Russia-Ukraine War: latest news of the invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky questioned the ability of the UN Security Council to provide security, undermining the very functions for which it was created: “The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world does not. For anyone,” he said in a video posted Tuesday.
Hours earlier, Zelensky demanded before the UN Security Council that the Russians responsible for war crimes in Ukraine be tried in a court similar to the one established for the Nazis in Nuremberg after World War II.
Days after the terrible images of the horrors experienced in Bucha emerged, in an impassioned speech, the Ukrainian president assured that ” the Bucha massacre is just one of many examples” and compared Russian troops with Islamic State. ” The women were raped and killed in front of their children; their tongues were ripped out,” he said.

By Tuesday night, Ukrainian authorities said that around 1,500 people were evacuated from the city of Mariupol, but had to leave the city in private vehicles because evacuation buses and humanitarian cargo could not reach the city.

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have not yielded significant progress and the appalling events in the city of Bucha could make a deal difficult, a source at the Elysee Palace said on Tuesday.

The European Commission opened the door to sanctions on Russian energy for the first time by proposing a ban on Russian coal to EU members.

The United States will send $100 million in security assistance to Ukraine

The United States will provide an additional $100 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including anti-armor systems, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

The weapons will come from existing military stockpiles, an official confirmed to ABC News.

The White House later released a memo from President Joe Biden saying he would use the withdrawal powers to release “a total of $100 million worth of Department of Defense defense goods and services, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Ukraine.”

WHO will send Ukraine 209,000 packages of drugs for HIV patients

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that it will supply thousands of doses of life-saving antiretroviral drugs to Ukraine to meet the needs of HIV patients in the country over the next 12 months.

The WHO, along with President Joe Biden’s emergency plan for AIDS relief, the Ukrainian authorities and other partners, has procured 209,000 packs of generic TLD antiretroviral drugs.

Ukraine has some 260,000 people living with HIV, the second-largest number in Europe after Russia, and before Moscow’s invasion around half of them were receiving antiretroviral treatment.

Last month, the UN HIV/AIDS agency warned that Ukraine was left with less than a month’s supply of drugs for HIV patients.

Zelensky questions the effectiveness of the UN Security Council and says that “there is no security in the world for anyone”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has questioned the ability of the UN Security Council to provide security, undermining the very functions for which it was created.

“The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world does not. For anyone,” he said in a video posted Tuesday.

“This definitely means that the United Nations is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created. And only one state is to blame for this: Russia, which discredits the UN and all other international institutions in which it still participates” he said.

Zelensky said he suggested hosting a world conference in Kyiv to “determine how the world’s architecture can be reformed” given all of Russia’s actions.

Russia and Ukraine report missile attacks near Lviv

Russian forces launched missile strikes near Kviv on Tuesday night, hitting what Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov described as military installations.

In a statement, Konashenkov said Russia launched precision missiles from the air at targets in the vicinity of Zolochiv in western Lviv and Chuhuiv in the northeastern oblast of Kharkiv.

He claimed the strikes destroyed a command post of a territorial defense unit, a fuel storage facility and an armored vehicle repair plant.

For his part, the regional governor of Ukraine, Maksim Kositsky, stated on Telegram that there was another attack near Radekhiv, a city about 70 kilometers northeast of Lviv. He noted that so far no casualties have been reported from the explosions.

Kositsky urged people to stay in shelters.

1,500 civilians were evacuated from Mariupol in private cars due to the lack of humanitarian buses

Around 1,500 people were evacuated from the city of Mariupol on Tuesday, according to Ukrainian officials. Evacuees had to leave the city in private vehicles because evacuation buses and humanitarian cargo were unable to reach the city, officials said.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that in addition to those evacuated in Mariupol, another 3,846 people were evacuated from other cities in the country, including 1,080 from the breakaway zone of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.

The evacuation came as Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said on Tuesday that Russian forces would “liberate Mariupol from the nationalists,” according to the Russian state news service TASS.

The train station in Berlin becomes a city for Ukrainian refugees

Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia continue without “important progress”

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have not yielded significant progress and the atrocious events in the city of Bucha could make a deal difficult, a source at the Elysee Palace said on Tuesday after a phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

” Bucha’s shock is not conducive to progress in negotiations,” he noted, though he said Zelensky was still interested in “maintaining and advancing talks with the Russians.”

The two leaders discussed concrete measures to be put in place to “make sure Russia’s crimes do not go unpunished,” the source said, including France’s offer last week to send additional funds to the International Criminal Court.

