Russia Ukraine war: Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky tells Russia: ‘It’s time to talk’
In an early morning video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Russia to enter meaningful peace talks and end the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made a video address in the early hours of the morning appealing for Russia to enter meaningful peace talks.
He also warned that talks were the “only chance for Russia to minimise the damage done with their own mistakes” after invading Ukraine.
The two sides are currently holding negotiations remotely but so far, like previous rounds, they have yielded little progress. None have been at the presidential level.
“This is the time to meet, to talk, time for renewing territorial integrity and fairness for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video posted to Facebook.
“Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such, that several generations will not recover.”
Zelensky said that Ukrainian authorities had been able to rescue more than 9000 people from the port city of Mariupol, which is under siege by Russian forces.
There was still no information about the number of people who had died when a theatre in the city sheltering civilians was bombed, he said.
More than 180,000 Ukrainian citizens have been rescued through humanitarian corridors across the country, Zelensky said.
He accused Russian forces of blocking aid around hotspot areas, saying “they have a strict order to do everything, so the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian cities turned into reason for Ukrainians to work together with the occupiers”.
“This is a war crime,” he said.
Several rounds of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow have taken place both in person and virtually since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. The latest set of talks, the fourth, opened on Monday.
Russia’s top negotiator said that Moscow and Kyiv had brought their positions “as close as possible” on a proposal for Ukraine to become a neutral state.
But Mikhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskyy taking part in the negotiations, said his country’s position had not budged.
“Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops and strong security guarantees with concrete formulas,” he said.
Russia, which has been conducting a military operation in Ukraine since February 24, has requested that its neighbour never join the Western NATO military alliance, as well as demanding its “demilitarisation” and “denazification”.
UN HUMANITARIAN AID ARRIVES IN RAVAGED UKRAINE CITY
The first convoy of “urgent humanitarian aid” from the United Nations and its partners has arrived at the northeast city of Sumy, one of Ukraine’s most war-affected areas.
The 130 tonnes of essential aid includes medical supplies, bottled water, ready-to-eat meals and canned food that will directly help some 35,000 people, said UN crisis co-ordinator Amin Award.
“We hope this is the first of many shipments delivered to the people trapped by fighting,” he said.
In addition to these items, the convoy brought equipment to repair water systems.
“We count on the continued co-operation of all parties as the United Nations and our humanitarian partners scale up our relief operation to respond to the grave humanitarian crisis caused by this war”, said Mr Awad.
“We are here to help the most vulnerable civilians caught in the fighting, wherever they are in Ukraine. We need unhindered and sustained humanitarian access to do so.”
Mr Awad said that safe passage for the humanitarian convoy “followed successful dialogue with and notification sent to the Ministries of Defense of Ukraine and of the Russian Federation, which was co-ordinated by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).”
Mr Awad warned that the war has created unprecedented humanitarian challenges that showed no signs of easing. He said the UN and its humanitarian partners, were on the ground operating from 17 locations, grouped into 10 hubs.
The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) has described the situation in cities such as Mariupol and Sumy as “extremely dire, with residents facing critical and potentially fatal shortages of food, water and medicine”.
UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said needs in the country’s eastern region “are becoming even more urgent.”
“More than 200,000 people are now without access to water across several localities in Donetsk oblast, while the constant shelling in Luhansk region has destroyed 80 per cent of some localities, leaving 97,800 families without power.”
In Odessa, UNHCR reported that authorities have appealed for support for general food assistance to cover the needs of 450,000 people in the city, as well as medicine.
The agency said more than 3.2 million people have now fled Ukraine, and millions more are internally displaced.
Those who have left Ukraine have found shelter in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Russia and to a much lesser extent, Belarus. Ninety per cent are women and children and 162,000 are third-country nationals.
“They don’t have a plan when they arrive,” said Mr. Saltmarsh. “So many of those in the first phase might have had friends, diaspora networks, contacts, a relative to whom they could go and stay with initially, and then make a plan from there. That’s been less the case recently.”
To counter the risk of exploitation of these vulnerable new arrivals, UNHCR and UNICEF have set up safe spaces known as “Blue Dots” in six countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
PUTIN HOLDS MASSIVE VICTORY RALLY AS CHINA SPEAKS AGAINST ‘CONFLICT’
Vladimir Putin held a huge, sometimes bizarre, victory rally to mark the eighth anniversary of his successful invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
It came as the Russian president’s more recent yet slower invasion of the rest of Ukraine pushed further into the west of the country with air strikes against Lviv, near the border with Poland. Kyiv, meanwhile, woke up to its fourth day of dawn bombings in what city’s mayor called a “war on civilians”.
