World
Asian shares retreat as oil climbs back above $100
Shares were mostly lower in Asia on Friday after Wall Street extended a rally into a third day and oil prices pushed higher, surpassing $105 per barrel.
Tokyo and Sydney advanced while Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul declined.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for more help for his country after days of bombardment of civilian sites in multiple cities over the past few days.
The war, and plans for President Joe Biden to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping later Friday were among the uncertainties overhanging markets.
READ: Gazette issued reducing VAT on edible oil import
The White House said the conversation will center on “managing the competition between our two countries as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine and other issues of mutual concern.”
Wrapping up a two-day meeting, the Bank of Japan opted to keep its monetary policy unchanged, with its benchmark interest rate at minus 0.1%. Japan's central bank has been keeping interest rates ultra low and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the world's third largest economy for years, trying to spur faster growth.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.1% to 26,667.23 and the S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney gained 0.3%, to 7,275.30.
But Hong Kong's Hang Seng sank 2.6% to 20,952.53 after barreling higher for two days after Chinese leaders promised to provide more support for the economy and markets, suggesting Beijing might temper its crackdowns on technology and real estate companies.
The Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.3% to 3,205.90.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 climbed 1.2% on Thursday, closing at 4,411.67, after surging more than 2% in each of the prior two days for its best back-to-back performance in nearly two years.
Big swings in markets have become the norm as investors struggle to handicap what will happen to the economy and the world’s already high inflation because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher interest rates from central banks around the world and renewed COVID-19 worries in various hotspots.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.2% to 34,480.76. The Nasdaq rose 1.3% to 13,614.78. The tech-heavy index is on pace for its biggest weekly gain in more than a year.
Smaller company stocks outpaced the broader market. The Russell 2000 index surged 1.7% to 2,065.02.
The market’s latest gains come after the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate Wednesday for the first time since 2018, something Wall Street had been expecting for months.
A barrel of U.S. crude oil gained $2.58 to $105.56 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It jumped 8.4% on Thursday to settle at $102.98.
Brent crude, the international standard, added $2.42 to $109.06 per barrel in London. It leaped 8.8% to settle at $106.64 per barrel.
Prices have been careening on doubts over both supplies of and demand for oil. After briefly topping $130 early last week, a barrel of U.S. crude fell to nearly $94 a barrel on Wednesday.
But reports of a sale of Russian crude oil to India and apparent setbacks in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia have renewed concern over possible shortfalls in supplies.
Asked about the reports India was buying oil from Russia at a discounted price, India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi did not directly confirm or deny them.
“India imports most of its oil requirements," Bagchi said. “We are exploring all possibilities in the global energy market. I don’t think Russia has been a major oil supplier to India.”
He also noted that European countries are importing oil from Russia.
Dribbles of news about the state of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have caused many of the sharp reversals. So too recently have worries about economic shutdowns in China because of surges in COVID-19 infections, which could hit demand for energy.
On Thursday, the Chinese government said companies in Shenzhen, a major business center, will be allowed to reopen while efforts to contain coronavirus outbreaks progress. Their earlier closures had rattled financial markets.
A wave of better-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy Thursday may also have helped markets. Fewer workers applied for unemployment claims last week, and builders broke ground on more homes last month than economists expected.
In other trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.17% from 2.20% late Thursday.
The dollar rose to 118.78 Japanese yen from 118.60 yen. The euro fell to $1.1082 from $1.1092.
Zelenskyy mum on specifics of new US aid
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was thankful to U.S. President Joe Biden for the additional military aid but said he would not say specifically what the new package included because he didn’t want to tip off Russia.
“This is our defense,” he said in his nighttime video address to the nation. “When the enemy doesn’t know what to expect from us. As they didn’t know what awaited them after Feb. 24,” the day Russia invaded. “They didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
READ: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
Zelenskyy said Russia expected to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when it seized Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they took control of the eastern Donbas region. But Ukraine is now a different country, with much stronger defenses, he said.
He said it also was not the time to reveal Ukraine’s tactics in the ongoing negotiations with Russia. “Working more in silence than on television, radio or on Facebook,” Zelenskyy said. “I consider it the right way.”
