Summary
This blog is closing now but you can follow our continuing live coverage here.
Below is a summary, thank you for reading.
- More than 6,600 Ukrainians were evacuated from besieged cities through eight humanitarian corridors on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
- Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been taken to Russia against their will, where they have been “redirected” to remote cities in the country, the Mariupol city council has said.
- The UK ministry of defence said Russia has still failed to gain control of the skies over Ukraine.
- China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, says his country is “on the right side of history” as it continues to rail against sanctions imposed on Russia and deny it is considering supplying weapons to Moscow.
- Australia has banned the sale of alumina and aluminium ores to Russia, in an effort to limit Russia’s munitions production. Australian supplies 20% of Russia’s alumina.
- Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
- Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
- Boris Johnson has come under heavy criticism for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting to the British public voting for Brexit.
- Kyiv officials have reported that 228 people, including four children, have been killed in Ukraine’s capitol. Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs reported that 14,400 Russian personnel have been killed since the start of the war.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for “meaningful, fair” peace talks to take place urgently. He told Moscow that Russian losses would otherwise be so huge it would take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
- Zelenskiy also urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said are helping to wage war on Ukraine from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.
- The southern city of Zaporizhzhia entered a 38-hour curfew beginning at 1400 GMT on Saturday (1600 local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday.
- Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme said.
- Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing season is disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
- Ten humanitarian corridors were agreed on with Russia for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.
China’s foreign minister says the country time will tell that they stand on the right side of history over the Ukraine crisis.
Reuters reports the minister Wang Yi told reporters on Saturday China had “always stood for maintaining peace and opposing war, and that its position was “objective and fair, and is in line with the wishes of most countries”.
“Time will prove that China’s claims are on the right side of history,” he said according to a statement published by the ministry.
China’s government holds conflicting positions on the war. It has projected itself as a neutral power, saying it respects Ukraine’s sovereignty as well as Russia’s “security concerns”, and says it could mediate.
It has refused to condemn Russia’s actions or call it an “invasion”, has voted alongside it at international bodies, and the US has significant concerns it is considering supplying weapons to Russia (which Beijing denies). It has repeatedly objected to the use of economic sanctions against Russia.
“China will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and opposes any unfounded accusations and suspicious against China,” Wang told reporters on Saturday evening.
Wang’s comments followed a Friday video call between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, during which Biden warned Xi of “consequences” if Beijing gave material support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Xi told Biden the war in Ukraine must end as soon as possible and called on NATO nations to hold a dialogue with Moscow. He did not, however, assign blame to Russia, according to Beijing’s statements about the call, Reuters reported.
Russian troops have reportedly stopped a convoy of busses traveling to Mariupol to evacuate residents, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Citing the Berdyansk City council, the outlet said the convoy was stopped a few kilometres outside Berdyansk and refused entry into the city limits, and the drivers were not permitted to spend the night.
According to the Berdyansk city council, the convoy was heading to Berdyansk from Zaporizhzhia to pick up fleeing Mariupol residents but was stopped by Russian occupying forces near the village Azovske, three kilometers from Berdyansk.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 20, 2022
The Guardian has not independently verified the report. Berdyansk is about 85km by road from Mariupol, which is under heavy siege by Russian forces. Local authorities have accused Russia of forcibly taking thousands of Mariupol residents to Russia against their will.
The New York Times has some more detail on the claims by Mariupol City Council that residents are being taken to Russia against their will.
Pyotr Andryuschenko, an assistant to the city’s mayor, accused Russian forces of taking “between 4,000 and 4,500 Mariupol residents forcibly across the border to Taganrog” without their passports.
Andryuschenko said thousands of people had been sheltering at a sporting complex in the city centre, and he believed many of those inside were being taken to Russia.
Other Mariupol residents said they had heard from friends and neighbors who relayed having been taken across the border without their consent. Eduard Zarubin, a doctor who left the city on Wednesday, said he had been in touch with three families who had been forcibly taken to Taganrog by Russian soldiers.
“Now the Russians are walking through the basements, and if there are people left there, they forcibly take them to Taganrog,” Mr. Zarubin, 50, said.
In one case, he said, the whole family of one of his friends was taken away, as was the family of his friend’s brother.
A senior Chinese government official said on Saturday that sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia over Ukraine are increasingly “outrageous”, according to a recent Reuters report. China’s vice foreign minister Le Yucheng also acknowledged Moscow’s point of view on NATO, saying the alliance should not further expand eastwards, forcing a nuclear power like Russia “into a corner”.
“The sanctions against Russia are getting more and more outrageous,” Le said at security forum in Beijing, adding that Russian citizens were being deprived of overseas assets “for no reason”.
“History has proven time and again that sanctions cannot solve problems. Sanctions will only harm ordinary people, impact the economic and financial system... and worsen the global economy.”
Beijing decries the use of sanctions in general, as unauthorised and unilateral, but has often used trade as an unofficial diplomatic weapon against countries with which it is in diplomatic dispute, including Lithuania and Australia.
China’s government has refused to label Russia’s assault on Ukraine as an “invasion”. It has sought to present itself as a neutral potential mediator, and denied US claims that it is considering a Russian request to supply weapons. However in recent weeks it has repeatedly abstained from voting in multilateral resolutions aimed at Russia, or voting alongside it, including against the International Court of Justice’s recent demand that Russia withdraw its troops.
Updated
'Ukrainians have proved they know how to fight' - Zelenskiy
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy published a video address just a short time ago. Here is an excerpt being reported by Ukrainian media.
The 24th day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is over. After eight years of aggression, Ukrainians have proved that they know how to fight more professionally than an army that has been fighting for decades in different regions and under different conditions. We respond with wisdom and courage to the huge number of their equipment and soldiers sent to Ukraine.
