Summary
Speaking before a crowd of thousands in the gardens of Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Joe Biden hailed the resilience of Ukraine’s people and the benevolence of Poland and other western allies in helping fend off the Russian invasion.
The US president said the attack on Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, and said new sanctions against Russia will be announced this week.
The Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy “would not waver” in its support for Ukraine after meeting president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Russian strikes in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson have left at least six people dead and 12 more injured.
The foreign ministers of the G7 have said their countries would continue to impose economic costs on Russia and urged the broader international community to reject what they described as Moscow’s “brutal expansionism”.
Ukraine told schools on Tuesday to hold classes remotely from 22-24 February because of the risk of Russian missile strikes around the first anniversary of Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
Eighteen Russian MPs are expected to attend a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on Friday, the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and have been invited to a nationalist ball.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has given a long televised national address to the joint houses of the Russian parliament, in which he blamed the west for starting the war in Ukraine, announced Russia would suspend the New Start nuclear treaty with the US, and promised a new fund to help those who had lost loved ones in what he referred to as Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said he regretted Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the New Start bilateral nuclear arms control treaty and urged Moscow to reconsider.
Joe Biden had visited Kyiv on Monday to announce a new package of additional US aid to Ukraine worth $500m (£415m) including artillery ammunition, anti-armour systems and air surveillance radars. The timing of his visit – before Putin’s address – was seen as a deliberate rebuke of the Russian president.
The US president then arrived in Warsaw late on Monday evening where he met with Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, along with other leaders of countries on Nato’s eastern flank.
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Italy 'will not waver' in support for Ukraine, says Italy PM Meloni, but says no plan to send jets
The Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy “would not waver” in its support for Ukraine after meeting president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Almost one year on from Russia’s invasion of the country, Meloni referred to Ukraine as an “extraordinary nation” which has been heroic in defending its “freedom, identity and sovereignty”.
“Italy will give every possible assistance to create the conditions for negotiation, but until then it will give every kind of military, financial and civil support,” she said. “Those who support Ukraine, even militarily, are those who work for peace.”
However, she said there was no plan on the table for Italy to send warplanes to Ukraine. “It is a decision to be made with international partners.”
It was Meloni’s first visit to the war-torn country since her government took power in October.
She arrived by train from Poland and was visibly moved during visits to Irpin and Bucha, towns in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital where atrocities were found after Russian troops left. “It’s different talking about numbers and seeing on-the-spot the lives of people destroyed for no reason,” Meloni said at the end of her visit to Irpin.
“We saw devastation and suffering with our own eyes,” she added during the press conference with Zelenskiy. “We can’t turn the other way and it would be very stupid to do so.”
Meloni had earlier dismissed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s speech on Tuesday as “propaganda”.
“A part of my heart hoped for some different words for a step ahead,” she said.
Meloni has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine although the stance of her allies – Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s League – have been less clear.
The Ukrainian president responded to controversial comments made by Berlusconi, the former Italian premier and long-time friend of Putin, who last week blamed Zelenskiy for the war, saying that if he had “stopped attacking the two autonomous republics of the Donbas” then the conflict would not have happened.
Zelenskiy said: “I believe that Berlusconi’s house has never been bombed by missiles, tanks have never arrived in the garden of his house, nobody killed his relatives, he never had to pack a suitcase at three in the morning to escape, or his wife never had to look for food…all this is thanks to the brotherly love of Russia. I wish peace to all Italian families, even those who don’t support Ukraine, but they need to understand that lives are being taken away.”
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