READ: Ukraine mayor, 9 Russian conscripts released
Rescuers search theater rubble as Russian attacks continue
Rescue workers searched for survivors Thursday in the ruins of a theater blown apart by a Russian airstrike in the besieged city of Mariupol, while scores of Ukrainians across the country were killed in ferocious urban attacks on a school, a hostel and other sites.
Hundreds of civilians had been taking shelter in the grand, columned theater in central Mariupol after their homes were destroyed in three weeks of fighting in the southern port city of 430,000.
More than a day after the airstrike, there were no reports of deaths. With communications disrupted across the city and movement difficult because of shelling and other fighting, there were conflicting reports on whether anyone had emerged from the rubble.
“We hope and we think that some people who stayed in the shelter under the theater could survive,” Petro Andrushchenko, an official with the mayor’s office, told The Associated Press. He said the building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter designed to withstand airstrikes. Video and photos provided by the Ukrainian military showed that the at least three-story building had been reduced to a roofless shell, with some exterior walls collapsed.
READ: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
Other officials had said earlier that some people had gotten out. Ukraine’s ombudswoman, Ludmyla Denisova, said on the Telegram messaging app that the shelter had held up.
Satellite imagery on Monday from Maxar Technologies showed huge white letters on the pavement in front of and behind the theater spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian — “DETI” — to alert warplanes to those inside.
Across the city, snow flurries fell around the skeletons of burned, windowless and shrapnel-scarred apartment buildings as smoke rose above the skyline.
“We are trying to survive somehow,” said one Mariupol resident, who gave only her first name, Elena. “My child is hungry. I don’t know what to give him to eat.”
She had been trying to call her mother, who was in a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. “I can’t tell her I am alive, you understand. There is no connection, just nothing,” she said.
Cars, some with the “Z” symbol of the Russian invasion force in their windows, drove past stacks of ammunition boxes and artillery shells in a neighborhood controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
Russia’s military denied bombing the theater or anyplace else in Mariupol on Wednesday.
The strike against the theater was part of a furious bombardment of civilian sites in multiple cities over the past few days.
In the northern city of Chernihiv, at least 53 people had been brought to morgues over the past 24 hours, killed amid heavy Russian air attacks and ground fire, the local governor, Viacheslav Chaus, told Ukrainian TV on Thursday.
Ukraine’s emergency services said a mother, father and three of their children, including 3-year-old twins, were killed when a Chernihiv hostel was shelled. Civilians were hiding in basements and shelters across the embattled city of 280,000.
READ: Ukraine mayor, 9 Russian conscripts released
“The city has never known such nightmarish, colossal losses and destruction,” Chaus said.
Ukrainian officials said 10 people were killed Wednesday while waiting in a bread line in Chernihiv. An American man was among them, his sister said on Facebook.
At least 21 people were killed when Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community center before dawn in Merefa, near the northeast city of Kharkiv, according to Mayor Veniamin Sitov. The region has seen heavy bombardment in a bid by stalled Russian forces to advance.
In eastern Ukraine, a municipal pool complex where pregnant women and women with children were taking shelter was also hit Wednesday, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration. There was no word on casualties in that strike.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for more help for his country in a video address to German lawmakers, saying thousands of people have been killed, including 108 children. He also referred to the dire situation in Mariupol, saying: “Everything is a target for them.”
The address began with a delay because of a technical problem caused by an attack close to where Zelenskyy was speaking, Bundestag deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt said.
Zelenskyy’s office said Russian airstrikes hit the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. Emergency authorities in Kyiv said a fire broke out in a 16-story apartment building hit by remnants of a downed Russian rocket, and one person was killed.
Zelenskyy said he was thankful to U.S. President Joe Biden for additional military aid, but he would not get into specifics about the new package, saying he did not want Russia to know what to expect. He said when the invasion began on Feb. 24, Russia expected to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they took control of the eastern Donbas region.
Instead, he said, Ukraine had much stronger defenses than expected, and Russia “didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
At a Thursday meeting of the U.N. Security Council, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO has verified 43 attacks on hospitals and health facilities, with 12 people killed and 34 injured. Tedros said disruption to hospital services now poses an extreme risk to people with serious illnesses and “the lifesaving medicine we need right now is peace.”