That is why, for example, the Ukrainian Chornobayivka will go down in war history. This is a place where the Russian military and their commanders have shown themselves completely as they are: incompetent, able to simply drive their people to slaughter.
Zelenskiy said more than 6,600 people were evacuated through eight humanitarian corridors on Saturday, including from Bervytsia and Bucha.
“Due to the shelling of the occupiers, we were unable to remove people from Borodyanka, Kyiv region,” he said. “More than 4,000 Mariupol residents managed to leave for Zaporizhia.”
Updated
Australia has banned the sale of alumina and aluminium ores to Russia in response to what it described as “unrelenting and illegal aggression” towards Ukraine, reports Christopher Knaus.
The country’s federal government has been under pressure to stop the export of alumina to Russia, with critics warning it was potentially allowing Australian resources to be used in munitions manufacturing.
The government overnight announced it was ceasing all exports of alumina and aluminum ores, including bauxite, to limit Russia’s ability to produce aluminium, a major Russian export and a critical component in arms and munitions.
Russia relies on Australia for 20% of its alumina needs.
Hello, this is Helen Davidson here to take you through the news developments for the next few hours.
Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station have rejected claims their yellow and blue flight suits are a nod to Ukraine, and have expressed support for their president.
Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov, of Russian space corporation Roscosmos, docked at the ISS late on Friday. Their uniforms - bright yellow with blue accents, sparked immediate questions about whether it was tacit message of support.
Shortly after arriving Artemyev was asked and said the crew had just “accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it”. In a follow up statement published on the Russian space agency’s Telegram channel, he again urged people to not “look for any hidden signs or symbols” in the suits.
“A colour is simply a colour. It is not in any way connected to Ukraine. Otherwise, we would have to recognise its rights to the yellow sun in the blue sky.
“These days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and our people!”
He gave a different reason for the choice this time - saying the crew chose the colours of the prestigious Bauman Moscow State Technical University, of which all three are graduates.
Summary
It’s 2am on Sunday in Ukraine. Here’s a summary of the developments that were seen so far today:
- Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
- Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
- Residents of Mariupol have been taken to Russia, where they have been “redirected” to remote cities in the country, the Mariupol city council has reported.
- Boris Johnson has come under heavy criticism for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting to the British public voting for Brexit.
- Kyiv officials have reported that 228 people, including four children, have been killed in Ukraine’s capitol. Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs reported that 14,400 Russian personnel have been killed since the start of the war.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for “meaningful, fair” peace talks to take place urgently. He told Moscow that Russian losses would otherwise be so huge it would take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
- Zelenskiy also urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said are helping to wage war on Ukraine from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.
- The southern city of Zaporizhzhia entered a 38-hour curfew beginning at 1400 GMT on Saturday (1600 local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday.
- Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme said.
- Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing season is disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
- Ten humanitarian corridors were agreed on with Russia for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.
My colleague Helen Davidson is taking things over from here. Stay tuned for more live updates.
Updated
The Guardian’s Moscow correspondents Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer wrote about why public support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is still high, despite hopes from the West that it is waning:
There have been efforts from abroad to encourage the Russian people to protest against the war. Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week released a nine-minute video in which he recalled his admiration for the Soviet weightlifter Yuri Vlasov and his father’s shame at fighting for the Nazi army at Leningrad. “This is not the Russian people’s war,” he said in an appeal to ordinary Russians.
But others in Russia say it is. Many supporters cite the eight-year-old war between Ukraine and Russian proxy forces in Donbas, using words such as genocide and comparisons to the second world war to justify the invasion.
As one former diplomat wrote in a WhatsApp message, he looks forward to Russia holding a “Nuremberg 2.0” in Ukraine after the war. “Aren’t you sad for the children killed in Donbas?” Elizaveta from Moscow shot back when asked about her views on the invasion. “Why don’t you write about them instead?”
Russian society is deeply polarised between supporters and opponents of the Kremlin. Those camps have carried this division over into support for and opposition to the war, experts said. Even simple choices such as whether to call the conflict a “war” or the state-sanctioned “military operation” carry political meaning.
“We are seeing that society is divided by a majority that broadly supports the war and a minority that is against it,” said Sergei Belanovsky, a sociologist. “These two groups live in different worlds, and cannot convince each other that their viewpoint is the right one.”
According to the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 71% of Russians “support Russia’s decision to hold a special military operation in Ukraine”. Valery Fyodorov, head of the polling centre, said that new data to be published by the centre this week would show an increase in support for the “military operation”.
Updated
The most recent intelligence update from the UK Ministry of Defence says that Russia has still failed to gain control of Ukrainian airspace, one of its main objectives.
“Their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress,” reads the statement.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 19 March 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 19, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/2whpSpRbwX
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/CcIp8qZg3w
Updated
Kyiv Independent is reporting that a Russian diplomat made vague comments about Russia having plans to confront NATO on Bosnian TV.
⚡️Russian diplomat: "We have plans against NATO."
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 19, 2022
Igor Kalabukhov, Russian ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said in an interview with Bosnia's Face TV that Moscow is “assessing the geo-strategic situation" and will respond to threats.
Mariupol City Council says residents are being taken to Russia
Residents of Mariupol, which is being continuously bombed by Russia, have been taken to Russia over the last week, the Mariupol city council is reporting.
The council said that “several thousand Mariupol residents were deported to Russia. The occupiers illegally removed people from the Left Bank district and shelters in the building of the sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombing,” the statement reads.
The council said that the residents were taken to “filtration camps, where occupiers checked people’s phones and documents”. After, residents were “redirected to remote cities in Russia, the fate of other remain unknown”.
