Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Russia accused of dropping chemical bombs, planning naval invasion
Russia is accused of dropping chemical bombs in Ukraine towns and planning a naval invasion. Meanwhile, the US has vowed to avenge a US journalist’s death.
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Ukrainian officials accused Russia at the weekend of using phosphorus chemical bombs in the eastern Donbas region, while a separate air strike on a monastery sheltering civilians wounded 30.
International law prohibits the use of white phosphorus shells in heavily populated civilian areas but allows them in open spaces to be used as cover for troops.
Oleksi Biloshytsky, head of police in Popasna, around 100km west of Lugansk city, said late on Saturday that Russian forces had used the chemical weapon in his area.
“It’s what the Nazis called a ‘flaming onion’ and that’s what the Russcists (amalgamation of ‘Russians’ and ‘fascists’) are dropping on our towns. Indescribable suffering and fires,” he wrote on Facebook.
It was not immediately possible to verify the comments.
Further south, bombs struck the Sviatoguirsk monastery, where nearly 1000 civilians were sheltering at the weekend, wounding 30 people, the Ukrainian public prosecutor said at the weekend.
And on Saturday night, a train evacuating people from the Donbas to the western city of Lviv was shelled, according to Donetsk military commander Pavlo Kirilenko.
One person was killed and another wounded, he said.
The Lugansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbas, were partially controlled by Moscow-backed separatists even before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The areas attacked at the weekend lie outside the so-called separatist “republics” of Lugansk and Donetsk declared by the pro-Russian rebels before the start of the war.
RUSSIA PLANNING INVASION OF ODESSA
Ukrainian officials say Russia’s navy is planning an invasion of the city of Odessa.
Russian forces on the Black Sea had planned their attack three or four days ago, but bad weather temporarily forced the fleet back to Sevastopol in Crimea, said Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief, Oleksiy Danilov, according to Pravda.
“We understand what is happening there, and the situation there is under control,” Danilov said.
In his nightly address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his country to “hold on”.
“We are undergoing the scariest test in our history, in our lifetime,” Mr Zelenskyy said in video posted to Facebook.
“We must hold on, we must fight. And we shall win. I am a believer in this.”
RUSSIA WILL FACE ‘APPROPRIATE CONSEQUENCES’ OVER JOURNALIST’S DEATH
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says Russia will face “appropriate consequences” for the killing of US journalist Brent Renaud.
Renaud - who has previously contributed to the New York Times -was shot dead by Russian soldiers while covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Irpin, according to police in Kyiv.
“This is obviously shocking and horrifying, and I’ve just learned about it as I came on to air here, so I will be consulting with my colleagues, will be consulting with Ukrainians, to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,” Mr Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation program.
Danylo Shapovalov, a surgeon volunteering for the Ukrainian territorial defence, said one of the Americans died instantly and he had treated the other.
Reporters in Irpin saw the body of the victim. A third victim, a Ukrainian who had been in the same car as the Americans, was also wounded.
Ukrainian officials were quick to blame Russian forces for the shooting but the exact circumstances were unclear.
Reporters heard small arms and artillery fire in the area.
“The car was shot at. There were two journalists and one of ours (a Ukrainian),” Mr Shapovalov told media.
“Our guy and the journalist are wounded, I provided them first aid, the other one received a wound in the neck, he died immediately.”
Papers found on the American reporter’s body identified him as 51-year-old video documentary shooter Brent Renaud, of New York.
Andrey Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv region police, said the 51-year-old journalist “paid with his life” for reporting on the invasion.
According to a report in The Sun, another journalist, thought to be Mr Renaud’s colleague, was also reportedly injured in the attack.
“A 51-year-old world-renowned media correspondent was shot in Irpin today,” Ms Nebitov said.
“Another journalist is injured. Now they are trying to remove the victim from the war zone.
“Of course, the profession of a journalist is a risk, but US citizen Brent Renaud paid with his life for trying to highlight the aggressor’s ingenuity, cruelty and ruthlessness.”
Another US journalist, Juan Arredondo, who survived the attack spoke to a reporter for Italian paper Internazionale from the hospital.
He said Mr Renaud had been shot in the neck and “had to be left behind”.
🔴🔴 Two American journalist shot by Russian at Irpin bridge. One is under surgery at the main hospital in Kyiv and the other was shot at the neck. pic.twitter.com/9lihX1JJ58
— annalisa camilli (@annalisacamilli) March 13, 2022
“We had crossed the first bridge in Irpin. We were going to film other refugees leaving we got into a car. Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge. We crossed a checkpoint and they started shooting at us. The driver turned around, there were two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud,” Mr Arredondo said.
“He has been shot and left behind. I saw he has been shot in the neck. We got split,” he said.
Initial reports suggest Mr Renaud worked for the New York Times, but Cliff Levy, the newspaper’s deputy managing editor, said he was not on assignment for the publication.
“We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death. Brent was a talented photographer and filmmaker who had contributed to the New York Times over the years,” Mr Levy said in a statement shared on Twitter.
“Though he had contributed to The Times in the past (mostly recently in 2015), he was not on assignment for any desk at The Times in Ukraine.
“Early reports that he worked for The Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that been issued for an assignment many years ago.”
The White House has not yet commented on Mr Renaud’s death but National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called it “shocking and horrifying”.