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven leading economies accused Putin of conducting an “unprovoked and shameful war,” and called on Russia to comply with the International Court of Justice’s order to stop its attack and withdraw its forces.
Russian law enforcement, meanwhile, announced the first known criminal cases under a new law that allows for 15-year prison terms for posting what is deemed to be “false information” about the war. Among those charged was Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and blogger living abroad.
One day after Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said American officials were evaluating and documenting potential war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. Blinken said the intentional targeting of civilians would amount to a war crime and that there will be “massive consequences” for any such crimes that are confirmed.
Both Ukraine and Russia this week reported some progress in negotiations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that some negotiators were breaking into working groups, “but there should be contacts today.”
Zelenskyy said he would not reveal Ukraine’s negotiating tactics.
“Working more in silence than on television, radio or on Facebook,” Zelenskyy said. “I consider it the right way.”
While details of Thursday’s talks were unknown, an official in Zelenskyy’s office told the AP that on Wednesday, the main subject discussed was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine.
Who’s a war criminal, and who gets to decide?
President Joe Biden flatly called Russia’s Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for the unfolding onslaught in Ukraine, where hospitals and maternity wards have been bombed. But declaring someone a war criminal is not as simple as just saying the words. There are set definitions and processes for determining who’s a war criminal and how they should be punished.
The White House had been avoiding applying the designation to Putin, saying it requires investigation and an international determination. After Biden used the term on Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president was “speaking from his heart” and renewed her statements that there is a process for making a formal determination.
In popular usage, though, the phrase has a taken on a colloquial meaning as a generic term for someone who’s awful.
“Clearly Putin is a war criminal, but the president is speaking politically on this,” said David Crane, who has worked on war crimes for decades and served as chief prosecutor for the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, which tried former Liberian President Charles Taylor.
The investigations into Putin’s actions already have begun. The U.S. and 44 other countries are working together to investigate possible violations and abuses, after the passage of a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry. There is another probe by the International Criminal Court, an independent body based in the Netherlands.
“We’re at the beginning of the beginning,” said Crane, who now heads the Global Accountability Network, which works with the international court and United Nations, among others. On the day of the invasion, his group set up a task force compiling criminal information for war crimes. He’s also drafting a sample indictment against Putin. He predicted an indictment of Putin could happen within a year. But there is no statute of limitations.
Here’s a look at how this all works:
WHO IS A WAR CRIMINAL?
The term applies to anyone who violates a set of rules adopted by world leaders known as the law of armed conflict. The rules govern how countries behave in times of war.
Those rules have been modified and expanded over the past century, drawn from the Geneva Conventions in the aftermath of World War II and protocols added later.
The rules are aimed at protecting people not taking part in fighting and those who can no longer fight, including civilians like doctors and nurses, wounded troops and prisoners of war. Treaties and protocols lay out who can be targeted and with what weapons. Certain weapons are prohibited, including chemical or biological agents.
WHAT SPECIFIC CRIMES MAKE SOMEONE A WAR CRIMINAL?
The so-called “grave breaches” of the conventions that amount to war crimes include willful killing and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity. Other war crimes include deliberately targeting civilians, using disproportionate force, using human shields and taking hostages.
Read: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
The International Criminal Court also prosecutes crimes against humanity committed in the context of “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” These include murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape and sexual slavery.
The most likely way that Putin could come into the picture as a war criminal is through the widely recognized legal doctrine of command responsibility. If commanders order or even know or are in a position to know about crimes and did nothing to prevent them, they can be held legally responsible.
WHAT ARE THE PATHS TO JUSTICE?
Generally, there are four paths to investigate and determine war crimes, though each one has limits. One is through the International Criminal Court.
A second option would be if the United Nations turns its work on the inquiry commission over to a hybrid international war crimes tribunal to prosecute Putin.
A third would be to create a tribunal or court to try Putin by a group of interested or concerned states, such as NATO, the European Union and the U.S. The military tribunals at Nuremberg following World War II against Nazi leaders are an example.
Finally, some countries have their own laws for prosecuting war crimes. Germany, for example, is already investigating Putin. The U.S. doesn’t have such a law, but the Justice Department has a special section that focuses on acts including international genocide, torture, recruitment of child soldiers and female genital mutilation.
