Russia Ukraine War: YouTube bans Russian parliament channel

An Italian government source said Italian Premier Mario Draghi is traveling to Algeria on Monday to sign a deal for more gas.

Italy has been urgently looking for alternatives to natural gas from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Russia is Italy’s biggest supplier, representing 40% of total imports.

Italy’s foreign minister has traveled to Algeria as well as Azerbaijan, Qatar, Congo, Angola and Mozambique to secure more deals. Algeria is Italy’s second-largest supplier of natural gas, which is the main source of the nation’s electricity, providing some 21 billion cubic meters of gas via the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline.

Italian energy company ENI has operated in Algeria for 40 years. ENI announced a significant oil and gas discovery in Algeria last month and said it would work with Algerian partner Sonatrach to fast-track its development for the third quarter of this year.

All government employees have been stopped from leaving Pakistan , all airports issued alert, emergency imposed in several hospitals and security increased, no official allowed to leave Pakistan without NOC.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said they include 12 soldiers and 14 civilians, but she didn’t disclose the number of prisoners of war sent back to Russia. It is the third prisoner exchange since Feb. 24.

The new package aims “to support Ukraine in this crucial phase while Russia’s illegal assault continues,” according to Downing Street. It is in addition to the $130 million package announced earlier.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer says the Austrian embassy staff will return to Kyiv from western Ukraine.

The Austria Press Agency reported that Nehammer announced the move during a visit on Saturday to Kyiv, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Nehammer said that “since the situation around Kyiv has now stabilized somewhat, the Austrian embassy's team will resume its work in the Ukrainian capital.” He said it's a sign of Austria's "full support for Ukraine at this very difficult time.” The team had been moved at the beginning of the war to an outpost in Uzhhorod, near the Slovak border in Ukraine's far west. The European Union also has returned its ambassador to Kyiv and Italy also reportedly plans to reopen its embassy there.

CNN quoted an unnamed European official, who said that 29 Russian battalion tactical groups are out of order.

The International Monetary Fund has created an account to give donor countries a secure way to funnel financial assistance directly to war-ravaged Ukraine.

The multilateral lender said in a statement Friday that it’s launching the account at the request of several member countries.

The goal is to help Ukraine meet its payment obligations and help stabilize its economy using loans or grants from pooled resources.

The IMF says Canada has proposed routing up to 1 billion Canadian dollars ($795 million) to Ukraine through the new account.

Two weeks after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, the IMF approved a $1.4 billion emergency loan to Ukraine.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has travelled to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in show of solidarity.

The two leaders meeting Saturday will discuss the “UK's long term support to Ukraine" including a new package of financial and military aid, the prime minister's office said. The visit comes a day after Johnson pledged another 100 million pounds ($130 million) in high grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wants to help Ukraine defend itself from continuing Russian assaults.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andrij Sybiha, said the two leaders are meeting in Kyiv.

Speaking Friday at a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Johnson said he would give Ukraine's military more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.

He also promised more helmets, night vision and body armour. The items were in addition to some 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment from the UK that had already been promised.

The head of the European Union’s executive branch is leading a fundraising event in Warsaw for Ukraine and people who have fled the country.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was joined at the event by Polish President Andrzej Duda and -- remotely -- by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Saturday’s pledging event is being held in Warsaw because more than 2.5 million of the 4.4 million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began entered Poland. Many have stayed though some have moved on to other countries.

Convened jointly by von der Leyen and Trudeau, it is meant to prompt political leaders and global celebrities to provide funding and other donations for the people of Ukraine.

YouTube has banned the channel of Russia's lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, prompting government officials to renew longtime threats against the platform.

The Duma TV channel reported the ban on the messaging app Telegram, noting that it had 145,000 subscribers and over 100,000 million total views.

In comments to the Russian news agency Interfax, Google didn't give an exact reason for the move, but said the company follows “all applicable sanction and trade compliance laws”.

Russia's state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor demanded that YouTube unblock the channel. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Saturday that the service “has handed itself a sentence” and urged its users to “download content, transfer it onto Russian platforms. And fast”.

State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called the move against the Parliament's YouTube channel “another proof of violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens by Washington”. 

Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people at a train station where thousands were waiting to leave the increasingly vulnerable region before an expected Russian onslaught.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded a tough global response to Friday's train station attack in Kramatorsk, calling it the latest sign of war crimes by Russian forces and hoping to prod Western backers to step up their response to help his country defend itself.

“All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, his voice rising in anger.

Russia denied it was responsible and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to try to turn blame for civilian slayings on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to bolster the argument. Western experts and Ukrainian authorities insisted that Russia launched the missile.

Italy’s foreign minister has reportedly told staff that Italy will reopen its embassy in the Ukrainian capital after Easter.

News agency ANSA quoted Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio on Saturday as telling his ministry’s crisis unit that Italy “will be among the first to return” to Kyiv.

He called it “another gesture to demonstrate support for the Ukrainian population, a concrete way to affirm that diplomacy must prevail.”

Di Maio said the return would be coordinated with other European Union nations.

The EU itself announced the return of its ambassador on Friday. On Saturday, EU ambassador Matti Maasikas tweeted a picture of an EU flag atop a flagpole with the words “First things first.”

Ten humanitarian corridors for civilian evacuations are to open in Ukraine's east on Saturday, according to Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The corridors will allow residents to leave a number cities in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

Those in Mariupol, Enerhodar, Tokmak, Berdyansk and Melitopol will be able to evacuate to the city of Zaporizhzhia, while those in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Girske and Rubizhne can evacuate to the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.