As fighting intensified, Chinese president Xi Jinping delivered his most pointed remarks against the “conflict” yet during an hours-long discussion with US president Joe Biden.
PUTIN’S PATRIOTIC RALLY GOES HAYWIRE
President Vladimir Putin was mysteriously cut up in the middle of his speech to mark the eight-year anniversary since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The broadcast cut away to a music clip during what was supposed to be the main act of a patriotic rally that included pro-Kremlin pop stars and flags emblazoned with the letter Z, a symbol of support for the Russian army in Ukraine.
The event was heavily anti-Western and filled with Soviet nostalgia, as Russian authorities ramp up patriotism in response to being hit by massive international sanctions for Putin’s Ukraine campaign.
A stage at the centre of the stadium had a banner that read “For a world without Nazism” — a reference to Putin saying he sent troops to Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country.
The Russian leader took to the stage to chants of “Russia! Russia! Russia!”. He said Moscow did the right thing in 2014 by “pulling Crimea out of the humiliating state it was in when it was part of another state.” He claimed Russia had vastly improved the infrastructure of the peninsula — which has been isolated since the annexation.
Russian troops have entered Ukraine from several directions since Putin sent them in last month, including from Crimea.
Putin said that Moscow now aimed to “rid people from their suffering and genocide”.
He invoked the Bible as he praised Russian soldiers, which he said were “heroically” fighting “shoulder to shoulder” in Ukraine.
Then Russian TV cut Putin mid-sentence, switching to showing a clip of patriotic music.
The Kremlin later said it was a technical glitch, and state television proceeded to show Putin’s speech in full and him walking off stage about ten minutes later.
Russian state television is tightly controlled and such interruptions are highly unusual.
XI JINPING SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ‘CONFLICT’
Chinese leader Xi Jinping said “conflict” is “in no one’s interest” as Joe Biden aimed to pressure Beijing away from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Chairman Xi told Biden during the two hour phone call that “state-to-state relations cannot go to the stage of military hostilities”, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
He was quoted as saying that “peace and security are the most valued treasures of the international community.”
In their first call since November, Biden hoped to persuade Xi to at least give up any idea of bailing out Russia from the US’s sanctions.
So far Beijing has refused to condemn its fellow authoritarian ally, and Washington fears China could deliver financial and military support for Russia, transforming an already explosive transatlantic standoff into a global dispute.
The White House was tight-lipped on whether Biden would threaten China with economic sanctions during his call, but some sort of response was on the table.
The Biden-Xi call came after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat, held what the White House called a “substantial” seven hour meeting in Rome this week.
Xi and Putin symbolically sealed their close partnership when they met at the February Winter Olympics in Beijing — just before Putin launched his onslaught on Ukraine.
Since then, Beijing has stood out by refusing to join international outcry over the invasion, while taking the Russian line in blaming the United States and NATO for European tensions.
Chinese authorities continue to refuse calling the invasion as a “war,” in keeping with Kremlin talking points of calling it a “special military operation”.
‘WAR AGAINST CIVILIANS’ IN KYIV
At daybreak for each of the last four days, the Ukrainian capital has been hit by isolated strikes on apartment blocks, killing at least seven people in total.
Kyiv has been bracing for a full-on Russian assault, but Moscow’s forces have stalled as they try to encircle the city with a pre-war population of 3.5 million people.
Instead the Russian invaders have launched a sudden but limited escalation in attacks, always at around the same time, in what Ukrainian authorities say is an attempt to break Kyiv’s will.
In the most recent attack, debris from a downed missile blew a huge chunk out of the top of a 16-storey apartment block at 5:04am local time, emergency services said.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko called it a “war against civilians” as he visited the scenes of several of the early morning blasts.
“I call on Kyivans to trust a warning siren and go down to a shelter. The air defence forces fight back the enemy’s air attacks and our army heroically resists the Orcs,” he said in a statement.
PUTIN ACCUSES URKAINE OF ‘WAR CRIMES’
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused Kyiv of “war crimes” in a call with his French counterpart, saying that Moscow was doing “everything possible” to avoid civilian deaths in Ukraine.
“Attention was drawn to the numerous war crimes committed daily by the Ukrainian security forces, in particular massive rocket and artillery attacks on the cities of Donbas,” the Kremlin said of the call between Putin and Emmanuel Macron.
Putin told Macron the Russian army was “doing everything possible to safeguard the lives of peaceful civilians, including by organising humanitarian corridors for their safe evacuation,” the Kremlin added
EXPLOSION NEAR LVIV AIRPORT
Russian forces struck an area around Lviv’s airport in western Ukraine, with several missiles striking a facility used to repair military aircraft in a dawn attack shortly after 6.30am.
