In his opening remarks at the talks on Ukraine’s peace plan in Malta, the foreign minister, Ian Borg, said the high attendance by officials from 65 countries was a “vote of confidence in Malta as a peace broker”, reiterating the country’s support for Ukraine.
“Although we are a neutral state, we cannot remain silent in the face of injustice, atrocities and abuse of power in this region,” Borg said. “Malta believes in multilateralism under the auspices of international law and the UN charter.”
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Round-up
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Russia’s forces around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka have “likely suffered” some of its highest casualty rates of 2023 so far, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update.
The report follows the Ukrainian president’s claims on Friday that Russian forces lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops attempting to advance on Avdiivka.
The Malta summit began on Saturday, with the head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, arguing that more countries are signing up to its “peace plan” and that Russia will have to submit to the international community.
Yermak also praised Qatar’s role in facilitating the return of four Ukrainian children earlier this month, who had been taken by Russia.
Ukraine and the Netherlands began talks on a bilateral agreement on security guarantees in Malta, Yermak announced. It is the sixth country to start bilateral negotiations with Ukraine on security guarantees.
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Mykola Tochytskyi, has pointedly accused Russia of having a history of “provoking” and “stoking” hybrid conflicts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
“We warned that turning a blind eye to [Russian] violation of international peace and security would fuel conflicts in the world,” Tochytskyi said, amid the Israel-Hamas war. For context, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously expressed fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel could threaten military support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Hamas is looking for eight dual citizens identified by Russia as potentially being among the hostages in Gaza and is ready to free them, a Hamas politburo member, Abu Marzouk, has told the Russian state news agency RIA, Reuters reports.
A Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.
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