China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, has met Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as China and Russia reaffirmed their close bilateral relationship just days before the first anniversary of the start of the Ukraine war. In brief televised remarks, Wang said China and Russia were ready to deepen their strategic cooperation. Putin said that “Russian-Chinese relations were proceeding as planned” and talked of reaching “new milestones” in areas such as bilateral trade. Putin said the two countries had “ongoing cooperation” in international affairs and expressed Russia’s gratitude to China.
Earlier on Wednesday, Wang met Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, where he said he expected to reach a “new consensus” on advancing the relationship between the two allies. Xi Jinping, China’s president, is expected to visit Putin in Russia in the coming months, although an exact date has not been announced.
Joe Biden has been meeting the leaders of the Bucharest Nine (B9), a collection of nations on the most eastern parts of the Nato alliance and closest to Russia. The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Speaking ahead of talks Biden said it was “absolutely clear” that the US would defend “literally every inch of Nato”.
Ukraine will ask Turkey and the UN this week to start talks to roll over the Black Sea grain deal, seeking an extension of at least one year that would include the ports of Mykolaiv, a senior Ukrainian official said. Yuriy Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of restoration, also said he wanted the ports of Mykolaiv included in the deal, and that Russia’s current occupation of the Kinburn spit was an obstacle. The spit of land overlooks the route that ships would use to sail from Mykolaiv’s ports into the Black Sea.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has urged member states to speed up delivery of ammunition from their stocks to Ukraine “as a matter or urgency”. Building on comments at the Munich security conference over the weekend and at Nato headquarters on Tuesday, Borrell said the EU was ”looking into the question of joint procurement” of ammunition and “how to ramp up the production capacity of the European defence industry”.
A group of 10 EU member states has called for stronger action to stop Russia sourcing military parts through front companies in neighbouring countries and evading western sanctions. The 10 countries, which include France, Germany, Italy and the Baltic states, write that “2023 must be the year of success in countering circumvention”, warning that public support and international legitimacy of sanctions could wane if they are deemed ineffective.
EU countries on Wednesday failed to agree on a new set of sanctions against Russia meant to be in place for the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday, four diplomatic sources in Brussels have told Reuters.
Russia on Wednesday expressed “deep concern” over the UN’s behaviour regarding the rotation of staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. In a statement, Russia’s foreign ministry said the UN nuclear body was “disrupting” the scheduled changeover of IAEA staff stationed at the plant, which is occupied by Russian forces.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, reported that two people were injured in Russian strikes on the city of Kharkiv on Wednesday morning.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, has said a shopping mall has been struck by Ukrainian fire in the Russian town of Shebekino, severely injuring one person.
Pope Francis, speaking two days before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday called for a ceasefire and peace negotiations, saying no victory could be “built on ruins”.
The International Federation of Journalists said on Wednesday it had suspended the membership of Russia’s main journalism trade union after it established branches in occupied regions of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, plans to attend in person a Nato summit taking place in Vilnius in July, Ukraine’s ambassador to Lithuania told local newswire BNS.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass reports that in an unspecified number of regions in Russia, some commercial radio stations broadcast air raid alerts as a result of a cyber-attack.
Russia’s flagship frigate equipped with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles has arrived in the South African port of Richards Bay for exercises that will include China.
Belgium has said it is investigating a Russian “spy ship” detected in the North Sea around mid-November last year. Vincent Van Quickenborne, the Belgian justice and North Sea minister, said in a statement headlined “Russian spy ship off our coast in November”. It comes after the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD said Russia had been attempting to gain intelligence to sabotage critical infrastructure in the Dutch part of the North Sea.
Speaking before a crowd of thousands in the gardens of Warsaw’s Royal Castle on Tuesday, Joe Biden hailed the resilience of Ukraine’s people and the benevolence of Poland and other western allies in helping fend off the Russian invasion.
The US president said the attack on Ukraine would never be a victory for Russia, and said new sanctions against Russia will be announced this week.
India does not want the G20 nations to discuss additional sanctions on Russia during its one-year presidency of the bloc, according to officials.
The foreign ministers of the G7 on Tuesday said their countries would continue to impose economic costs on Russia and urged the broader international community to reject what they described as Moscow’s “brutal expansionism”.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, gave a long televised national address to the joint houses of the Russian parliament on Tuesday, in which he blamed the west for starting the war in Ukraine and promised a new fund to help those who had lost loved ones in what he referred to as Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Putin also announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New Start (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). The foreign ministry later said Moscow intended to continue abiding by the restrictions outlined in the treaty on the number of warheads it could have deployed.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said he regretted Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the New Start bilateral nuclear arms control treaty and urged Moscow to reconsider.
Spain plans to send six 2A4 Leopard tanks to Ukraine, defence minister Margarita Robles told lawmakers. “We are repairing right now six Leopard 2A4 vehicles … with the possibility – if needed and if our allies request it – of increasing that number,” Robles said.
Women in Ukraine are increasingly vulnerable to sexual violence 12 months after Russia invaded the country, with reports of abuse on the rise, according to a humanitarian organisation in the country. Women fleeing bombed houses and their home towns are reporting attacks in the home and communal shelters, said Marysia Zapasnik, Ukraine country director for the International Rescue Committee.
Nato must “seriously plan” for the likely future reality of a Russian-controlled Belarus, the US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has warned. Vladimir Putin will “very likely secure significant gains in restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus” and use it as a launch pad to further threaten Ukraine and Nato’s eastern flank, regardless of the outcome of his invasion of Ukraine, the ISW said in its latest update on the war.
