HomeWorld NewsRussia-Ukraine war latest: It will ‘take years’ to defuse Russian mines, Ukraine’s interior minister warns; Biden outlines ‘consequences’ if China aids Russia – live – The Guardian
Russia-Ukraine war latest: It will ‘take years’ to defuse Russian mines, Ukraine’s interior minister warns; Biden outlines ‘consequences’ if China aids Russia – live – The Guardian
Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to reports.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko told the BBC:
Yes, they were really active today. Tanks and machine gun battles continue. Everybody is hiding in bunkers.
More than 80% of residential buildings in Mariupol are either damaged or destroyed, he added, and 30% of them cannot be restored.
There’s no city centre left. There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war.
A view shows a line of cars near blocks of flats destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict, as evacuees leave the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 17, 2022. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Earlier today, the Russian defence ministry said Russian forces were “tightening the noose” around the city of Mariupol, adding that fighting was ongoing in the city centre.
In a one-hour call between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, today, Macron said he was “extremely concerned” about the situation in Mariupol, the French presidential office said.
Premature babies who were left behind by their parents lay in a bed in hospital number 3 in Mariupol, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Two former US presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, showed their support for Ukraine on Friday, by placing bouquets of sunflowers, the country’s national emblem, outside a church in Chicago.
They wore blue and yellow ribbons in the colours of Ukraine’s flag, and placed the flowers in front of the Catholic Church of Saints Volodymyr and Olha.
Bill Clinton(@BillClinton)
America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression. pic.twitter.com/O7INc9S1tq
A video of the gesture was shared on Clinton’s Twitter account, alongside a post that said: “America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression.”
It sets the former presidents apart from Donald Trump, writes AFP. It reports: “[Trump] just before the invasion described Vladimir Putin’s strategy of amassing troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine and then recognizing the independence of two pro-Russian separatist territories as a stroke of ‘genius.’”
As Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine drags on, the question of whether to keep buying and selling Russian diamonds is a quandary for jewellers, diamond companies and the industry bodies set up to regulate them – many of which depend on the country’s state-controlled diamond sector for supply.
Industry insiders say US sanctions will do little or nothing to stop the flow of diamonds from Alrosa, Russia’s enormous state-backed mining monopoly, to the west.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has released a video address saying the time has come for peace talks, warning it will otherwise take generations for Russia to recover from losses suffered during the war.
Reuters has released the following summary of his speech:
Zelenskiy said Ukraine had always offered solutions for peace and wanted meaningful and honest negotiations on peace and security, without delay.
“I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk,” he said in a video address released in the early hours of Saturday.
“The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.”
The two sides have been involved in talks for weeks with no sign of a breakthrough.
Zelenskiy said Russian forces were deliberately blocking the supply of humanitarian supplies to cities under attack.
“This is a deliberate tactic … This is a war crime and they will answer for it, 100%,” he said.
Zelenskiy said there was no information about how many people had died after a theatre in the city of Mariupol, where hundreds of people had been sheltering, was struck on Wednesday. More than 130 people had been rescued so far, he said.
A teenager was overwhelmed when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy shook her hand and gave her flowers during a visit to people wounded by Russian attacks at a Kyiv hospital on Thursday.
Sixteen-year-old Katya Vlasenko, who was wounded when the car her family was travelling in came under fire, told the president he was a hero on social media platform TikTok, to which Zelenskiy responded: “Oh yes? So we have occupied TikTok?”
Katya’s family was trying to escape fighting in the area north-west of the capital Kyiv when their car came under fire near Hostomel.
Hospitalised teen becomes emotional meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy – video
It’s Rebecca Ratcliffe here in Bangkok, I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments on the war in Ukraine today.
It’s nearly 2am in Ukraine; here’s where things stand:
Ukraine’s interior minster told Associated Press that it will take years to find and defuse all of the unexploded ordnances from the country. Denys Monastyrsky said: “A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine and a large part haven’t exploded, they remain under the rubble and pose a real threat. It will take years, not months, to defuse them.”