#Mariupol city council informed that thousand of #Ukraine citizens from the captured parts of Mariupol have been forcibly interned to filtration camps, and then to remote villages in #russia.
— Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) March 19, 2022
The GULAG has been restored😢
Updated
Ukrainian forces have defeated Russia in its initial campaign of the war, according to analysis from DC-based think tank Institute of the Study of War, ultimately leading to a stalemate between the two counties.
The institute describes Russia’s strategy as using “airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and other major Ukrainian cities”.
“Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way,” the analysis reads. The fall of Mariupol is “unlikely” to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically.
The analysis notes that the Russia military continues to focus on localized fighting rather than launching large-scale operations. It concludes that there is a stalemate throughout most of Ukraine that, if continued, will “likely be very violent and bloody”.
The Kyiv Independent reported today that Russia is illegally forcing untrained men living in the Russian-controlled Donbas region to fight and putting them on the frontlines.
“These people have never even held a machine gun in their hands,” said Oleksii, a 24-year-old resident of Russian-occupied Khrestivka in Donetsk, speaking of friends, classmates and former colleagues that he knows have been conscripted.
One Donbas resident named Anastasia told the news outlet that these civilians from Donbas are forced to serve in frontline positions, with Russian forces threatening to shoot them if they don’t comply.
Updated
Journalist Neil Hauer, a freelancer journalist reporting in Kyiv, has an interesting Twitter thread about the intensifying anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians that is directed at the average Russian, not just Vladimir Putin.
Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) March 19, 2022
The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) March 19, 2022
And I'm saying this from Kharkiv. I think I saw more virulently anti-Russian views here than anywhere else in the country. The sense of betrayal here, of 'how could they possibly do this to *us*', is incredible.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) March 19, 2022
The people we watched crawl out of the rubble today told us their relatives in Moscow didn't believe them. Videos of their destroyed home were met with 'it's a fake' or 'Nazis did it.' *Every* bond between Ukrainians & Russians - familial, cultural, historical - is being broken.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) March 19, 2022
Updated
A video of a police officer in Mariupol, where fighting has been intensifying, is starting to circulate. The officer, Michail Vershnin, directs his pleas to Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, saying that his city has been “wiped off the face of the earth”.
“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it has been wiped off the face of the earth,” he said in Russian in the video filmed on Friday.
“You have promised that there will be help, give us that help. Biden, Macron, you are great leaders. Be them to the end,” he said.
“You have promised that there will be help, give us that help.”
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) March 19, 2022
A police officer in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol issued a direct appeal for help to President Biden and President Macron on Friday pic.twitter.com/5fA2DHJ5CG
Updated
The frontman of one of Ukrainian’s biggest bands, BoomBox, went viral at the beginning of the war with an Instagram video of him singing a Ukrainian freedom fighter song.
Reposted on Twitter by Buzzfeed journalist Christopher Miller, Andriy Khlyvnyuk can be seen in uniform with a rifle. Instead of going on a US and Canadian tour, Khlyvnyuk, like many Ukrainian celebrities, chose to stay in his country to fight.
While Khlyvnyuk skipped BoomBox's US tour to help his country fight against Russia, he managed time for one stirring performance in Kyiv in between his new police tasks. It went viral. Read more about it here: https://t.co/3CJwsYbuJ2 pic.twitter.com/HI42Bh9jux
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 19, 2022
“This is my duty. Ukraine is my home,” Khlyvnyuk told Buzzfeed’s Miller. “And it’s not that easy to push me out of my home.”
Updated
Kyiv officials have just said that 228 people, including four children, have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since the invasion began.
⚡️In Kyiv, 228 people, including 4 children, have been killed since Russia’s all-out invasion.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 19, 2022
According to the city council, more than 900 citizens, including 16 children, were wounded. Nearly 40 houses, six schools, and four kindergartens were damaged.
Earlier today, Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry reported about 14,400 Russian personnel killed as of Saturday.
Information on Russian invasion
— MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 (@MFA_Ukraine) March 19, 2022
Losses of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, March 19 pic.twitter.com/7igTs8lFa9
Updated
This is Lauren Aratani in New York taking over for Nadeem Badshah.
Earlier today, Pope Francis paid a visit to a ward in the Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital in Rome that is treating Ukrainian refugee children. The children are undergoing treatment for illnesses like cancer or neurological diseases, according to the Catholic News Agency.
The hospital has treated 50 Ukrainian children since the start of the war, including 19 children who were brought in for treatment on Saturday.
In a message to a gathering of European Catholic representatives yesterday, the Pope denounced the “perverse abuse of power” in Ukraine and said that Ukrainians have been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and are “defending their land”. While the Pope clearly denounced the war, he did not speak of Russia as an aggressor during his speech.
Updated
Two weeks ago, Alani Iyanuoluwa fled Kyiv as the Russian invasion intensified. Making her way across Europe, the 24-year-old hoped to be reunited with family in London. Yet for 10 days she has been stranded in a French port – because she is Nigerian.
Iyanuoluwa is among a growing number of refugees who claim the British government is ignoring black people who fled Ukraine.
Their experiences have again raised the issue of race and the UK’s welcome to refugees, prompting claims that ministers would never have unveiled last week’s humanitarian sponsorship scheme for Ukrainians had it not been aimed at white Europeans.
Updated
Johnson criticised for comparing Ukraine struggle with Brexit
Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion to British people voting for Brexit.
In his speech to the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool, Johnson said it is the “instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom”, with the Brexit vote a “famous recent example”.
The comparison was condemned by Tory peer Lord Barwell, who pointed out Ukraine is seeking to join the EU.