A bus repair facility was also hit but no casualties were reported.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said the plant had suspended work prior to the attack.
He said the missiles that hit Lviv were launched from the Black Sea, but two of the six that were launched were shot down by the Ukrainian air force’s western command.
There are also unconfirmed reports the city’s airport was struck.
Lviv, a UN world cultural heritage-listed city, had largely escaped Russian shelling but that changed this week when a military base on the city’s outskirts was hit killing at least 35 people and wounding more than 130.
Mr Sadovyi said grey smoke streamed across the sky and ambulances and police vehicles raced to the scene.
BIDEN TO SEND ‘CLEAR’ MESSAGE TO CHINA
US President Joe Biden will warn his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday that he will face “costs” if Beijing rescues fellow authoritarian ally Russia from intense Western sanctions aimed at punishing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The two leaders’ 9am (midnight AEDT) scheduled phone call, their first since a video summit in November, will be a chance to air differences as the United States spearheads an unprecedented pressure campaign on Russia, placing China in a geopolitical bind.
It’s “an opportunity for President Biden to assess where President Xi stands,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
Trade rows and snarled international supply chains will be discussed, according to Ms Psaki, but a big focus is expected to be the Western bid to force Russia from Ukraine, where Mr Putin’s invasion is in its fourth week.
President Biden has successfully marshaled a tight Western alliance against Russia, while giving military support to Ukrainian forces.
But Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow, and Washington fears the Chinese could switch to full financial and even military support for Russia, transforming an already explosive transatlantic standoff into a global dispute.
Not only could Beijing potentially help Russia weather crippling pressure on its banks and currency, but Western governments would then face the painful decision of whether or not to impose sanctions against China, likely prompting turmoil on world markets.
The White House was tight-lipped on whether Mr Biden will threaten China with sanctions during his call, but some sort of response is on the table.
Mr Biden “will make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression and we will not hesitate to impose costs,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
He hoped China would use “whatever leverage they have to compel Moscow to end this war,” the top US diplomat said.
“Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction,” Mr Blinken said, adding he was “concerned that they’re considering directly assisting Russia with military assistance.”
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES GROW; THEATRE BOMBING SURVIVORS
It comes as the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine continues to rise and is fuelling accusations Russia is committing war crimes.
Three weeks into Vladimir Putin’s devastating invasion, the latest civilian targets include a school and a cultural centre in the town of Merefa, that left 21 people dead, authorities said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said despite worldwide outrage and crippling sanctions, there were no signs Mr Putin “is prepared to stop.”
“Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. After all the destruction of the past few weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing otherwise,” he said, following warnings from the G7 that those behind such crimes “will be held responsible.”
Russia’s onslaught on Mariupol has been particularly horrific – 2000 people are thought to have died, with 80 per cent of its housing destroyed and 100 bombings occurring each day.
In rare good news, 130 survivors were pulled from the rubble of a drama theatre with no deaths reported as its bomb shelter appeared to have withstood Russia’s targeted strike.
RUSSIA ACCUSED OF ‘PRETENDING’ TO NEGOTIATE
Russia is speaking about a ceasefire and peace in one room but in another is plotting to expand the battlefield with more foreign fighters, more artillery and even possibly another country.
The United States was the first to warn of a potential ruse in hopes Mr Putin would accept any proposal being negotiated with Ukraine, other than a surrender, given how much standing he and his nation had already lost.
But now the French, normally the epitome of diplomacy and double speak, has called it and accused Russia of just “pretending” as it looked to continue its “brutal strategy” of conquest.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said there was only one urgent matter, a ceasefire, but Mr Putin had no real interest in that.
“Unfortunately we’re still facing the same Russian logic – making maximalist demands, wanting Ukraine to surrender and intensifying siege warfare,” Mr Le Drian said.
He said his indiscriminate bombing showed he was pretending to negotiate.
Certainly that appears to be the case with Ukraine military intelligence noting 40,000 Syrians were set to come to join the war for Russia, 300 a day to be collected from Syria in Russian military aircraft. The first flight full had already arrived.
In Bosnia too, Russia’s ambassador Igor Kalabukhov let slip Russia could invade their nation if they continued to purse NATO membership
He said there were no plans as such already drawn up but “we will respond having analysed the strategic and geopolitical situation”.
“If (Bosnia and Herzegovina) decides to be a member of any alliance, that is an internal matter. Our response is a different matter, Ukraine’s example shows what we expect. Should there be any threat, we will respond,” he said.
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