Lithuania’s government has announced it will ask prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to investigate “war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine”.
“There is new material coming in every day, but we have enough of it by now to file the request,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in a televised cabinet meeting.
At least 102 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since Russia launched its invasion last Thursday, with a further 304 injured, but the real figure is feared to be “considerably higher”, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday.
United Nations high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet delivers a speech at the opening of a session of the UN human rights council on 28 February in Geneva. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Bachelet, addressing the opening session of the Human rights council in Geneva, said:
Most of these civilians were killed by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and air strikes. The real figures are, I fear, considerably higher.
Some 422,000 Ukrainians have fled their homeland, with many more displaced within the country, she told the Geneva forum which earlier agreed to hold an urgent debate on Ukraine later this week.
Forty Ukrainian civil society groups have come together to call on the West to establish safe zones for refugees inside Ukraine, and provide technology to help document Russian war crimes as part of a plan to make Vladimir Putin and his inner circle face justice at the International Criminal Court.
The appeal called the Kyiv Declaration has been put together by the groups in Kyiv and other cities coordinating via encrypted app’s, and face-to-face in underground shelters. The signatories include Ukrainian Helsinki Group for Human Rights, Come Back Alive, Ukraine Crisis Media Centre and Women’s Perspectives says the world has to act now before the Russians seize power.
The Declaration is a sign that despite the huge practical difficulties Ukrainian civil society is still operating, largely supporting its government and trying to urge the West to maintain the momentum of its support.
The six humanitarian demands include safe zones for refugees inside the country; the provision of anti-tank missiles; sanctions to be broadened to include a ban on energy trading with Russia; a faster crack down of the wealth of Russian oligarchs abroad including withdrawal of family visas; requisition fuel, logistics support and emergency medical equipment, such as field hospitals, mobile clinics and trauma supplies. It also calls for the supply of technology and support to human rights groups, as well as lawyers, recording Putin’s war crimes.
Safe or buffer zones were set up in North East Syria in 2019 following an agreement between Turkey and Russia. A less consensual zone was declared by US Britain and France in Iraq to protect the Kurdish minority after the Gulf War of 1991, when the US, Britain and France declared two no-fly zones in the north and south.
An imposed safe zone in Ukraine would require air power, something that so far has been ruled out by Nato leaders since it would take Nato into direct conflict with the Russian air force.
Lyubov Maksymovych, Chair of Women’s Perspectives, said:
We are issuing this declaration on behalf of Ukrainian women and men who stand together to fight for their liberty and freedoms. At this moment, it’s not too late to draw a line in the sand, here in Ukraine rather than through the centre of Europe – which is what will happen if we fail. We hope that western powers have learnt from the long failures of appeasement, and the obvious duplicity and inhumanity of Vladimir Putin. This is the most important declaration I have ever signed. If it is not answered, it could also be my last.
Olga Aivazovska, Chair of Elections Watchdog Opora, said:
Now is the moment the world must demonstrate its support not only for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but also for the values of democracy, human rights and freedom. With the Kyiv Declaration, we ask for your help in defeating an autocratic dictator to defend not only Ukraine but the whole democratic world and the principles it is founded on.
Oleksandr Pavlichenko, the Executive Director of Ukrainian Helsinki Group for Human Rights, said:
Vladimir Putin and his henchmen believe they are above the law, that they can get away with this bloodshed because the world needs their gas and oil. We must prove them wrong. We must expose the truth. We must hold them to account in a court of law.
Residents in Mariupol this morning said the port city on the sea of Azov was surrounded by Russian forces and under heavy attack.
They were not able to confirm that Russian marines had landed on the coast and seized the port, home to Ukraine’s tiny fleet and the command ship Donbas.
“We hear planes in the sky. It’s overcast and we can’t tell whether there are ours or Russians,” Anatoliy Lozar told the Guardian this morning, speaking from a Mariupol basement where he was sheltering with his family.
Lozar said he was helping evacuate civilians following another night of heavy bombardment. He said Russian warplanes had bombed the village of Shyrokyne, 20km west of Mariupol, with Ukrainian soldiers wounded.
The village on the frontline with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic was still under Ukrainian control, he said.
He added: “We have become the new Stalingrad. We are killing Russians. Some have been taken prisoner. Families are sheltering in basements. They are terrified by what is happening. Huge numbers of volunteers have been joining the army. We have weapons. We will fight to the last man.”
Lozar said attempts had been made to evacuate the wounded by helicopters, which has come under Russian fire. He said some Russian diversionary groups had rented apartments inside the city ahead of the invasion and had been plotting attacks.
Despite a slow start to its military offensive, and fierce Ukrainian resistance, Russia was getting closer to its strategic goal of capturing the 250km strip along the Sea of Azov, between the Crimean peninsula and Mariupol.
