Three European Prime Ministers of NATO countries will meet in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala will represent the European Council.
A statement reported by Reuters announced, “The purpose of the visit is to confirm the unequivocal support of the entire European Union for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. The aim of this visit is also to present a broad package of support for Ukraine and Ukrainians.”
The visit from Polish, Czech and Slovenian PM comes while Kyiv continues to be bombarded by Russian troops. With civilian fatalities reported early Tuesday morning after shelling hit buildings in a residential areas.
Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet “Negotiations are ongoing. Consultations on the main negotiation platform renewed. General regulation matters, ceasefire, withdrawal of troops from the territory of the country…”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also address Congress in a virtual speech, most likely to put additional pressure on President Biden to facilitate fighter jets to help with Russia’s continued offensive in Ukraine.
“They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” said the Ukrainian president.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday accused Russia of committing “a crime against democracy itself” by abducting the mayor of Melitopol, a city in southern Ukraine that Russian troops seized in the early days of the invasion.
“This is obviously a sign of weakness of the invaders,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference, praising Melitopol Mayor Ivan Federov as someone “who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community.”
Russian forces, Zelenskyy warned, have “moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities.”
“The capture of the mayor of Melitopol is, therefore, a crime, not only against a particular person, against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine,” he continued. “It is a crime against democracy itself.”
According to Ukrainian officials, Russian soldiers “put a plastic bag” on Fedorov’s head and abducted him from the Melitopol city center on Friday, outraging local residents who turned out to protest the alleged kidnapping.
“Return the mayor!” townspeople shouted during a demonstration on Saturday. “Free the mayor!”
The New York Timesreported that “nearly as soon as people gathered, the Russians moved to shut them down, arresting a woman who they said had organized the demonstration, according to two witnesses and the woman’s Facebook account.”
Locals in Melitopol, a southern Ukrainian town captured by Russia, protest against the reported kidnapping of their mayor. Video via Zelensky’s office pic.twitter.com/139ld4KKly
Across Europe on Saturday, thousands of people took to the streets to protest Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine, which shows no sign of abating after entering its third week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron both spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Saturday, urging him to broker an immediate ceasefire and move toward a diplomatic resolution in Ukraine—but there was no indication that Putin was prepared to heed their demands.
“The conversation is part of ongoing international efforts to end the war in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the German government said in a statement.
The Elysée, meanwhile, described the phone conversation with Putin as “very frank and difficult.”
The call came as Ukrainian officials braced for a potentially massive Russian assault on the capital city of Kyiv, which has thus far fought off Russia’s incursion attempts. The Associated Pressreported that fighting “raged in the outskirts of the capital” as Russian forces continued bombarding and shelling other Ukrainian cities, including the strategic port of Mariupol.
“In Irpin, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, bodies lay out in the open Saturday on streets and in a park,” according to AP.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence has assessed that “the bulk of Russian ground forces” are now roughly 25 kilometers from the center of Kyiv. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, declared Friday that Kyiv is “ready to fight.”
Zelenskyy himself said Saturday that “if there are hundreds of thousands of people, who are now being mobilized by Russia, and they come with hundreds or thousands of tanks, they will take Kyiv.”
“We understand that,” he continued. “How Ukrainian people have resisted these invaders has already gone down in history. But we have no right to reduce the intensity of defense, no matter how difficult it may be for us.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said the human rights group.
Russian forces used cluster bombs during attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in what may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
The new assessment of Monday strikes on Kharkiv, an eastern city home to over 1.4 million people, is based on photos and video evidence verified by the human rights group and was presented as Russia faces increasing global condemnation over its ongoing invasion, which has stoked fears of nuclear disaster and has already forced over one million people to flee Ukraine.
HRW already confirmed last week use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in a February 24 strike just outside a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Vuhledar. The new assessment focuses on munitions that hit the Moskovskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, and Industrialnyi districts of Kharkiv on February 28.
The rights group—which noted the “inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions and their foreseeable effects on civilians”—based its new assessment on interviews with two witnesses and an analysis of 40 videos and photographs, which revealed information on explosion signatures and remnants of the rockets.
The munitions used in the Kharkiv strikes, said HRW, were delivered by Russian-made 9M55K Smerch cluster munition rockets.
