This blog is now closed. Please follow our live coverage here:
Summary
Russia’s war on its neighbour is well into its fourth week. Casualties are in the thousands and millions have fled the country seeking refuge abroad.
Here is where the crisis currently stands:
- Russia’s ministry of defence set a 5am deadline for the embattled city of Mariupol to surrender. “Lay down your arms,” Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian national defence management centre, said on Sunday. Mizintsev added that all those who lay down their arms would be “guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol” with humanitarian corridors opened from 10am Moscow time on Monday.
- Ukraine quickly rejected the proposal with deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk saying that there can be “no question” of surrender. “Instead of wasting time on 8 pages of letters, just open a [humanitarian] corridor,” she told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper.
- A shopping centre in Kyiv was shelled late last night with rescuers still battling to control the blaze in the Podilskyi district of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Ukraine’s state emergency services said it received a call at 10.48pm that a fire had broken out at several homes and floors of a shopping mall in an update on its official Telegram account. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack claimed one victim but information is still being clarified.
- An ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy is affecting an area within a 2.5km radius of the spill, the city’s mayor said early this morning. Dmytro Zhyvytskyiy said the leak was reported at 4.30am local time at the Sumykhimprom plant in an update posted to his official Telegram.
- US President Joe Biden will travel to Poland on Friday to discuss international efforts to support Ukraine and “impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia” for its invasion, the White House said. The discussions will follow Biden’s meetings in Brussels, Belgium with Nato allies, G7 leaders, and European Union leaders.
- The Chinese ambassador to the United States has denied China had sent weapons and ammunition to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and that Beijing would “do everything to de-escalate the crisis” in an interview with CBS. Qin Gang said reports Beijing may provide military assistance to Russia was “disinformation” and China was sending humanitarian aid to help those affected by the conflict.
- The UK’s ministry of defence believes Russian forces are advancing from Crimea and are still attempting to circumvent Mykolaiv as they look to drive west towards Odesa. “These forces have made little progress over the past week,” the report adds.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he believes a failure to negotiate the end of Russia’s invasion will mean “a third world war”. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Zelenskiy said that he’s “ready for negotiations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin but warned that if they fail “that would mean that this is a third World War.”
- Zelenskiy drew links between Putin’s “final solution” for Ukraine and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as he challenged Israel over its failure to impose sanctions on Russia in an address to the Knesset.
- Mariupol’s city council said Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering.
- Slovenia will send its diplomats back to Kyiv soon, according to prime minister Janez Janša.
Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations warned on Sunday there was little immediate hope of a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, as pressure continued to build on the US president ahead of a crucial Nato summit in Europe this week.
Biden, who faces growing dissatisfaction over his approach to the war, will travel to Brussels on Thursday and then on to Poland, it was announced on Sunday night. He will hear a proposal from Poland for Nato to send a peacekeeping force into Ukraine, something Linda Thomas-Greenfield said was unlikely.
Thomas-Greenfield was reacting on CNN’s State of the Union to an interview with Volodymr Zelenskiy in which the Ukrainian president told the same network only talks would end the war and its devastating toll on civilians.
“We have to use any format, any chance, to have the possibility of negotiating, of talking to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin,” Zelenskiy told Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS. “If these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”
Thomas-Greenfield said she saw little chance of a breakthrough.
Around Ukraine, as the bombardment continues, some residents are trying to snatch moments of normal life:
We’ve got a bit more from the White House on Biden’s plan for the week. We know that the US president will travel to Brussels and then to Poland to meet leaders to discuss the war in Ukraine. Before that, he will discuss the situation with European leaders, AP reports:
On Monday ahead of his trip, Biden will discuss the war with European leaders. President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom are expected to take part, the White House said Sunday.
He will also attend a summit on Thursday of Nato leaders, who will use the meeting to look at strengthening the bloc’s own deterrence and defence, immediately and in the long term, to deal with the now openly confrontational Russian president Vladimir Putin.
That gathering is intended not just to show Nato’s “support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all Nato allies,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
“And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between Nato and Russia,” Stoltenberg said.
Updated
Our reporter in Ukraine, Isobel Khoshiw, interviewed a former journalist who has been rescuing people from Mariupol. He described the city as broken and said that many people he tried to help were too scared to leave their shelters. Here is the full story:
Here’s a look at some of the British newspaper front pages for Monday:
Monday’s GUARDIAN: “Thousands from Mariupol ‘being forced into Russia’ “ #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/1LfLygsGQ8
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) March 20, 2022
Monday’s FINANCIAL TIMES: “Sheltering civilians bombed as fierce fighting grips Mariupol” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/rb743HSuCS
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) March 20, 2022
Monday’s TIMES: “Russia accused of genocide” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/QIuuG2ARRn
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) March 20, 2022
New Zealand says it will provide Ukraine with a further NZ$5 million ($3.46 million) in funds and non-lethal military assistance including some surplus equipment.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern said the money would be primarily directed to a Nato trust fund that provides fuel, rations, communication equipment and first aid kits to support Ukraine, Reuters reports.
“We consider what is happening in Ukraine as a massive disruption to the international rules-based order and because of that it impacts all of us and that’s why we have taken these extraordinary measures,” Ardern told a news conference.
The New Zealand defence force will provide tactical equipment such as body armour, helmets and vests that are surplus to requirements, she said.
This brings New Zealand’s total assistance to Ukraine to NZ$11 million. New Zealand has also imposed sanctions on Russia and arranged a special visa for Ukrainians with New Zealand connections.
An ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy is affecting an area within a 2.5km radius of the spill, the city’s mayor has said.
Dmytro Zhyvytskyiy said the leak was reported at 4.30am local time at the Sumykhimprom plant in an update posted to his official Telegram this morning
He said the area within a 2.5km radius around the plant was hazardous, adding that resident should use shelters and basements for protection and describing ammonia as a “colourless gas with a pungent suffocating odour”.
However, Zhyvytskyiy clarified that there is no current threat to Sumy due to the direction of the wind.
Updated
According to Reuters, the number of fatalities from the strike on a shopping mall in Kyiv has increased to four.
The news agency cites the Kyiv department of Ukraine’s state emergency service, however the agency so far only lists the death toll from the attack as claiming one victim.
Updated
The United States could broaden its sanctions against Russia, including reaching “the commanding heights of the Russian economy” US deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh has said.
In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, Singh said:
We can broaden our sanctions. Take the measures, take the sanctions we’ve already applied, apply them in more targets. Apply them to more sectors. More banks, more sectors that we haven’t touched.”
Asked what that might entail, Singh said: “Well, the commanding heights of the Russian economy. It’s mostly about oil and gas, but there are other sectors too. I don’t want to specify them, but I think Putin would know what those are.”
Singh described the impact of sanctions from the US and allies on the Russian economy, saying they have prompted Putin to take “some desperate measures.”
“He’s self-isolating his economy. Russia is now on a fast track to a 1980’s-style Soviet living standard. It’s looking into an economic abyss and that is that is the result of Putin’s choices and I can see from his reaction, that’s where it’s headed.”
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, new mothers are forced to comfort their babies in makeshift underground nurseries.
Biden to travel to Poland to impose more costs on Russia
US President Joe Biden will travel to Poland this week to discuss international efforts to support Ukraine and “impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia” for its invasion, the White House has said.
The discussions will follow Biden’s meetings in Brussels, Belgium with Nato allies, G7 leaders, and European Union leaders.
A White House press statement reads:
On Friday, March 25, President Biden will travel to Warsaw, Poland, where he will hold a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda. The President will discuss how the United States, alongside our Allies and partners, is responding to the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created.”
Biden is also due to hold a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and UK prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday.
Updated
A Ukrainian mother has been seriously wounded while shielding her baby from a missile strike in Kyiv.
Olga, a 27-year-old Ukrainian woman seriously wounded while sheltering her baby from shrapnel blasts in Kyiv, recalled the shock as she saw blood covering her child after a missile strike that shattered glass across the room.
“I was wounded in the head, and blood started flowing. And it all flowed on the baby,” said Olga, sitting on a bed at the Okhmatdyt Children’s hospital where she was being treated.
“I couldn’t understand, I thought it was her blood.”
Photographs of Olga, her head bandaged and her upper body covered in cuts as she holds her baby, Victoria, have featured widely on social media, in an image encapsulating the heavy toll being paid by civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Read the full story below.
CCTV captured the explosion near a shopping centre in the Podilskyi district of Kyiv late on Sunday night.
Ukraine’s state emergency services said in an update on its official Telegram account that it received a call at 10.48pm that a fire had broken out at several homes and floors of a shopping mall.
Firefighters who rescued people from the rubble can be seen in the video below.
It is now less and half an hour away from Russia’s 5am deadline for Ukraine to lay down its arms in the eastern port city of Mariupol, where it said a “terrible humanitarian catastrophe” was unfolding.
