Virtual meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden On Monday morning, when External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh were in Washington for the fourth ‘2+2’ Foreign and Defense Ministry talks with their US counterparts. The war between Russia and Ukraine featured prominently in the opening remarks of both.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said on Monday that Russia has almost completed building up its forces for a fresh attack on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Nine humanitarian corridors were agreed between Kyiv and Moscow on Monday to evacuate people from Ukraine’s besieged eastern regions, including five in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said.
The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said on Monday that more than 10,000 civilians had died in the Russian siege of his city and the death toll could surpass 20,000 with corpses “carpeted through the streets”.
The conflict began to intensify on February 21, 2022, after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized separatist territory Deployed troops to eastern Ukraine and in a peacekeeping role.
here are the latest updates
Russia
Putin says Russia will insist on military action
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will continue military action in Ukraine until its goals are met.
Mr Putin said on Tuesday that the campaign was going according to plan. He said it was not moving fast because Russia wanted 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 it is completed and has completed the assigned tasks.”
Mr Putin claimed Ukraine withdrew from proposals made during talks with Russian negotiators in Istanbul, resulting in a deadlock in talks and leaving Moscow with no option but to press for its offensive. – AP
world trade organization
WTO warns against dividing world economy over war in Ukraine
The World Trade Organization warned on Tuesday that Russia’s war in Ukraine blew prospects for world trade as it raised the alarm against splitting the global economy into rival factions over the conflict.
The World Trade Organization said the war would hurt world trade growth this year and also drag down global gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
“This is not the time to turn inward,” WTO Director-General Ngoji Okonjo-Iwela told a news 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 hinder the task of building a sustainable economic recovery from COVID-19. Will make it more difficult.”
The former Nigerian foreign and finance minister said countries and international organizations should work together to facilitate trade amid intense inflationary pressures on essential supplies and growing difficulties for supply chains.
“History teaches us that dividing the world economy into rival blocs and turning away from the poorest countries brings neither prosperity nor peace,” Okonjo-Iwela said.
The World Trade Organization said world GDP, at market exchange rates, is expected to grow 2.8% in 2022 – 1.3 percentage points down from the previous forecast of 4.1% – after growing 5.7% in 2021.
Growth should increase to 3.2% in 2023 – close to the average rate of 3% between 2010 and 2019.
The World Trade Organization now expects trade volume to increase by three percent in 2022 – down from its previous forecast of 4.7% – and then 3.4% in 2023. , AFP
Russia cannot be isolated: President Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country cannot be isolated.
Speaking on a tour of the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s Far East, Mr Putin said on Tuesday that Russia has no intention of isolating itself and said foreign powers would not succeed in isolating it.
He added that “it is certainly impossible to isolate anyone in today’s world, especially in a vast country like Russia.”
Mr Putin said that “we will work with our partners who want to cooperate.”
Mr Putin’s visit to Vostochny was his first known visit outside Moscow since Russia launched military action in Ukraine on 24 February. Putin visited the space facilities with the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
Russia will achieve ‘great’ goal of its Ukraine military operation: Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine would undoubtedly achieve what he said were its “great” objectives.
Speaking at an awards ceremony at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that Moscow had launched a military operation to defend Russia and Ukraine’s conflict with anti-Russian forces. There was no other option but to. had become inevitable.
“Its goals are very clear and noble,” Putin said of Russia’s military campaign.
Putin said Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine was primarily aimed at saving people in the Donbass 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 only taking measures to ensure the security of Russia,” Putin said. “It’s clear we didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision.”
Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee the country since Russia sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24, which it called to downplay the military capabilities of its southern neighbor and root out dangerous nationalists. A special campaign was called.
Ukraine’s military has put up strong resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an attempt to force it to withdraw its forces. , Reuters
Russia aims to take Mariupol as part of eastern Ukraine offensive
Russian troops were aiming to take control of the city of Mariupol on Tuesday, part of a possible large-scale offensive in eastern Ukraine, as defense forces do their best to hold them back.