European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen who visited Ukraine's Bucha town where Russian forces allegedly massacred and raped hundreds of civilians said that the world was mourning with the people of Bucha.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that 10 humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of stranded civilians have been approved for Saturday. According to Vereshchuk, evacuation will be allowed from the besieged city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzhya by private transport, Ukrayinska Pravda reported. The other corridors to the Zaporizhzhya region are from the cities of Berdyansk, Tokmak, Energodar and Melitopol. Meanwhile, in the Luhansk region, evacuations can take place from Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Gorske and Rubizhne, the Minister announced.

The number of civilians killed in the Russian strike on a train station in Ukraine's Kramatorsk has increased to 52, with 109 people injured, a top official announced on Saturday. In a social media post, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the military head in Donetsk region where Kramatorsk is located, confirmed the toll but warned that "these numbers will inevitably increase", Ukrayinska Pravda. On Friday, Russian troops from the occupied territories in the Luhansk region deployed a Tochka-U system to carry out the cluster shelling on the Kramatorsk railway station, where some 4,000 people were awaiting to be evacuated. The victims included five children.

Actor Priyanka Chopra has urged world leaders to stand up and deal with the "humanitarian and refugee crisis" emerging out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Chopra, who is the goodwill ambassador of UNICEF, took to her Instagram on Friday and posted a video, appealing to the world leaders to support the crisis in Eastern Europe and asked for action to be taken to help the displaced people from Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he wants a tough global response to Russia after its forces fired a missile at a crowded train station, killing at least 52 people. Zelenskyy's voice rose in anger during his nightly address late Friday, when he said the strike on the Kramatorsk train station, where 4,000 people were trying to flee a looming Russian offensive in the east, amounted to another war crime. Russia denied it was responsible for the strike. Among those killed were children, and dozens of people were severely injured. Photos taken after the attack showed corpses covered with tarpaulins, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children" in Russian. The Russian phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear. The strike seemed to shock world leaders.

A missile hit a train station in eastern Ukraine where thousands had gathered Friday, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a new, looming Russian offensive, Ukrainian authorities said. The attack, denounced by some as yet another war crime in the 6-week-old conflict, came as workers unearthed bodies from a mass grave in Bucha, a town near Ukraine's capital where dozens of killings have been documented after a Russian pullout. Photos from the station in Kramatorsk showed the dead covered with tarps, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children,” which in Russian implied that children were being avenged by the strike, though the exact reason remained unclear.
About 4,000 civilians had been in and around the station, heeding calls to leave before fighting intensifies in the Donbas region, the office of Ukraine's prosecutor-general said.

At least 132 bodies have been found at a mass grave in Ukraine's Makariv town, located some 50 km west of capital Kiev, an official has confirmed. Speaking to the media on Friday, Makariv's Mayor Vadym Tokar said: "As of yesterday, we have found 132 civilians who have been shot dead by the Russian 'orcs'," Ukrayinska Pravda reported. He said besides the bodies in the mass grave, corpses were also found in the streets of the town. Tokar added that 40 per cent of the entire town has been destroyed and many of the buildings cannot be restored.

A Ukrainian Minister has claimed that the Russian troops who were posted at the Exclusion Zone of the now-defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant were exposed to high levels of radiation due to which they have at the most a year to live. Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, fell to the Russian troops on the first day of Moscow's invasion on February 24. On April 5, National Guard of Ukraine seized it and took control of the facility after the troops fully evacuated the premises on March 31. 

India’s dependence on Russia for major defence equipment and supplies along with some other essential items like fertiliser is immense, a top American diplomat has told lawmakers ahead of the next week’s 2+2 ministerial meeting. US Deputy Secretary of State Windy Sherman, during her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, showed a complete understanding of India’s position on Russia and its repeated abstention at the United Nations on the issue of Ukraine.

Biden Administration’s key architect for Russian sanctions Indian American Daleep Singh had not issued any warning to India on oil imports from Russia during his recent trip to New Delhi and had a rather constructive dialogue, the White House said Friday.

US President Joe Biden expects that the Indo-US two-plus-two ministerial here next week will continue to drive forward the Administration’s work with New Delhi, the White House said Friday ahead of the meeting. “We also believe both sides will continue our close consultations on the consequences of President Putin's brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating the impact by addressing energy and food prices. Obviously, it could cover a range of topics, but we expect that to be a central one,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.

The United States would prefer India to move away from its “long-term history of non-alignment G77 partnership with Russia”, the Biden Administration has told lawmakers, observing that there is a great opportunity for defence trade with India. America’s relationship with India is a very critical one, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a Congressional hearing early this week. “They are the largest democracy in the world. We have a strong defence relationship with them. They are part of the Quad, with Australia and Japan, and we are moving forward on many achievements that are critical to Indo-Pacific prosperity and security,” she said.

A day after Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council amid its invasion of Ukraine, the White House on Friday said it does not anticipate the same for Moscow in the Security Council where it is a veto-wielding Permanent Member. 

A missile hit a train station where thousands of Ukrainians had gathered Friday, killing at least 50 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a new, looming Russian offensive in the country's east, Ukrainian authorities said. The attack that some denounced as yet another war crime in the 6-week-old conflict came as workers unearthed bodies from a mass grave in Bucha, a town near Ukraine's capital where dozens of killings have already been documented following a Russian pullout.