Ukraine says that Russia has returned the bodies of 77 soldiers, days after the crash of a Russian military transport plane threw doubt on the future of such exchanges. Moscow and Kyiv traded fresh accusations over the plane that Russia says was shot down by Ukraine forces in the border region of Belgorod, killing 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war. While Kyiv has not denied the claims outright, officials have appeared to question whether its PoWs were on board.
The black boxes from the military plane have been delivered to a special laboratory in Moscow for analysis, Russian state media said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called for full clarity over the crash, accusing Moscow of “playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners of war”.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has lost an appeal against his arrest, Russian state news agencies report. A court in Moscow extended the pretrial detention until the end of March, meaning the journalist will have spent at least a year behind bars in Russia.
The former Nato secretary general George Robertson has told Sky News that the Ukrainians are “fighting for us” and “we need to do more”. He said if Russia were to defeat Ukraine, the “rest of us” would then be in danger because Putin would be “fuelled by any success that he has in Ukraine”.
Ukraine has invited Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, to participate in peace talks, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s top adviser has said. Switzerland has agreed to hold the summit, which a number of world leaders will attend, but no venue or date has been set just yet.
The fates of US military aid to Ukraine and the politically explosive issue of illegal immigration into the United States were still up in the air Friday as president Joe Biden rebuked congressional Republicans for stalling on a deal. The speaker, Mike Johnson, warned that the deal under consideration in the Senate may be “dead on arrival” in his chamber.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday the creation of a second body to assist businesses in wartime after several entrepreneurs voiced outrage at the arrest of a prominent banker. It followed a meeting with business leaders after the arrest last week of banker Ihor Mazepa, which Zelenskiy acknowledged had been “difficult”.
