An anti-Russian, Crimean Tatar-led underground group have claimed large explosions have destroyed a pipeline, causing “colossal” damage, in Russian-occupied Crimea, Associated Press reports.
Loud explosions were heard near an oil depot in the early hours of Sunday, according to a local pro-Kyiv Telegram news channel, while Kremlin-installed officials in the territory said that a nearby stretch of highway was closed to traffic for over eight hours.
Videos shared with pro-Ukrainian channel Crimean Wind showed explosions lighting up the night sky, followed by loud booms. The channel said they were taken by local residents near Feodosia — a coastal town in northeastern Crimea. It was not immediately possible to verify the circumstances in which the videos were shot.
The group, Atesh — which means “fire” in Crimean Tatar — did not directly claim responsibility for the strike, and said it had learned about its consequences from informers among Russian-appointed officials. Authorities in Kyiv did not immediately acknowledge or comment on the claims.
Russia’s defense ministry on Sunday did not comment on the reports but claimed that 38 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight into Sunday over the peninsula.
Summary
It is 2.30pm in Ukraine. Here is a summary of events
The bodies of a mother and baby found in the rubble of a missile-hit apartment block in Odesa on Sunday have brought the death toll from Saturday’s strike to 10. Two babies and a toddler are amongst those found dead following a Russian drone strike on a nine-storey apartment block in Odesa on Saturday, according to briefings from officials.
Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. A “massive missile attack” on a residential area of Myrnohrad injured two women aged 50 and 33 and a 37-year-old man, Donetsk Oblast’s regional prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram. It said a Russian missile strike in a residential area of Pokrovsk at 6.30 on Sunday morning also left two women with shrapnel wounds.
People are still queueing up to place flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery. The pile of floral tributes is growing despite state intimidation as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.
Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday. Fidan said: “A dialogue for a ceasefire (in Ukraine) should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation (by Russia), but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately.”
The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners, says it has taken two years to secure a meeting with the UK government, despite him being a British citizen. Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian jail and his wife Evgenia told The Observer she met David Cameron on Friday.
Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that around 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the west to rapidly deliver more air-defence systems as a wave of Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least 11 people. “Russia continues to hit civilians,” the Ukrainian president posted on social media on Saturday. Eight were confirmed dead, including a child and a baby, after an overnight drone strike on an apartment block in the southern port city of Odesa, a regional official said. Zelenskiy said in his post: “We need more air defences from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection for our people from Russian terror.”
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a purported recording of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”, a ministry spokesperson said. The recording apparently showed German officials discussing striking Crimea and delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv.
Updated
After diplomatic talks in Moscow on Saturday evening, China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that negotiation would be the only way to end fighting in Ukraine.
China’s special envoy on Ukraine, Li Hui, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Galuzin, held talks on Saturday evening with senior Russian diplomats. It was the first leg of a European trip that will also take Hui to Brussels, Poland, Germany and France.
In a readout published on Sunday morning, China’s foreign ministry said that Special Representative Li Hui and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin agreed that negotiations are the only way to end the fighting in Ukraine.
China is ready to “continue its efforts to promote peace talks, mediate and build consensus among Russia, Ukraine and other relevant parties, and promote a final political settlement of the Ukraine crisis,” China’s foreign ministry said in a readout from the meeting.
Li’s trip is the second since last May and comes as Kyiv seeks Beijing’s participation in peace talks that Switzerland is trying to organise this spring, AP reports. China claims it is neutral in Russia’s war on Ukraine but maintains close ties with Moscow.
“A very engaged and thorough exchange of views took place on the topic of the Ukrainian crisis,” the Russian foreign ministry said in the statement posted on its website. “It was stated that any discussion of a political and diplomatic settlement is impossible without the participation of Russia and taking into account its interests in the security sphere.”
Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners. He is a British citizen, yet his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza tells Carole Cadwalladr in today’s Observer that it has taken her two years to secure a meeting with the UK government.
Cadwalladr writes:
Hours after Alexei Navalny was buried in Moscow, his body brought from a grim Siberian jail, Evgenia Kara-Murza, who is married to another Russian opposition leader serving a 25-year sentence in another grim Siberian jail, is perfectly composed.
On Friday, images of Navalny’s body in an open casket were beamed around the world, but if these scenes had brought home to Evgenia Kara-Murza the risk to her husband and her family, she wasn’t showing it.
In fact, she’s fresh out of a meeting with Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron. “I was actually with him when the funeral was taking place,” she says. “It was arranged two weeks ago so it was a total coincidence. But can you believe it’s taken two years for the British government to meet with me? It took them a year to make even a statement about his arrest.”
