Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Oligarch Roman Abramovich has offered support to war-torn country, says Volodymyr Zelenskyy
He is one of Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile associates but Roman Abramovich has made an unexpected offer to Ukraine, as Kevin Rudd says Biden was wrong about Putin.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that Ukraine had received offers of support from Russian businessmen and that Kyiv would give refuge to anyone who backed his country’s fight against Moscow.
During an interview with Russian journalists Mr Zelenskyy said he had received signals of support from Russian businessmen, including Roman Abramovich.
The Ukrainian leader said the businessmen had told him they wanted to “do something” and “help somehow” to de-escalate Russia’s now month-long military assault on Ukraine.
“Some said that they were ready to help rebuild the country after the war,” Mr Zelenskyy said during the interview conducted by journalists from several independent Russian media.
Western countries including the United States and the EU have imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, including placing oligarchs and other individuals close to Mr Putin on sanctions lists.
Mr Abramovich was among the individuals listed under new sanctions adopted by the European Union last week.
Mr Zelenskyy said that some Russian business had offered support in the hope of being excluded from penalties in return.
He also said that Ukraine was prepared to help Russian businessmen who aided Kyiv’s fight against Russian troops.
“We are ready to provide them with security and then provide work and development of their business,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
Mr Abramovich, 55, who bought the Chelsea football club in 2003, has denied claims that he bought it on Mr Putin’s orders, to expand Russia’s influence abroad in the early 2000s.
Mr Zelenskyy said his government is “carefully” considering a Russian demand of Ukrainian neutrality, a key point of contention as negotiators for both sides prepare for a fresh round of talks aimed at ending the brutal month-long war.
“This point of the negotiations is understandable to me and it is being discussed, it is being carefully studied,” Mr Zelenskyy said during an interview with several independent Russian news organisations.
The UN estimates that at least 1100 civilians have died and more than 10 million have been displaced in a devastating war that has gone on far longer than Moscow leaders expected.
The new talks - starting in Turkey on either Monday or Tuesday, according to conflicting reports - come after the Russian army said it would begin focusing on eastern Ukraine in a move some analysts saw as a scaling back of Moscow’s ambitions.
RUDD: NOT POSSIBLE TO REMOVE PUTIN
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has downplayed Joe Biden’s call for Vladimir Putin to be removed from power as world leaders seek to distance themselves from the diplomatic gaffe.
“For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Mr Biden said in an unscripted remark at the end of a speech in Poland on Saturday.
The comment was quickly walked back by his administration, with an official clarifying the US did not have a strategy of regime change in Russia.
Asked by host Karl Stefanovic how it was possible the US President could make such an “unfathomable” comment, Mr Rudd downplayed it as a “human mistake”.
“Mate, I’ve done a few of those myself over the years. I think we all do when you’re running a government,” he said, potentially referring to the time he, post-leadership spill, referred to himself as the prime minister when he was the foreign minister – or the time he was caught on camera hurling expletives about China.
“You just occasionally just blah, but I think he was just expressing his sentiment from the heart.
“Bottom line is, Putin knows the Russians. There’s not about to be a special operations led by the CIA to go in there and decapitate the Russian leadership.
“That’s just not possible.”
Mr Rudd’s comments echo those of US permanent representative to NATO Julianne Smith, who called the President’s comments a “principled human reaction”.
Mr Biden’s remark is just the latest in a series of blunders on Mr Putin. Earlier in the day Mr Biden referred to the Russian President as a “butcher”.
US Secretary of State Mr Blinken sought to soften Mr Biden’s off-the-cuff comments.
“I think the President, the White House, made the point last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron distanced himself from the comments on Sunday evening, warning against the use of inflammatory language as Ukraine and Russia continue ceasefire negotiations.
“We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation,” Mr Macron said. “
“If this is what we want to do, we should not escalate things – neither with words or actions.”
CHERNOBYL RADIATION SPIKES AMID FIRES FROM SHELLING
Some 31 fires are burning across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, reports say, potentially increasing levels of radioactive pollution.
There are fears the flames, ‘sparked by Russian shelling’, could spread to nuclear fuel storage facilities and nuclear waste storage facilities.
Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun said: “It isn’t possible to put out the fire now, as this territory isn’t controlled by Ukraine.
“We’re afraid that the fire will reach the nuclear power plant. The radiation level is already elevated.”
Ukraine’s General Chief of Staff said Vladimir Putin’s troops had withdrawn to Belarus to regroup.
Meanwhile, Russian forces took control of a town where staff working at the Chernobyl nuclear site live and briefly detained the mayor, sparking protests, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
“I have been released. Everything is fine, as far as it is possible under occupation,” Yuri Fomichev, mayor of Slavutych, told AFP by phone, after officials in the Ukraine capital Kyiv announced earlier he had been detained.
Earlier, the military administration of the Kyiv region, which covers Slavutych, announced that Russian troops had entered the town and occupied the municipal hospital.
They also said that the mayor had been detained.
Residents took to the streets, carrying a large blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and heading towards the hospital, the administration said. Russian forces fired into the air and threw stun grenades into the crowd, it added.