US to ban investments in Russia as part of its anticipated new sanctions: AFP

The United States will adopt this Wednesday, in coordination with the European Union and the G7, new sanctions against Russia, such as prohibiting “any new investment” in that country, according to a source close to the matter.

These measures in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine will also include “more sanctions against financial institutions and public companies in Russia, and sanctions on Russian government officials and their relatives,” this source told AFP.

The source assured that these decisions, which are added to a battery of measures taken since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, “would damage key instruments of the Russian state apparatus” and “would cause immediate and acute economic damage.”

Ukraine asks DJI again to disable the tool used by the Russians to locate their drones

kyiv insisted on Tuesday on asking the Chinese drone manufacturer DJI to disable a tool that it claims allows Russian troops to discover the Ukrainian operators of these devices.

Victor Zhora, head of Ukraine’s cybersecurity, said during a press conference that DJI’s device detection tool called AeroScope has been “sharing information from Ukrainian drones to Russian ones.”

Both Russia and Ukraine use drones to monitor troop movements and pinpoint targets. But kyiv says it has evidence that the nearby drone detection tool works for the Russians and not the Ukrainians.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s government wants DJI to prevent its devices from operating in Ukraine if they have been purchased and activated in other countries, such as Russia.

DJI has denied the Ukrainians’ allegations and says it cannot disable the AeroScope tool. The Chinese company has been willing to apply a “no-fly zone” if Ukraine makes a formal request, but it would apply to both Russian and Ukrainian drones. And some might avoid it.

Russia announces final offensive to take Mariupol

The Russian Army announced on Tuesday an offensive to take Mariupol after the expiration of the ultimatum it had given to the Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms and leave the city.

Mariupol, a city where some 100,000 people still remain according to various estimates, has been under siege by Russian troops and separatist militias for more than a month.

According to the City Council, in the city siege, condemned for its brutality by the international community, some 5,000 people may have died.

Last week the Russian Army withdrew from the Kyiv region and regrouped its forces to focus all its efforts on the conquest of Donbas, which was supposedly the initial objective of the invasion launched on February 24 last.

Putin says Russia will ‘carefully monitor’ food exports to ‘hostile countries’

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia will “carefully monitor” food exports to “hostile” countries.

“Against the background of global food shortages , this year we will have to be cautious with supplies abroad and carefully monitor exports to countries that are clearly hostile to us,” Putin told a meeting on agriculture.

The Russian leader also assured that the country’s food production will “fully” cover domestic needs and urged officials to increase the substitution of imported products.

Developing and import-dependent countries have been hit hard by the war between Russia and Ukraine, countries that account for more than a quarter of the world’s annual wheat sales.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, told the Security Council on Tuesday that the war already affects 1.2 billion people.

“Our analysis indicates that 74 developing countries, with a total population of 1.2 billion people, are particularly vulnerable to rising food, energy and fertilizer prices,” Guterres said.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announce an alliance to develop hypersonic missiles

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announced Tuesday that they will work together to develop hypersonic missiles.

In a joint statement, the three countries made public their “new trilateral alliance to cooperate in hypersonic, anti-hypersonic, and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as in the expansion of information exchange and to deepen cooperation in defense innovation.”

The United States, Russia, and China have worked to develop hypersonic missiles, a system so fast that it cannot be intercepted by any current defense system.

UK says it has blocked $350 billion from Putin’s ‘war fund’

Britain has frozen some $350 billion of assets from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war chest, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Tuesday.

“So far, our sanctions have had a devastating impact on those who feed and finance Putin’s war machine. This week we will announce that we have frozen more than $350 billion of Putin’s war funds ,” Truss said.

This amount corresponds to “more than 60% of the regime’s $604 billion in foreign currency,” he said.

Blinken denounces a “deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape” in Bucha, Ukraine

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced on Tuesday a “deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape” in the Ukrainian suburb of Bucha, outside Kyiv.

From Bucha, a city that was occupied for several weeks by Russian troops, images of dead civilians arrived over the weekend. Survivors claim to have witnessed summary executions and torture.

Blinken denounces a “deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape” in Bucha, Ukraine

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced on Tuesday a “deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape” in the Ukrainian suburb of Bucha , outside Kiev.

From Bucha , a city that was occupied for several weeks by Russian troops, images of dead civilians arrived over the weekend. Survivors claim to have witnessed summary executions and torture.