Writing on Twitter, he said: “Apart from the bit where voting in a free and fair referendum isn’t in any way comparable with risking your life to defend your country against invasion + the awkward fact the Ukrainians are fighting for the freedom to join the EU, this comparison is bang on.”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister “is a national embarrassment”, adding: “To compare a referendum to women and children fleeing (Vladimir) Putin’s bombs is an insult to every Ukrainian.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said: “Boris Johnson’s comments comparing Ukraine’s life-threatening situation with Brexit was crass and distasteful, and shows just how dangerously obsessed the Tories are with Brexit.”
Read our full story here:
Updated
The governor of Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region said rescue work was ongoing at the site of an air strike on a facility where Ukrainian soldiers had been sleeping.
Speaking on national television, governor Vitaliy Kim said the attack took place on Friday but gave no further detail about the location or the number of possible casualties.
Local media reported the strike hit a barracks in the regional capital, Reuter reports.
Updated
Ukrainian mothers and their young children found shelter in an ornate theatre in the Polish border town of Przemysl on Saturday, Reuters reports.
For Tanya, a 34-year-old from Berdychiv in northern Ukraine, it was a relief to finally have some help with her five young children after their long trip to Poland.
Tanya, who did not give her last name, had stayed in her home until it was no longer possible to shield her children from the war.
“I tried to protect them from all of this. When the alarm sounded, I covered the windows with blankets so one couldn’t hear it. My small ones made up a monster, the siren monster,” she said.
Her children ran around her as she stood inside the theatre, which is tucked inside the Polish city’s Ukrainian cultural centre.
There were about 50 refugees sleeping side by side under borrowed blankets on fold-out cots in the theatre.
Updated
The UK’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said another plane has been grounded because of possible links to Russia.
Today I have taken rapid action to identify and ground another plane pending enquiries about possible Russian links.
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) March 19, 2022
We are continuing to take decisive action against Putin and his illegal war in Ukraine.
Updated
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said were helping to wage war on his country from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.
In an audiolink address to thousands attending an anti-war protest in Bern, Zelenskiy thanked Switzerland for its support since Russia launched its invasion, but speaking through a translator he also said:
Your banks are where the money of the people who unleashed this war lies. That is painful. That is also a fight against evil, that their accounts are frozen. That would also be a fight, and you can do this.
Ukrainians feel what it is when cities are destroyed. They are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in European, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege.
Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, has fully adopted the bloc’s sanctions against Russian individuals and entities, including orders to freeze their wealth in Swiss banks.
Updated
Ukraine says 190,000 people have been evacuated since the invasion
Ukraine has evacuated 190,000 civilians from frontline areas via humanitarian corridors since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
The country’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said corridors in the Kyiv and Luhansk regions were functioning on Saturday, but a planned corridor to the besieged eastern port city of Mariupol was only partially operational, with Russian troops not allowing buses through.
Updated
Summary of recent developments
- Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
- Boris Johnson has spoken of the beginning of a “new age of intimidation” stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea if Vladimir Putin succeeds in his invasion of Ukraine.
-
Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for “meaningful, fair” peace talks to take place urgently. He told Moscow that Russian losses would otherwise be so huge it would take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
- The southern city of Zaporizhzhia entered a 38-hour curfew beginning at 1400 GMT on Saturday (1600 local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday.
-
Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme said.
- Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing season is disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
- Ten humanitarian corridors were agreed on with Russia for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.
My colleague Nadeem Badshah will be taking over this liveblog shortly.
Updated
From CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto:
New: Russia launched hypersonic missiles against Ukraine last week, the first known use of such missiles in combat, multiple US officials tell CNN. The US was able to track the launches in real time, the sources said.
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 19, 2022
Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday it had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russia’s deployment of hypersonic missiles was a warning to Ukraine and the west that it “has the means to escalate” the conflict further, defence expert Dr James Bosbotinis said.
Updated
Russia’s space agency has rejected western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) wore wear yellow suits with a blue accents in support of Ukraine.
“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’ press service said on its Telegram channel. “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from ... To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”
When asked about the suits during a live-streamed news conference from the ISS on Friday, mission commander Oleg Artemyev said: “Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour. The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That’s why we had to wear yellow flight suits.”
Updated
Activists in Kazakhstan have said they were refused permission to hold a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to AFP.
Kazakhstan is seeking a third way amid the war in Ukraine, attempting to distance itself from the Kremlin’s actions while not antagonising Moscow. The foreign ministry last month signalled its neutrality in the conflict over Ukraine, saying it is not considering recognition of two Russia-backed separatist entities in eastern Ukraine.
Although Kazakh authorities permitted activists in the former capital Almaty to hold a rally of more than 2,000 people demonstrating against the invasion earlier this month, they were blocked from putting on a second rally. Authorities in the country strictly control demonstrations, only allowing them to take place in designated locations with permission.
Activists showed AFP a letter from the Almaty mayor’s office refusing them permission to hold a second demonstration, explaining a square designated for demonstrations was being used for a rally in support of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instead.
“In reality they only held (the demonstration) to prevent us from holding our anti-war meeting,” activist Alnur Ilyashev told AFP, explaining they had “booked” the square for the whole day, meaning it would not be free for other rallies even after they left.
Updated
Russia’s deployment of hypersonic missiles was a warning to Ukraine and the west that it “has the means to escalate” the conflict further, a defence expert has said.
Dr James Bosbotinis, a specialist in defence and international affairs, told the BBC it was not possible for the Ukrainian army to defend itself against attacks by these missiles. “The speed of the Kinzhal puts it beyond the reach of any Ukrainian air defence system and the launch platforms can launch from ranges beyond the reach of Ukraine,” he said, adding that the hypersonic missile was probably launched from southern Russia.
