No reason to trust representatives who 'continue to fight for our destruction' – Zelenskiy cautions
Regarding recent peace negotiations, Zelenskiy called for caution.
Of course, we see all the risks. Of course, we see no reason to trust the words of certain representatives of a state that continues to fight for our destruction. Ukrainians are not naive people. Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas that only a concrete result can be trusted. The facts – if they change on our land.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine was willing to negotiate and would continue the negotiation process.
There must be real security for us, for our state, for sovereignty, for our people. Russian troops must leave the occupied territories. Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be guaranteed. There can be no compromise on sovereignty and our territorial integrity. And there will not be any.”
Referring to sanctions, he added:
And certain countries should not even expect that certain negotiations will facilitate the lifting of sanctions against the Russian Federation. The question of sanctions cannot even be raised until the war is over, until we get back what’s ours and until we restore justice.
On the contrary, sanctions must be strengthened. Intensified weekly. And they must be effective. Not just for headlines in the media that sanctions have been imposed, but for real peace. Real.
Hello, it’s Samantha Lock with you as my colleague Maanvi Singh signs off for the day.
Here’s a little more from Zelenskiy’s late-night address.
The Ukrainian leader urged his people to “not lose vigilance” despite saying the signals received from peace talks with Russia appeared positive.
The situation has not become easier. The scale of the challenges has not diminished.
The Russian army still has significant potential to continue attacks against our state. They still have a lot of equipment and enough people completely deprived of rights whom they can send to the cauldron of war.”
Zelenskiy said Ukraine would not be reducing its defence efforts.
The enemy is still in our territory. The shelling of our cities continues. Mariupol is blocked. Missile and air strikes do not stop. This is the reality. These are the facts.
Yes, we can call positive the signals we hear from the negotiating platform. But these signals do not silence the explosion of Russian shells.”
However, western officials said they were “very wary” about Russian diplomatic promises and feared that Vladimir Putin could be seeking to take advantage of the situation. Negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations had not yet reached the point where it was possible to talk about a ceasefire, although there is a feeling that at the very least the war is entering a new phase.
Moscow’s lead negotiator in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia’s promise to “drastically reduce” military operations did not represent a ceasefire. In an interview with the Russian state-owned Tass news agency, Medinsky said there was still “a long way to go” to reach a mutual agreement with Ukraine.
Following Russia’s announcement, two senior US officials said the US is seeing Russia beginning to withdraw some of its forces from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in what it believes is a “major” change in Russian strategy. Another US official said any movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv would constitute a “redeployment, not a withdrawal”.
Ukraine called for “an international mechanism of security guarantees” similar to Nato’s article 5, which commits alliance members to defend one another. The senior Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the guarantee would involve countries such as the US, UK, Turkey, France and Germany being “legally actively involved in protecting [Ukraine] from any aggression”.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow’s “main goal” in Ukraine was now the “liberation” of the Donbas region. In a sign that Moscow may be switching to more limited objectives after facing fierce Ukrainian resistance in the first month of the war, Shoigu claimed the “main tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed”.
A Russian airstrike hit a government building in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday, destroying a large portion of the structure and leaving people trapped under debris. At least seven people were killed and 22 injured, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told the Danish parliament in a video address.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Russia and Ukraine to reach a clear agreement for the safe evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol and other frontline places as vital supplies run out. “Time is running out” for people in Mariupol, it warned, adding that there was still a lack of “concrete agreements” for the safe passage and evacuations of civilians in the southern Ukrainian city.
The Kremlin dismissed reports that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning during an informal round of talks earlier this month. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the reports were false and “part of the information war”.
A Ukrainian soldier who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself” while defending an island has been awarded for his services, local authorities said. Roman Hrybov was serving on Snake Island – known as Zmiinyi Island in Ukrainian – when it came under Russian air and sea bombardment on 24 February. Ukraine’s defence ministry said Hrybov had been released from Russian captivity and was now home in Cherkasy.
A £38m superyacht owned by an unnamed Russian businessman has been detained in Canary Wharf in London as part of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The vessel, known as Phi, is subject to the first detention of a superyacht in UK waters, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said, and its owner was “deliberately well hidden”.
In his latest address, posted on Telegram, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine wouldn’t be reducing its defensive efforts despite Russian promises to ease off some parts of the country.“We can say the signals we are receiving from the talks are positive but they do not drown out the explosions of Russian shells,” he said.