WHERE MIGHT PUTIN BE PUT ON TRIAL?
It’s not clear. Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and would not send any suspects to the court’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. The U.S. does not recognize the authority of the court, either. Putin could be tried in a country chosen by the United Nations or by the consortium of concerned nations. But getting him there would be difficult.
HAVE NATIONAL LEADERS BEEN PROSECUTED IN THE PAST?
Yes. From the post-World War II tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo to more recent ad hoc tribunals, senior leaders have been prosecuted for their actions in countries including Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda.
Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was put on trial by a U.N. tribunal in The Hague for fomenting bloody conflicts as Yugoslavia crumbled in the early 1990s. He died in his cell before the court could reach a verdict. His Bosnian Serb ally Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb military leader, Gen. Ratko Mladic, were successfully prosecuted and are both now serving life sentences.
Liberia’s Taylor was sentenced to 50 years after being convicted of sponsoring atrocities in neighboring Sierra Leone. Chad’s former dictator Hissene Habre, who died last year, was the first former head of state to be convicted of crimes against humanity by an African court. He was sentenced to life.
India extends USD 1 billion credit line to Sri Lanka
India on Thursday extended a USD 1 billion credit line to Sri Lanka to help the island nation tide over its worst economic crisis while allowing for the import of food, medicines and other essential items.
An agreement to this regard was inked between the State Bank of India, the country's largest public lender, and the Sri Lankan government in New Delhi, in the presence of visiting Sri Lankan Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa.
"Neighbourhood first. India stands with Sri Lanka. US$ 1 billion credit line signed for supply of essential commodities. Key element of the package of support extended by India,” Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar tweeted.
Read: Emirati-flagged cargo ship sinks in Persian Gulf off Iran
Earlier in the day, Rajapaksa held talks with Jaishankar and his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman. A day before, the Lankan Minister called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thanked him for extending financial support to Colombo.
Last month, India provided a USD 500 million line of credit to Sri Lanka to help the neighbouring nation avert a severe foreign exchange and energy crisis.
Emirati-flagged cargo ship sinks in Persian Gulf off Iran
An Emirati-flagged cargo ship, longer than a soccer field, sank in stormy seas off Iran’s southern coast in the Persian Gulf on Thursday, authorities said. Rescuers were trying to account for all of the vessel’s 30 crew members.
Capt. Nizar Qaddoura, operations manager of the company that owns the ship, told The Associated Press that the Al Salmy 6 encountered treacherous weather. The choppy waters forced the vessel to list at a precarious angle and within hours fully submerged the ship.
Emergency workers dispatched from Iran successfully saved 16 crew members, Qaddoura said, and civilian ships had been asked to help with the rescue efforts. Another 11 survivors made it into life rafts, while one person was plucked and saved from the water by a nearby tanker. Two crew members were still bobbing in the sea, he said.
The crew consisted of nationals from Sudan, India, Pakistan, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, Qaddoura said. The ship had been bound for the port of Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq, carrying cars and other cargo. It had left Dubai days earlier.
Also read: Bangladeshi migrants among 43 missing as boat sinks off Tunisia
The ship’s owners, the Dubai-based Salem Al Makrani Cargo company, specializes in car freighters.
The vessel capsized some 50 kilometers (30 miles) off the coast of Asaluyeh, in southern Iran, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. The search-and-rescue operation was complicated by bad weather, the report added, and was continuing.
Iranian media released images and footage of the ship, flipping over on its side after being rocked by waves, that matched with previous images of the Al Salmy 6, a roll-on, roll-off carrier — so named because automobiles can drive on and off.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which patrols in the Mideast, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the incident.
Crucial oil and cargo shipping lanes flow past Iran through the Strait of Hormuz, delivering energy supplies from the oil-rich Gulf Arab states to the rest of the world.
Vessels sinking and other accidents remain rare in the busy waters. But dust and sand storms, gale-force winds and other poor weather typically sweeps across the region as seasons change from the chilly winter to sizzling summer.