The deadline has been rejected by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk who responded that there can be “no question” of surrender.
“There can be no talk of any surrenders, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she said, according to online news site Ukrainska Pravda. “Instead of wasting time on 8 pages of letters, just open a [humanitarian] corridor.”
Director of the Russian National Defence Management Center, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, said those who lay down their arms are “guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.”
Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped in the city with little, if any, food, water or power.
The Chinese ambassador to the United States has denied China had sent weapons and ammunition to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and that Beijing would “do everything to de-escalate the crisis”.
Ambassador Qin Gang said any reports that Beijing may provide military assistance to Russia was “disinformation” and Beijing was sending humanitarian aid to help those affected by the conflict.
In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Qin Gang said:
What China is doing is sending food, medicine, sleeping bags and baby formula, not weapons and ammunition to any party, and we are against the war.”
Gang said that public condemnation by the west “doesn’t help” and that “good diplomacy” was needed.
His comments come after US President Joe Biden warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday that there would be “consequences” if Beijing provided material support to Moscow.
Images released by Ukraine’s state emergency services show the aftermath of an earlier attack on a shopping centre in Kyiv.
The UK’s ministry of defence has just released its latest intelligence report, saying Russian forces are advancing from Crimea are still attempting to circumvent Mykolaiv as they look to drive west towards Odesa.
“These forces have made little progress over the past week,” the report adds.
“Russian naval forces continue to blockade the Ukrainian coast and to launch missile strikes on targets across Ukraine.
“The blockade of the Ukrainian coast is likely to exacerbate the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, preventing vital supplies reaching the Ukrainian population.”
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 20 March 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 20, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/4Kgqgh6q8K
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/VU1vamog4n
Failure to negotiate will mean 'a third world war', Zelenskiy says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that he believes a failure to negotiate the end of Russia’s invasion will mean “a third world war”.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Zelenskiy said that he’s “ready for negotiations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin but warned that if they fail “that would mean that this is a third World War.”
I’m ready for negotiations with him. I was ready for the last two years. And I think that without negotiations we cannot end this war.
I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have a possibility of negotiating, possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third World War.”
Zelenskiy added that if Ukraine “were a Nato member, a war wouldn’t have started.”
In a recent video message, the Ukrainian president called for talks “without delay,” warning that otherwise Russia’s losses would be “huge.”
“We have always insisted on negotiations. We have always offered dialogue, offered solutions for peace,” he said. “And I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine.”
Oleg Nikolenko, Ukraine ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, called Russia’s actions in Mariupol on Sunday “a chapter from WWII.”
“First they came to destroy the cities, bombing hospitals, theatres, schools, and shelters, killing civilians and children. Then they forcibly relocated the scared, exhausted people to the invader’s land. A chapter from WWII? No – the actions of the Russian army, today in Mariupol,” Nikolenko said.
First they came to destroy the cities, bombing hospitals, theaters, schools and shelters, killing civilians and children. Then they forcibly relocated the scared, exhausted people to the invader’s land. A chapter from WWII? No – the actions of the Russian army, today in Mariupol.
— Oleg Nikolenko (@OlegNikolenko_) March 20, 2022
British prime minister Boris Johnson said he spoke with Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy and will be addressing the war in Ukraine at meetings of Nato and the G7 this week.
“I spoke to president Zelenskiy this afternoon to set out how I will be working to advance Ukraine’s interests at meetings of Nato and the G7 this week.
“The UK will continue to step up military, economic and diplomatic support to help bring an end to this terrible conflict.”
I spoke to President @ZelenskyyUa this afternoon to set out how I will be working to advance Ukraine’s interests at meetings of NATO and the G7 this week.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) March 20, 2022
The UK will continue to step up military, economic and diplomatic support to help bring an end to this terrible conflict.
Kyiv shopping district shelled, 1 killed
A shopping centre in Kyiv has been shelled with rescuers battling to control the blaze in the Podilskyi district of Ukraine’s capital.
Ukraine’s state emergency services said it received a call at 10.48pm that a fire had broken out at several homes and floors of a shopping mall in an update on its official Telegram account.
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko also corroborated reports, saying “several explosions” were heard in the northwestern Podilskyi district. The Retroville mall is believed to be the site of the attack, according to journalists at the scene.
“According to the information we have at the moment, several homes and one of the shopping centres [were hit]. Rescue teams, medics and the police are already on site,” Klitschko posted to his Telegram account about 11.30pm local time.
Klitschko later added he believed the attack had claimed one victim but information was still being clarified.
Ukraine’s state emergency services published video footage of the aftermath.
Друзі! Кілька вибухів у Подільському районі столиці. Зокрема, з інформації на даний момент,деякі будинки та на території одного з торгових центрів. Рятувальники, медики і поліція вже на місці. pic.twitter.com/qDjaEhGyj9
— Віталій Кличко (@Vitaliy_Klychko) March 20, 2022
Київ: внаслідок ворожого обстрілу зайнялися торгівельний центр та автомобілі на парковціhttps://t.co/XmnqdR8FXF pic.twitter.com/NMsnlUVNgl
— DSNS.GOV.UA (@SESU_UA) March 20, 2022
Updated
Ukraine rejects deadline to surrender Mariupol
Russia’s ministry of defence earlier set a 5am deadline for the embattled city of Mariupol to surrender.
“Lay down your arms,” Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian national defence management centre, said on Sunday in a briefing. “A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed. All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.”
Mizintsev added that local officials would face a “military tribunal” if they didn’t agree to the surrender terms.
However Ukraine has rejected the proposal with deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk saying that there can be “no question” of surrender.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk was quoted as saying by Ukrainska Pravda:
There can be no talk of any surrenders, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this.
Instead of wasting time on 8 pages of letters, just open a [humanitarian] corridor.”
Updated
Slovenia will send its diplomats back to Kyiv soon, according to prime minister Janez Janša.
“They are volunteers. We are working to make EU do the same. Ukraine needs direct diplomatic support,” he said.
Slovenia @vladaRS will send its diplomats back to #Kyiv soon. They are volunteers. We are working to make #EU do the same. 🇺🇦needs direct diplomatic support. @SLOinUKR @ukraineoffice @Kabmin_UA_e @ua_parliament @ZelenskyyUa @Denys_Shmyhal #defendUkraine @KyivPost @visegrad24
— Janez Janša (@JJansaSDS) March 20, 2022
Zelenskiy also confirmed attacks on Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kherson as Ukraine continues its evacuation effort.
In besieged Mariupol, Russian aviation dropped a bomb on an art school where people were taking shelter, hiding from shelling and bombing. There were no military posts. There were nearly 400 people, mostly, women, children, and the elderly. They are trapped under the rubble now. At the moment, we don’t know how many are alive.
But we know that we will shoot down a pilot who dropped that bomb. Just as we have already shot down a hundred other mass murderers.”
Zelenskiy said, as of 20 March, only four humanitarian corridors were open, allowing 7,295 people to evacuate.
Nearly 4,000 residents of Mariupol arrived in Zaporizhia. Tomorrow morning, we are preparing to send buses to Mariupol to continue this important mission. Over 3,000 people were rescued in Kyiv region. However, in Kharkiv region… Russian troops seized our convoy of humanitarian aid for the city of Vovchansk. We have lost communication with six people: five drivers and one doctor. We will liberate them. And we will, again, make effort to deliver necessary aid to our people.”
Describing the situation in Kherson, Zelenskiy said the region fought again today “on the streets” and “with Ukrainian flags and our Ukrainian courage”.
Hello it’s Samantha Lock back with you as my colleague Maanvi Singh signs off.
In what has become a regular nightly feature, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has delivered another emphatic televised address.
Zelenskiy mocked Russian forces, saying soldiers were sent for “military drills” only to find themselves on Ukraine’s land.
“All of them say so when they are captured,” he added.
It has been 25 days that Russian troops are looking for and can’t find “Nazis” whom they invented, from whom they purportedly want to protect our people. They are looking for and can’t find Ukrainians who would greet them with flowers, at least in some city or in some village of our state.
And most importantly, Russian troops can’t find their way home. That’s why our soldiers are helping them to find their way to God’s judgement.
God’s Judgment, at which, I’m convinced, they will receive one punishment for all: an eternal basement. Forever under bombs, forever without food, water, and heating. For everything that they have done against our people, ordinary Ukrainians. Against civilians.”
Updated
Catch up
- One person has been killed following a shelling that hit homes and a shopping district in Kyiv, according to the city’s mayor. “According to the information we have at the moment, several homes and one of the shopping centres [were hit],” mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post.
