By: News Desk
News18.com
Last Updated: March 19, 2022, 23:29 IST
Russia on Saturday said it has used hypersonic missiles for the first time in Ukraine to destroy a weapons storage site in the west of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow, saying Russia would otherwise need generations to recover from losses suffered during the war.
Zelensky said Ukraine had always offered solutions for peace and wanted meaningful and honest negotiations on peace and security, without delay.
“I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk,” he said in a video address Read More
Key Events
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday blasted firms including Nestle for carrying on business as usual with Russia “even though our children are dying”, in a live address to a Swiss rally. Zelensky urged Swiss companies to stop doing business in Russia and told the country’s banks to freeze funds belonging to the Kremlin elite. Speaking to a rally outside the Swiss parliament in Bern, Zelensky condemned firms that maintained business as usual despite the siege of Mariupol.
People rest inside a sports hall of a primary school, transformed into temporary accommodation for people fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Przemysl, Poland, March 19, 2022. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken on the phone with Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.
Ukraine called on China to join the West in condemning “Russian barbarism”, after the US warned Beijing of consequences if it backed Moscow’s attack on the country.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia has conducted 1,403 air strikes, fired 459 missiles at Ukraine since it invaded the country, reports Ukrainian media The Kyiv Independent. US security officials recently told BBC that Russia had fired over 1,000 missiles.
Rescuers work on remains of a building damaged by shelling, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kharkiv, Ukraine March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Oleksandr Lapshyn
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow to stop its invasion of Ukraine, saying it would otherwise take Russia “several generations” to recover from its losses in the war.
Dozens of soldiers were killed after Russian troops struck a Ukrainian military barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv, witnesses told AFP on Saturday while a rescue operation was underway. “No fewer than 200 soldiers were sleeping in the barracks” when Russian troops struck early Friday, a Ukrainian serviceman on the ground, 22-year-old Maxim, told AFP without providing his last name. READ MORE
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko warned said the country may not produce enough crops to export due to disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion. “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.
The United Nations said more than 3.3 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, while nearly 6.5 million are thought to be internally displaced within the country. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 3,328,692 Ukrainians had left since the war began on February 24, with another 58,030 joining the exodus since Friday’s update.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is healthy, sane and “in better shape than ever”, his close ally Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has said in an interview with the Japanese television channel TBS. “He and I haven’t only met as heads of state, we’re on friendly terms,” Lukashenko said in a recording of the interview shared by state news agency BelTA. “I’m absolutely privy to all his details, as far as possible, both state and personal.”
Dozens dead after shelling of military barracks in south Ukraine, witnesses told AFP.
Russian President Vladimir Putin may have cut down on his Botox treatments as sanctions continue to cripple the Russian market and economy. US drugmaker AbbVie, the owner of wrinkle treatment Botox, temporarily suspended operations of all its aesthetics products in Russia. READ MORE
Russians trying to enter the United States at the Mexican border are frustrated they are not getting in like Ukrainians are, despite leaving their homeland over the invasion of Ukraine. U.S. officials have let dozens of Ukrainians through this week but Russians remain in limbo, prompting some to camp on the pavement alongside a barbed wire border fence, defying warnings from Mexican authorities to leave.
Switzerland President Ignazio Cassis said Russia’s war in Ukraine is driven by “devastating madness”, and Swiss is prepared to pay the price for defending freedom and democracy. “On February 24, the face of the world changed, and not in a good way. We must valiantly and tirelessly defend freedom and democracy. This has a price. A price that Switzerland is ready to assume”, he wrote in Le Temps newspaper.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced Saturday that 10 humanitarian corridors have been agreed on with the Russians. They include a corridor from the besieged port city of Mariupol, several in the Kyiv region and several in the Luhansk region. She also announced plans to deliver humanitarian aid to the city of Kherson, which is currently under control of the Russian forces.
A man walks near destroyed cars in a residential district that was damaged by shelling, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Marko Djurica
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia deputy mayor Anatoliy Kurtiev said the Ukrainian military has imposed a 38-hour curfew in the southern city, starting at 1400 GMT on Saturday and ending early on Monday, “Do not go outside at this time!” he said in an online post.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned peace talks to end the Ukraine conflict could be a “smokescreen” for more extreme Russian military manoeuvres. “I’m very sceptical,” Truss told The Times newspaper in an interview. “What we’ve seen is an attempt to create space for the Russians to regroup. Their invasion isn’t going according to plan. “I fear the negotiation is yet another attempt to create a diversion and create a smokescreen. I don’t think we’re yet at a point for negotiation,” she added.
Russian Lieutenant-General Andrei Mordvichev, who commanded the 8th Guards Combined Arms Army, was killed in action in southern Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, reports Ukrainian media The Kyiv Independent.
“The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.”
The two sides have been involved in talks for weeks with no sign of a breakthrough.
Zelenskiy said Russian forces were deliberately blocking the supply of humanitarian supplies to cities under attack.
“This is a deliberate tactic … This is a war crime and they will answer for it, 100%,” he said.
Zelenskiy said there was no information about how many people had died after a theatre in the city of Mariupol, where hundreds of people had been sheltering, was struck on Wednesday. More than 130 people had been rescued so far, he said.
Rescuers in Ukraine searched on Friday for hundreds of civilians feared trapped under the wreckage of a bombed theatre, as local forces battled against Russian troops across the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said 130 people had been brought out after the Russian strike two days ago on the building where civilians were sheltering in the besieged city of Mariupol, but that hundreds were still inside.
With world powers manoeuvring to respond to the bloody three-week invasion, Washington said that President Joe Biden had told Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of the “consequences” of any support for Russia.
The United States fears that China could deliver financial and military aid to Moscow, transforming an already explosive transatlantic standoff into a global confrontation.
In the nearly two-hour phone call, Xi said that war is “in no one’s interest”, but showed no sign of giving in to US pressure to join Western condemnation of Russia.
Russia’s offensive remains largely stalled, a US defence official said, with troops about 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of the capital Kyiv and facing heavy resistance.
The official added that Russian forces had made no further progress into the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which they have encircled, and that Ukrainians were also defending the northern city of Chernihiv.
Despite the apparent setbacks, President Vladimir Putin held a large triumphalist rally in a Moscow football stadium featuring a sea of Russian flags, pro-Kremlin pop stars and chants of “Russia! Russia! Russia!”
Marking eight years since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, tens of thousands of people took part, many wearing ribbons with the letter Z that features on Russian tanks invading Ukraine.
Putin said the Russian military was in Ukraine “to rid these people from their suffering and genocide”.
Also on Friday, the Russian leader accused Kyiv of “war crimes” in a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, and said that Moscow was doing “everything possible” to avoid civilian deaths — even as Russia continued its devastating bombardment of Mariupol and other cities.
Read the Latest News and Breaking News here
TAGS
Follow us on
Download News18 App