Bosbotinis said hitting the “high-value target” of an underground military depot was “sending the message to Ukraine that Russia has the means to escalate this conflict further ... It’s also a warning to the west that Russia can of course, up the ante in Ukraine and the Kinzhal could also be deployed if the war escalated and drew in external powers.” He said it was “messaging” that Russia could hit targets in other parts of Europe.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for “meaningful and fair” peace talks over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.”
“The war must end,” he added. “Ukraine’s proposals are on the table.”
The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, has said his country will take care of the “wives and children” fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven about 3 million Ukrainians to seek refuge in the EU’s eastern flank.
Fiala, who travelled to Kyiv earlier this week with his Polish and Slovenian counterparts to meet Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, added that the Czech Republic could cope with further refugee arrivals from Ukraine.
With men of conscription age prevented from leaving Ukraine, mostly women and children have crossed into the European Union at border points in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
“I have informed Ukrainian friends that we will take care of their wives and children,” Fiala said on Twitter. “The speed and size of the refugee wave is incomparable with past waves but the Czech Republic can (handle) it.”
Echoing the concerns of other leaders in the region, Fiala said countries receiving large numbers of refugees should receive EU financial support but voiced opposition to quotas.
“We do not want the EU to introduce quotas but to have financial solidarity with the countries most affected by the refugee wave,” he said.
Poland, which shares a roughly 500km (310-mile) border with Ukraine, has received more than 2 million of the refugee arrivals.
The deputy mayor of Przemyśl, a town near Poland’s busiest crossing with Ukraine, said the flow of refugees had eased, but cautioned that further Russian military attacks in western Ukraine could change the situation quickly.
“Most of the people who left eastern Ukraine are now in western Ukraine waiting for further developments,” the deputy mayor Bogusław Świeży said. “Any nervousness occurring in western Ukraine will result in an increase in the stream of people coming to Poland.”
Updated
Boris Johnson said it was a “tragedy” that the lack of democracy in Russia meant Vladimir Putin was not challenged as he launched his “disastrous” invasion.
Johnson said:
I don’t believe that democratic freedoms are going to sprout any time soon in the Kremlin, far from it.
But with every day that passes I think that Putin becomes a more glaring advertisement for the system that he hates and despises, and it becomes ever more obvious why we have to stick up for Ukraine.
The prime minister said that “if Putin had a free press, if he had the BBC on his case ... whatever you may think, he would have known the truth – or a version of it”.
As Tory activists laughed at the jibe aimed at the BBC, Johnson continued:
If he had free, impartial responsible journalism, let me put it that way, then he would have known the truth that the Ukrainians are a proud, proud nation with a charismatic leader.
And he would have known, before he set out on this disastrous and inhuman venture, that they would fight to defend their homeland, he would have known that.
In a real democracy Putin would not have “locked himself in this echo chamber of sycophants” because he would have to face a “real parliament with real backbenchers” who had to face an electorate.
In those circumstances “I don’t believe that he would have been capable of such a crescendo of disastrous and self-destructive mistakes,” Johnson added.
Updated
Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing campaigns are disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
“Ukraine has enough grain and food reserves to survive for a year, but if the war continues ... [Ukraine] will not be able to export grain to the world, and there will be problems,” he said, adding that Ukraine is the world’s fifth-largest wheat exporter.
Updated
Boris Johnson thanked the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for urging him to “read Putin’s crazy essay” several months ago, ahead of the invasion.
He said the pair, along with the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, spoke daily about the situation in Ukraine.
“We are talking continuously, Liz, Ben and I, to our colleagues in the Ukraine support group to discuss what more we can do. And those conversations are literally every day and there will be more,” he told the Conservative conference.
He said he was “proud” of what the UK did on sanctions, adding: “We must sanction more banks and individuals than any other European country ... there is, of course, a cost to all these actions. Of course there is. But the cost of doing nothing will be far higher.”
He described Putin as a “a backstreet pusher, feeding addiction, creating dependence” on Russia’s gas and oil.
“Putin’s war is intended to cause economic damage to the west and to benefit him,” he told the conference.
He knows that with every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil, he gets billions more in revenues from the sales of either oil and gas, and that’s the tragedy of the situation.
Now he wants to weaken the collective will to resist by pushing up the cost of living, hitting us at the pumps and in our fuel bills, so we must respond.
Updated
Boris Johnson warns of "new age of intimidation" if Russian invasion successful
A “new age of intimidation” stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea looms if Vladimir Putin succeeds in his invasion of Ukraine, Boris Johnson has warned.
Johnson said the world was at a “turning point”:
The end of freedom in Ukraine will mean the extinction of any hope of freedom in Georgia and then Moldova. It will mean the beginning of a new age of intimidation across the whole of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
If Putin succeeding crushing Ukraine, it will be the green light for autocrats everywhere in the Middle East, in the Far East. This is a turning point for the world. It’s a moment of choice. It’s a choice between freedom and oppression.
He warned other leaders against adopting a stance of “realpolitik” towards Putin. “I know there are some others around the world who say it’s better to make accommodation with tyranny. I believe they are profoundly wrong,” Johnson said.
To try to normalise relations with Putin after this, as the west had done in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, would be to make exactly the same mistake again, he added.
Updated
Vladimir Putin made a “catastrophic mistake” in invading Ukraine, Boris Johnson has said.
Speaking at the Conservative party conference in Blackpool, the UK prime minister said the country stood with the people of Ukraine. “With every day that Ukraine’s heroic resistance continues, it is clear that Putin has made a catastrophic mistake,” he said.
