Tuesday, March 26

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 21 of the invasion | Russia


  • Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told reporters “with allies like this we will win this war” after the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia made a perilous train journey to Kyiv to offer their support. The comments from Ukraine’s president followed an extraordinary meeting with the three EU leaders in a capital which is close to being encircled by Russian forces. They are the first western visitors to Kyiv since the war began two weeks ago.

  • During a press conference in Kyiv alongside Zelenskiy, the leader of Poland’s ruling party said an international peacekeeping mission should be sent to operate in Ukraine. “I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission – Nato, possibly some wider international structure – but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said.

  • A series of Russian strikes hit a residential neighborhood in the capital on Tuesday morning, igniting a huge fire and prompting a frantic rescue effort in a 15-storey apartment building. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said five people were killed in the airstrikes.

  • Russian forces have reportedly taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol hostage. According to the BBC, the city’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said there were 400 people in the hospital and the Russian army were “using our patients and doctors like hostages”.

  • About 2,000 cars were able to leave Mariupol, according to local authorities. Officials said a further 2,000 cars were waiting to leave the city. Deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a convoy with supplies was stuck at nearby Berdyansk.

    Also Read  Why women are shaving their faces, posting on TikTok
  • More than 100 buses carrying civilians have left the besieged city of Sumy in north-east Ukraine for a safe area, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The evacuation consists of two separate convoys headed towards Poltava, in central Ukraine, ICRC spokesperson Jason Straziuso told Reuters.

  • Nearly 100 children have died in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskiy said in a virtual address to Canadian lawmakers. Zelenskiy pleaded for Canada and its allies to do more to stop the Russian invasion of his country, including establishing a no-fly zone as civilian casualties mount.

  • There are “fundamental contradictions” in talks aimed at ending Russia’s military attack on Ukraine but compromise is possible, a member of the Ukrainian delegation and presidential aid, Mykhailo Podolyak, said. “We’ll continue tomorrow. A very difficult and viscous negotiation process.”

  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that “talks are now continuing on giving Ukraine neutral military status, in the context of security guarantees for all participants in this process”.

  • The US president, Joe Biden, will attend an EU summit in Brussels next week, an EU official said, according to AFP.

  • A woman who interrupted a live news program on Russian state TV last night to protest against the war in Ukraine has been fined 30,000 roubles (£215) by a Russian court. Marina Ovsyannikova, a Russian television producer, was found guilty of flouting protest legislation, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.

  • Russian prosecutors have asked a court to move jailed Kremlin criticizes Alexei Navalny to a maximum security prison after requesting that he serve 13 years in prison on new fraud charges, AFP reported. Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic in Russia, was jailed last year for parole violations related to charges he says were trumped up.

    Also Read  ‘I was susceptible to being taken advantage of’: Be Your Own Pet return after surviving sleazy indie | Punk
  • The UK is to impose sanctions on 370 more Russian individuals, including more than 50 oligarchs and their families with a combined net worth of £100bn. More than 1,000 individuals and entities have now been targeted with sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine, with fresh measures announced against key Kremlin spokespeople and political allies of Putin, including the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu.

  • Boris Johnson will visit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to ask the Gulf states to produce more oil and help the UK reduce dependence on Russian oil. The move sparked protests, following news that Saudi Arabia had executed 81 people just days earlier.

  • More than 100,000 people have offered homes to Ukrainian refugees in the first 24 hours of a government scheme that allows families and individuals to bring them to the UK. The website for registering interest in the scheme crashed for a short while because of the numbers offering help.


  • www.theguardian.com

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *