Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy vows to ‘punish atrocities’ as family dies trying to evacuate Irpin – live | World news

Zelenskiy spoke of the death of a family attempting to flee the Ukrainian city of Irpin, near Kyiv in northern Ukraine, in an emotional plea to honour humanitarian corridors that Russian forces appear to have ignored.

There was a lot of talk about humanitarian corridors. There were talks every day about the opportunity for people to leave the cities …

And we heard the promise that there would be humanitarian corridors. But there are no humanitarian corridors.

Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only make bloody ones.

A family was killed in Irpen today. A man, a woman and two children. Right on the road when they were just trying to get out of town to escape. The whole family.

How many such families have died in Ukraine?”

Moscow is recruiting Syrians to fight in Ukraine, according to US officials who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

The publication cites four American officials who believe Russia has in recent days been recruiting fighters from Syria in the hope that their expertise in urban combat can help take Kyiv and deal a devastating blow to the Ukraine government.

Russia has been operating inside Syria since formally entering the country’s civil war in 2015.

Powerful snippets from Zelenskiy’s national address can be viewed in the video below.

The Ukrainian president called on the west to do more as he spoke of the destruction across Ukraine and the suffering faced by his people.

“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land.”

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivered an impassioned nightly address to his nation, warning Russian troops he will punish those who committed atrocities in Ukraine while the “only quiet place” that awaits them is the grave.

“Today is Forgiveness Sunday. But we will not forgive hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings. And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment,” Zelenskiy said.

An excerpt of his speech, as translated by Ukrainian broadcaster Ukrinform, reads:

We will not forgive the destroyed houses. We will not forgive the missile that our air defence shot down over Okhmatdyt today. And more than five hundred other such missiles that hit our land. All over Ukraine .. hit our people and children.

We will not forgive the shooting of unarmed people. Destruction of our infrastructure.

We will not forgive.

Hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings.

And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.

And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment. I’m sure of it.”

Zelenskiy warned Russian forces they would face “a day of judgement” for the “deliberate murder” inflicted on his country.

How many such families have died in Ukraine?

We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land.

We will find every bastard who shot at our cities, our people, who bombed our land, who launched rockets.

There will be no quiet place on this earth for you. Except for the grave.”

Russia has instructed all state-owned websites and services to switch to the Russian domain name system by 11 March, according to Russian state media outlets.

“This is necessary to protect resources from cyber attacks and the possibility of disconnection from the outside,” the Kommersant Russian newspaper reports.

Citing the ministry of digital development, the publication said there are no plans to disconnect Russia from the global internet.

The ministry of digital development told Kommersant that these measures are necessary to protect against cyberattacks:

We are preparing for various scenarios to ensure that Russian resources are available to citizens. The telegram for government agencies outlines a set of simple cyber hygiene recommendations that will help to organise work more effectively to protect our resources from malicious traffic, keep services running and control over domain names.”

Russia managed to disconnect itself from the global internet during tests in June and July last year, the RBC media group reported at the time, citing documents from the working group tasked with improving Russia’s internet security, according to Reuters.

Russia adopted legislation, known as the “sovereign internet” law, in late 2019 that seeks to shield the country from being cut off from foreign infrastructure, in answer to what Russia called the “aggressive nature” of the United States’ national cyber security strategy.

The move would strengthen the Russian government’s oversight of cyberspace.

Cyber resistance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, with hacking collective Anonymous claiming to have hacked into the Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi and live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24 to broadcast footage from Ukraine.

The group added that activists are also broadcasting troll faces on Russian military radio.

Russian forces stepped up overnight shelling of Ukrainian cities in the centre, north and south of the country on Sunday night, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich has said.

“The latest wave of missile strikes came as darkness fell,” he told a Ukrainian broadcaster.

Arestovich said Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in the north-east was still battling to fend off a Russian attack while all regions of Chernihiv in the north were coming under missile attack.

The official described a “catastrophic” situation in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where efforts to evacuate residents on Sunday failed. He said the government was doing all it could to resume evacuations, the Associated Press reports.

Ukraine will ask the United Nations’ top court on Monday to issue an emergency ruling requiring Russia to stop its invasion, arguing that Moscow’s justification for the attack is based on a faulty interpretation of genocide law, Reuters reports.

Although the court’s rulings are binding and countries generally follow them, it has no direct means of enforcing them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s “special military action” is needed “to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide” – meaning those whose first or only language is Russian – in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s suit argues that the claim of genocide is untrue, and in any case does not provide legal justification for invasion.

The case it has lodged at the World Court, officially known as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), centres on the interpretation of a 1948 treaty on the prevention of genocide, signed by both countries. The treaty names the ICJ as the forum for resolving disputes between signatories.

Last week, the executive board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a statement saying that Putin was “misappropriating and misusing the term ‘genocide’”.

“There is absolutely no evidence that there is genocide going on in Ukraine,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, told Reuters.

The hearings are set to start at 10am (9am GMT) with Ukraine presenting its case. Russia is due to respond on Tuesday.

Hello it’s Samantha Lock with you as we continue to monitor the crisis unfolding in Ukraine.

Russia’s war on its neighbour continues for its eleventh day and well into its second week. It is 1.40am in Ukraine and the UN estimates more than 1.5 million people have fled the country to seek safety in neighbouring countries.

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