Also read: Coal-laden vessel sinks in Pashur river
Severe weather began to pound the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, the state-run Iran Meteorological Organization reported, bringing wind gusts in excess of 70 kph (40 mph) and high waves to Iran’s Bushehr province. The agency issued a “red alert” this week, warning of disruption to maritime activities in the gulf and damage to offshore facilities through Saturday.
Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
Ukrainian authorities struggled to determine the fate of hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering in a theater smashed by a Russian airstrike in the besieged city of Mariupol as officials said Russian artillery Thursday destroyed more civilian buildings in another frontline city.
Some hope emerged, as an official said some people had managed to survive the Mariupol theater strike.
A photo released by Mariupol's city council showed an entire section of the large, 3-story theater had collapsed after the strike Wednesday evening. Several hundred people had taken refuge in the building's basement, seeking safety amid Russia's 3-week, strangulating siege of the strategic Azov Sea port city.
At least as recently as Monday, the pavement in front of and behind the once-elegant theater was marked with huge white letters spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian, according to images released by the Maxar space technology company.
Rubble had buried the entrance to the shelter inside the theater, and the number of casualties was unclear, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on Telegram. Ukrainian parliament member Sergiy Taruta, a former governor of the Donetsk region where Mariupol is located, later said on Facebook that some people had managed to escape alive from the destroyed building. He did not provide any further details.
Also read: Zelensky lists 6 priorities at peace talks with Russia
Kyrylenko said Russian airstrikes also hit a municipal swimming pool complex in Mariupol where civilians, including women and children, had been sheltering. “Now there are pregnant women and women with children under the rubble there,” he wrote, thought the number of casualties was not immediately known.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for more help for his country in a video address to German lawmakers Thursday, saying thousands of people have been killed in the war that started almost a month ago, including 108 children.
He also referred to the dire situation in Mariupol. “Everything is a target for them,” he said, including “a theater where hundreds of people found shelter that was flattened yesterday.”
The address began with a delay because of a technical problem caused by “an attack in the immediate vicinity” of where Zelenskyy was speaking from, Bundestag deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt said.
Zelenskyy's address to the Bundestag came a day after he delivered a speech via video to the U.S. Congress that garnered several ovations as he called for more help.
The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday
Zelenskyy’s office said Russia carried out further airstrikes on Mariupol early Thursday morning, as well as artillery and airstrikes around the country overnight, including in the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. There was no immediate word on casualties.
In Kyiv, where residents have been huddling in homes and shelters, a fire broke out in an apartment building hit by remnants of a downed Russian rocket early Thursday, killing one person and injuring at least three others, according to emergency services. Firefighters evacuated 30 people from the top floors of the 16-story building and extinguished the blaze within an hour.
Also read: Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol
On Thursday, Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community center in Merefa, a city near the northeast city of Kharkiv, according to Merefa's mayor Veniamin Sitov. There were no known civilian casualties. The Kharkiv region has seen heavy bombardment as stalled Russian forces try to advance in the area.
Six nations have called for a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday afternoon, ahead of an expected vote Friday on a Russian resolution demanding protection for Ukrainian civilians “in vulnerable situations,” yet making no mention of Moscow's responsibility for the war.
“Russia is committing war crimes and targeting civilians,” Britain's U.N. Mission tweeted, announcing the call for the meeting that was joined by the U.S., France and others. “Russia's illegal war on Ukraine is a threat to us all.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin went on television Wednesday to excoriate Russians who don’t back him.
Russians “will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths,” he said. “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country.”
He said the West is using a “fifth column” of traitorous Russians to create civil unrest.
“And there is only one goal, I have already spoken about it — the destruction of Russia,” he said.
The speech appeared to be a warning that his authoritarian rule, which had already grown tighter since the invasion began on Feb. 24, shutting down Russian news outlets and arresting protesters, could grow even more repressive.
In a sign of that, Russian law enforcement announced the first known criminal cases under a new law that allows for 15-year prison terms for posting what is deemed to be “false information” about the Ukraine war. Among those charged was Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and blogger living abroad.
But it also came amid signs that talks were finally making progress.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after Tuesday’s meeting that a neutral military status for Ukraine was being “seriously discussed” by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming “more realistic.”
Wednesday's talks, held by video, appeared to wade more deeply into technicalities.