- Russia says it has set a 5am Moscow time (2am GMT / 10pm ET) deadline for Mariupol to surrender. “Lay down your arms,” Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian National Center for Defense Management, said in a briefing. He said that humanitarian corridors would be opened tomorrow in both the eastern and western directions from Mariupol from 10am Moscow time.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy drew links between Vladimir Putin’s “final solution” for Ukraine and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as he challenged Israel over its failure to impose sanctions on Russia in an uncompromising address to the Knesset. Speaking via video link, Ukraine’s president warned that indifference cost lives and that there could be no mediating between good and evil, as he challenged Israel over both the lack of sanctions and the failure to come to Ukraine’s aid with weapons.
- Mariupol’s city council said Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering. Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, shared on social media that there is no exact information on the number of casualties. “The city continues to be shelled both from the sky and the sea,” Andrushenko said on Telegram. “It seems the occupiers are so eager to wipe out Mariupol that they are ready to cover themselves with fire.”
- Ukraine’s human rights spokesperson, Lyudmyla Denisova, said said Russian troops had “kidnapped” residents and taken them to Russia. “Several thousand Mariupol residents have been deported to Russia,” she said on Telegram. After processing at “filtration camps”, some had been transported to the Russian city of Taganrog, about 60 miles (100km) from Mariupol, and from there sent by rail “to various economically depressed cities in Russia”, she said.
- Ten million people – more than a quarter of the population – have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia’s “devastating” war, the head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said today. And at least 902 civilians have been killed and 1,459 injured in Ukraine as of midnight local time yesterday, the UN human rights office said. The Ukrainian parliament says 115 Ukrainian children have been killed and at least 140 more have been injured.
-
Pope Francis has described what is happening in Ukraine as “inhumane and sacrilegious”. Addressing tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Sunday address and blessing, he called on leaders to stop “this repugnant war”.
-
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has claimed a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is “close”, despite the scepticism of western governments.
-
Eleven Ukrainian political parties have been suspended because of their links with Russia, according to Zelenskiy. The country’s national security and defence council took the decision to ban the parties from any political activity. Most of the parties affected were small, but one of them, the Opposition Platform for Life, has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament.
– Guardian staff
Updated
The Frontline Club, a London-based media club, has lit up the Russian embassy in London with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Outside, demonstrators held up photos of journalists killed on the front line of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 20, 2022
Updated
One person has been killed following a shelling that hit homes and a shopping district in Kyiv, according to the city’s mayor.
“According to the information we have at the moment, several homes and one of the shopping centres [were hit],” mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post.
The Guardian is still working to verify video and reports of the shelling.
The attack on Kyiv’s Podilskyi district hit “some houses and on the territory of one of the shopping centers. Rescuers, paramedics and police are already on scene,” Klitschko said.
Updated
David Beckham hands his Instagram account to Ukrainian doctor in Kharkiv
David Beckham has handed over control of his Instagram account to a Ukrainian doctor working in the city of Kharkiv.
Throughout Sunday, the former footballer’s Instagram Stories were inundated with videos and photographs following child anaesthesiologist and head of the regional perinatal centre, Iryna, through a day at work in the midst of the conflict.
Iryna showed Beckham’s 71.5 million followers the cramped basement where all pregnant women and new mothers were evacuated to during the first day of the Russian invasion. She posted photographs of newborns in the intensive care unit, where they relied on oxygen generators donated by Unicef. In one clip, she filmed a young mother, Yana, holding her son, Mykhailo, who was born with breathing problems, and whose family home was destroyed.
Iryna said she now works “24/7” and that: “We are probably risking our lives, but we don’t think about it at all. We love our work.”
She added: “Doctors and nurses here, we worry, we cry, but none of us will give up.”
Beckham, an ambassador for Unicef since 2005, urged his followers to donate to the charity, which is working in Ukraine to provide families with access to clean water and food, delivering ready-to-use kits to maternity hospitals and ensuring child protections services continue.
“Thanks to your donations, the oxygen generators they have received are helping newborns survive in appalling conditions,” he said.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has been the constant target of Russian shelling for three weeks.
Updated
For a sense of the dire circumstances in Mariupol, here is a dispatch from the AP:
The heat on the train was as thick as the anxiety. Ukrainian survivors of one of the most brutal sieges in modern history were in the final minutes of their ride to relative safety.
Some carried only what they had at hand when they seized the chance to escape the port of Mariupol amid relentless Russian bombardment. Some fled so quickly that relatives who were still in the starving, freezing Ukrainian city on the Sea of Azov aren’t aware that they have gone.
“There is no city anymore,” Marina Galla said. She wept in the doorway of a crowded train compartment that was pulling into the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
The relief of being free from weeks of threats and deprivation, of seeing bodies in the streets and drinking melted snow because there was no water, was crushed by sadness as she thought of family members left behind.
“I don’t know anything about them,” she said. “My mother, grandmother, grandfather and father. They don’t even know that we have left.”
Seeing her tears, her 13-year-old son kissed her over and over, offering comfort.
Mariupol authorities say nearly 10% of the city’s population of 430,000 have fled over the past week, risking their lives in convoys out.
For Galla, the memories are too fresh. For three weeks, she and her son lived in the basement of Mariupol’s Palace of Culture to hide from the constant Russian shelling, moving underground after the horizon turned black with smoke.
“We had no water, no light, no gas, absolutely no communications,” she said. They cooked meals outside with wood in the yard, even while under fire.
Even as they finally fled Mariupol, aiming to reach trains heading west to safety, Russian soldiers at checkpoints made a chilling suggestion: it would be better to go to the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol or the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula instead.
It’s a suggestion that residents found ludicrous after the Russians on Wednesday bombed a Mariupol theatre where children and others were sheltering, and after authorities on Sunday said an art school holding hundreds of people in Mariupol had been bombed.
For hours on Sunday’s train journey, survivors shared their experiences with fellow passengers. Even residents of other Ukrainian cities that have been battered or occupied by the Russians see Mariupol as a horror apart.
One resident of Melitopol, Yelena Sovchyuk, shared a train compartment with a Mariupol family. She bought them food, she said. They had nothing, only a small bag.
“Everyone from there is in deep shock,” Sovchyuk said.
She recalled seeing convoys from the besieged city on the road. “There’s a way to tell a Mariupol car,” she said. “They have no glass in their windows.”
With deep disdain, Sovchyuk said Russian soldiers amid such devastation were still encouraging Ukrainians to come to Russia, claiming it would be for their safety.
The Mariupol city council has asserted that several thousand residents were taken into Russia against their will over the past week. On Sunday, the Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said 2,973 people had been “evacuated” from Mariupol since 5 March, including 541 over the last 24 hours.
Updated
Russia sets 5am deadline for Mariupol surrender
Russia says it has set a 5am Moscow time (2am GMT / 10pm ET) deadline for Mariupol to surrender.
From Reuters:
“Lay down your arms,” Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian National Center for Defense Management, said in a briefing distributed by the defence ministry.
“A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed,” Mizintsev said. “All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.”
Mizintsev said at a briefing today that humanitarian corridors would be opened tomorrow in both the eastern and western directions from Mariupol from 10am Moscow time.
“The Mariupol authorities now have the opportunity to make a choice and go over to the side of the people, otherwise the military tribunal that awaits them is just a little that they deserve for their terrible crimes, which the Russian side is very carefully documenting,” he said.
Read our full story here.
Updated
Marina Ovsyannikova, Russian TV protester, decries Putin propaganda
The Russian TV editor who interrupted a news broadcast to protest the Ukraine war said on Sunday she acted out of dissatisfaction at propaganda disseminated by Vladimir Putin’s government, and said she had turned down an offer of asylum in France despite fearing further retaliation.
Marina Ovsyannikova, who describes herself as “a patriot”, was fined 30,000 roubles ($280) by a court in Moscow last week for the “spontaneous” act of rebellion in which she appeared during the live newscast with a sign saying “No War”.
On Sunday, she told ABC’s This Week she needed to speak out after watching her employer, Channel One, spread “lies” about the Ukraine war.
“After a week of coverage of this situation, the atmosphere on the channel was so unpleasant that I realised that I could not go back there,” she said. “I could see what in reality was happening in Ukraine. And what we showed on our programmes was very different from what was going on in reality.”
She said the knowledge the channel was imparting false information ate away at her.
“I could not believe that such a thing could happen, that this gruesome war could take place. And as soon as the war began, I could not eat. I could not sleep,” she said, adding that she had considered joining public protests in Moscow.
“I could see security dragging people away … and I decided that this was going to be a rather useless action on my part. Maybe I could do something more meaningful, with more impact, where I could show to the rest of the world that Russians are against the war.
“And I could show to the Russian people that this is just propaganda, expose this propaganda for what it is and maybe stimulate some people to speak up against the war.”
Read more:
“Russian forces have come to exterminate us, to kill us,” Volodymr Zelenskiy said in an interview with CNN earlier today. But the Ukrainian president remained steadfast that “diaologue is the only way out” of this conflict.