Russia is believed to be trying to annex occupied Crimea with the Moscow-backed separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass, and has laid siege to the strategically located city, home to more than 400,000 people.
Ukrainian forces were “encircled and blocked”, tweeted Myhailo Podolik, an official in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. -afp
Russia
Russia’s Gazprom continues to export gas to Europe through 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, Interfax news agency reported.
The request for April 12 was 74.5 million cubic metres, Interfax reported, citing Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator. -Reuters
Ukraine
Ukraine’s deputy PM says 9 humanitarian corridors agreed on Tuesday
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said Tuesday it had been agreed to evacuate civilians on nine humanitarian corridors, including one from Mariupol, a city surrounded by private cars.
Vereshchuk said in a statement that five of the nine evacuation corridors were from Ukraine’s Luhansk region in the country’s east, which Ukrainian officials said was under heavy shelling. -Reuters
International
Nokia told to stop business in Russia
Telecom equipment maker Nokia is exiting the Russian market, its CEO told Reuters, going a step further than rival Ericsson, which said on Monday it was suspending its business in the country indefinitely.
Hundreds of foreign companies are breaking ties with Russia following the February 24 invasion of Ukraine and unprecedented Western sanctions against Moscow. -Reuters
UK
Britain says fighting in eastern Ukraine will intensify in next 2-3 weeks
The fighting in eastern Ukraine will intensify over the next two to three weeks as Russia refocuses its efforts there, Britain’s Defense Ministry tweeted in a regular bulletin on Tuesday.
British military intelligence said Russian attacks focused on Ukrainian positions near Donetsk and Luhansk, further fighting around Kherson and Mykolaiv and a renewed push towards Kramatorsk. -Reuters
Russia
Putin to discuss Ukraine with Belarusian leader Lukashenko on Wednesday
Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and Western sanctions, news agencies in Russia and Belarus reported.
Russia sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24 from both Russian and Belarusian territories in what it called a “special military operation”, designed to demilitarize and “deny” its neighbor. -Reuters
Italy
Italy to import more natural gas from Algeria
Italian Premier Mario Draghi on Monday secured a deal from Algeria to import more natural gas into the Mediterranean pipeline, in the latest push by a European Union nation to reduce dependence on Russian energy after Ukraine’s invasion.
Draghi told reporters in the Algerian capital after a meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune that a deal to export more gas to Italy, as well as an agreement to intensify bilateral cooperation in the energy sector, will help to quickly transform Russian energy. There is an important response to the strategic goal”. -ap
Ukraine
Zelensky asked to address African Union
Senegalese President Mackie Saal said on Monday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has requested an address to the African Union.
Saul, the current AU president, tweeted that he and Mr Zelensky had discussed over the phone the economic impact of the war in Ukraine and the “need to support dialogue for a negotiated outcome for the conflict”. -afp
France
France sends police officers to Ukraine to investigate Russia’s ‘war crimes’
French police officers and forensic doctors arrived in Ukraine on Monday to help investigate alleged Russian war crimes after hundreds of civilian bodies were found in cities around Kyiv, Paris said.
The French interior and justice ministries said they had dispatched the team to “prevent the deterrence of acts that constitute war crimes” after the killings that shook the world. -afp
International
War in Ukraine could stall global trade growth by 2022: WTO
Russia’s war in Ukraine could nearly halve world trade growth this year and drag down global GDP growth, the World Trade Organization estimated on Monday.
The WTO said the Russian aggression had not only created a humanitarian crisis of “enormous proportion” but also dealt a “severe blow” to the global economy.
It also said that in the long term, conflict could even provoke disruption in individual blocs of the global economy. -afp
UK
Britain investigating claims of Russian chemical attack in Ukraine
Britain’s top diplomat said on Monday that Britain was trying to confirm reports that Russia used chemical weapons in an attack on the Ukrainian-held city of Mariupol.
Western officials have previously expressed concern that Russia, grinding its neighbor’s February 24 invasion into a protracted conflict, may resort to more extreme measures, including chemical weapons. -afp