters)
The appeal of Russian money is making some countries tolerant of its aggression, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday as he rejected calls to accept territorial concessions to appease Moscow.
"Today we hear that allegedly Russia should be given what it wants, supposedly it is necessary to agree that some peoples may be deprived of some of their foreign policy rights," Zelenskiy said in a video address to the Latvian parliament. "We must fight for the principle that nation(hood) is important," he said. (Reuters)
The Kremlin on Thursday said the West only had itself to blame for a brewing food crisis due to problems getting Ukraine's grain out to world markets, demanding the United States and its allies scrap what it cast as illegal sanctions.
Besides the death and devastation sown by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the war and the West's attempt to isolate Russia as punishment have sent the price of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soaring, hurting global growth. The United Nations, which says a global food crisis is deepening, is trying to broker a deal to unblock Ukraine's grain exports though Western leaders have blamed Russia for holding the world to ransom by blockading Ukrainian ports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected those accusations and said the West was to blame for the situation. "We categorically reject these accusations and, on the contrary, accuse Western countries that they have taken a number of illegal actions that led to this," Peskov told reporters. "They (the West) must cancel those illegal decisions that prevent the chartering of ships, that prevent the export of grain, and so on" so that supplies can resume, Peskov said. (Reuters)
Turkey is in negotiations with Russia and Ukraine to open a corridor via the Bosphorus for grain exports from Ukraine, a senior Turkish official told Reuters on Thursday. Ukraine's Black Sea ports have been blocked since Russia invaded in February and more than 20 million tonnes of grain are stuck in silos there.
Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies and the lack of exports from Ukraine is contributing to a growing global food crisis. "Turkey is negotiating with both Russia and Ukraine for the export of grains from Ukraine," the official said, requesting anonymity because the talks were confidential.
"With a corridor to be opened from Turkey, there was a demand for this grain to reach their targeted markets. Negotiations are still ongoing," the person added. President Tayyip Erdogan's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reuters)
Two captured Russian soldiers pleaded guilty on Thursday to shelling a town in eastern Ukraine in the second war crimes trial of the war. At the trial in the Kotelevska district court in central Ukraine, state prosecutors asked for Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov to be jailed for 12 years for violating the laws of war. A defence lawyer asked for leniency, saying the two soldiers had been following orders and repented.
Bobikin and Ivanov, who stood in a reinforced glass box, acknowledged being part of an artillery unit that fired at targets in the Kharkiv region from the Belgorod region in Russia. The shelling destroyed an educational establishment in the town of Derhachi, the prosecutors said. The servicemen, described as an artillery driver and a gunner, were captured after crossing the border and continuing the shelling, the prosecutor general's office said. (Reuters)
A proposal to condemn the regional health emergency triggered by Russia's aggression in Ukraine will come before a World Health Organisation (WHO) assembly on Thursday, prompting a rival resolution from Moscow that makes no mention of its own role in the crisis.
The original proposal, backed by the United States and more than 40 other countries, condemns Russia's actions but stops short of immediately suspending its voting rights at the UN health agency. The Russian document backed by Syria, which echoes the language of the first text, will also be decided on.
If the Western-led initiative passes nearly unanimously, observers say it would send a powerful political message that is rare in the multilateral system. (Reuters)
Now a prisoner of war, a Ukrainian Photographer-soldier Dmytro Kozatsky has captured the horrific ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His photos are his legacy. Kozatsky posted several images from his collection on his Twitter handle before he joined the troops from the Ukraine side.
All photos by Dmytro Kozatski, soldier of Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office via Associated Press. Browse through all images here.
Oil prices rose on Thursday, extending a cautious rally this week on signs of tight supply while the European Union (EU) wrangles with Hungary over plans to ban imports from Russia, the world's second-largest crude exporter, after it invaded Ukraine.
A bigger-than-expected drawdown in US crude inventories in the week to May 20, following soaring exports, buoyed the market on Wednesday. Analysts said the inventory draw and the prospect of an EU embargo on Russian oil, in retaliation for what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine, were pushing prices higher.
"The focus in oil markets is on the EU summit taking place next week, at which another attempt will be made to agree on an EU-wide embargo on Russian oil," said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management in a note. (Reuters)