On today's GPS, I spoke w/ Ukrainian Pres. @ZelenskyyUa in an exclusive interview about the state of his country & its war w/ Russia.
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) March 20, 2022
Pt. 1 of our in-depth conversation: the prospect of negotiating w/ Putin & what Zelensky makes of Russia's demands pic.twitter.com/rOlK59NMe7
“I think it’s just the two of us, me and Putin, who can make an agreement on this,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “If these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”
But Zelenskiy said he is unwilling to accept Putin’s push to recognise Donetsk and Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine, as independent entities. “You cannot just demand from Ukraine to recognise some territories as independent republics,” he said
“These compromises are simply wrong,” he said. “We have to come up with a model where Ukraine will not lose its sovereignty, its territorial integrity.”
Updated
Ukrainian authorities have said that Russian forces have bombed a Mariupol art school sheltering about 400 people. Here’s a satellite view of the damage.
Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, shared on social media that there is no exact information on the number of casualties. “The situation is difficult and there is nowhere to get the data from,” he posted.
“The city continues to be shelled both from the sky and the sea,” Andrushenko wrote on his Telegram. “It seems the occupiers are so eager to wipe out Mariupol that they are ready to cover themselves with fire.”
Updated
Reuters reports that Manolis Androulakis, Greece’s consul general and the last EU diplomat to evacuate Mariupol, had a dire assessment of the city’s plight:
Greece’s consul general in Mariupol, the last EU diplomat to evacuate the besieged Ukrainian port, said on Sunday the city was joining the ranks of places known for having been destroyed in wars of the past.
Androulakis has assisted dozens of Greek nationals and ethnic Greeks to evacuate the ruined city since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He left Mariupol on Tuesday and after a four-day trip through Ukraine he crossed to Romania through Moldavia, along with 10 other Greek nationals.
“What I saw, I hope no one will ever see,” Androulakis said as he arrived on Sunday at Athens international airport and was reunited with his family.
“Mariupol will become part of a list of cities that were completely destroyed by war; I don’t need to name them – they are Guernica, Coventry, Aleppo, Grozny, Leningrad,” Androulakis said.
According to the Greek foreign ministry, Androulakis was the last EU diplomat to leave Mariupol, where many residents have been trapped under heavy bombardment for more than two weeks as Russian forces seeks to take control.
Updated
Isobel Koshiw and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kyiv:
Few countries can be quite as dedicated to a good, or at least a frequent, cup of coffee as Ukraine. Even war, with nightly bombing raids and Russian troops committing atrocities just a few dozen kilometres away, hasn’t shut down supplies of daily caffeine kicks in Kyiv.
Valentyn Kononeko, 22, offered to help out a friend at a stall in fashionable Podil district when he reopened on Monday. He is one of millions who stayed on in the city, by choice or by necessity, and is now trying to feel his way towards some kind of wartime routine.
“If I have to sit around worrying about whether a rocket is going to land on me, I would rather do it here,” he said after dealing with a 20-minute queue of customers. “You have something to do, taking up some of your time.”
Olena Osadcha, 51, an accountant, was picking up two espressos to go, determined to stay even though her employer has shut down. “I’ve always lived here, and I can’t imagine life without Kyiv,” she said.
Like many in the city, she talks lightly of the Russian missiles that rip into apartment blocks every evening, including one recently just a few kilometres away. “To hold your nerve during all of this, you have to try to live your normal life as much as possible.”
At least half of Kyiv’s population has left, its streets are dotted with roadblocks, offices are closed and pavements eerily empty. But those who have remained are often proud – and defiant.
The city’s trademark trams are running regularly, now free for anyone who needs them. “I can’t leave my mum for long, so it’s good to be able to stock up between curfews,” said one shopper heading home with bulging bags.
Many women were walking around with bunches of tulips, handed out by shops after flowers once destined for the city’s many florist kiosks were used to create a giant trident – the Ukrainian national symbol – in the centre on Friday.
“Some employers picked them up from the trident, and we have been handing them out to give everyone something to be cheerful about,” said Yuri Melnyk, 30, working behind the bar at First Point cafe. Outside customers are sitting in the sun, stroking a husky.
They even had a few freshly baked croissants left, made from dough frozen before the war, although it is likely to run out soon.
At a nearby restaurant specialising in pastries from the western city of Lviv, which has mostly been coordinating community volunteering but still makes pies to sell to hungry locals, handmade luxury chocolates on display are also selling well, says Victoria Patichenko, 20.
Customers now include armed men guarding the nearby roadblocks, but she looks as fashionable as she would have a month ago, when the streets were packed with drinkers each evening, not emptied by the nightly curfew.
Read more:
Updated
US not optimistic about Ukraine talks as Zelenskiy ups pressure on Biden
Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations warned on Sunday there was little immediate hope of a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, as pressure continued to build on the US president ahead of a crucial Nato summit in Europe this week.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield was reacting on CNN’s State of the Union to an interview with Volodymr Zelenskiy in which the Ukrainian president told the same network only talks would end the war and its devastating toll on civilians.
“We have to use any format, any chance, to have the possibility of negotiating, of talking to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin,” Zelenskiy told Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS. “If these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”
Thomas-Greenfield said she saw little chance of a breakthrough.
“We have supported the negotiations that President Zelenskiy has attempted with the Russians, and I use the word “attempted” because the negotiations seem to be one-sided, and the Russians have not leaned in to any possibility for a negotiated and diplomatic solution,” she said.
“We tried before Russia decided to move forward in this brutal attack on Ukraine and those diplomatic efforts were not responded to well by the Russians, and they’re not responding now. But we’re still hopeful that the Ukrainian effort will end this brutal war.”
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “Turkey is doing some real effort to try to facilitate, support talks between Russia and Ukraine. It’s far too early to say whether these talks can lead to any concrete outcome.”
Biden, who faces growing dissatisfaction over his approach to the war, will travel to Brussels on Thursday. He will hear a proposal from Poland for Nato to send a peacekeeping force into Ukraine, something Thomas-Greenfield said was unlikely.
“I can’t preview what decisions will be made and how Nato will respond to the Polish proposal,” she said. “What I can say is American troops will not be on the ground in Ukraine at this moment. The president has been clear on that.
“Other Nato countries may decide that they want to put troops inside of Ukraine, that will be a decision that they have made. We don’t want to escalate this into a war with the United States but we will support our Nato allies.”
Read more:
Updated
Summary
- Zelenskiy has urged Israeli legislators to help protect Ukraine against the Russian invasion, drawing comparisons between the Russian offensive and the “final solution” – the plan by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.
- Mariupol’s city council says Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering.
- Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been forcibly deported to Russia, and then sent by rail to various economically depressed cities where they have to remain, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has claimed.
- Ten million people – more than a quarter of the population – have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia’s “devastating” war, the head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said today.
-
One of Europe’s largest metallurgical plants, the the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, has been destroyed by the Russians, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said.
- Russia has struck Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and launched hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace, the Russian defence ministry said.
- An attack on marine barracks in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Friday killed more than 40 marines, according to the New York Times. If confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.
- At least 902 civilians have been killed and 1,459 injured in Ukraine as of midnight local time yesterday, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said.
-
The Ukrainian parliament says 115 Ukrainian children have been killed and at least 140 more have been injured.
- Pope Francis has described what is happening in Ukraine as “inhumane and sacrilegious”. Addressing tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Sunday address and blessing, he called on leaders to stop “this repugnant war”.
- A shell exploded outside an apartment block in Kyiv, wounding five people, the mayor said on Sunday.
-
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has claimed a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is “close”, despite the scepticism of western governments.
- Eleven Ukrainian political parties have been suspended because of their links with Russia, according to Zelenskiy.
Updated
China’s ambassador to the US has said his country is not sending weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, but he did not definitively rule out the possibility Beijing might do so in the future.
Asked Sunday on CBS whether China might send money or weapons to Russia, ambassador Qin Gang spoke about the present, saying: “There is disinformation about China providing military assistance to Russia. We reject that.”
Instead, “what China is doing is sending food, medicine, sleeping bags and baby formula, not weapons and ammunition to any party,” he said.
Qin said Beijing was continuing to “promote peace talks and urge immediate cease-fire”.
But the sort of public condemnation urged by many in the west “doesn’t help”, he said. “We need reason. We need courage. And we need good diplomacy.”
Updated
Russia’s deputy Black Sea fleet commander, Andrey Paly, has been killed in Ukraine, Russia has confirmed. He is said to have died during the fighting in the Mariupol region.
Paly was about to be promoted to rear admiral.
