Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children. In granting the request for warrants by the ICC prosecutor, a panel of judges agreed that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the ICC arrest warrant for Putin was “meaningless”. “Russia is not a party to the Rome statute of the international criminal court and bears no obligations under it,” she said. The Kremlin said Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC “outrageous and unacceptable” but that any decisions of the court were “null and void” because it did not recognise the court’s jurisdiction.
Sources at the ICC have said they thought it was now “very unlikely” that Putin would travel to any country currently supporting Ukraine. If he did so he risked arrest, they pointed out. They said it was possible Putin would still fly to China which is not a signatory to the Rome statute, the treaty which obliges governments to enforce ICC warrants.
The ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin will probably be portrayed as a point of no return in Russia, where the Kremlin will spin the court’s decision as proof that the west is seeking nothing short of regime change. While Putin has already been preparing his public for a long war, the arrest warrant will for the first time raise the concrete possibility that Russia’s leaders and other prominent supporters of the war could face justice at The Hague if they ever find themselves under arrest.
Russia is sustaining up to 1,500 casualties a day in its current offensive, mostly in the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to a senior Nato official. Ukraine is taking “an order of magnitude less” in fighting where “several thousand” shells a day have been fired by both sides, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. They added that it was unclear how long the battle for Bakhmut will go on.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said Turkey would start the process of ratifying Finland’s Nato membership bid in parliament after the country took concrete steps to keep its promises. In a news conference on Friday after meetings with his Finnish counterpart, Erdoğan said: “When it comes to fulfilling its pledges in the trilateral memorandum of understanding, we have seen that Finland has taken authentic and concrete steps.”
Turkey’s willingness to consider ratifying Sweden’s Nato bid would “depend on the solid steps Sweden will take”, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday. His Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinistö, welcomed Turkey’s decision to move on his country’s Nato bid, but also expressed solidarity with Sweden. Niinistö said: “I have a feeling that Finnish Nato membership is not complete without Sweden.”
Sweden remains confident it will join the Nato alliance, foreign minister Tobias Billström has said, despite Turkey’s decision to move foward with ratifying Finland’s Nato application. He said separate ratification of Finland and Sweden’s bids by Ankara was “a development that we didn’t want but it’s something that we’re prepared for.”
Hungary’s parliament is expected to vote on the ratification of Finland and Sweden’s membership of Nato on 31 March. Turkey and Hungary are the only two countries yet to ratify their attempts to join the alliance.
Slovakia will donate 13 MiG-29 warplanes to Ukraine, its prime minister has said. Slovakia’s prime minister, Eduard Heger, told a news conference on Friday that his government was “on the right side of history” as Slovakia became the second Nato member to announce such a shipment in 24 hours, after a similar move by Poland. The Kremlin said the promised planes were another example of Nato members “raising the level of their direct involvement in the conflict”, adding that “all this equipment will be subject to destruction”.
Denmark was “open” to the idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine to help its war effort against the Russian invasion, the Danish defence minister said on Friday, according to the state broadcaster DR. “I won’t rule out that at some point it may be necessary to look at the contribution of fighter jets,” the acting defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said.
China’s president is to visit Russia next week in an apparent show of support for Vladimir Putin, the Chinese foreign ministry has said. During the visit, scheduled for 20-22 March, the two leaders will sign “important” bilateral documents and discuss issues of further development of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China.
The US has deep concerns that China could try to position itself as a peacemaker in the war in Ukraine by promoting a ceasefire, the White House has said. A ceasefire in Ukraine would “in effect recognise Russia’s gains and its attempt to conquer its neighbor’s territory by force, allowing Russian troops to continue to occupy sovereign Ukrainian territory”, White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said.
Talks are in progress on the renewal of an agreement allowing the safe export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, the UN’s office in Geneva has said. The Black Sea grain initiative, brokered between Russia and Ukraine by the UN and Turkey last July, is due to expire on Saturday. The UN, Ukraine and Turkey have called for a 120-day rollover of the agreement. Russia, however, has said the deal should be renewed for only 60 days.
Russia’s defence secretary, Sergei Shoigu, has presented state awards to the pilots of the Su-27 planes involved in the drone incident over the Black Sea for “preventing the violation of the borders of the special operation area by the American MQ-9 Reaper drone”.
Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, has said she sees no danger of war in her countries while Ukraine continues to hold out against Russia. “The Russian army cannot get here while Ukraine holds out – and [therefore] protects Moldova,” Sandu said in an address to the Moldovan parliament.
Kyiv’s wartime curfew will be reduced by an hour to boost business. The head of Kyiv city administration, Serhiy Popko, said that the new curfew period – starting at midnight instead of 11pm – would increase the time for public transport and that reducing its duration “should help reduce social tension, increase production, create new jobs”.
In light of Turkey’s decision to express its support for the Finnish Nato bid, our Europe correspondent Jon Henley explains the motivations for Sweden and Finland’s decision to apply to join the military alliance, as well as why they have historically remained outside the alliance.
