Russia-Ukraine war latest: Moscow says warship still afloat despite explosion; west says Ukraine claim of strike ‘credible’ – live | World news
15:08
France to move its Ukrainian embassy back to Kyiv
France said on Thursday its embassy in Ukraine would return to the capital Kyiv from the western city of Lviv, where it had been relocated in early March after the Russian invasion, Agence France-Presse reports.
French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made the announcement during a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.
This redeployment will happen very soon and will allow France to deepen its backing for Ukraine even further in all spheres to face the war unleashed by Russia on February 24,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
France, however, continues to advise its nationals against returning to Ukraine, including to Kyiv.
We consider returning remains unthinkable for those French people who lived in Ukraine. The return of French compatriots today remains formally prohibited,” the French government noted on Tuesday, stressing that “the whole of Ukraine remains a war zone”.
France is providing support to Ukraine through military equipment, humanitarian aid and assistance for investigations into abuses allegedly committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians, in addition to humanitarian supports for Poland and Moldova, which are hosting many Ukrainian refugees.
In recent days a number of other nations have said they will reopen their embassies in Kyiv, following the withdrawal of Russian forces that had been advancing on the sprawling capital before their efforts were thwarted, including the Czech, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish embassies and the European Union office.
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13:36
Fate of millions of people with disabilities in Ukraine ‘unknown’, UN says
The lives of around 2.7 million people with disabilities are at risk in Ukraine, a UN committee has warned, Reuters reports.
Citing reports that many are trapped or abandoned in their homes, care centres and orphanages without basic supplies or medicines, the Committee of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published a statement that read:
The committee is deeply disturbed that the fate of people with disabilities in Ukraine is largely unknown.
People with disabilities have limited or no access to emergency information, shelters and safe havens, and many have been separated from their support networks, leaving them unable to respond to the situation and navigate their surroundings.
It noted that few people with disabilities were among those internally displaced or who had reached Ukraine’s borders as refugees, “indicating that many of them have not been able to flee to safety”.
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Alexei Navalny has called for an “information front” against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the jailed opposition leader asserted that poll results showing 75% of Russians support the conflict were a “Kremlin lie”.
In an extended series of tweets, Navalny called on western leaders to support a massive social media ad campaign in order to break through Kremlin propaganda regarding the invasion.
“We need ads. Lots of ads,” wrote Navalny. “A huge national anti-war campaign will start with an advertising campaign. Two hundred million impressions a day to reach every Russian internet user twice. Stories, posts and prerolls. Across Russia, in cities and villages. On every tablet and every phone.”
Alexey Navalny
(@navalny)1/31 Truth and free information hit Putin’s insane regime just as hard as Javelins.
This is a thread about opening the second front against the war criminal from the Kremlin — the informational front.
In the statement, he called on Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, the head of Google owner Alphabet, to “urgently find a solution to crush [Vladimir] Putin’s propaganda using the advertising power of social media”.
The advertising campaign would be a way around the Kremlin’s efforts to shut down independent media in Russia. Along with most independent websites and newspapers, the Russian censor has also blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
It also marks the opposition leader’s biggest foray yet into the complicated question of how widely the Russian public supports the war in Ukraine. Polling results, including from the independent Levada Centre, have shown majority support among Russians for the war.
12:36
Germany’s chancellor is under growing pressure to authorise the delivery of heavy weaponry to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s looming eastern offensive, with Olaf Scholz’s coalition partners accusing him of failing to live up to his promises.
The centre-left leader had surprised even close partners in his three-party coalition when on 27 February he announced an “epochal change” in Germany’s foreign policy to boost defence spending and relax its restrictive stance on exporting weapons to conflict zones.
Six weeks on, prominent politicians from allied parties urged the Social Democrat to follow up words with actions after Germany was accused of stalling on delivering heavy weaponry to Ukraine and blocking a wholesale ban on Russian oil and gas.
Scholz has to “not just purse his lips but start to whistle”, said the Free Democratic party’s Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the Bundestag’s defence committee.
With a view to the apparent failure of economic sanctions in stopping Vladimir Putin’s military campaign, she said there had to be a renewed focus on hard power.
“There is only one answer that Russia understands: to continue to try to end the war through talks – but with one hand visibly on the holster,” said Strack-Zimmermann. “That means that Germany has to also supply Ukraine with heavy weapons to help it defend itself, as long as they can be handled by the Ukrainian army.”
12:20
Ukrainian strike on Russian ship is ‘credible’, western official says
Western officials have said the intelligence picture about the state of the Moskva warship is not yet clear but that there are doubts about the Russian version of events.
“I am not aware previously of a fire onboard a capital warship which had led to the ammunition magazine exploding as a consequence,” one official said, calling it “remarkably inept” if true.
Officials said it was credible that the Ukrainian forces had damaged the ship with a Ukrainian missile system they had developed.
“The fact that it’s been damaged to a point where it is either inoperable or under tow is a significant blow,” the official said, adding that there would have been “enormous determination, ingenuity and initiative of Ukrainian forces in order to be able to strike at Russian forces where perhaps they previously thought they were invulnerable, and a significant impact on Russian maritime operations”.
Western officials said it was unlikely British anti-ship missiles were involved in the apparent attack. Johnson promised on his recent trip to Kyiv that those would be made available, but the official said that had not happened yet. “It would appear that it’s not a UK capability,” the official said.
The UK has trained the Ukrainian navy in the past as part of Operation Orbital but the official said it was “difficult to draw a causal link” between the British training and the operation.
Western officials also warned that the weather in the east of Ukraine was having a major impact on the redirected Russian offensive, with no new major successes for Russia in the Donbas.
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Damaged Russian warship still ‘battling fire’, US defence official says
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UK sanctions two close associates of Roman Abramovich
The UK government has announced sanctions against two Russian oligarchs: Chelsea football club director, Eugene Tenenbaum, and another associate of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, David Davidovich.
Tenenbaum will be subject to an asset freeze as well as transport sanctions meaning that any ship or aircraft owned, chartered, controlled or operated by him could be detained if it enters Britain.
Davidovich, described as Abramovich’s “much lower profile right-hand man”, will be subject to an asset freeze and travel ban as well as transport sanctions.
Both men have been sanctioned for their close association with Abramovich, the government said. In a statement, the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said:
We are tightening the ratchet on Putin’s war machine and targeting the circle of people closest to the Kremlin.
We will keep going with sanctions until Putin fails in Ukraine. Nothing and no one is off the table.
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Germany has seized the world’s largest superyacht after “extensive investigations” determined that it is owned by the sister of the sanctioned the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
The German federal police said on Thursday it had seized the $600m (£458m) Dilbar after weeks of painstaking financial investigative work exposed the yacht’s true ownership despite a complex web of “offshore concealment”.
The vessel is flagged in the Cayman Islands and registered to a holding company in Malta – both tax havens favoured by the global ultra-rich to park their wealth.
German authorities said they had determined the yacht was ultimately owned by Usmanov’s sister Gulbakhor Ismailova.
Usmanov, a telecoms magnate who owns the £48m mansion Beechwood House in Highgate, London and the 16th-century Sutton Place estate in Surrey, was sanctioned by the UK last month. The billionaire, who has had significant interests in the English football clubs Arsenal and Everton, had already been sanctioned by the EU and the US.
Ismailova and another of Usmanov’s sisters, Saodat Narzieva, have also been subjected to UK and EU sanctions. The UK government said Usmanov “indirectly transferred assets to Ismailova, including leaving his sister as the only beneficial owner of the yacht Dilbar”.
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