Russia-Ukraine war latest: western officials urge caution over Russia’s peace talk promises – live | World news

The White House has provided a read-out of the five way phone call earlier today between top Nato member leaders Joe Biden, the US president, the UK’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Mario Draghi.

“The leaders affirmed their determination to continue raising costs on Russia for its brutal attacks in Ukraine, as well as to continue supplying Ukraine with security assistance to defend itself against this unjustified and unprovoked assault,” the White House statement said.

It continued: “They reviewed their efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the millions affected by the violence, both inside Ukraine and seeking refuge in other countries, and underscored the need for humanitarian access to civilians in Mariupol. They also discussed the importance of supporting stable energy markets in light of current disruptions due to sanctions.”

In the last three days, Biden and Macron essentially disagreed over the US president’s ad lib at the end of a speech in Poland on Saturday where he said that Russian president Vladimir Putin was a butcher who “cannot remain in power.

On Sunday, as US officials rushed to play down Biden’s remarks and insist they were not meant to signal a new US policy stance of “regime change” in Russia, Macron warned warned against the use of inflammatory language in an already volatile situation.

Yesterday, Biden said he was not “walking anything back”, made no apologies for his use of language and said the comment had been made from a personal sense of moral outrage after meeting with Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

The death toll from the Russian strike on a regional administration building in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv has risen from at least seven to at least nine, with 28 people wounded, local authorities said and various wire services reported.

The wounded were pulled from the rubble by rescue workers, who continue to work at the scene, the emergencies service said in an online post.

Footage from the state rescue service showed a gaping hole in a side of the building, with firefighters extinguishing a fire where the rocket hit and the wounded being put onto ambulance stretchers.

There was blood visible in the debris, and shattered glass and upturned furniture strewn on the floor in the offices inside the building, Reuters reported.

This is just a nightmare. A girl died on my floor. What can I say? Are you kidding? I hugged her, two minutes passed, and she passed,” said a woman who was helped out of the building by rescuers.

They destroyed half of the building, hit my office,” regional governor Vitaliy Kim said.

Russian forces have attacked Ukraine’s southern ports including Kherson, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Mariupol as they try to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and establish a land corridor from Russia to Crimea, the peninsula Russia seized in 2014.

Kim said there was an upside to the strike – it suggested Russia had given up trying to take over the city.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbour. It denies targeting civilians and did not comment on the strike on Mykolaiv.

Ukraine and the west say Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion.

It was so noisy, people were very afraid. People all ran into the hallway and some are still sitting there because they’re still scared. After that the [air-raid] sirens went off,” said Natalia Novikova, 57, an employee in the department of health in the local administration

It is 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand now:

• Moscow’s lead negotiator in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia’s promise to “drastically reduce” military operations does not represent a ceasefire. In an interview with the Russian state-owned Tass news agency, Medinsky said there is still “a long way to go” to reach a mutual agreement with Ukraine.
• Following Russia’s announcement, two senior US officials said the US is seeing Russia beginning to withdraw some of its forces from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in what it believes is a “major” change in Russian strategy. Another US official said any movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv would constitute a “redeployment, not a withdrawal”.

• Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow’s “main goal” in Ukraine was now the “liberation” of the Donbas region. In a sign that Moscow may be switching to more limited objectives after facing fierce Ukrainian resistance in the first month of the war, Shoigu claimed the “main tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed”.

• A Russian airstrike hit a government building in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday, destroying a large portion of the structure and leaving people trapped under debris. At least seven people were killed and 22 injured, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told the Danish parliament in a video address.

• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Russia and Ukraine to reach a clear agreement for the safe evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol and other frontline places as vital supplies run out. “Time is running out” for people in Mariupol, it warned, adding that there was still a lack of “concrete agreements” for the safe passage and evacuations of civilians in the southern Ukrainian city.

• A Ukrainian soldier who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself” while defending an island has been awarded for his services, local authorities said. Roman Hrybov was serving on Snake Island – known as Zmiinyi Island in Ukrainian – when it came under Russian air and sea bombardment on 24 February. Ukraine’s defence ministry said Hrybov was released from Russian captivity and is now home in Cherkasy.

• A £38m superyacht owned by an unnamed Russian businessman has been detained in Canary Wharf in London as part of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The vessel, known as Phi, is subject to the first detention of a superyacht in UK waters, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said, and its owner was “deliberately well hidden”.

That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, for today as I hand the blog over to my US colleague, Joanna Walters.

The US president, Joe Biden, said it remains to be seen whether Russia follows through with any actions to scale down its military operations in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters at the White House following his meeting with Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, Biden said:

We’ll see. I don’t read anything into it until I see what their actions are. We’ll see if they follow through with what they’ve suggested.

Romania will distribute potassium iodine tablets to residents free of charge to prepare in case of a nuclear emergency, the country’s health minister, Alexandru Rafila, said today.

Describing the likelihood of a nuclear incident as “not probable” but “possible”, Rafila said the government would start distributing the tablets from next week through family doctors.

He told reporters:

They should be taken if there is a nuclear incident in the vicinity. Otherwise, they should not be taken.

Several doctors have warned against taking iodine without proper precautions, pointing at the serious side effects, Reuters reports.

Russia has not yet demonstrated it is serious about negotiations with Ukraine, a western official speaking on condition of anonymity said.

Reuters is reporting the official as saying:

In terms of the negotiations, nothing that we have seen so far has demonstrated to us that President Putin and his colleagues are particularly serious about that, it’s more of a tactical exercise in playing for time.

The official added that talks were “nevertheless the best way forward in due course”.

We would hope that at some stage it would become real and lead to a ceasefire … we are sceptical that it is real just yet. Nevertheless, we do want to see a ceasefire which will emerge ultimately from a negotiation.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, discussed the situation in Ukraine in a phone call today.

Macron brought up the subject of carrying out a humanitarian mission for the besieged city of Mariupol with Putin, but conditions are not in place at this stage, a French presidency official said.

Russia’s position on a humanitarian mission for Mariupol remains tough, the official said, adding that Putin told the French president that he would think about it.

In a statement, the Kremlin said the two leaders also discussed Russia’s decision to request payments in roubles for Russian gas supplies to the European Union.

A US official said any movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv would constitute a “redeployment, not a withdrawal”, Reuters reports.

The official warned:

We believe any movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv is a redeployment, not a withdrawal.

And the world should be prepared for continued major offensives against other areas of Ukraine.

They added:

They are shifting gears … No one should mistake that for Russia ending the conflict.

Separately, a US official told the BBC that some Russian forces are moving away from the Ukrainian capital.

Yes, we have seen the Russians begin to draw away from Kyiv.

But we have little confidence at this stage that it marks some significant shift or a meaningful retreat. The Russians are still pounding Kyiv with airstrikes.

Time will tell.