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, praised Fox News for its coverage of the war in Ukraine during an in-studio interview with theRussian state-controlled RT network. “We know the manners and the tricks that are being used by the western countries to manipulate media … If you take the United States, only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view,” Lavrov said.
The European Union is considering creating a solidarity fund for Ukraine. The plan was announced on Friday and is meant to be used for people’s basic necessities. An EU official told Reuters the creation of the fund would be discussed at a summit of EU leaders next week.
Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water. The Russian defence ministry said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.
Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in the western city of Lviv, 50 miles from Ukraine’sborder with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians.Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, as a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.
Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday.In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.
Hundreds of people remain buried under the rubble of a theatre in the devastated city of Mariupol that was hit by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president,Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said. In a video address, Zelenskiy said that more than 130 people have been rescued so far but officials have said rescue efforts had been hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and fears of future Russian attacks.
Kyiv city administration said today that 222 people have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, including 60 civilians and four children. In a statement, it said a further 889 people have been wounded, including 241 civilians and 18 children, in the capital. The Guardian has not been able to verify these figures.
Russian forces are “holding captive” a Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna,according to the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske.In a statement, Hromadske said they believe Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB around 15 March.
Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, the UN has said today, nearly twice as many as have managed to flee the country. The new figure, which dwarfs the 3.3 million refugees who have entered mainly EU territory, is a big jump on the UN’s last estimate of 1.85 million.
Refugees now fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are “more traumatised” than those who escaped in the first phase of the war, the UN said. Daily border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, the country that has received the most arrivals, have fallen by around half from a peak of about 100,000 daily, Reuters quoted UN refugee agency official, Matthew Saltmarsh, as saying.
The US president, Joe Biden, described to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in a phone call today “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said. “The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see,” Xi was quoted by Chinese media as saying to the US president.
Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine during a rare public speech at the national stadium in Moscow. As Putin was finishing his speech, the broadcast was suddenly cut off and state television showed patriotic songs. The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed a “technical failure” for the cutoff.
A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses now empty. Jakob Kern, WFP emergency coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, also expressed concern about the situation in “encircled cities” such as Mariupol, saying supplies were running out and its convoys had not yet been able to enter the city.
Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians, whom he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land”.Francis’ comments were some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
Celebrities including Billy Porter, Audra McDonald and Steve Martin are going to appear on a 10-hour telethon to raise money for Ukrainian victims of war. The “Stars in the House” program is set to air Saturday 26 March from 12pm Eastern time on YouTube, SiriusXM and the program’s website.
Money raised during the telethon will go toward humanitarian efforts and the International Rescue Committee.
On Friday, Halliburton, an oilfield services provider, said it has paused its future business in Russia. Reuters has more on what this suspension may look like.
Oilfield services company Halliburton Co said on Friday it has suspended future business in Russia, including for certain state-owned Russian customers, in compliance with US sanctions after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The company said it has no active joint ventures in the country and had weeks ago halted all shipments of specific sanctioned parts and products to Russia.
Other Western energy companies such as BP PLC, Shell and Norway’s Equinor ASA have either suspended business or announced plans to abandon their Russia operations, leaving behind their investments.
Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation”, is among the world’s largest oil and gas producers that mainly relies on homegrown service providers.
Earlier this month, oil major Exxon Mobil said it would exit Russia oil and gas operations valued at more than $4 billion and halt new investment.”
It will likely take years to defuse all of the unexploded Russian ordnances, the Associated Press reports. Denys Monastyrsky, Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Friday that the nation will need US help to unearth and defuse Russian mines which are hidden under rubble and to remove explosives placed at bridges and airports by Ukrainian forces.
The AP further reports:
“A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine and a large part haven’t exploded, they remain under the rubble and pose a real threat,” Monastyrsky said. “It will take years, not months, to defuse them.”
In addition to the unexploded Russian ordnances, the Ukrainian troops also have planted land mines at bridges, airports and other key infrastructure to prevent Russians from using them.
“We won’t be able to remove the mines from all that territory, so I asked our international partners and colleagues from the European Union and the United States to prepare groups of experts to demine the areas of combat and facilities that came under shelling,” Monastyrsky told the AP.
He noted that another top challenge is dealing with fires caused by the relentless Russian barrages. He said there’s a desperate shortage of personnel and equipment to deal with the fires amid the constant shelling.
A Washington Post report is giving readers a glimpse into the efforts under way to get much-needed military equipment to Ukrainian soldiers. The article was set at a military base where Ukrainian forces received convoys with everything from dozens of vehicles to night-vision gear and surveillance drones.
Ukrainian factories have been impacted by shelling, which has led the country’s forces to rely on “pop-up supply chains like for vital gear, including body armor, medical supplies and the pickup trucks and SUVs they covet as fighting vehicles”, the article states.
The Washington Post further reports:
Receiving much of the donated money and supplies is Blue and Yellow, a nonprofit founded in 2014 to supply Ukrainians fighting the takeover of eastern parts of their country by Russian-backed separatists. Now the group is the focal point of Lithuania’s yearning to help.
Russia’s foreign minister praised Fox News for its coverage of the war in Ukraine. During an in-studio appearance on the Russian state-controlled RT network, Sergei Lavrov, said: “We know the manners and the tricks that are being used by the western countries to manipulate media… If you take the United States, only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view.”
Haggis_UK (@Haggis_UK)
Sergey Lavrov(RUSSIAN foreign minister) praises Fox News for its Ukrainian coverage. pic.twitter.com/RHLJjhDyMb
The Guardian’s Joanna Walters reports that Lavrov’s comments came as six western nations accused Moscow of using the UN security council to launder disinformation and spread propaganda, after Russian diplomats again raised allegations that the US was involved in biological weapons, which have been repeatedly denied by both Washington and Ukraine.
It is just after 11pm in Ukraine. Here is where things stand:
The European Union is considering creating a solidarity fund for Ukraine. The plan was announced on Friday and is meant to be used for people’s basic necessities. An EU official told Reuters the creation of the fund would be discussed at a summit of EU leaders next week.
Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water. The Russian defence ministry said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.
Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians.Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, as a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.
Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday.In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.
Hundreds of people remain buried under the rubble of a theatre in the devastated city of Mariupol that was hit by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday, Ukraine’s presidentVolodymyr Zelenskiy said. In a video address, Zelenskiy said that more than 130 people have been rescued so far but officials have said rescue efforts had been hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and fears of future Russian attacks.
Kyiv city administration said today that 222 people have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, including 60 civilians and four children. In a statement, it said a further 889 people have been wounded, including 241 civilians and 18 children, in the capital. The Guardian has not been able to verify these figures.
Russian forces are “holding captive” a Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna,according to the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske.In a statement, Hromadske said they believe Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB around 15 March.
Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, the UN has said today, nearly twice as many as have managed to flee the country. The new figure, which dwarfs the 3.3 million refugees who have entered mainly EU territory, is a big jump on the UN’s last estimate of 1.85 million.
Refugees now fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are “more traumatised” than those who escaped in the first phase of the war, the UN said. Daily border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, the country that has received the most arrivals, have fallen by around half from a peak of about 100,000 daily, Reuters quoted UN refugee agency official, Matthew Saltmarsh, as saying.
The US president, Joe Biden, described to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in a phone call today “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said. “The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see,” Xi was quoted by Chinese media as saying to the US president.
Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine during a rare public speech at the national stadium in Moscow. As Putin was finishing his speech, the broadcast was suddenly cut off and state television showed patriotic songs. The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed a “technical failure” for the cutoff.