Johnson questioned why Putin had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, rejecting the idea that it was over concerns about the country joining Nato. “He was frightened of Ukraine, because in Ukraine, they have a free press. And in Ukraine, they had free elections and with every year Ukraine has progressed, not always easily, towards freedom and democracy and open markets, he feared the Ukrainian example, and he feared the implicit reproach to himself,” Johnson said.
The prime minister contrasted this with the situation in Russia. “In Putin’s Russia, you get jailed for 15 years just for calling an invasion an invasion. And if you stand against Putin in an election, you get poisoned or shot.”
He said Putin felt threatened by Ukraine because the two countries had been “so historically close”. It is vital that Moscow’s invasion fails, Johnson said, because “a victorious Putin will not stop in Ukraine”.
Updated
Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme has said.
The UN agency’s emergency coordinator, Jakob Kern, told AFP that “the challenge is to get to the cities that are encircled or about to be encircled”, describing the situation as dire. He said it has been almost impossible to deliver emergency supplies to the besieged port city of Mariupol or the north-eastern cities of Kharkiv and Sumy. He said it was a tactic that was unacceptable in the 21st century.
Replacing broken food supply chains amid fighting is a “mammoth task”, he said. The WFP is aiming to reach 3.1 million people in Ukraine, but efforts have been hindered by difficulties in finding willing truck drivers. Hundreds of thousands of women and children are among those trapped.
“The closer you go to these cities, the more worried they are about their safety,” Kern said. “And that means we’re not able to reach these people in Mariupol, Sumy, Kharkiv, in the cities that are almost encircled by now - or completely in the case of Mariupol.”
Updated
Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station wearing yellow flight suits with blue accents – the colours of the Ukrainian flag:
A total of 816 Ukrainian civilians have been confirmed to have been killed and 1,333 injured since the Russian invasion began on 24 February, according to the UN human rights office. However, as it only reports counts that it can verify, it believes the figures vastly understate the actual toll.
Ukrainian officials say thousands have been killed.
The Associated Press reports that the office of the country’s prosecutor general said that a total of 112 children have been killed since the start of the fighting. More than 140 children have been wounded.
Updated
The UK Home Office has said 8,600 visas had been granted under the family scheme for Ukrainians fleeing the war by 5pm on Friday.
The announcement comes amid frustration with the length of time the Home Office is taking to process visas. At least 43,000 have applied for Ukraine family scheme visas and are waiting for their applications to be approved, with many staying in hotels in countries bordering Ukraine.
Updated
Poland calls for EU to impose total ban on trade with Russia
Poland has proposed that the European Union implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Poland is proposing to add a trade blockade to this package of sanctions as soon as possible, [including] both of its seaports ... but also a ban on land trade. Fully cutting off Russia’s trade would further force Russia to consider whether it would be better to stop this cruel war,” Morawiecki said.
Poland’s call for Moscow to face tougher economic repercussions for its invasion of Ukraine comes after EU member states agreed on a fourth package of sanctions against Russia this week. Details were not disclosed, but the French presidency said Russia’s “most-favoured nation” trade status would be revoked.
Updated
Street fighting in the centre of Mariupol is preventing the rescue of hundreds of civilians trapped in the basement of a theatre that Ukrainian officials say was bombed by Russia on Wednesday, according to the city’s mayor.
Vadym Boychenko told the BBC that rescue teams could help people out of the wreckage only during periods when the fighting subsided. “There are tanks ... and artillery shelling, and all kinds of weapons fired in the area,” he told the broadcaster.
“Our forces are doing everything they can to hold their position in the city, but the forces of the enemy are larger than ours, unfortunately.”
On Friday, Mariupol authorities said 130 had escaped but that more than 1,000 remained in the theatre’s basement. Russia denies bombing the theatre.
Updated
The Ukrainian army has not observed any significant shifts in the past 24 hours in front line areas, the presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Fighting continues, Arestovych said in an online video address. He named the following as hotspots for the Russian offensive:
- The south-eastern city of Mariupol
- The southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson
- The eastern town of Izyum
Updated
The former head of the British armed forces has backed calls for Vladimir Putin to face a “Nuremberg-type trial” due to Russia’s “morally indefensible tactic” of attacking Ukrainian civilians.
Discussing the role of morale plays in wars, Lord Richard Dannatt told BBC Breakfast that it had a “huge bearing on what happens on the ground”. He said:
When we talk about fighting power, there are three components – there’s the physical component (the tanks, the aircraft, the equipment), there’s the conceptual components (the plans the generals come up with) but then there’s the morale component – that’s the will of the soldiers to fight.
He contrasted the situation that Russian troops had been led to expect when they invaded Ukraine with the reality. “We understand that they were briefed really poorly, that they would go, that they’d be moving quickly, they’d be welcomed as peacekeepers and liberators, but in fact what they found was that the Ukrainian armed forces, Ukrainian civilians were fighting resolutely against them. These young men are absolutely confused, many of them are very young, frightened, exhausted from weeks of exercising.”
The morale of Russian troops had been further weakened by a failure in the army’s logistics systems, Dannatt said:
These young men, not only frightened, are now hungry, the fuel for their tanks is not available, so they’ve been placed in a terrible situation. It’s therefore no surprise the Russian army has not made progress on the ground. They’ve had to resort now to this morally indefensible tactic of shelling defenceless civilians.”
Dannatt agreed with calls from Gordon Brown and others for Putin to not only be indicted, but for “a Nuremberg-type trial to be set up, to absolutely condemn, for all time, into the history books, what Putin and his generals have been doing”.
