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Russia Ukraine News Highlights | President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday peace talks with Ukraine had hit a dead end, using his first public comments on the conflict in more than a week to vow that his troops would win and to goad the West for failing to bring Moscow to heel.
In other major updates, Moscow had said it hit four S-300 launchers near the central city of Dnipro that had been provided by a European country it did not name. Slovakia gave Ukraine just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. Russia previously reported two strikes on similar systems in other places.
The failure to win full control of Ukraine’s skies has hampered Moscow’s ability to provide air cover for troops on the ground, limiting their advances and likely exposing them to greater losses.
With their offensive in many parts of the country thwarted, Russian forces have relied increasingly on bombarding cities — a strategy that has left many urban areas flattened and killed thousands of people.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Russian forces of committing atrocities, including a massacre in the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a missile attack that killed at least 57 people last week at a train station.
In Bucha on Monday, the work of exhuming bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed.
Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain in hopes of identifying her 50-year-old son, who was shot and killed more than a month ago, but eventually she went home for some warmth. “He’s still there,” her surviving son, Andriy, said.
In Mariupol, about 120,000 civilians are in dire need of food, water, warmth and communications, the mayor said.
Only those residents who have passed the Russian “filtration camps” are released from the city, Boychenko said. He said improvised prisons were organized for those who did not pass the “filtering,” while at least 33,000 were taken to Russia or to separatist territory in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the U.N. children’s agency said that nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have fled their homes in the six weeks since Russia’s invasion began. The United Nations has verified that 142 children have been killed and 229 injured, though the actual numbers are likely much higher.
Elsewhere, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for talks that were “very direct, open and tough.”
In a statement released by his office, Nehammer said his primary message to Putin was “that this war needs to end, because in war both sides can only lose.” Nehammer said he also raised the issue of war crimes committed by the Russian military and said those responsible “will be held to account.”
Austria is a member of the European Union and has backed the 27-nation bloc’s sanctions against Russia, though it so far has opposed cutting off deliveries of Russian gas. The country is militarily neutral and is not a member of NATO.
In other developments, the head of the separatist rebel government in Donetsk said Ukrainian forces have lost control of the port area of Mariupol.
“Regarding the port of Mariupol, it is now under our control,” Denis Pushilin, president of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russian state television, according to Russian news agencies. The claim could not immediately be confirmed.
The mayor said fighting continues.
“It is difficult, but our heroic military holds on,” Boychenko said. “There are fights in the port. Yesterday, our heroic warriors knocked out several positions of equipment and, accordingly, rebuffed the infantry.
Russia has appointed a seasoned general to lead its renewed push in the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014 and have declared independent states.
The Pentagon’s latest assessment is that Russia is gearing up for an intensified offensive there as more troops and materiel move toward the area.
A senior U.S. defense official said a lengthy convoy is headed toward the eastern city of Izyum with artillery, aviation and infantry support.
More artillery is being deployed near the city of Donetsk, while ground combat units that withdrew from around the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas appear destined for refitting and resupplying before they position in Donbas, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments.
Both sides are digging in for what could be a devastating war of attrition.
Russian forces will likely try to encircle the Donbas region from the north and the south as well as the east, said retired British Gen. Richard Barrons, co-chair of the U.K.-based strategic consulting firm Universal Defence & Security Solutions.
The ground in that part of Ukraine is flatter, more open and less wooded — so the Ukrainian ambush tactics used around Kiev may be less successful, Barrons said.
“As to the outcome, it’s finely balanced right now,” Barrons said. If the Russians learned from their previous failures, concentrated more force, connected their air force to ground forces better and improved their logistics, “then they might start to overwhelm the Ukrainian positions eventually, although I still think it would be a battle of enormous attrition.”
In a video address to South Korean lawmakers on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy specifically requested equipment that can shoot down Russian missiles.
But those armaments could increasingly come under attack as Russia looks to shift the balance in the 6-week-old war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the military used cruise missiles to destroy the four launchers Sunday on the southern outskirts of Dnipro. He said the military also hit such systems in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
The Russian claims could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon said it had seen no evidence to support Russia’s claims. And Lubica Janikova, spokeswoman for Slovakia’s prime minister, denied Monday that the S-300 system it sent Ukraine had been destroyed. She said any other claim is not true.
Questions remain about the ability of depleted and demoralized Russian forces to conquer much ground after their advance on Kyiv was repelled by determined Ukrainian defenders.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said Monday that Ukraine has already beaten back several assaults by Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — which make up the Donbas — resulting in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery.
Western military analysts say Russia’s assault increasingly is focusing on an arc of territory stretching from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the north, to Kherson in the south.
A residential area in Kharkiv was struck by incoming fire on Monday afternoon. Associated Press journalists saw firefighters putting out the fire and checking for victims following the attack, and saw that at least five people were killed, including a child.
Oleh Synyehubov, the regional governor of Kharkiv, said earlier Monday that Russian shelling had killed 11 people over the last 24 hours.
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OPEC on Tuesday cut its forecast for growth in world oil demand in 2022 citing the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising inflation as crude prices soar and the resurgence of the Omicron coronavirus variant in China. Read full report
Bulgaria will allow NATO troops, as well as travellers from some neigbouring countries, to arrive in the Balkan country without showing any coronavirus-related documents as of April 13, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
The European Union and NATO member country lifted all domestic COVID restrictions from the beginning of the month, including wearing of face masks indoors as the number of new inflections eased.