According the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest update, “it is almost certain that the Russian offensive has failed in its objective to encircle Kyiv”. The assessment mirrors that of the Pentagon. “Russia has failed in its objective of capturing Kyiv,” a Pentagon spokesman said earlier. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”
UN official concerned over videos showing apparent abuse of PoWs in Ukraine
Daniel Boffey
A senior UN official has said they have seen videos purporting to show the abuse of prisoners of war on both sides in Ukraine, as Russia raised the mistreatment of its soldiers at the first day of the latest peace talks.
Matilda Bogner, head of the UN’s human rights office in Ukraine, said a number of videos of the abuse of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners were being examined, adding that “on the face of it, it does raise serious concerns”.
In the grainy footage, which is being investigated by Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government in Kyiv, three prisoners are seen being brought in from a car. A man with a blue armband then approaches them and says: “Hi” before shooting each of them in the leg.
The Ukrainian government has said it is taking the footage “very seriously” although there is no independent evidence of its veracity yet.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said: “if this turns out to be real, this is absolutely unacceptable behaviour”.
One of the biggest promoters of the video was Maria Dubovikova, a political commentator at the Russian International Affairs Council.
The BBC reported that the footage of Ukrainian soldiers being shot took place in a dairy plant in Malaya Rohan’, to the south-east of Kharkiv, which had been recently been re-taken by Ukrainian troops from Russian forces.
With cats, ferrets and handcarts, life goes on underground in Kharkiv
Emma Graham-Harrison
Dracoa the ferret and the ginger cat named Cat have reached an uneasy truce. And while the dog across the platform still yaps at them both, after more than a month, the humans and their pets living in this corner of Kharkiv’s metro station are used to each other.
On one side of the platform, Tetiana Kapustynska hung up balloons for her 24th birthday on the pillar she sleeps behind. “The day before I cried because I didn’t know what it was going to be like, but in the end people got together and celebrated with me,” she said.
“The biggest problem was champagne, I couldn’t find a bottle anywhere,” she added with a grin, as she made cups of instant coffee for visitors with water in a flask. “Cake wasn’t so much of a problem. You can still get it in the shops.”
Dascha with her ferret Dracoa in Kharkiv metro. Photograph: Dmytro Frantsev/The Guardian
Kapustynska, who is a maths and physics teacher, turned the metro station’s operation room into a cross between a childcare facility and a school for the children living in the underground chamber. For her birthday, they made decorations and organised flowers.
Barely a month ago, she had been trying to choose a bar or restaurant for celebrations. But since the war began, bombs, shells and rockets have smashed Kharkiv city centre and residential areas, killing hundreds of civilians, in perhaps the most intense offensives of the war outside the besieged port town of Mariupol.
In response, life has largely moved indoors and underground, with thousands of people taking refuge in Soviet-era stations. These were designed in the cold war era to shelter the city’s residents from a western attack, but now the bunkers are protecting civilians from the Russians.
“I don’t go out much; it’s frightening,” said Denis Kapustynskyi, 19, Tetiana’s brother. He lived with his mother in Saltivka, a northern suburb that has been turned into a burnt-out wasteland by some of the most intense shelling of the war.
He does not even know if they have a house any more, after fleeing with little more than the clothes on their backs at the start of the war. “On the first day of the war, the sounds of explosions were really loud. They were already shelling housing blocks. We got dressed, picked up our documents and left,” he said.
Some still risk venturing out in the daytime for light, fresh air, shopping, and Tetiana goes to feed and play with her dog, who is too big to be brought into the metro station – although every trip above ground is potentially deadly.
In his latest address, posted on Telegram, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine wouldn’t be reducing its defensive efforts despite Russian promises to ease off some parts of the country.
Zelenskiy addresses the Danish Parliament via video link. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
“We can say the signals we are receiving from the talks are positive but they do not drown out the explosions of Russian shells,” he said.
“The Russian army still has significant potential to continue attacks against our state,” he added. “Therefore we are not reducing our defensive efforts.”
Zelenskiy signaled optimism about talks in Turkey, but noted that any peace deal couldn’t compromise Ukrainian sovereignty.
According the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest update, “it is almost certain that the Russian offensive has failed in its objective to encircle Kyiv.”
“Russian statements regarding a reduction in activity around Kyiv, and reporting indicating the withdrawal of some Russian units from these areas, may indicate Russia’s acceptance that it has now lost the initiative in the region,” said the UK defence attaché Mick Smeath in a statement. “It is highly likely that Russia will seek to divert combat power from the north to their offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.”
