Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden met virtually on Monday morning, as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh were in Washington for the fourth ‘2+ 2’ foreign and defence ministry dialogues with their U.S. counterparts. The war between Russia and Ukraine featured prominently in the opening remarks of both.
Russia has nearly completed its buildup of forces for a renewed assault on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Monday.
Nine humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from Ukraine’s besieged eastern regions have been agreed for Monday between Kyiv and Moscow, including five in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city and that the death toll could surpass 20,000, with corpses that were “carpeted through the streets.”
The conflict began escalating on February 21, 2022, after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised separatist regions in eastern Ukraine and deployed troops in a peacekeeping role.
Here are the latest updates
Putin says Russia will press on with military action
President Vladimir Putin says that Russia will press on with its military action in Ukraine until its goals are fulfilled.
Mr Putin said Tuesday that the campaign is going according to plan. He said it is not moving faster because Russia wants to minimize losses.
He said during a visit to the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s Far East that the “military operation will continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
Mr Putin claimed that Ukraine backtracked on proposals it made during talks with Russian negotiators in Istanbul, resulting in a deadlock in talks and leaving Moscow no other choice but to press on with its offensive. - AP
WTO warns against dividing world economy over war in Ukraine
The WTO warned Tuesday that Russia's war in Ukraine had darkened the prospects for world trade as it sounded the alarm against the global economy dividing into rival blocs over the conflict.
The World Trade Organization said the war would damage world trade growth this year and drag down global gross domestic product (GDP) growth as well.
"This is not the time to turn inward," WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told a press conference at the global trade body's headquarters in Geneva.
"In a crisis, more trade is needed to ensure stable, equitable access to necessities. Restricting trade will threaten the well-being of families and businesses and make more fraught the task of building a durable economic recovery from Covid‑19."
The former Nigerian foreign and finance minister said countries and international organisations must work together to facilitate trade amid sharp inflation pressures on essential supplies and growing difficulties for supply chains.
"History teaches us that dividing the world economy into rival blocs and turning our backs on the poorest countries leads neither to prosperity nor to peace," said Okonjo-Iweala.
The WTO said world GDP, at market exchange rates, is expected to increase by 2.8% in 2022 — down 1.3 percentage points from the previous forecast of 4.1% — after rising 5.7% in 2021.
Growth should rise to 3.2% in 2023 — close to the average rate of 3% between 2010 and 2019.
The WTO now expects merchandise trade volume growth of three percent in 2022 — down from its previous forecast of 4.7% — and then 3.4% in 2023. -- AFP
Russia cannot be isolated, says President Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin says that his country can’t be isolated.
Speaking on a visit to the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s Far East, Mr. Putin said Tuesday that Russia has no intention to isolate itself and added that foreign powers wouldn’t succeed in isolating it.
He said that “it’s certainly impossible to isolate anyone in the world of today, especially such a huge country as Russia.”
Mr. Putin added that “we will work with those of our partners who want to cooperate.”
Mr. Putin’s visit to Vostochny marked his first known trip outside Moscow since Russian launched military action in Ukraine on Feb. 24. Putin toured space facilities together with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Russia will achieve ‘noble’ aims of its Ukraine military campaign, says Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine would undoubtedly achieve what he said were its “noble” objectives.
Speaking at an awards ceremony at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies that said Moscow had no other choice but to launch a military operation to protect Russia and that a clash with Ukraine’s anti-Russian forces had been inevitable.
“Its goals are absolutely clear and noble,” Putin said of Russia’s military campaign.
Putin said the main objective of Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine was to save people in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
“On the one hand, we are helping and saving people, and on the other, we are simply taking measures to ensure the security of Russia itself,” Putin said. “It’s clear that we didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision.”
Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee the country since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a special operation to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists.
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces. -- Reuters
Russia aims to take Mariupol as part of eastern Ukraine onslaught
Russian troops were aiming to take control of the city of Mariupol on Tuesday, part of an anticipated massive onslaught across eastern Ukraine, as defending forces tried desperately to hold them back.