Updated
Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after failing to “fatally weaken” the country with its annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas, the UK’s former ambassador to Ukraine has said.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Simon Smith discussed the “background” to Putin’s “full-scale” invasion of Ukraine, saying:
I think in 2013-14, a lot of us saw what Russia was doing then as a start of Russia’s war on Ukraine – it isn’t a war that just started in February this year. Because what Putin was after in annexing Crimea and instigating the war in the Donbas was fatally weakening Ukraine, inflicting such damage on Ukraine, damaging its systems and institutions, damaging its confidence to an extent that Ukraine would not be fit to operate as a viable sovereign country.
What we saw in the 7-8 years following, was the fact that Putin failed in that objective, that Ukraine did remarkably well in staying on its feet, reforming a lot of institutions and actually making itself a more viable and successful country.
Updated
Here are some images from the past 24 hours.
In Lviv on Friday, prams were arranged in neat rows across Rynok Square, in a display that symbolised the tragic cost of the war. The prams represent each of the 109 children Ukrainian officials say have died so far in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
In Kyiv, officials said on Friday that 222 people had been killed in the capital, including 60 civilians and four children.
More than 3.2 million have left Ukraine since the start of the war. Many - more than 2 million - have travelled to Poland, according to UNHCR. On Friday, families queued for food near the Central Station in Warsaw. Christine Goyer, the UN refugee agency’s Representative in Poland, said there had been a “tremendous effort from the people, local communities, municipalities and government of Poland in receiving and hosting new arrivals.”
On Friday night in Moscow, Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine, during a rare public speech. His five-minute address at the Luzhniki stadium was, however, cut short due to a “technical failure” and so re-aired from start.
Many attending the Moscow rally were seen waving flags emblazoned with the letter Z, a military marking that has become a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Zaporizhzhia under 38-hour curfew from 1400 GMT
The southern city of Zaporizhzhia will be under a 38-hour curfew beginning at 2pm GMT on Saturday (4pm local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday, the deputy mayor Anatoliy Kurtiev said in a statement reported by Reuters.
“Do not go outside at this time!” he said in an online post.
The city has become an important route for some of the 35,000 people estimated to have escaped the siege of Mariupol.
Updated
Ukraine and Russia agree on 10 humanitarian corridors
Ten humanitarian corridors have been agreed on with Russian for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.
Reuters reports that Vereshchuk said a corridor had been agreed for the besieged city of Mariupol, although the authorities’ previous efforts to evacuate civilians there under a temporary ceasefire have mostly failed, with both sides trading blame. About 350,000 civilians are stranded in the city with little food or water.
Several corridors have also been agreed in Kyiv and in the Luhansk region.
Updated
Summary
-
Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons - which travel so fast they can evade detection by missile defence systems - to destory an underground military depot in western Ukraine. The claim has not been verified.
- In a video address the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said “meaningful, fair” peace talks were needed urgently. He warned Moscow that Russian losses will otherwise be so huge it will take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
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The US president, Joe Biden, warned China’s president, Xi Jinping, that there will be “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities, the White House said. Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack during the two hour call on Friday.
-
On Friday, fighting 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 port city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.
- Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had “temporarily” lost access to the Azov Sea, which opens to the Black Sea and would be a major blow for Ukraine.
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More than 130 people have been rescued following a Russian airstrike on a Mariupol theatre that was sheltering hundreds of civilians. Speaking in the early hours of Saturday, Zelenskiy said there was no new information regarding fatalities. The city was experiencing “the greatest ordeal in its history, in the history of Ukraine”, he said.
-
There were also reports on Friday of mass casualties after a missile attack on a Ukrainian army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
- The Institute of the Study of War said Russian forces continued to secure territorial gains only around Mariupol on Friday and that Russian forces face growing morale and supply problems. Russian attempts to surround Kyiv and Mykolaiv have been pushed back, according to the UK, which said heavy Russian shelling of encircled cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol has continued.
- Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, according to the UN. The World Food Programme has warned Ukraine’s food supply chains are breaking down, with many grocery stores and warehouses now empty.
- There have been 816 confirmed civilian deaths, according to the UN. Kyiv officials said 222 people had been killed in the capital, including 60 civilians and four children.
I’m now handing over to my colleague in London, Clea Skopeliti.
Updated
Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces has said that Russian lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev, commander of the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District of the Russian Armed Forces was killed during fighting. The claim has not been verified.
Ukraine has also said its anti-aircraft defences have hit 12 Russian targets: two planes, three helicopters, three drones and four cruise missiles.
Updated
Russia claims to have used hypersonic weapons in Western Ukraine
Russia has said it has used hypersonic weapons to destory an underground military depot in western Ukraine. Hypersonic missiles are fast weapons that can evade detection by missile defence systems.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday it had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, the Interfax news agency reported.
The ministry said it had also destroyed Ukrainian military radio and reconnaissance centres near the port city of Odessa using a coastal missile system, according to Interfax, which was cited by a Reuters report. These claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
The UK Ministry of Defence says the Kremlin has “so far failed to achieve its original objectives” and has been “surprised by the scale and ferocity of the Ukrainian resistance”.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK MoD says Russia has been forced to change its operational approach and is now pursuing a strategy of attrition. “This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis,” it warns.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 19 March 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 19, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/iXd9G8IiA0
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/6fYJwelqMP
According to the UN, 816 civilians are confirmed to have been killed since the conflict began, while 1,333 people have been wounded, mostly from explosive weapons. Kyiv officials said yesterday that 222 people had been killed in the capital, including 60 civilians and four children.
Humanitarian corridor to open in Luhansk region - governor
Serhiy Gaiday, governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, has said a humanitarian corridor for evacuation will be open on Saturday. He said a “regime of silence” has been agreed from 9am Kyiv time, according to Reuters. That’s about 40 minutes from now.
Updated
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will push for a unified international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Saturday.