Deputy commander of the Russian Black Fleet, formerly deputy commander of Russian forces in Syria, about to be promoted to rear-admiral, killed in action in Mariupol, Russia confirms. Born and raised in Kyiv! https://t.co/4p014TfqoD
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) March 20, 2022
Updated
Zelenskiy compares Russian offensive to Nazi Germany
Zelenskiy told Israeli legislators they would have to live with the choices they make on whether to help protect Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
Addressing the Knesset via video link on Sunday, he drew comparisons between the Russian offensive and the “final solution” – the plan by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.
He also questioned Israel’s reluctance to sell the Iron Dome defence system to Ukraine. He said:
Everybody knows that your missile defence systems are the best and that you can definitely help our people, save the lives of Ukrainians, of Ukrainian Jews.
We can ask why we can’t receive weapons from you, why Israel has not imposed powerful sanctions on Russia or is not putting pressure on Russian business. Either way, the choice is yours to make, brothers and sisters, and you must then live with your answer, the people of Israel.
Russia denies targeting civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Updated
Russia’s claim it used a hypersonic missile in Ukraine was a way to reclaim war momentum, but the next-generation weaponry has not proved to be a “game changer,” the Pentagon’s chief has said, AFP reports:
Moscow said it has fired two hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. While US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would not “confirm or dispute” whether Russia used such weapons, he warned that Putin’s invasion was undergoing a change in tactics including the targeting of civilians.
Russia’s use of the hard-to-intercept hypersonics would mark a dramatic escalation of its campaign to force Ukraine to abandon hopes of closer ties with the West.
But “I would not see it as a game changer,” Austin told CBS talk show Face the Nation.
“I think the reason he is resorting to using these types of weapons is because he is trying to re-establish some momentum,” he added. “And again, we’ve seen him attack towns and cities and civilians outright (and) we expect to see that continue.”
Ukraine’s outgunned military has “presented some significant problems for the Russians”, Austin said.
“The Ukrainians have continued to trip [Putin’s] forces, and they’ve been very effective using the equipment we provided them.”
With Putin and Russia under punitive western sanctions, Moscow has reportedly asked China for military and economic aid for its war, a claim Beijing denies.
As a potential means of reinforcing its troops, Russia has been recruiting thousands of Syrian army personnel and allied militia fighters for possible deployment in Ukraine, a war monitor has said.
“We’ve heard from a number of sources that this is, in fact, going on,” Austin said, but “we have not seen mercenaries show up on the battlefield to my knowledge.”
Updated
A peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is “close”, Turkey’s foreign minister has claimed.
Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, whose government has been acting as a “mediator and facilitator”, said there was “momentum” behind the negotiations despite the scepticism of western governments.
Kyiv was said to be willing to change its constitution to abandon aspirations to join Nato but wants Turkey, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN security council to act as guarantors of any deal.
Çavuşoğlu, who visited Russia and Ukraine this week to meet his counterparts, said: “Of course, it is not an easy thing to come to terms with while the war is going on, while civilians are killed, but we would like to say that momentum is still gained … We see that the parties are close to an agreement.”
In an interview with daily Hürriyet, İbrahim Kalin, a spokesperson for Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said six points were the focus of the talks.
They are Ukraine‘s neutrality, disarmament and security guarantees, the so-called “de-Nazification” of the country, removal of obstacles on the use of the Russian language in Ukraine, the status of the breakaway Donbas region and Crimea which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Turkey said it was ready to host a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin which has been called for by Ukraine’s president. “We are working day and night for peace,” Çavuşoğlu said.
Updated
In Kherson, an occupied city in southern Ukraine, a Russian army truck retreated in the face of protests by locals.
Another video from today's anti-occupation protest in Kherson shows a Russian truck retreating as some protesters are approaching it.
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 20, 2022
📹@ukrpravda_newspic.twitter.com/yiimYP6LRX
Reports of Ukrainians from the besieged port city of Mariupol being deported to Russia are are “horrific” and “unconscionable” if true, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said today.
Speaking on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show, she said she could not confirm the allegations but added:
I find that story absolutely horrific. I do know that the Russians attempted to open what they called a humanitarian corridor to go into Belarus as well as into Russia, and the Ukrainians clearly objected to that. To force people from Ukraine to go into Russia is absolutely unacceptable; it’s unconscionable. And again, it’s something we need to confirm, but I don’t put it past the Russians to take such a horrific action ...
Certainly, that would be another escalation, but not beyond the realm of possibility given how horrible the Russians have tried to put pressure on the Ukrainian people.
A shell exploded outside an apartment block in Kyiv, wounding five people, the mayor said Sunday, the latest bombardment as Russian forces try to encircle the Ukranian capital (via AFP).
The ten-storey building in northwestern Sviatoshyn district was badly damaged, with all the windows blown out and scorch marks from a fire that broke out, AFP journalists at the scene said.
Firefighters led an elderly woman and a disorientated man with facial injuries to an ambulance. Two burned-out cars lay in the debris-covered courtyard, which also houses a playground.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that “the enemy’s airstrikes” had wounded five people, two of whom were taken to hospital.
“It was lucky” that there were not more casualties, Sviatlana Vodolaga, a spokeswoman for the state emergency service told AFP, adding that six people were rescued from the block.
A kindergarten was also damaged but was empty at the time.
The boom of shelling and rocket fire could be heard in the distance from the scene, which is only a few kilometres from the frontline commuter town of Irpin.
“My sister was on the balcony when it happened, she was nearly killed,” said Anna, 30, a resident of the block who asked to be identified by her first name.
“Please Nato, close the skies. I hate [Vladimir] Putin,” she added referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv has been hit by a series of isolated strikes on apartment blocks over the past week, killing at least seven people in total and leaving one building in flames.
⚡️ Another missile strike on the Sviatoshyn district in Kyiv. Parts of a projectile hit the yard of a ten-storey residential building, causing a fire. According to mayor Klitschko, 5 people were injured. #StopRussia
— Stratcom Centre UA (@StratcomCentre) March 20, 2022
Photos: @SESU_UA pic.twitter.com/Eo3njtXI7w
The former US military commander and CIA chief, David Petraeus, has been talking to CNN about how Ukrainians are taking out Russian generals. Since this report was broadcast, Ukraine claims to have killed six Russian general to date.
Petraeus said:
It’s very, very, very, very uncommon [for generals to be killed]. This is in the first three weeks. And these are quite senior generals. The bottom line is that their command-and-control has broken down. Their communications have been jammed by the Ukrainians. Their secure comms didn’t work. They had to go to single channel. That’s jammable. And that’s exactly what the Ukrainians have been doing to that. They use cellphones. The Ukrainians blocked the prefix for Russia so that didn’t work. Then they took down 3G. They’re literally stealing cell phones from Ukrainian civilians to communicate among each other.
So, what happens? The column gets stopped. An impatient general is sitting back there in his armoured or whatever vehicle. He goes forward to find out what’s going on because there’s no initiative. Again, there’s no noncommissioned officer corps. There’s no sense of initiative at junior levels. They wait to be told what to do. Gets up there. And the Ukrainians have very, very good snipers, and they have just been picking them off left and right. And at least four of these five are absolutely confirmed. And I think the fifth, we will hear today.
Eleven Ukrainian political parties have been suspended because of their links with Russia, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The country’s national security and defence council took the decision to ban the parties from any political activity. Most of the parties affected were small, but one of them, the Opposition Platform for Life, has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament.
“The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response,” Zelenskiy said, in a video address on Sunday.
“Therefore, the national security and defence council decided, given the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, and the political ties that a number of political structures have with this state, to suspend any activity of a number of political parties for the period of martial law,” the Ukrainian leader added.
The UK Ministry of Defence says Russia has made “limited progress” over the past week in capturing cities it has encircled.
UK defence attaché, Air vice-marshal Mick Smeath said:
The Ministry of Defence’s Defence Intelligence says Russian forces are continuing to encircle a number of cities across eastern Ukraine.”
Over the past week Russian forces have made limited progress in capturing these cities; instead, Russia has increased its indiscriminate shelling of urban areas resulting in widespread destruction and large numbers of civilian casualties.”
It is likely Russia will continue to use its heavy firepower to support assaults on urban areas as it looks to limit its own already considerable losses, at the cost of further civilian casualties.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 20, 2022
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 20 March 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/J7sKL6rgdZ
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/vdGH636YCt
Videos have been posted on social media showing members of the Russian armed forces in occupied areas of Ukraine reacting with force to protests by locals.
In Berdyansk, people went on a peaceful protest against Russians - they began to detain and beat them. Shots were also heard in the air.
— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) March 20, 2022
The video was sent by a local resident#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/7SW1tcMkpI
The Russian military tried to arrest some of the Ukrainian protesters but the crowd prevented them from doing so. They shot several rounds into the air and sped off in their rather battered-looking truck. pic.twitter.com/AQQuoDBFtO
— Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) March 20, 2022
At least 902 civilians killed in Ukraine
At least 902 civilians have been killed and 1,459 injured in Ukraine as of midnight local time yesterday, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on today (via Reuters).
Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons such as shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, OHCHR said.
The actual toll is thought to be considerably higher since OHCHR, which has a large monitoring team in the country, has not yet been able to receive or verify casualty reports from several badly hit cities including Mariupol, it said.
Ukraine accuses Russian forces of killing 56 elderly people in Luhansk region
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Lyudmila Denisova, has accused Russian forces of shooting dozens of elderly people in Luhansk region. In a post on Telegram, she said:
Today it became known about another terrible crime against humanity committed by the racist occupation forces – the shooting of 56 elderly people in Luhansk region.
In the town of Kreminna on March 11, the Russian occupiers cynically and purposefully fired from a tank at a home for the elderly.
56 residents who lived to their old age in the house died on the spot. The survivors, 15 people, were abducted by the occupiers and taken to the occupied territory in Svatove to the regional geriatric boarding school.
It is still impossible to get to the site of the tragedy to bury the dead old people.
This is another act of horrific genocide – the extermination of the civilian population of Ukraine. For every such crime, for every innocent life taken, the leadership of the aggressor state must be held accountable in all the severity of international criminal law.
I call on the International Criminal Court to take this fact into account in the investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Russian political and military leadership.
I ask UN member states to speed up the establishment of the Special Military Tribunal. Racist criminals must bear full responsibility for the atrocities in Ukraine!
Updated
Zelenskiy calls for negotiations with Putin but warns any failure would lead to third world war
The Ukraine president Volodymr Zelenskiy warned Sunday that only negotiations would end the war in his country. And that if those negotiations failed, it would mean a third world war.
Zelenskiy was asked by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria if he was ready to negotiate with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the wake of attacks on civilians in Mariupol and elsewhere.
“I’m ready for negotiations. I was ready for the last two years. And without negotiations we cannot end this war,” Zelenskiy said.
“All the people who think that this dialogue is shallow, and that it is not going to resolve anything, they just don’t understand that this is very valuable. If there is just 1% chance for us to stop this war we need to take this chance, we need to do that.
“I can’t tell you about the result of these negotiations [but] we’re losing people on a daily basis, innocent people on the ground. Russian forces have come to exterminate us, to kill us. And we have demonstrated the dignity of our people, and our army, we are able to deal a powerful blow, we are able to strike back.
“But unfortunately, our dignity is not going to preserve their lives. We have to use any format, any chance, in order to have the possibility of negotiating the possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”
Updated
Summary
- Mariupol’s city council says Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering.
- Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been forcibly deported to Russia, and then sent by rail to various economically depressed cities where they have to remain, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has claimed.
- Ten million people - more than a quarter of the population - have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia’s “devastating” war, the head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said today.
-
One of Europe’s largest metallurgical plants, the the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, has been destroyed by the Russians, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said.
- Russia has struck Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and launched hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace, the Russian defence ministry said.
- An attack on marine barracks in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Friday killed more than 40 marines, according to the New York Times. If confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.
-
The Ukrainian parliament says 115 Ukrainian children have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion. It says at least 140 more have been injured.
- Pope Francis has described what is happening in Ukraine as “inhumane and sacrilegious”. Addressing tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Sunday address and blessing, he called on leaders to stop “this repugnant war”
10million have fled their homes in Ukraine - UN
Ten million people - more than a quarter of the population - have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia’s “devastating” war, the United Nations refugees chief said today (via AFP)
“Among the responsibilities of those who wage war, everywhere in the world, is the suffering inflicted on civilians who are forced to flee their homes,” said UNHCR head Filippo Grandi.
“The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad.”
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said that 3,389,044 Ukrainians had left the country since the Russian invasion began on 24 February, with another 60,352 joining the exodus since Saturday’s update - a flow roughly the same as the day before.
Some 90 % of those who have fled are women and children. Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are eligible for military call-up and cannot leave.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said more than 1.5 million children are among those who have fled abroad, warning that the risks they face of human trafficking and exploitation are “real, and growing”.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) also said that as of Wednesday, 162,000 third-country nationals had fled Ukraine to neighbouring states.
Millions more have fled their homes but remain within Ukraine’s borders.
Some 6.48 million people were estimated to be internally displaced within Ukraine as of Wednesday, according to UN and related agencies, following an IOM representative survey.
UNHCR initially estimated that up to four million people could leave Ukraine.
Before the conflict, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control, excluding Russia-annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist regions in the east.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, claims six Russian generals have been killed in Ukraine.
High mortality of RF senior officers is striking. Already 6 generals killed: Maj Gens Tushayev, Gerasimov, Kolesnikov, Sukhovetsky, Mityaev & Lt Gen Mordvichev. Dozens of colonels & other officers. I.e. RF army is fully unprepared & fights only with numbers & cruise missiles.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 20, 2022
Meanwhile, another presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, says the front lines between Ukrainian and Russian forces are “practically frozen” as Russia does not have enough combat strength to advance further. “(Over the past day) there were practically no rocket strikes on (Ukrainian) cities,” Arestovych added.
Pope Francis has today called the conflict in Ukraine an unjustified “senseless massacre” and asked leaders to stop “this repugnant war” (via Reuters).
“The violent aggression against Ukraine is unfortunately not slowing down,” he told tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square in Rome during his weekly Sunday address and blessing.
“It is a senseless massacre where every day slaughters and atrocities are being repeated,” he said.
Pope Francis today:
— Christopher White (@cwwhiteNCR) March 20, 2022
"The aggression against Ukraine has not ceased...there is no justification for this."
The pope recalled his visit yesterday to wounded Ukrainian children being treated in Rome and those continuing to flee war.
"All is this is inhumane and sacrilegious" pic.twitter.com/G6fCRM5g7D
Updated
Ukraine accuses Putin's army of forcibly deporting Mariupol citizens to Russia
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Ludmila Denisova this morning accused Russian forces of forcibly transporting Ukrainian citizens to Russia. In a post on Telegram, she said:
In recent days, several thousand Mariupol residents have been deported to Russia. These are people from the Left Bank district of the city and the bomb shelter in the building of the sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) hid from the constant bombing ...
It is known that the captured Mariupol residents were taken to filtration camps, where the occupiers checked people’s phones and documents. After the inspection, some Mariupol residents were transported to Taganrog and from there sent by rail to various economically depressed cities in Russia.
Our citizens have been issued papers that require them to be in a certain city. They have no right to leave it for at least two years with the obligation to work at the specified place of work. The fate of others remains unknown.
She accused Russia of a gross violation of international laws, including the Geneva convention, and called on the international community to increase sanctions against Russia.
Updated
The Ukrainian armed forces have updated their assessment of estimated losses inflicted on Russia, the Kyiv Independent reports. It includes 14,700 Russian troops
These are the indicative estimates of Russia’s losses as of March 20, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/wuyU0L7Xmb
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 20, 2022
Last night, the influential Institute of the Study of War, a US thinktank tracking the fighting, said: “Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. Its culmination is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine.”
NEW: Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial #Russian campaign of this war. Its culmination is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of #Ukraine.
— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) March 19, 2022
Read the latest Russian offensive campaign assessment from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats: https://t.co/EtMCrMbAjO pic.twitter.com/4XrCCj5Gnj
Russian mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, including the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group, have been linked to far-right extremism including an organisation designated by the US as terrorist, analysis reveals.
Although Vladimir Putin says his “special military operation” is aimed at the “denazification” of Ukraine, an investigation has found links between pro-Russian forces and violent rightwing extremism, including those directly affiliated with Wagner.
One post on the messaging app Telegram, dated 15 March, shows the flag of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), a white-supremacist paramilitary organisation which the US lists as terrorist, allegedly flown by Moscow-backed separatists in Donetsk. The post was shared by a pro-Putin channel.
Much of the extremist content, posted on Telegram and the Russian social media platform VKontakte (VK), relates to a far-right unit within the Wagner Group called Rusich with others linked to pro-Kremlin online communities, some bearing the name and logo of Wagner Group.
Olha Stefanishyna, Ukriane’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, said Russia is failing in its objectives so far but Ukraine needs more external help if it is to continue to resist (via PA Media).
She told Sophy Ridge On Sunday on Sky News:
The enormous bravery of Ukrainian people, army, nation and government, it’s something we would expect from all leaders around the world for standing for the values enshrined in the UN Charter.
That’s why Ukraine will resist as long as it needed to make sure that no terror, no mass murdering, no genocide is committed on this land in the 21st century.
But it’s absolutely clear that only a Ukrainian army, and only a Ukrainian president, will not be able to withstand it alone.
She called on political leaders from around the world, including the US, European Union and Asia to establish an anti-war coalition.
