There are reports that Russian forces have taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol as hostages.
According to the BBC, Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said:
We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital … and they’re using our patients and doctors like hostages.
We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this confirmation. We received information that there are 400 people there.
The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent)
⚡️Donetsk Oblast Governor: Russia takes patients, medical staff hostage in Mariupol.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko says Russian troops entered a hospital on the outskirts of Mariupol.
“Russians drove 400 people from neighbouring houses to the hospital and they can’t leave,” he said.
Donetsk regional administration: Russian invaders captured doctors and patients of the Regional Intensive Care Hospital in Mariupol. 400 people have been rounded up from nearby homes. They are being kept in a basement, not allowed to leave
Russia’s foreign ministry said the US president, Joe Biden, and a dozen other top officials have been banned from entering the country in a reciprocal response to US sanctions.
In a statement, it said the measure, which also applies to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, “is the consequence of the extremely Russophobic policy pursued by the current US administration”.
Also on the list are the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, Central Intelligence Agency director, William Burns, White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as well as Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
The ministry warned Moscow will soon announce additional sanctions against a range of “Russophobic” US officials, military officers, lawmakers, businessmen and media personalities.
The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia are scheduled to meet with Ukraine’s president Vlodomyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv this evening.
The three premiers travelled to the Ukrainian capital by train today in a show of solidarity with Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, posted pictures of him with the Czech Republic’s PM, Petr Fiala, and Slovenian PM, Janez Janša, in Kyiv, where “history is being made”.
Mateusz Morawiecki (@MorawieckiM)
It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made. It is here, that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance. EU supports UA, which can count on the help of its friends – we brought this message to Kyiv today. pic.twitter.com/Us7k9xTq5f
A man holding his shopping bags stops for a moment to inspect the damage to the Artem building caused by what authorities said is Russian bombardment in Kyiv. Photograph: Marcus Yam/LA Times/Rex/Shutterstock
Local residents carry bags out and get to safety after the apartment building behind them was damaged by what Kyiv officials said was a Russian bombardment in the Obolon neighbourhood of Kyiv. Photograph: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock
The Italian army issued an order for its territorial units to boost training “oriented towards warfighting” referring to the “well-known” international events, Lorenzo Tondo reports.
The order, released in a note and dated 9 March, cites also the “need to maintain the highest levels of efficiency of all tracked vehicles, helicopters and artillery systems”.
The army said the note was intended only for internal use, Italy’s news agency Ansa reported.
Here’s more on the US president, Joe Biden, travelling to Brussels next week to meet the leaders of the Nato alliance and the European Commission.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced the travel plans at today’s press briefing.
She said the US president would attend the Nato summit on 24 March to discuss ongoing deterrence and defence efforts related to Russia’s invasion and reaffirm the United States’s “ironclad commitment” to the alliance.
Psaki told reporters:
I expect he will share more of those details in the next 24 hours.
Biden will also join a previously scheduled EU council summit to discuss Ukraine, including efforts to penalise Russia and provide humanitarian support to Ukraine, she added.
More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, according to the United Nations, Lizzy Davies reports.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), 3,000,381 people have left the country since 24 February, a total it expects to rise to at least 4 million.
The number of people displaced within Ukraine is estimated at 1.85m, the UN said last week – a number that could reach nearly 7 million in coming months.
Nearly 2 million refugees have fled Ukraine to Poland, where a massive humanitarian aid effort is under way. But some people are going the other way, returning to Ukraine with aid, to collect family members or to fight.
We spent a day meeting those queueing to cross back into Ukraine, unsure what they will find there.
‘It’s our duty’: the Ukrainians returning to their country to fight and help – video
Russians will be banned from importing many designer clothes, jewellery, handbags and racing horses from Europe, under the latest round of EU sanctions, Jennifer Rankin reports.
The EU is banning the export of most luxury goods to Russia, including precious stones, watches, horses, caviar and fur. Such restrictions apply only to a handful of countries, such as North Korea and Syria, highlighting Russia’s deepening isolation from the global economy.
EU officials said the ban on luxury goods was designed to target wealthy, well-connected Russians, rather than ordinary citizens. All items under €300 are excluded and there are varying thresholds for different categories of goods, for example cars under €50,000 are excluded.
The EU is also banning Russian steel imports, denying Moscow revenues from a product category worth €3.3bn in 2021. However, some of Europe’s big industrial producers, including Germany and Italy, successfully won exemptions, so the ban will not include iron ore, palladium and nickel. The steel import ban will only take effect after three months to allow existing contracts to be concluded, whereas the luxury goods ban comes into force almost immediately.
Poland and the Baltic States had battled to close down these exemptions, but lost out to a group of more conservative member states, including Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, according to diplomatic sources. “The ‘sanctionistas’, Poland and the Balts, are afraid the others are missing the sense of urgency, especially as rockets are landing near their borders,” one EU diplomat said.
The EU also chose to exclude nuclear from a ban on all new investments in Russia’s energy sector. In the wake of the downing of MH17 in July 2014, the EU banned investment by EU firms into Russian Arctic oil fields, a measure that is now being extended to all new fossil fuel investments and other forms of financial support. The ban will not apply to nuclear power, as several eastern European countries operate Russian-built nuclear reactors and the technology is used in medicine. There is also a carve out to protect investments to bring oil and gas into the EU.
EU officials hailed a decision, agreed with the United States, to prohibit ratings agencies from reassessing Russia’s creditworthiness. Big ratings agencies, including Moody’s and Fitch, have slashed Russia’s rating to junk status, as they fear the ensuing recession will trigger a default on state debts. EU officials said the decision to ban new ratings of Russia and Russian companies was important because it would freeze existing junk status in global markets. “So there would be no new ratings, if there would be a recovery in future,” an EU official said.