It’s a fact that Bill Browder, an American businessman turned activist calls “utterly shameful”, not least because Vladimir Kara-Murza is a British citizen. Since Navalny’s death, he’s the most high-profile politician imprisoned in Russia but he spent his teenage years in Britain after his mother married an Englishman, studying at Cambridge University before returning to Moscow.
You can read the full article here.
The pile of flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave is growing bigger by the minute, as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.
The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg has posted a video of the scene from Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery, where queues of people have braved state intimidation to show their support.
The scene at Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery this morning. Russians continue to place flowers on the grave of Alexei Navalny. There’s now a mountain of floral tributes to the late opposition leader. @BBCNews #Navalny pic.twitter.com/Eco5N2gJMf
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) March 3, 2024
Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, according to the regional prosecutor office.
A “massive missile attack” on a residential area of Myrnohrad injured two women aged 50 and 33 and a 37-year-old man, Donetsk Oblast’s regional prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram. According to its governor, the attack damaged 17 apartment blocks, 16 homes, two shops, two educational institutions and a bank.
Another Russian missile strike in a residential area of Pokrovsk at 6.30 on Sunday morning also left two women aged 24 and 52 with shrapnel wounds, according to the regional prosecutor.
Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday, Reuters reports.
“A dialogue for a ceasefire (in Ukraine) should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation (by Russia), but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately,” Fidan said.
He was speaking at the close of a diplomacy forum in the southern city of Antalya. The Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF) began in 2021 as a place for policymakers, businessmen, researchers and academics to exchange ideas and views.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered last month to host a new round of Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations.
Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports.
State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that around 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.
Protests over the EU’s Green Deal have been taking place across Europe but in Poland they have taken on an anti-Ukrainian character over allegations that cheaper imports have undermined their business.
Polish farmers now want to stop the import of Ukrainian grain and to extend the ban to other goods including fruit, eggs and meat. They have been dumping Ukrainian grain at the border in protest and blocking trucks from coming through.
Demchenko said that busses and passenger cars are still able to cross the border and that trucks carrying aid into Ukraine were getting through.
Two babies and toddler among 10 confirmed dead after drone strike in Odesa
Two babies and a toddler are amongst the 10 people confirmed dead following a drone strike on an apartment block in Odesa on Saturday, according to briefings from officials.
A mother and her baby have been found in the rubble this morning as search and rescue operations continue, Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said. A Russian drone crashed into a nine-storey residential building in Odesa on Saturday.
“The body of another dead baby has just been found next to the woman’s body. Preliminarily, the child is less than a year old. Rescuers continue to clear the rubble,” Kiper said on Telegram.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that a four-month-old and a two-year-old had been killed. Zelenskiy said that casualties could have been avoided if Ukraine had not faced delays in arms deliveries.
Updated
An estimated 1,160 Russian soldiers were killed in combat on Saturday, according to figures published this morning by the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces.
It brings Ukraine’s estimate of Russian losses to 416,800.
In its daily update of combat losses, which cannot be verified, Ukraine’s military also claimed to have destroyed 16 tanks, 28 armoured vehicles and 14 drones on Saturday. The data is still being updated.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments to start with:
Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Earlier, road traffic near Feodosia was significantly restricted, Russian-installed officials in Crimea said, with traffic on the bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia halted for hours before resuming.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the west to rapidly deliver more air-defence systems as a wave of Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least 11 people. “Russia continues to hit civilians,” the Ukrainian president posted on social media on Saturday. Eight were confirmed dead, including a child and a baby, after an overnight drone strike on an apartment block in the southern port city of Odesa, a regional official said. Zelenskiy said in his post: “We need more air defences from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection for our people from Russian terror.”
About 10 people were still unaccounted for after the Odesa strike on the nine-storey building, the interior minister, Igor Klymenko, said on Telegram. Almost 100 rescuers were set to continue a search and rescue operation overnight. Ukraine’s armed forces said the Odesa region was attacked by eight drones, of which seven were shot down.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a purported recording of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”, a ministry spokesperson said. The recording apparently showed German officials discussing striking Crimea and delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv.
Shelling attacks on the frontline Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions killed another three people, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine downed a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber on Saturday, the Ukrainian air force commander said on Telegram. Mykola Oleshchuk’s claim could not be independently verified.
A drone crashed into an apartment building in St Petersburg, Russia’s state news agency said. A report by RIA Novosti said six people received medical help after an explosion on Saturday morning in the north-western Russian city
Russian artillery shelling reportedly killed a 53-year-old man in the partly occupied Kherson region on Saturday.
The mother and mother-in-law of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were among mourners who brought flowers to his grave in Moscow on Saturday, a day after thousands turned his funeral into one of the largest recent displays of dissent in Russia.
More than 20 settlements in Ukraine’s eastern province of Kharkiv have reportedly sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks. As well, high-rise buildings in Kharkiv city were damaged by a drone attack, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, was reported as saying.