Russian forces captured the small port city of Berdyansk last night, its mayor, Oleksandr Svidlo, confirmed last night, and took over the administration building.
Video showed armoured vehicles marked with “Z” patrolling Berdyansk’s residential streets.
Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova)
#Ukraine Residents of Berdyansk, captured by Russian troops, sang the Ukrainian national anthem right in front of military equipment.
Ukrainians are so brave pic.twitter.com/Erqcx9cvC9
There was fighting around the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol throughout last night, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on television on Monday.
He did not say whether Russian forces had gained or lost any ground or provide any casualty figures.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian negotiating team have arrived for talks with Russia on the border with Belarus, according to a tweet from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU)
The Ukrainian delegation arrived in the area of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border to take part in talks with representatives of the Russian Federation
https://t.co/RKxx6801eh
This is the building where the crucial talks will take place…
The Ukrainian president’s office has said it’s main aim for the talks is to secure a ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the country.
As Moscow’s economy appears to be going into meltdown, all European airspace is closed to Russian airlines, sanctions are proliferating, and Russian oligarchs are moving their superyachts out the harm’s way, it’s worth recalling a key theory of how authoritarian leaders hold on to power.
This theory – known as “coup-proofing” – was popularised by Edward Luttwak in his book Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook.
The essence of Luttwak’s argument is that non-democratic leaders require other tools than simply coercion to coup-proof their regimes. Crucially that includes securing broader support among financial, political and security elites by sharing the spoils and prestige.
In the Russian context it’s always been clear that there are enormous financial benefits to supporting Putin for a small circle. But the benefits that a lot of other individuals lower down the food chain have enjoyed are now seriously under threat.
Russian invasion forces seized two small cities in south-eastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere as Moscow’s diplomatic and economic isolation deepened.
Blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian authorities said. But, Russian ground forces’ attempts to capture major urban centres had been repelled, they added.
Russia’s defence ministry, however, said its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine’s south-eastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported. The plant’s operations continued normally, it said.
Ukraine denied that the nuclear plant had fallen into Russian hands, according to the news agency.
About 800 people were arrested as Belarus voted to ditch its non-nuclear status in a referendum that raises the stakes at a time when the country has become a staging ground for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the government said on Monday.
The vote sparked the biggest protests in months as thousands took to the streets in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko has imposed a sweeping crackdown on dissent after a contested election challenged his grip on power in 2020.
The vote to change the constitution, passed by 65% according to official data, could see nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil for the first time since the country gave them up after the fall of the Soviet Union, Reuters reported.
It comes at a time when Lukashenko has fallen in line behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military assault on Ukraine after earlier playing an intermediary role between the two neighbours.
“Despite the numerous calls from destructive Telegram channels to destabilise the situation, which were spread by citizens outside the country, mass protests did not happen. Police officers were focused on prompt response and suppression of provocations,” the interior ministry said.
The new constitution also gives powers to an assembly created by Lukashenko and populated by party loyalists, officials and pro-government activists, and gives lifetime immunity from prosecution to the president if he leaves office.
On Sunday, speaking at a polling station, Lukashenko said that he could ask Russia to return nuclear weapons to Belarus.
“If you (the west) transfer nuclear weapons to Poland or Lithuania, to our borders, then I will turn to Putin to return the nuclear weapons that I gave away without any conditions,” Lukashenko said.
Recent British intelligence appears to corroborate with a recent report from Ukraine’s military that Russia had “slowed down” its offensive.
Britain’s defence ministry has said Russia’s advance on Kyiv has been slowed by logistical failures and fierce Ukrainian resistance.
The ministry said on Monday:
The bulk of [President Vladimir] Putin’s ground forces remain more than 30km to the north of Kyiv their advance having been slowed by Ukrainian forces defending Hostomel airfield, a key Russian objective for day one of the conflict.
Logistical failures and staunch Ukrainian resistance continue to frustrate the Russian advance.”
Heavy fighting continues around Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, the defence ministry said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter. Both cities remain under Ukrainian control, it said.
Ministry of Defence
(@DefenceHQ)
Latest Defence Intelligence update on Ukraine pic.twitter.com/6WoxBkatNt
Tensions are rising at the £3bn Surrey estate in England where Russian oligarchs call home.
The secretive owners of mansions at St George’s Hill will be nervous about making an appearance on Liz Truss’s hitlist after the foreign secretary warned rich Russians linked to Putin that the UK government “will come after you” and ensure oligarchs have “nowhere to hide”.
Russians and those from former Soviet states own more than a quarter of the 430 luxurious homes in St George’s Hill, a heavily guarded 964-acre estate near Weybridge, Surrey, where mansions have changed hands for more than £20m each.
Read the full story from the Guardian’s Rupert Neate below.
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