A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses now empty. Jakob Kern, WFP emergency coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, also expressed concern about the situation in “encircled cities” such as Mariupol, saying supplies were running out and its convoys had not yet been able to enter the city.
Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians, whom he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land”.Francis’s comments were some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
Hello, I am Abené Clayton, a California-based Guardian reporter. I’ll be bringing our blog readers the latest news out of Ukraine for the next couple of hours.
The European Union is considering creating a solidarity fund for Ukraine, to help provide basic services in the country and meet citizens’ immediate needs, European Council president Charles Michel said on Friday.
“The fund would give liquidity for continued support to authorities and in the longer term serve as backbone for reconstruction of a free and democratic Ukraine once hostilities stop,” Michel said in a tweet.
“The bravery and resilience Ukrainians are showing is humbling,” Michel said. “The #EU will continue to stand by you in the face of the Kremlin’s aggression.”
An EU official told Reuters the creation of the fund would be discussed at a summit of EU leaders next week. The Russian invasion has cut Ukraine off from international financial markets, and the fund could provide the liquidity needed to keep government services running, to continue defence efforts and to provide basic services, Reuters reported.
The Biden administration is still concerned that China is considering answering Russia’s request for military equipment, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing.
“We have that concern. The president detailed what the implications and consequences would be if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians. And that is something we’ll be watching and the world will be watching,” Psaki said.
CSPAN(@cspan)
.@PressSec to @kaitlancollins on Russia’s request for military equipment: “The president detailed what the implications and consequences would be if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians.” pic.twitter.com/FHKcwzIV0a
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will push over 40 million people into extreme poverty through price spikes for food and energy, according to the Center for Global Development.
In an analysis blog, the Washington-based thinktank said food commodity prices since the start of the conflict have risen above levels experienced in price spikes in 2007 and 2010.
It cited World Bank Research showing that the 2007 spike may have pushed as many as 155 million people into extreme poverty, and separate research showing the 2010 episode pushed 44 million into extreme poverty.
The researchers said the most immediate concern was for direct wheat customers of Ukraine and Russia, which together account for more than a quarter of world wheat exports. These include Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey, but prices will rise worldwide as importers compete for alternative supplies.
The Biden administration has given a briefing on the Biden-Xi call, not adding too much detail, but stressing the price China would pay for arming Russia.
A senior administration official said there would be consequences “not just for China’s relationship with the United States, but for the wider world”, but would not give more details on whether Biden had gone into specifics on possible sanctions, other than to point out what had happened to Russia as an example.
“The president really laid out in a lot of detail the unified response from not only governments around the world, but also the private sector, to Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine,” the official said.
“The president made clear that there would likely be consequences for those who would step in to support Russia at this time.”
“This was really about President Biden being able to lay out very clearly in substantial detail, with a lot of facts, really walking President Xi through the situation, making very, very clear our views,” the official added, but said Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the onslaught.
“The president really wasn’t making specific requests of China. He was laying out his assessment of the situation and the implications of certain actions. Our view is that China will make its own decisions.”
Reports are emerging that the crowd which witnessed Vladimir Putin’s speech in Moscow earlier today may not have been there entirely voluntarily.
Russian TV footage showed a boisterous crowd at the Luzhniki stadium, attendees waving flags and cheering ahead of a speech where Putin hailed Russian “unity”.
But BBC journalist Will Vernon reported that at least some of the crowd had been “forced” to attend.
Will Vernon(@BBCWillVernon)
Many said they worked in the public sector (e.g. schoolteachers), and that they had been pressured into attending by their employers. One group of teachers, from a town near Moscow, were being told what to say to us by a woman who appeared to be from the local administration.
One man, who works in the Moscow metro, told us that he and other employees had been forced to attend the rally. “I’ll be here for a while and then I’ll leave… I think most people here don’t support the war. I don’t,” he said.
During the speech – which Russian state TV cut off in an apparent glitch – Putin repeated his unfounded claims that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbas region.
(@Haggis_UK)
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