Emma Graham-Harrison (@_EmmaGH)
“New fascism, New swastika”
Poster denouncing Moscow’s Z, symbol of its invasion of Ukraine — outside Odessa’s historic opera house pic.twitter.com/uWqiBvLGP3
A series of Russian strikes hit a residential neighbourhood 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.
About 2,000 cars were able to leave the besieged Ukrainian city of 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. There are reports that Russian forces have taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in Mariupol as hostages.
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.
Talks between Russia and Ukraine resumed this afternoon, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said. On Monday, Podolyak said negotiations had taken a “technical pause” until Tuesday for “additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions”.
The US president, Joe Biden, will attend an EU summit in Brussels next week, an EU official said,according to AFP.
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.
A woman who interrupted a live news programme 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 critic 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.
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 defence minister, Sergei Shoigu.
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.
AFP reports the US president will travel to Belgium to attend an EU summit.
More to follow …
Nearly 100 children have died in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a virtual address to Canadian lawmakers.
He said:
They destroying everything: memorial complexes, schools, hospitals, housing complex. They already killed 97 Ukrainian children. We are not asking for much. We are asking for justice, for real support.
The besieged city of Mariupol was “left without heat or hydro, without means of communicating, almost without food, without water”, Zelenskiy added.
The Ukrainian leader has sought to drum up support for Ukraine with video briefings of foreign audiences that have included the European and British parliaments. He is due to address the US Congress tomorrow.
There are reports that Russian forces have taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol as hostages.
According to the BBC, Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said:
We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital … and they’re using our patients and doctors like hostages.
We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this confirmation. We received information that there are 400 people there.
The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent)
⚡️Donetsk Oblast Governor: Russia takes patients, medical staff hostage in Mariupol.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko says Russian troops entered a hospital on the outskirts of Mariupol.
“Russians drove 400 people from neighbouring houses to the hospital and they can’t leave,” he said.
Donetsk regional administration: Russian invaders captured doctors and patients of the Regional Intensive Care Hospital in Mariupol. 400 people have been rounded up from nearby homes. They are being kept in a basement, not allowed to leave
A journalist who interrupted a live news programme on Russian state TV last night to protest against the war in Ukraine has been fined 30,000 roubles (£215) by a Russian court.
A court found Marina Ovsyannikova guilty of flouting protest legislation, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.
Ovsyannikova, a Russian television producer, burst on to the set of Channel One during the national evening news on Monday, holding a poster that read “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”
Lawyers had been unable to find Ovsyannikova for nearly 24 hours after her protest, which was an extraordinary act of defiance given that Russia had ramped up its already strict censorship laws when the war began.
She reappeared on Tuesday evening in a Moscow courtroom alongside lawyer Anton Gashinsky. According to Novaya Gazeta, Ovsyannikova was charged with an administrative offence for holding an unauthorised protest.
In a photograph taken in the courtroom, Ovsyannikova appeared unharmed and was wearing the same necklace in the colours of the Ukrainian flag as during her protest.
Соболь Любовь (@SobolLubov)
Марина Овсянникова в Останкинском районом суде. С ней адвокат Антон Гашинский. pic.twitter.com/b1wPyy4BJ1
Canadian MPs applaud as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the Canadian parliament on Tuesday. Photograph: Adrian Wyld/AP
Volodymyr Zelenskiy is seen via videoconference as he makes an address to parliament, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Tuesday. Photograph: Justin Tang/AP
More than 100 buses carrying civilians have left the besieged city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine for a safe area, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
The evacuation, organised by the ICRC and Ukrainian Red Cross, is made up of two separate convoys headed towards Poltava, in central Ukraine.
ICRC spokesperson Jason Straziuso told Reuters the buses might not be able to take a direct route to Poltava, adding that the Russian side had given a green light for the evacuation.
ICRC (@ICRC)
UPDATE: We’re facilitating the safe passage of civilians out of Sumy, #Ukraine.
Together with @RedCrossUkraine, we’ll lead two convoys of approximately 70 trucks.
We desperately hope this will help people leaving Sumy to reach a safe haven. pic.twitter.com/WcC7sJSqbC
Earlier, ICR spokesperson Ewan Watson said more than 70 buses were ready in Sumy to evacuate civilians who had gathered ahead of a “safe passage” operation organised by the Red Cross.
A total of 3,000 cyber attacks against Ukrainian targets have been recorded since mid-February, according to Victor Zhora, the deputy chairman of the country’s SSSCIP cyber security agency.
Many of the attacks, almost certainly from Russia, have been aimed at knocking out internet service providers and other communications as well as government and financial services in parallel with Moscow’s military offensive, Zhora added.
The record number was “275 in a day” Zhora told reporters in a briefing, part of an uptick in hacker attacks seen since before the war started on 15 February. Most were denial of service attacks aimed at preventing a service from functioning.
An apparent attack on Viasat, a satellite communications company, at the end of February that disrupted service in Ukraine and elsewhere is under investigation by Ukraine, Zhora said, as well as reportedly by the US National Security Agency.
Some of Russia’s traditional military activity has also been aimed at disrupting communications, Zhora added, including the bombing of TV towers in Kyiv a fortnight ago and in Rivne, in the north of the country, on Monday.
Mobile communications have also been affected, at times, most recently in the southern city of Kherson, as Russian forces destroy base stations. It was part of a concerted effort to prevent Ukrainians from communicating and removing their sources for information, the official said.
“They will use all the means they can to change the infosphere in Ukraine,” Zhora added.