Here is some further detail from Reuters:
“Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine coincides with this trip, I’d like to emphasise the importance of international unity and confirm that Japan and India will work together on various issues,” Kishida said ahead of his visit.
India and Japan are party to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), a security framework that also includes the United States and Australia.
Japan has imposed sanctions on dozens of Russian individuals and organisations since the Ukraine invasion that began on Feb. 24 and has been receiving Ukrainian refugees. India, however, is the only one of the four Quad members that has not condemned the invasion.Kishida will also aim to reinforce security and economic ties with India, the world’s second most populous country and Asia’s third-largest economy.
Updated
At least 40 Ukrainian soldiers were killed following a Russian air strike on an army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Friday, according to local media reports cited by AFP.
The mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Senkevich said on Facebook on Friday that several villages in the region had been occupied and the city had been under heavy fire, calling it a “difficult day”.
Updated
Zelenskiy calls for “meaningful, fair” negotiations without delay
In the early hours of Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy released a video address in which he told Moscow that now was the time for urgent peace talks, warning that Russian losses will otherwise be so huge it will take generations to recover.
Here are some of the key points from his speech:
Russia has continued to block the supply of aid to besieged cities “in most areas”
Zelenskiy said that on Friday there were seven humanitarian corridors in Ukraine. Six in the Sumy region, one in the Donetsk region.
More than 9,000 people were evacuated from the besieged Mariupol, he said, and hundreds of tons of essential products were delivered. But he added: “The occupiers continue to block the supply of humanitarian aid to the besieged cities in most areas. This is a totally deliberate tactic. They have a clear order to do absolutely everything to make the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian cities an ‘argument’ for Ukrainians to cooperate with the occupiers. This is a war crime.”
No new information on fatalities following a Russian airstrike on a theatre in Mariupol
Zelenskiy said people were being rescued from the rubble, and that more than 130 people had been rescued so far. “Some of them are seriously wounded. But at the moment there is no information about the dead,” he said. Hundreds of civilians were sheltering in the theatre.
He thanked those defending Mariupol, saying the city was experiencing “the greatest ordeal in its history, in the history of Ukraine.”
Russian forces had been stopped “in almost all directions”
Zelenskiy said Russian forces were halted across many areas of the country. He said there was heavy fighting in the Kharkiv region, especially near Izyum, but that Russian troops were unprepared.
“Meaningful, fair” negotiations were urgently needed
Zelenskiy told Moscow: “It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.”
He said: “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine - meaningful, fair and without delay - are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes.”
On the international response
Zelenskiy said he would continue to appeal to world leaders to call for peace in Ukraine, with plans to address Switzerland, Italy, Israel and Japan. He has spoken with Ukrainian ambassadors around the world “to intensify the supply of humanitarian goods” for displaced people in Ukraine. A coordination headquarters has also been set up to oversee the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, he said.
Updated
The Vatican has long played global mediator but has struggled to make its mark in the Ukraine conflict, reports AFP. It is walking a tightrope between the desire for peace and ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Here is some analysis from AFP:
The Argentine pontiff has been forced to perform a diplomatic balancing act. He has been drawn into the conflict as the spiritual guide of five to six million Catholics in Ukraine.
But the Vatican has also spent years fostering closer ties with the Russian Orthodox Church led by Patriarch Kirill - a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and a key pillar of his ruling apparatus.
This led in 2016 to the historic meeting between Pope Francis and Kirill, the first encounter by the heads of the two churches since Christianity split into Western and Eastern branches in the 11th century.
In December, the pontiff even raised the possibility of going to Moscow to meet with this “brother” Kirill in the near future.
Francis “is inevitably considered as both judge and party” in the conflict, noted Bernard Lecomte, a specialist in the Vatican and eastern Europe.
The result has been a series of public statements by the pope condemning the war in increasingly emotive terms - without ever mentioning Russia as the aggressor.
Hello it’s Rebecca Ratcliffe, bringing you all the latest developments unfolding in Ukraine.
It’s 7.20am in Ukraine. Here’s where things stand:
- US president, Joe Biden, warned China’s president, Xi Jinping, that there will be “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities, the White House said. Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack during the two hour call on Friday.
- In a video address Zelenskiy said “meaningful, fair” peace talks were needed urgently. He warned Moscow that Russian losses will otherwise be so huge it will take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine - meaningful, fair and without delay - are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
-
On Friday, fighting 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 port city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.
- Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had “temporarily” lost access to the Azov Sea, which opens to the Black Sea and would be a major blow for Ukraine.
- More than 130 people have been rescued following a Russian airstrike on a Mariupol theatre that was sheltering hundreds of civilians. Speaking in the early hours of Saturday, Zelenskiy said there was no new information regarding fatalities. The city was experiencing “the greatest ordeal in its history, in the history of Ukraine”, he said.
- There were also reports of mass casualties after a missile attack on a Ukrainian army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
- The Institute of the Study of War said Russian forces continued to secure territorial gains only around Mariupol on Friday and that Russian forces face growing morale and supply problems. Russian attempts to surround Kyiv and Mykolaiv have been pushed back, according to the UK, which said heavy Russian shelling of encircled cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol has continued.
- Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, according to the UN. The World Food Programme has warned Ukraine’s food supply chains are breaking down, with many grocery stores and warehouses now empty.
- There have been 816 confirmed civilian deaths, according to the UN. Kyiv officials said 222 people had been killed in the capital, including 60 civilians and four children.
- 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.
- 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 disruption.
- Zelenskiy said Ukraine expects progress on its EU membership bid within months, following a call with the head of EU executive, Ursula von der Leyen. He also said he would continue to appeal to world leaders to call for peace in Ukraine, with plans to address Switzerland, Italy, Israel and Japan.
Updated