On the same programme, Air Marshal Philip Osborn, the former head of the UK’s defence intelligence said Ukraine may be able to withstand the Russian invasion for “as long as we can supply them (with weaponry) and for as long as their morale holds up”.
He said:
We need to bear in mind that they have been preparing for this.
This, for most of the west started three weeks ago - for Ukraine, this started nearly a decade ago. They have had time to prepare and think.
They have also got a strength of will and the application of good weaponry.
Frankly, I think they will hold out as long as we can supply them and for as long as their morale holds up, and those are two very easy things to say but really challenging to do.
Focusing on supporting a brave people to do what is right for them has to be one of those things that the West does to show strength and resolution.
Russia has rubbished reports suggesting its cosmonauts wore yellow suits with blue accents to show solidarity with Ukraine, the Associated Press reports.
The three cosmonauts wore the suits, bearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag, when arriving at the International Space Station (ISS) leading to speculation they were a show of support for the country which is under attack by Russia.
However, on Saturday, Russia dismissed the idea as fanciful.
Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picks the colours about six months before launch because the suits need to be individually sewn. He added that they were chosen because all three graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University and so they chose the colours of their prestigious alma mater.
In a statement on the Russian space agency’s Telegram channel, Artemyev said:
There is no need to look for any hidden signs or symbols in our uniform. A colour is simply a colour. It is not in any way connected to Ukraine. Otherwise, we would have to recognise its rights to the yellow sun in the blue sky.
These days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and our people!
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the space agency Roscosmos, tweeted a picture of the university’s blue and gold coat of arms.
Иногда желтый цвет означает просто желтый цвет. Если бандеровские выродки думают, что мы из-за них поменяем наши цветовые вкусы, перекрасим стартовый комплекс Восточного в серо-буро-малиновый, герб МГТУ Баумана в оранжевый (нет, оранжевый тоже не подходит),.. pic.twitter.com/7qFDtu11Dl
— РОГОЗИН (@Rogozin) March 19, 2022
Shortly after their arrival at the orbiting station on Friday, Artemyev had a different answer about the flight suits, saying there was a lot of the yellow material in storage and “that’s why we had to wear yellow”.
The Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, has played down hostile comments by Rogozin in the wake of the invasion, after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.
“That’s just Dmitry Rogozin,” Nelson told the Associated Press. “He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.
The Russian invasion has resulted in canceled launches and broken contracts. Many worry Rogozin is putting decades of work at risk, most notably regarding the International Space Station.
Besides threatening to pull out of the space station and drop it on the US, Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin had the flags of other countries covered on a Soyuz rocket awaiting liftoff with internet satellites.
The launch was called off after the customer, London-based OneWeb, refused Rogozin’s demand that the satellites not be used for military purposes and the British government halt financial backing.
On Thursday, the European Space Agency confirmed that it was indefinitely suspending its ExoMars rover mission with Roscosmos because of the war in Ukraine.
“Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues,” Nelson said. “The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat. This is the cooperation we have going on in the civilian space program.”
The US and Russia are the prime operators of the space station, which has been occupied for 21 years.
Nasa has said Vande Hei’s plans remain unchanged, despite a video in early March allegedly produced by Roscosmos that showed two Russian cosmonauts waving him goodbye. It then showed a mission control team watching a computer-generated video of the Russian segment of the station detaching and floating away.
The video, which includes a Russian song titled Farewell, was shared by the news agency RIA Novosti. Its caption read: “The Roscosmos television studio jokingly demonstrated the possibility of Russia withdrawing from the ISS project – the undocking of the Russian segment of the station, without which the American part of the project cannot exist.”
In a response, the Russian state news agency Tass said, “American astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return to Earth on 30 March onboard the Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, together with Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov … Roscosmos has never given reason to doubt its reliability as a partner.”
Read more:
Updated
Ukraine is aiming to reach 70% of last year’s harvest despite the war, the Kyiv Independent reports.
⚡️Ukraine aims to reach 70% of last year's harvest despite war.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 20, 2022
Rostyslav Shurma, deputy head of presidential office, said that Ukraine is launching a government program to support agricultural producers through subsidies.
One tenth of the world’s wheat comes from Ukraine while Russia and Ukraine are collectively responsible for around 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Developing countries in northern Africa, Asia and the near east are among the most reliant on Ukraine and/or Russia, leading the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to warn that the invasion may lead to a worldwide food crisis.
In televised remarks, reported by the Associated Press, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said. “One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed.”
Denysenko was referring to the the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
#Mariupol #Azovstal One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated #StopRussiaNOW pic.twitter.com/4GMbkYb0es
— Lesia Vasylenko (@lesiavasylenko) March 19, 2022
The Ukrainian parliament says 115 Ukrainian children have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion.
115 children fell victim to the war unleashed by russia and putin. More than 140 young Ukrainians were injured.
— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (@ua_parliament) March 20, 2022
These numbers are not figures but the scale of grief and the broken destinies of hundreds of Ukrainian families.#StopPutin #StopRussia #ClosetheSkyoverUkraine pic.twitter.com/kEtZnn2uCb
Russia launched hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace, its defence ministry claims
Russia struck Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and launched hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace, the Russian defence ministry said today (via Reuters):
Defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russia had carried out strikes against Ukraine’s military infrastructure on last night and this morning.
“Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from the waters of the Black Sea against the Nizhyn plant that repairs Ukrainian armoured vehicles damaged in fighting,” he said.
Russia fired Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea and hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles from airspace of Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, to destroy a fuel storage facility used by the Ukrainian military, Konashenkov said.
Russia also hit a Ukrainian military preparation centre where foreign fighters joining Kyiv’s forces were based, he said.
Updated
The New York Times is reporting that an attack on marine barracks in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Friday killed more than 40 marines.
A senior Ukrainian military official said on Saturday that the strike on the barracks, which happened Friday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, had killed more than 40 marines.
At the city morgue, the bodies of dozens of marines in uniform were laid out side by side in a storage area. A morgue employee would not specify the number of dead brought from the site of the attack.
If confirmed, the death toll would make it one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” under martial law, his office said in a statement on Sunday (via Reuters).
Ukrainian privately owned media channels have hitherto continued to operate since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. The decree announcement, made on the presidential website, did not specify how quickly the new measure would come into force.
Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme will be “completely unworkable” unless the government cuts excessive bureaucracy and takes urgent steps to coordinate the matching process, the shadow communities secretary has warned.
In an interview with the Observer Lisa Nandy also said charities and local government should have been properly consulted before announcing the sponsorship scheme – through which members of the public or organisations can bring a named refugee fleeing Ukraine to Britain.
Phase one of the initiative opened on Friday for visa applications from Ukrainians wishing to travel to the UK and who have a named sponsor. So far there have been 150,000 expressions of interest in assisting those fleeing Ukraine with no family links to the UK.
But Nandy said: “There is no formal central system of matching the people on the register to those in need, which is pretty extraordinary.
“When you add in the excessive layers of bureaucracy – the lengthy forms and the documents you need to prove your identity and residency – the barriers make this scheme completely unworkable. Unless urgent steps are taken to address this, we will see very small numbers of people taking up this offer and a lot of the public’s generosity squandered.”
Here is a summary of the latest developments in the Ukraine war. My colleague Haroon Siddique will be taking over shortly, to continue our coverage.
- Mariupol’s city council says Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering.
- More than 6,600 Ukrainians were evacuated from besieged cities through eight humanitarian corridors on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
- Zelenskiy said Russia’s siege of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”, and would “go down in history of responsibility for war crimes”.
- Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been taken to Russia against their will, where they have been “redirected” to remote cities in the country, the Mariupol city council has said.
- Russian troops have reportedly stopped a convoy of buses traveling to Mariupol to evacuate residents.
- The UK ministry of defence said Russia has still failed to gain control of the skies over Ukraine, and will likely continue to use heavy firepower - and inflict more civilian casualties - “as it looks to limit its own already considerable losses”.
- China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, says his country is “on the right side of history” as it continues to rail against sanctions imposed on Russia and deny it is considering supplying weapons to Moscow.
- Australia has banned the sale of alumina and aluminium ores to Russia, in an effort to limit Russia’s munitions production. Australian supplies 20% of Russia’s alumina.
- Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
- Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
There are a few more updates of specific attacks and recent casualties. The Guardian has not independently verified these.
According to the Kyiv Independent, three people were killed in Rubizhne, including two chidren. The outlet cited Luhansk Oblast Governor, Serhiy Haidai, saying that in the last 24 hours 24 houses and apartment buildings were destroyed in Rubizhne and Severodonetsk over the past 24 hours.
The Interfax Ukraine new agency reported shelling in Kharkiv overnight killed five. All in the Industrial district, among the dead was a nine-year-old boy, according to Vyacheslav Markov, assistant chief of the National Police in Kharkiv region.