Russia is believed to be trying to connect occupied Crimea with Moscow-backed separatist territories Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbas, and has laid siege to the strategically located city, once home to more than 400,000 people.
Ukrainian forces were “surrounded and blocked”, tweeted Myhaylo Podolyak, an official from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. -AFP
Russia’s Gazprom continues gas exports to Europe via Ukraine- Ifax
Russian state-owned gas producer Gazprom continued to supply natural gas to Europe via Ukraine on Tuesday in line with requests from European consumers, the Interfax news agency reported.
Requests stood at 74.5 million cubic metres for April 12, Interfax reported, citing Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator. -Reuters
Ukraine deputy PM says 9 humanitarian corridors agreed for Tuesday
Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed for Tuesday to evacuate civilians, including from the besieged city of Mariupol by private cars.
Vereshchuk said in a statement that five of the nine evacuation corridors were from Ukraine’s Luhansk region in the east of the country, which Ukrainian officials have said is under heavy shelling. -Reuters
Nokia says to stop doing business in Russia
Telecoms equipment maker Nokia is pulling out of the Russian market, its CEO told Reuters, going a step further than rival Ericsson, which said on Monday it was indefinitely suspending its business in the country.
Hundreds of foreign companies are cutting ties with Russia following its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and after unprecedented Western sanctions against Moscow. -Reuters
U.K. Says fighting in eastern Ukraine to intensify over the next 2-3 weeks
Fighting in eastern Ukraine will intensify over the next two to three weeks as Russia continues to refocus its efforts there, the UK’s Ministry of Defence tweeted in a regular bulletin on Tuesday.
Russian attacks remain focused on Ukrainian positions near Donetsk and Luhansk with further fighting around Kherson and Mykolaiv and a renewed push towards Kramatorsk, British military intelligence said. -Reuters
Putin to discuss Ukraine with Belarus leader Lukashenko on Wednesday- agencies
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and Western sanctions, news agencies in Russia and Belarus reported.
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. -Reuters
Italy to import more natural gas from Algeria
Italian Premier Mario Draghi secured a deal on Monday for more natural gas imports across a Mediterranean pipeline from Algeria, in the latest push by a European Union nation to reduce dependence on Russian energy following its invasion of Ukraine.
Draghi told reporters in the Algerian capital after meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune that an agreement to intensify bilateral cooperation in the energy sector along with the deal to export more gas to Italy “are a significant response to the strategic goal” of quickly replacing Russian energy. -AP
Zelensky asks to address African Union
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy has requested to address the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall said on Monday.
Sall, the current AU chairman, tweeted that he and Mr. Zelenksy had discussed over the phone the economic impact of the war in Ukraine and “the need to favour dialogue for a negotiated outcome to the conflict”. -AFP
France sends police officers to Ukraine to probe Russian ‘war crimes’
French police officers and forensic doctors arrived in Ukraine Monday to help investigate alleged Russian war crimes after hundreds of civilian bodies were discovered in towns around Kyiv, Paris said.
The French interior and justice ministries said they had sent the team to “prevent the impunity of acts constituting war crimes” following the killings that shocked the world. -AFP
War in Ukraine could halve 2022 global trade growth: WTO
Russia’s war in Ukraine could almost halve world trade growth this year and drag down global GDP growth too, the World Trade Organization projected Monday.
The WTO said that the Russian invasion had not only created a humanitarian crisis of “immense proportions” but had also dealt a “severe blow” to the global economy.
It also said that in the longer term, the conflict could even spark a disintegration of the global economy into separate blocs. -AFP
U.K. probing claims of Russian chemical attack in Ukraine
Britain is trying to verify reports that Russia has used chemical weapons in an attack in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, London’s top diplomat said on Monday.
Western officials have previously expressed concerns that Russia, finding its February 24 invasion of its neighbour grinding into a protracted conflict, could resort to more extreme measures, including chemical weapons. -AFP