NEW: Russian forces fired cluster munitions into at least three residential areas of Kharkiv, #Ukraine’s second largest city, on February 28, 2022. The use of these weapons might constitute a war crime. https://t.co/S7cgZFAifnpic.twitter.com/rMubla6C1a
Over 120 nations have signed on to an international treatybanning the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, which can pose deadly harm far beyond initial explosions, as unexploded submitions becoming akin to landmines. The Cluster Munition Caolition describes the weapons as being able to “saturate an area up to the size of several football fields.”
Neither Russia, Ukraine, nor the U.S., however, is state party to the treaty.
“We are seeing mounting evidence of indiscriminate attacks on Kharkiv and the price civilians are paying for these serious violations,” said HRW’s Goose.
“If these deadly acts were carried out either intentionally or recklessly,” he added, “they would be war crimes.”
The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also said Friday that Russian forces have used cluster bombs in its attacks on Ukraine.
“We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
Amnesty International has also previously confirmed Russian forces’ use of cluster bombs on Ukraine, and open source investigative outlet Bellingcat has also been tracking Russia’s use of the weapons during the invasion.
In a Wednesday statement, the U.K. presidency of the Convention on Cluster Munitions expressed “grave” concern about reports of Russia using the weapons in strikes on Ukraine, noting that cluster bombs “have had a devastating impact on civilians in many conflict areas.”
The Cluster Munition Coalition, in a Wednesday tweet, said, “We welcome the growing number of states speaking out on—and urge all states to condemn—the unacceptable use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in Ukraine.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced plans for a bombing campaign in the Ukrainian capital.
Above: Photo Collage / Reuters / Time / Lynxotic
This is a developing news story… Check back for possible updates…
The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday warned Kyiv residents to leave their homes immediately as Russia’s forces advanced on the Ukrainian capital and announced plans to bomb targets in the city.
In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the military intends to strike the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the 72nd Center for Information and Psychological Operations (PSO) in Kyiv.
“In order to thwart informational attacks against Russia, [Russian forces] will strike technological objects of the SBU and the 72nd Main PSO Center in Kyiv,” the ministry said. “We urge Ukrainian citizens involved by Ukrainian nationalists in provocations against Russia, as well as Kyiv residents living near relay stations, to leave their homes.”
Shortly following the Russian Defense Ministry’s warning, one Ukrainian media outlet reported that an explosion was heard in Kyiv, where Ukrainian forces have thus far beaten back Russia’s incursion attempts.
Video footage from Kyiv showed residents scrambling to flee on Tuesday as Russia’s 40-mile-long convoy of tanks and armored vehicles approached the city.
Footage also showed that a Russian airstrike hit a TV tower in Kyiv. Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group, condemned the attack as an “attempt to close access to information.”
⚡️The moment of the Russian attack on a TV tower in Kyiv, captured by a witness.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 1, 2022
Russians are destroying the Kyiv TV Tower. They are trying to cut us off from communications. pic.twitter.com/ppi264K5Jf
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) March 1, 2022
With Russia’s assault on major Ukrainian cities intensifying, media outlets in Ukraine reported that the second round of diplomatic talks is set to take place on Wednesday.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Sergiy Kyslytsya also denounced the Russian president’s decision to put nuclear forces on special alert as “madness.”
Amid rapidly escalating fears of global nuclear war, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should follow in the footsteps of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Echoing the condemnation of anti-war activists worldwide, the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called Putin’s Sunday decision to put Russian nuclear forces on special alert “madness.”
“If he wants to kill himself, he doesn’t need to use [a] nuclear arsenal. He has to do what… the guy in Berlin did, in a bunker,” the ambassador said.
During his U.N. speech, Kyslytsya did not name the notorious German leader, who consumed cyanide and shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945, just days before Germany surrendered to Allied forces.
‘This war was not provoked. It was chosen by someone right now that is sitting in the bunker. We know what happened to the person who sat in the bunker in Berlin, in May, 1945,’ said Ukraine’s U.N. envoy Sirgiy Kyslytsya https://t.co/gyYHI0BslXpic.twitter.com/C5ZQTysdcV
Kyslytsya also gained global attention last week for his remarks during a U.N. Security Council meeting chaired by his Russian counterpart, Vasily Nebenzya.
“There is no purgatory for war criminals; they go straight to hell, ambassador,” the Ukrainian told Nebenzya.
In response, the Russian ambassador claimed that “we are not carrying out aggression against the Ukrainian people—this is against that junta, that seized power in Kyiv.”
Following several war crime allegations against Russia over the past week, Karim A.A. Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced Monday that he has “decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.”