Also reported by Interfax, Russia struck Ukraine on Sunday with cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. There were no further details at hand.
Here is a video clip with fuller comments from China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who told reporters late on Saturday that his country is “on the right side of history” regarding Ukraine.
Wang Yi: China will continue to make an independent judgment based on the merits of the matter itself and in an objective and fair manner. We will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and we will also oppose any groundless accusations and suspicion against China. pic.twitter.com/G1QrKjxWi3
— XIE Yongjun 解勇军 (@XIEYongjun_CHN) March 20, 2022
Russia bombs art school sheltering 400 civilians, claims Mariupol council
Russian forces have bombed a Mariupol art school where 400 residents were sheltering, the city’s council has said.
In a statement posted on the Telegram channels of Mariupol council and the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, the council said women, children and elderly people were inside and “are still under the rubble” of the destroyed G12 art school in the city’s Left Bank district. The number of casualties was unclear.
The message accused the Russians of committing war crimes, echoing president Zelenskiy’s earlier video address. In his late night broadcast, Zelenskiy said the siege of Mariupol would “go down in history of responsibility for war crimes”.
“To do this to a peaceful city... is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”
The Guardian has not independently verified the claim of the bombing.
Updated
Russia likely to continue using heavy firepower on urban areas, British intelligence says
It’s likely Russia will continue to use heavy firepower in its assaults on urban areas “as it looks to limit its own already considerable losses”, the UK’s ministry of defence has said in its latest assessment. This will come at the cost of further civilian casualties.
In the latest briefing published today, the MOD said Russia has increased its indiscriminate shelling of civilian urban areas over the past week, as it encircled easter Ukraine cities but struggled to make progress in capturing them.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 20 March 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 20, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/4JKS04Ob7r
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/TB9B35K1A0
Updated
Some Syrian paramilitary fighters say they are ready to deploy to Ukraine to fight in support of their ally Russia but have not yet received instructions to go, two of their commanders told Reuters.
Nabil Abdallah, a commander in the paramilitary National Defence Forces (NDF), said he was ready to use expertise in urban combat gained during the Syrian war to aid Russia, speaking to Reuters by phone from the Syrian town of Suqaylabiyah.
“Once we get instructions from the Syrian and Russian leadership, we will fight this righteous war,” Abdallah said on March 14, four days after President Vladimir Putin gave a green light for 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East to deploy in Ukraine.
“We don’t fear this war and are ready for it once instructions come to go and join. We will show them what they never saw ... We will wage street wars and (apply) tactics we acquired during our battles that defeated the terrorists in Syria,” he added.
The Kremlin referred Reuters’ requests for comment to the Russian Defence Ministry. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment on whether Russia intended to issue instructions for NDF fighters to deploy or whether any NDF fighters had been recruited so far.
Reuters received no response to questions sent to the Syrian information ministry and the army via the information ministry on whether Syria intended to issue instructions for NDF fighters to deploy or whether any NDF fighters had been recruited so far.
Syria is Russia’s closest ally in the Middle East, and Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian war in 2015 proved decisive in helping President Bashar al-Assad defeat rebel forces in enclaves across much of the country.
The NDF emerged from pro-Assad militias early in the Syrian war and fought in offensives that captured some of the rebel held enclaves, with Russian air support.
Now largely demobilised, the NDF numbers in the tens of thousands, experts on Syria say, a potentially large pool of recruits for Russia if the Ukraine war drags on.
Russian siege of Mariupol is 'a terror that will be remembered for centuries', says Zelenskiy in latest address
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Russia’s siege of the port city of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”, Reuters reports.
In his late night broadcast, Zelenskiy said the siege of Mariupol would “go down in history of responsibility for war crimes”.
“To do this to a peaceful city... is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”
Still, he said, peace talks with Russia were needed although they were “not easy and pleasant”.
Some 400,000 people have been trapped in Mariupol for more than two weeks, sheltering from heavy bombardment that has severed central supplies of electricity, heating and water, according to local authorities.
Rescue workers were still searching for survivors in a Mariupol theatre that local authorities say was flattened by Russian air strikes on Wednesday. Russia denies hitting the theatre or targeting civilians.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its forces were “tightening the noose” around Mariupol and that fighting had reached the city centre.
Updated
Associated Press: At a makeshift basement bomb shelter in Ukraine’s capital, at least 20 babies born to surrogate mothers are waiting for their foreign parents to be able to travel to the war-torn country and take them home.
Some just a few days old, the infants are well cared for, but even below ground the blasts of occasional shelling can be heard clearly.
Many of the surrogacy center’s nurses are also stranded in the shelter because it’s too dangerous to travel to and from their homes. Ukrainian troops have been resisting Russian forces in Kyiv’s suburbs as they attempt to encircle the city.
“Now we are staying here to preserve our and the babies’ lives,” said Lyudmilia Yashchenko, a 51-year-old nurse. “We are hiding here from the bombing and this horrible misery.”
Yashchenko said they leave briefly during the day to get some fresh air but don’t dare stay out too long. She worries about her own children, too — both her sons, ages 22 and 30, are fighting to defend their country.
Exhaustion is constant.
“We are almost not sleeping at all,” Yashchenko said. “We are working round the clock.”
Ukraine has a thriving surrogate industry and is one of the few countries that allow the service for foreigners. These babies’ parents live in Europe, Latin America and China.
Yashchenko would not say how many parents have come to get their children, how many infants are still waiting or how many more surrogate mothers are expected to deliver soon.
While there’s plenty of food and baby supplies to care for their young charges, the nurses are left to hope and wait for the newborns to be picked up — just as they wait for the war to end.
Russian troops have reportedly stopped a convoy of buses traveling to Mariupol to evacuate residents, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Citing the Berdyansk City council, the outlet said the convoy was stopped a few kilometres outside Berdyansk and refused entry into the city limits, and the drivers were not permitted to spend the night.
According to the Berdyansk city council, the convoy was heading to Berdyansk from Zaporizhzhia to pick up fleeing Mariupol residents but was stopped by Russian occupying forces near the village Azovske, three kilometers from Berdyansk.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 20, 2022
The Guardian has not independently verified the report. Berdyansk is about 85km by road from Mariupol, which is under heavy siege by Russian forces. Local authorities have accused Russia of forcibly taking thousands of Mariupol residents to Russia against their will.
Updated
China’s foreign minister says time will tell that they stand on the right side of history over the Ukraine crisis.
Reuters reports the minister Wang Yi told reporters on Saturday China had “always stood for maintaining peace and opposing war, and that its position was “objective and fair, and is in line with the wishes of most countries”.
“Time will prove that China’s claims are on the right side of history,” he said according to a statement published by the ministry.
China’s government holds conflicting positions on the war. It has projected itself as a neutral power, saying it respects Ukraine’s sovereignty as well as Russia’s “security concerns”, and says it could mediate.
It has refused to condemn Russia’s actions or call it an “invasion”, has voted alongside it at international bodies, and the US has significant concerns it is considering supplying weapons to Russia (which Beijing denies). It has repeatedly objected to the use of economic sanctions against Russia.
“China will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and opposes any unfounded accusations and suspicious against China,” Wang told reporters on Saturday evening.
Wang’s comments followed a Friday video call between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, during which Biden warned Xi of “consequences” if Beijing gave material support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Xi told Biden the war in Ukraine must end as soon as possible and called on NATO nations to hold a dialogue with Moscow. He did not, however, assign blame to Russia, according to Beijing’s statements about the call, Reuters reported.
Updated
Summary
- More than 6,600 Ukrainians were evacuated from besieged cities through eight humanitarian corridors on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
- Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been taken to Russia against their will, where they have been “redirected” to remote cities in the country, the Mariupol city council has said.
- The UK ministry of defence said Russia has still failed to gain control of the skies over Ukraine.
- China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, says his country is “on the right side of history” as it continues to rail against sanctions imposed on Russia and deny it is considering supplying weapons to Moscow.
- Australia has banned the sale of alumina and aluminium ores to Russia, in an effort to limit Russia’s munitions production. Australian supplies 20% of Russia’s alumina.
- Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
- Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
- Boris Johnson has come under heavy criticism for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting to the British public voting for Brexit.
- Kyiv officials have reported that 228 people, including four children, have been killed in Ukraine’s capitol. Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs reported that 14,400 Russian personnel have been killed since the start of the war.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for “meaningful, fair” peace talks to take place urgently. He told Moscow that Russian losses would otherwise be so huge it would take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
- Zelenskiy also urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said are helping to wage war on Ukraine from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.
- The southern city of Zaporizhzhia entered a 38-hour curfew beginning at 1400 GMT on Saturday (1600 local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday.
- Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme said.
- Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing season is disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
- Ten humanitarian corridors were agreed on with Russia for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.