The assessment mirrors that of the Pentagon. “Russia has failed in its objective of capturing Kyiv,” a Pentagon spokesman said earlier. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol might have died since Russia began bombing the port city, according to the UN human rights mission.
Reuters reports:
Nearly 5,000 people, including about 210 children, have been killed in Mariupol since Russian forces laid siege to it a month ago, a spokesperson for Mayor Vadym Boichenko said on Monday.
His office said 90% of Mariupol’s buildings had been damaged and 40% destroyed, including hospitals, schools, kindergartens and factories.
“We do think that there could be thousands of deaths, of civilian casualties, in Mariupol,” Matilda Bogner, head of the UN human rights mission in Ukraine which deploys some 60 monitors, said in a virtual interview.
She said the mission did not have a precise estimate but was working to gather more information.
Local officials, citing witness accounts, last week estimated that 300 people were killed in the March 16 bombing of a Mariupol theatre where people were sheltering.
As of Tuesday, the UN human rights office had confirmed 1,179 civilians killed and 1,860 injured across Ukraine in the five-week old conflict, amid reporting delays due to the hostilities, a statement said.
"No one should be fooled" by Russia's pulling back of troops around Kyiv - White House
The White House has warned its allies “no one should be fooled by Russia’s announcements” about reducing its military presence around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and that it was important to be “clear-eyed about the reality of what is happening on the ground”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Any movement of Russian forces around Kyiv is a “redeployment and not a withdrawal”, White House director of communications Kate Bedingfield said in Washington at a briefing moments ago.
The comments echoed those coming from the Pentagon just prior, warning that Kyiv “remains under threat”.
A Ukrainian serviceman walks past a Russian tank captured after fighting with Russian troops in the village of Lukyanivka outside Kyiv, at the weekend. Photograph: Marko Đurica/Reuters
Russia itself had noted earlier, via Moscow’s lead negotiator in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, that its promise to “drastically reduce” military operations around Kyiv and northern Ukraine did not represent a ceasefire.
And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy just said that although signals from the talks in Turkey were positive, they didn’t drown out the explosions of Russian shells raining down on Ukraine.
Now Washington has amplified warnings for caution. AFP further reports:
We’re seeing a small number now that appears to be moving away from Kyiv, this on the same day that the Russians say they’re withdrawing,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said just earlier.
“But we’re not prepared to call this a retreat or even a withdrawal. We think that what they probably have in mind is a repositioning to prioritize elsewhere.”
“We all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine. It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.
“Russia has failed in its objective of capturing Kiev,” the Pentagon spokesman said, but “they can still inflict massive brutality on the country including on Kyiv.”
White House Director of Communications Kate Bedingfield holds a press briefing at the White House moments ago. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
A dozen members of the US Senate foreign relations committee urged Joe Biden’s administration to push for Russia’s removal from the United Nations human rights council, citing its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
In a letter dated Monday and made public on Tuesday, the eight Democrats and four Republicans asked the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to introduce a resolution to remove Russia from the rights body, citing widespread casualties in Ukraine and the destruction of residential buildings, hospital and schools.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, addressing the United Nations Security Council at UN HQ in New York last week. Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/AP
Support for Ukraine is one of the rare areas of bipartisan agreement in the bitterly divided US Congress, which has approved billions of dollars in aid for the government in Kyiv.
“Swift action must be taken to show the world the United States and our allies will not stand for indiscriminate and unprovoked attacks on civilians and democracies. The time has come for Russia to no longer have a seat on the Council,” said the letter, led by the committee’s top Republican, Senator Jim Risch, and its Democratic chairman, Senator Bob Menendez.
In the letter, the senators said states engaging in a pattern of gross and systemic rights abuses can be removed by a two-thirds vote in the UN general assembly.
“We implore you to introduce a resolution in the UN General Assembly to call for the removal of the Russian Federation from the UNHRC immediately,” they wrote.
American officials at the US mission to the United Nations in New York referred a request for comment to the office in Geneva, which did not immediately respond.
The Human Rights Council is based in Geneva.
Russia, which has called its actions since 24 February a “special operation”, has denied targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Only one country has been suspended from the 47-member Geneva-based council: Libya. The North African country was suspended in 2011 because of violence against protesters by forces loyal to its then-leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Some senior officials addressing the council during a meeting earlier this month questioned Russia’s membership, but did not explicitly call for its suspension.