Zelenskyy adviser Mikhailo Podolyak said Ukraine demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and security guarantees for Ukraine from several countries.
“This is possible only through direct dialogue” between Zelenskyy and Putin, he tweeted.
An official in Zelenskyy’s office told The Associated Press that the main subject under discussion was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on a legally binding document with security guarantees for Ukraine. In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral status.
Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there.
Earlier Wednesday, Zelenskyy went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: “We need you right now.”
President Joe Biden announced the U.S. was sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. He also called Putin a “war criminal,” in his sharpest condemnation since the invasion began.
Although Moscow’s ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said earlier that the operation was unfolding “successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans.” He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to “squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.”
The fighting has led more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine, the U.N. estimates. The death toll remains unknown, though Ukraine has said thousands of civilians have died.
Nowhere has suffered more than the encircled city of Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.
Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate a hospital basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of a 22-day-old infant. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children.
“These are the people we could not save,” Drengar said.
END/AP/UNB/FA
Zelensky lists 6 priorities at peace talks with Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has listed six priorities during peace talks with Russia, the presidential press service reported.
"My priorities in the negotiations are absolutely clear: the end of the war, security guarantees, sovereignty, restoration of territorial integrity, real guarantees for our country, real protection for our country," Zelensky said while addressing the nation on Thursday.
Read: Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol
The negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are continuing, Zelensky said.
Ukrainian and Russian delegations started their fourth round of negotiations on Monday via video link.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that Zelensky might hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a meeting between Putin and Zelensky is possible.
Earlier Wednesday, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky said Russia and Ukraine have achieved some progress on a number of issues during the new round of talks, "but not all."
Read:Ukraine mayor, 9 Russian conscripts released
"The positions of the parties are quite clear, we are moving slowly," local media reported, citing Medinsky, who is also the head of Moscow's delegation.
"The preservation and development of Ukraine's neutral status, Ukraine's demilitarization along with a whole range of issues related to the size of the Ukrainian army are being discussed," Medinsky said.
Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office says Russia carried out further airstrikes on the besieged port city of Mariupol early on Thursday morning.
Zelenskyy’s office did not report casualties for the latest strikes. They come amid rescue efforts in the city after a theater where hundreds had been sheltering was destroyed Wednesday in what Ukrainian authorities say was a Russian air strike.
Read:Ukraine mayor, 9 Russian conscripts released
“People are escaping from Mariupol by themselves using their own transport,” Zelenskyy’s office said, adding the “risk of death remains high” because of Russian forces previously firing on civilians.
The presidential office also reported artillery and air strikes around the country overnight, including in the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. It said fighting continues as Russian forces try to enter the Ukraine-held city of Mykolaiv in the south and that there was an artillery barrage through the night in the eastern town of Avdiivka.
Read:Russian attacks batter Ukraine as Putin warns of 'traitors'
Ukraine says Russian forces are increasingly resorting to artillery and air strikes as their advance stalls.
The Ukrainian General Staff says “the enemy, without success in its ground operation, continues to carry out rocket and bomb attacks on infrastructure and highly populated areas of Ukrainian cities.”
Indian gov't restores e-tourist visas
The Indian government has restored all valid five-year e-tourist visas granted to people from over 150 countries and regions as well as regular paper visas to nationals of all countries with immediate effect, two years after a suspension over COVID-19, the state-run broadcaster All India Radio (AIR) reported Thursday.
The report said people from these countries and regions will also be eligible for getting fresh e-tourist visas.
Read:India: Popular comedian Bhagwant Mann sworn in as chief minister of Punjab state
The Indian government took the step following improved COVID-19 situation in the South Asian country and considering the need to further relax visa and travel restrictions, according to the report.
India's Ministry of Home Affairs has also restored the valid regular 10 year tourist visas for U.S. and Japanese nationals, the report said.
Meanwhile, Afghan nationals will continue to use the e-Emergency X-Miscellaneous Visa, it said.
After a break of about two years, last week India decided to resume regular international commercial flights from March 27.
Read:Benapole: Covid-negative certificates not needed for vaccinated India returnees
Indian authorities have been operating special international flights since May 2020 and under bilateral "air bubble" arrangements with some countries since July 2020.