He said the US would consult with Ukrainian officials about what to do next. It remains unclear if US President Joe Biden would retaliate against Vladimir Putin.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Putin is finally starting to show signs of “willingness” to negotiate to end the war but that up until now he has seemed “intent on destroying Ukraine”.
ZELENSKYY VISITS INJURED TROOPS
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has maintained an extraordinarily high profile through the conflict – visited wounded soldiers at a hospital outside Kyiv.
“Feel better, stay strong,” a visibly moved Mr Zelenskyy told them.
“You are doing a great job.”
According to the presidency official website, Mr Zelenskyy made a visit to the hospital to “award militaries with orders and medals for courage and dedication, and to honor the hospital staff for exemplary work in difficult conditions”.
The president says the Russians have suffered “heavy losses”, about 12,000 troops – although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.
About 1300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv.
POWER RESTORED TO CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR PLANT
Electricity supply has been restored at Ukraine’s retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces in the first days of the invasion, energy officials in Kyiv said Sunday.
“Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of (Ukrainian energy) specialists, our nuclear power engineers and electricians managed to return the power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was seized by the Russian occupiers,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.
“Our Ukrainian energy engineers, by risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe,” he added.
Power had been cut to the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, though the UN’s atomic watchdog said there was “no critical impact to safety”.
TRAIN EVACUATING REFUGEES HIT BY SHELLING
A train carrying refugees including 100 children was hit by Russian shelling on Sunday.
The attack near the Brusyn station in Donetsk region killed a conductor and injured a second person, the country’s national railroad said.
“This is a terrible blow to those who rescue civilian Ukrainians every day and paved the ‘road of life’ for more than two million rescued,” the railroad said in a statement on Facebook.
The carrier said it was working to send another train to pick up the stranded crew and passengers.
РоÑійÑькі окупанти обÑтрілÑли українÑький паÑажирÑький поїзд
— Україна Ðовини | War in Ukraine | Russia Conflict (@ukrainenewstop) March 13, 2022
З причин безпеки, щоб уникнути повтору, не можемо зараз назвати маршрут.
Є поранені. pic.twitter.com/08JZjfwFST
PUTIN HAS ‘NO INTEREST’ IN ENDING SLAUGHTER
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown “no interest” in ending the slaughter in Ukraine as he orders his troops to intensify their drive to topple the capital Kyiv.
But it’s apparently not the only city in his immediate sights, with reports of missiles and explosions in the early hours of Sunday on the outskirts of Lviv in the country’s west. Among the targets was one of Ukraine’s largest military bases.
Multiple explosions were heard shortly in the early hours of Sunday on the outskirts of the city near Ukraine’s border with Poland.
Air sirens went off in almost all regions in Ukraine about 3.45am. It was the third night in a row the air sirens had sounded across Lviv, however this was the first time explosions followed.
For three hours terrified Lviv residents hid underground. They later discovered the missiles had not been destined for their city – instead it was a military base in Yavoriv, between Lviv and the Polish border.
This is one of the larges military bases in Ukraine and late last year hosted US troops and other foreign forced in training exercises with local forces.
The pre-dawn strike has raised major concerns given it is near one of the main exit points for refugees fleeing Ukraine for Poland.
Back in the capital, in scenes described by aid agencies as “medieval”, Kyiv came under a volley of devastating missiles as had other key cities including port city Mariupol that has been blockaded for 12 days and was starving out civilians.
The barrage across the country was less shock and awe and more shock and horror as countless residential areas were struck in various town and cities; Russian forces have taken east of Mariupol where bodies remain strewn about streets.
The great fear Russian forces would do what they did in Syria and Chechnya and level whole cities is now happening, air raid sirens ringing out across most of Ukraine yesterday.
In a move that could engulf Europe in the conflict, Russia also overnight warned Western supplies being delivered to Ukraine by land and air could now be considered a “legitimate target” in the war.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg had earlier said such an attack on the supply lines of allied nations would be “a dangerous escalation of the war.”
French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz held a three-way 75-minute telephone hook up with President Putin about the plight of civilians to which the Russian retorted it was Ukrainian forces performing human fights abuses.
The men agreed not to speak expansively about discussions but the French delegation concluded it was “frank and difficult” and did not progress anything.
“We did not detect a willingness on Putin’s part to end the war,” an official said.
President Putin has consistently said he would only authorise a ceasefire when Ukraine surrendered.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday held a briefing with foreign media and conceded 1300 of his troops had been killed since the Russian invasion but Russian losses in 17 days of war were the greatest in decades and had forced Moscow to now send in reinforcements.
The Russian bombardment has trapped thousands of people in besieged cities and sent 2.5 million Ukrainians fleeing to neighbouring countries.
Mr Zelenskyy said the conflict meant some small Ukrainian towns no longer existed but Russia would never truly occupy the capital or country and Ukrainians would fight to their deaths.
“If they carry out carpet bombings and wipe off the historic memory of the entire region, the history of Kyivan Rus, the history of Europe, they could enter Kyiv but they will have to leave on that land alone, certainly without us.
“Even if they bring a million Russians here, they can’t occupy Ukraine.”
Yesterday a military air base in the town of Vasylkiv south of the capital was destroyed by eight missiles as was a fuel and an ammunition depot and the villages of Kryachky and Kvitneve.
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