China’s president, Xi Jinping, has arrived in Moscow in his first visit to Russia for four years. The state visit makes him the first world leader to meet Vladimir Putin since the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president. The pair are scheduled to have informal talks on Monday, with more formal negotiations to follow. The two leaders are expected to sign joint declarations.
Upon his arrival, Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass reported Xi said “China and Russia are good neighbours and reliable partners”. The Chinese president said he expected the visit to Russia would give a new impetus to the development of Russian-Chinese relations and strategic cooperation.
Russia and China “share the same, or some similar goals”, Xi told Putin at the Kremlin. Xi also told Putin he was sure the Russian people would support him in the 2024 presidential election, although Putin has not publicly declared that he will seek another term.
Putin told Xi he welcomed Beijing’s proposal to end the “acute crisis” in Ukraine and that he viewed the plan with respect. “You know that we are always ready for negotiating, and we will discuss all those questions including your suggestions,” the Russian leader told his Chinese counterpart.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has voiced scepticism over China’s “peace” proposals to end the Ukraine conflict, warning they could be a “stalling tactic” to help Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine. “The world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war on its own terms,” Blinken said at a briefing on Monday.
Any future peace plan must require Russia to withdraw its troops from all Ukrainian territory, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, has reiterated. The formula for the successful implementation of China’s “peace plan” must include the restoration of Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”, Danilov tweeted.
Ahead of the trip, Putin praised Xi as a “good old friend” in a newspaper article published in China, while Xi wrote in a Russian daily that his trip to Russia aimed to strengthen the friendship between the two countries and called for “pragmatism” on Ukraine.
The prosecutor for the international criminal court (ICC) has said the world needs to “have the stamina” to enforce international law by trying those accused of war crimes in Ukraine, four days after the court took action against Vladimir Putin. Karim Khan also challenged the Kremlin to allow Ukrainian children abducted to Russia to return home, after his court issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, on the grounds that they had overseen the forcible transfer of thousands of children.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called the ICC’s arrest warrant against Putin a “turning point” in the conflict. In Zelensky’s nightly address, he said the warrant marked a “truly significant international legal result for Ukraine, for justice … The moment after which it becomes undeniable that the end of this aggression for Russia will be the full range of its responsibility.”
EU ministers have reached a deal to supply Ukraine with a million rounds of shells to bolster its defences against Russia’s invasion. EU foreign and defence ministers are still fine-tuning a €1bn plan for the joint procurement of ammunition by the Brussels-based European Defence Agency. Such an agreement would be a significant moment for the EU, which has limited experience of the joint purchase of military supplies.
The US will send Ukraine $350m (£285m) in weapons and equipment, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced. The latest aid package includes a large amount of various types of ammunition, such as rockets for the high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars), Blinken said in a statement.
Putin, speaking on Monday before meeting Xi, said deepening ties between Moscow and African countries were a key goal for the Kremlin. In a televised address to delegates at a Russia-Africa parliamentary conference, Putin also said Russia would provide grain to African countries for free should the Black Sea grain deal not be extended in May.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group, has written to Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to warn that the Ukrainian army is planning an imminent offensive aimed at cutting off his forces from the main body of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. In the letter published by his press service on Monday, Prigozhin said the “large-scale attack” was planned for late March or the start of April. The letter was the first time Prigozhin has published such correspondence with the defence minister.
Prigozhin also intensified his attack on Shoigu, calling the minister’s son-in-law a “scumbag blogger”.
Putin visited a command post in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Russian state-owned news agency Tass said Putin held a meeting at a military command and control post in the Russian city. It comes after Putin travelled to Russian-occupied Mariupol by helicopter, and visited Russian-occupied Crimea.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence accused Putin of visiting Mariupol “under the cover of night” in order to avoid showing destruction of city. In a Twitter post the ministry said “darkness allows him to highlight what he wants to show, and keeps … its few surviving inhabitants away from prying eyes.”
Leaders of Ukraine’s Moscow-Patriarch-affiliated Orthodox church arrived near Ukraine’s presidential administration on Monday in an attempt to meet Zelenskiy. The church has been under pressure since November after Ukraine’s security services began a number of investigations into the church, saying they suspected the church of spreading pro-Kremlin narratives. The church leaders say they want to clarify their pro-Ukrainian position with Zelenskiy.
Ukraine’s armed forces have released their latest estimate for war casualties, although the Guardian cannot verify them. The country’s army now claims to have killed 164,910 Russian troops since the start of the war. Of these, they say 710 were killed in the 24 hours to Sunday morning. They also report having destroyed eight Russian artillery systems since Saturday.
A shortage of explosives is hampering the efforts of European countries to provide Ukraine with arms, according to a report. Industry insiders told the Financial Times that gunpowder, plastic explosives and TNT are in short supply and could delay a planned ramping up of shell production by as much as three years. It means Europe’s defence industry may be unable to meet expected EU orders for Ukraine.
Britain and Ukraine have signed a digital trade deal, which will give Ukraine access to electronic financial services to aid reconstruction efforts. The UK department of business and trade said trading digitally was particularly important in the conflict, because damage to Ukrainian infrastructure and warfare had made it much harder to trade physically.
Serbia’s president attacked the decision to issue an international arrest warrant for Putin, saying it would only prolong the war in Ukraine. Aleksandar Vučić, who has previously boasted of his personal relationship with the Russian leader, told reporters in Belgrade: “I think issuing an arrest warrant for Putin, not to go into legal matters, will have bad political consequences and it says that there is a great reluctance to talk about peace (and) about truce.”