The Black Sea state, which is setting up a 1,000-strong battle group as NATO is bolstering its eastern flank amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will allow access of foreign allied forces to its territory without any COVID certificate. (Reuters)
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had thwarted an attempt by Russian hackers to damage its electricity grid last week with a cyberattack. "This is a military hacking team," said government spokesman Victor Zhora. "Their aim was to disable a number of facilities, including electricity substations."
"They did not succeed, and we're investigating."Kyiv blamed the attack on a group dubbed "Sandworm" by researchers and previously tied to cyberattacks attributed to Russia. (Reuters)
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday vowed Russia would triumph in all of its "noble" war aims in Ukraine, using his first public comments on the conflict in a week to goad the West for failing to bring Moscow to heel with an economic Blitzkrieg.
Addressing the war in public for the first time since Russian forces retreated from northern Ukraine after they were halted at the gates of Kyiv, Putin said the situation in Ukraine was a tragedy.
However Russia had no choice but fight, he said, because it had to defend the Russian speakers of eastern Ukraine and prevent its former Soviet neighbour from becoming an anti-Russian springboard for Moscow's enemies. (Reuters)
Russian hackers attempted to launch a destructive cyberattack on Ukraine's electricity grid last week, Ukrainian officials and cybersecurity researchers said on Tuesday. The group, dubbed "Sandworm" by security researchers and previously tied to destructive cyberattacks attributed to Russia, deployed destructive and data-wiping malware on computers controlling high voltage substations in Ukraine, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) said in a statement on its website.
"The victim organisation suffered two waves of attacks. The initial compromise took place no later than February 2022. The disconnection of electrical substations and the decommissioning of the company's infrastructure was scheduled for Friday evening, April 8, 2022," the CERT-UA statement said.
The World Bank is preparing a new, $1.5 billion support package for war-torn Ukraine, including a $1 billion payment from the development lender's fund for the poorest countries, World Bank President DavidMalpasssaid on Tuesday.
Malpass, speaking in Warsaw, said the package was enabled by Monday's approval of $1 billion in International Development Association aid, as well as a $100 million payment to neighboring Moldova. (Reuters)
Russia will launch a lunar probe later this year and deepen cooperation with Belarus on space infrastructure and technology, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. Speaking at a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East, Putin recalled Soviet successes in space and said no sanctions on Russia could halt its progress.
What Russia calls its "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine triggered a barrage of sanctions from Western countries including restrictions on scientific funding and cooperation.
Putin said Russia would develop a new generation transport spaceship and technologies for nuclear energy in space. (Reuters)
President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Tuesday that attempts to isolate Moscow would fail, citing the success of the Soviet space programme as evidence that Russia could achieve spectacular leaps forward in tough conditions.
Russia says it will never again depend on the West after the United States and its allies imposed crippling sanctions on it to punish Putin for his Feb. 24 order for what he called a "special military operation" in Ukraine.
Sixty one years to the day since the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin blasted off into the history books by becoming the first man in space, Putin travelled to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East, 3,450 miles (5550 km) east of Moscow. (Reuters)
Civilians were fleeing from areas of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive, while Kyiv said it was checking reports that Russian forces had used chemical weapons in the besieged port city of Mariupol. The battle for Mariupol was reaching a decisive phase, with Ukrainian marines holed up in the Azovstal industrial district.
Should the Russians seize Azovstal, they would be in full control of Mariupol, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east. The city has already been laid waste by weeks of Russian bombardments that have killed possibly thousands of civilians. Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking unverified information that Russia may have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol.
"There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions," Malyar said in televised comments. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said on Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it amassed troops in the eastern Donbas region for a new assault on Mariupol. He did not say if they actually had been used.
US government data will on Tuesday likely confirm what many Americans already suspected: prices continued to rise at record rates last month, continuing a phenomenon that began last year but which has been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Labor Department's consumer price index (CPI) report for March will be the first to fully encompass the shock caused by the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions against Moscow, and is almost certain to show a spike in prices for gasoline and other petroleum products.
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has definitely added upside risks to US inflation through channels such as energy, food and also elevated risks of supply bottlenecks lingering for longer," Pooja Sriram of Barclays said. Americans have been weathering steadily accelerating price increases that hit 7.9 percent over the 12 months to February, a rate not seen in four decades. But as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, some economists believe the report will also mark the peak of the inflation wave that began last year as the economy recovered from Covid-19 -- though it could be a while before consumers feel relief.
"The subsequent slowing may not be meaningful given all the supply restrictions on products from Russia and Ukraine as well as the growing supply chain bottlenecks on finished goods from China due to the Covid lockdowns there," Karl Haeling of LBBW said. The inflation wave has become a political liability for President Joe Biden, and before the data's release, the White House temporarily waived a seasonal ban on sales of E15 gasoline, which is cheaper but usually not allowed to be sold during the summer.
President Vladimir Putin flew into Russia's far east Amur region on Tuesday for talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko expected to focus on Ukraine and Russian-Belarusian integration. The two leaders were due to head to the Vostochny Cosmodrome to mark Russia's annual Cosmonautics Day, commemorating the first manned space flight made in 1961 by the Russian Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
They were also expected to inspect the spaceport and meet staff, and to give a joint news conference at around 1100 GMT. Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 from both Russian and Belarusian territory in what it called a "special military operation" designed to demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour.
Ukraine has mounted fierce resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions designed to force Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. Lukashenko, who has a track record of sometimes saying things that appear to jar with his closest ally's stated positions on a range of issues, has insisted that Belarus must be involved in negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and has said that Belarus had been unfairly labelled "an accomplice of the aggressor".