It also shared on its Telegram account images in which dozens of people gathered around the Ukrainian flag and chanted: “Glory to Ukraine.” Later Saturday, Fomichev posted a video on Facebook saying that at least three people had died, without elaborating on what had happened.
“We haven’t yet identified all of them,” he added, but said that civilians were among the dead.
While they had defended their town, they were up against a larger force, he said.
The Chernobyl plant was taken by the Russian army on February 24 on the same day that Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Some 25,000 people live in the town 160km north of the capital, built after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday it was “closely monitoring the situation” after Ukraine’s nuclear regulator informed it that the town had been seized by Russian forces.
The UN atomic watchdog said it was concerned about the ability of employees at Chernobyl to rotate and return to their homes to rest.
“There has been no staff rotation at the NPP for nearly a week now,” the IAEA said.
The town’s capture comes after the first staff rotation at Chernobyl plant last weekend since Russia took control.
About 100 Ukrainian technicians continued to run the daily operations at the radioactive site for nearly four weeks without being rotated.
PUTIN ‘GAFFE’ PUTS PRESSURE ON US
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has had to backtrack on President Joe Biden’s controversial comments that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
On Sunday local time, Mr Blinken said that the United States is not looking for “regime change” in Moscow or anywhere else in the world.
Mr Biden’s apparent call for Putin’s exit reverberated instantly around the world, sparking an administration rush to course-correct — and risks scrambling US efforts to rally a united front on the Ukraine conflict.
Mr Biden’s comment that the Russian president “cannot remain in power” — delivered in Warsaw at the close of three days of marathon diplomacy — was termed “a horrendous gaffe” by one Republican senator.
A senior US analyst said it could have the effect of lengthening the war. And even France’s president warned such language could “escalate” a conflict the United States and its NATO allies have sought at all costs to contain, and undercut Western efforts to help suffering Ukrainians.
The remark came as Mr Biden wound up a forceful speech on Saturday capping what had been a widely-praised European visit, aimed at presenting a determined front against Russia’s invasion.
His ad libbed words — “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain power” — caught even US advisors off guard, representing a stark departure from oft-stated American policy.
The White House sprung immediately into action, clarifying within minutes that Biden was not advocating “regime change” in Russia.
But the comments by Mr Biden — who hours earlier called Putin a “butcher” — drew predictable fury from Moscow, raised eyebrows in allied countries, and sent the president’s advisors into high gear to mollify the criticism.
NO ‘REGIME CHANGE’
Mr Blinken, in Jerusalem, joined in forcefully denying Mr Biden was calling for Putin’s ouster.
Mr Biden’s point, Mr Blinken said, was that “Putin cannot be empowered to wage war, or engage in aggression against Ukraine, or anyone else”.
The choice of Russia’s leader, Mr Blinken said, is “up to the Russians”.
The administration sent out the US ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, to underscore the same message — stating across multiple TV networks that “the US does not have a policy of regime change towards Russia, full stop”.
Mr Biden’s comments, Ms Smith told US TV were “a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard” during an emotional visit with Ukrainian refugees.
But President Emmanuel Macron of France, a close US ally who has spoken frequently with Putin since the invasion, warned the West not to “escalate in words or actions” — or risk hampering vital humanitarian efforts, including hopes of evacuating the devastated city of Mariupol.
As noted by a senior Republican politician, Senator Jim Risch, the remarks ran 180-degrees counter to the Biden administration’s constant efforts until now to stop the conflict from escalating.
“There’s not a whole lot more you can do to escalate than to call for regime change,” he told CNN.
Not everyone saw the remark, however undiplomatic, as carrying an unstated threat — or in fact a gaffe at all.
Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, told US TV that “anyone who’s a war criminal, who attacks a neighbouring country, who’s doing all these atrocities … definitely cannot stay in power in a civilised world.”
And Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said on Twitter that Mr Biden’s words needed to be read with nuance.
“Biden expressed what billions around the world and millions inside Russia also believe. He did not say that the US should remove him from power. There is a difference.”
But multiple experts in the United States and abroad weighed in with criticism. Richard Haass, an American diplomat who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, said Biden had “made a difficult situation more difficult and a dangerous situation more dangerous”.
“Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along,” Mr Haass said on Twitter.
“Bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.” Equally stern, Francois Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said American leaders would do better not to “shoot off their mouths.”
ABANDONED ANIMALS JOIN UKRAINE’S WAR EXODUS
Exotic animals are sheltering alongside everyday pets that have been left behind in the rush of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A milky-eyed wolf prowls in its enclosure at the so-called Home for Rescued Animals in the city of Lviv.
Boris the goat bathes his bedraggled face in the spring sunshine. A parliament of owls peers out from the perches of their shaded roost.
In a side building around a dozen cats from Kyiv are lodged. Dogs yowl from an industrial barn, courting volunteers arriving to walk them round nearby parkland.
“Migrants who come from Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv and go abroad via Lviv leave animals en masse,” said 24-year-old shelter manager Orest Zalypskyy.
His hilltop sanctuary in the 13th century city of Lviv was once a “haven” reserved for exotic animals, he says.
“This war has made us more engaged.”
The UN estimates more than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the war began a month ago. More than two million of those crossed the border to Poland, where droves of animal lovers have been seen ferrying dogs, cats, parrots and turtles to safety.
Lviv – just 70km from the border – has been the final stopover on Ukrainian soil for many making the journey out of the war zone. And some soon-to-be refugees felt unable to take their pets further.
Zalypskyy estimates his shelter has taken in 1500 animals since the war began, from migrants and shelters in “hot spots” to the east.
Between 10 and 20 were collected from Lviv’s train station – the locus of chaos in the first days of the war, where carriages and platforms heaved with desperate passengers.
“There’s been no system,” says Zalypskyy. “We just have many volunteers who head out and fetch them.”
One dog from a war-torn region in the east did not leave its pen for two weeks. A cat abandoned by its owner of seven years is distraught.
“We are all bitten and scratched,” said Zalypskyy of his volunteer teams. “The animals are very stressed.”
However the animals left here do not languish. Around 200 have been adopted by the locals of Lviv, while most of the rest are taken onwards by volunteers to Germany, Latvia and Lithuania.
There are currently no cats available for adoption – they are all bound for Poland.
By noon Zalypskyy has already signed his third set of dog adoption paperwork for the day.
Meanwhile the shelter is inundated with couples, friends and families arriving to borrow dogs for a weekend stroll.
“Ukrainians really adore animals,” says 36-year-old Kateryna Chernikova. “It’s just in the DNA.”
With her husband Ihor, 36, and four-year-old daughter Solomiia, Chernikova fled Kyiv a week before war broke out.
The young family plus their two guinea pigs Apelsynka and Lymonadka (Orange and Lemonade) – now live in the relative safety of Lviv, which has been largely untouched by violence.
On Saturday morning they leashed a pair of boisterous hunting dogs and set out through the shelter gates, under a fluttering Ukrainian flag.
“We’re not in the war conditions itself, but it’s psychologically very hard,” said Chernikova.
“When you have a walk with a dog, it just feels as if you’re living a normal life.”
HEAD OF UKRAINE REBEL REGION SAYS MAY HOLD VOTE ON JOINING RUSSIA
The head of Ukraine’s Luhansk separatist region said it may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia, after Moscow sent troops into its pro-Western neighbour.
“I think that in the near future a referendum will be held on the territory of the republic, during which the people will … express their opinion on joining the Russian Federation,” Russian news agencies quoted Leonid Pasechnik as saying.
“For some reason, I am sure this will be the case.”
Russia launched its military action in Ukraine in late February, saying it was acting in defence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics in the country’s east.
President Vladimir Putin had days earlier recognised the two regions as independent.
The industrial, mainly Russian-speaking regions broke from Kyiv’s control in 2014 in fighting that over the next few years claimed more than 14,000 lives.
Russia that year annexed Crimea from Ukraine after a pro-Moscow leader was ousted in a popular uprising and a referendum was held in the southern region on becoming part of Russia.
BIDEN LASHES OUT AT ‘BUTCHER’ PUTIN
US President Joe Biden has castigated Vladimir Putin over the month-old war in Ukraine, bluntly calling the Russian leader “a butcher” who “cannot remain in power”.
In an impassioned speech from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, delivered after meeting top Ukrainian ministers in Poland and earlier conferring with NATO and EU allies on the conflict, Biden plainly warned Russia: “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory.”
Although the White House moved quickly to temper Mr Biden’s unprecedented comments on Mr Putin — insisting the US leader is not seeking “regime change” in Russia and was referring to his influence over neighbours in the region — the Kremlin made its displeasure clear.
Personal attacks, one official said, were “narrowing down the window of opportunity” for bilateral relations.
Mr Biden coupled his harsh words for Mr Putin with a pointed attempt to appeal to ordinary Russians, saying they were “not our enemy” and urging them to blame their president for the heavy sanctions imposed by the West.
He offered reassurance to Ukrainians in the audience and elsewhere, at a time when nearly four million of them have been driven out of their country. “We stand with you,” he said.
Mr Biden also cast doubt on Russia’s signal that it may scale down its war aims to concentrate on eastern Ukraine — even as two Russian missile strikes slammed into the west of the country.
The US President said he was “not sure” Moscow has indeed changed its objectives, which, so far, had resulted in “strategic failure”.
Two Russian missiles earlier struck a fuel depot in western Ukraine’s Lviv, a rare attack on a city just 70km from the Polish border, which has escaped serious fighting.
At least five people were wounded, regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said, as AFP journalists in the city centre saw plumes of thick black smoke.
More Coverage
Mr Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, vowing to destroy the country’s military and topple pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But his army has made little progress on capturing key cities, and it has hit hospitals, residential buildings and schools in increasingly deadly attacks.
Mr Biden, who was winding up a whirlwind visit to Poland after holding a series of urgent summits in Brussels with Western allies, earlier met Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in Warsaw in an emphatic show of support for Kyiv.
Originally published as Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Oligarch Roman Abramovich has offered support to war-torn country, says Volodymyr Zelenskyy
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