Russia Ukraine War LIVE Updates: Zelenskyy to address UN Security Council today

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday that there is a “total determination” from all 27 European Union countries for sanctions against Russia that could target oil and coal over evidence its troops deliberately killed Ukrainian civilians. Europe's dependence on Russian oil, gas and coal means finding unanimity on energy measures is a tall order, but the reports of the killings outside Kyiv have increased pressure for tougher EU sanctions.

The White House has reiterated that it is not in India's interest to "accelerate or increase" imports of Russian energy and other commodities, while offering to work with New Delhi to help it reduce its reliance on imports from Moscow. Responding to questions on the visit of top Indian-American US advisor Daleep Singh to New Delhi last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference on Monday that he explained both the mechanisms of the American sanctions and reiterated that any country or entity should be abiding by those.

The European Union's executive branch has proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia in what would be the first sanctions targeting the country's lucrative energy industry over its war in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday that the EU needed to increase the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin after what she described as the “heinous crimes” carried out around Kyiv.

Ukraine says a civilian ship is sinking in the port of the besieged city of Mariupol after Russian forces fired on it. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the ship was struck during “shelling from the sea” by Russia, causing a fire in the engine room. The crew was rescued, including one injured crew member, it added.

Russian forces on Tuesday were preparing for an offensive in Ukraine's southeast, the Ukrainian military said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to talk to the U.N. Security Council amid outrage over evidence Moscow's soldiers deliberately killed civilians.

Ministers making students who were evacuated from war-torn Ukraine chant slogans in favour of the government was a "self-defeating spectacle", Congress leader Manish Tewari said on Monday. Speaking on the discussion in Lok Sabha on the situation in Ukraine, the member also criticised the government, saying he had never seen such "self congratulatory ecstacy" as displayed during the evacuations.

Sarajevo was paying a subdued tribute this week to the resilience of its citizens who survived the longest military siege in modern history, and commemorating thousands of others who did not. Many of the survivors said they found the 30th anniversary of the start of the siege of the Bosnian capital particularly hard because they were marking it against the backdrop of what they described as similar suffering being inflicted on civilians in Ukraine by Russia's occupying army.

The Danish Foreign Ministry decided to expel 15 Russian diplomats from the country, Reuters reported.

Russian forces on Tuesday were preparing for an offensive in Ukraine's southeast, the Ukrainian military said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to talk to the U.N. Security Council amid outrage over evidence Moscow's soldiers deliberately killed civilians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's government is pouring soldiers into Ukraine's east to gain control of the industrial heartland known as the Donbas. That follows a Russian withdrawal from towns around the capital, Kyiv, which led to the discovery of corpses, prompting accusations of war crimes and demands for tougher sanctions on Moscow.

Russian forces are focused on seizing the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Black Sea port of Mariupol, the General Staff said on its Facebook page.

Donetsk and Luhansk are controlled by Russian-backed separatists and recognized by Moscow as independent states. The General Staff said access to Kharkiv in the east, Ukraine's second-largest city, was blocked.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree introducing visa restrictions for citizens from "unfriendly countries", the Kremlin said.

It added that the decision was made in retaliation to "hostile measures" taken by the European Union (EU) against Russia's warn in Ukraine, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the decree, Russia will partially suspend its simplified visa agreements with EU member countries along with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The French Foreign Ministry said that the country has decided to expel "many" Russian diplomats, "whose activities are contrary to our security interests".

The Ministry said in a statement that "the action is part of a European approach", reports Xinhua news agency. It however, gave no further details about the numbers.

The development comes after French President Emmanuel Macron termed the killings in the Ukrainian city of Bucha as "unbearbale".

Bucha, located about 60 km from Kiev, was liberated from Russian forces on April.

Germany's president is admitting mistakes in policy toward Russia in his previous job as foreign minister. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier served twice as ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel's foreign minister, most recently from 2013 to 2017, and before that as ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff. In that time, Germany pursued dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and cultivated close energy ties.

Steinmeier told ZDF television Tuesday that “we failed on many points,” including efforts to encourage Russia toward democracy and respecting human rights.

The president conceded that “there were different assessments” of Russia among European countries.

He added: “It is true that we should have taken the warnings of our eastern European partners more seriously, particularly regarding the time after 2014” and the building of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Sticking to that project was a mistake that cost Germany “a lot of credit and credibility” in eastern Europe, he said. Chancellor Olaf Scholz suspended the pipeline in the week Russia invaded Ukraine. 

Ukraine's General Staff reports Tuesday morning that Russia is regrouping its troops and preparing for an offensive in Donbas.

“The goal is to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” the update posted on the General Staff's Facebook page says.

In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Russian military are focusing their efforts on taking control of Popasna and Rubizhne cities, as well as establishing full control over Mariupol, the General Staff said. Other towns and settlements in the two regions are subject to continued shelling.

The Russian troops also continue to block Kharkiv, according to the General Staff. 

 Two Harvard University freshmen have launched a website designed to connect people fleeing Ukraine to those in safer countries willing to take them in — and it's generating offers of help and housing worldwide.

Moved by the plight of Ukrainian refugees desperate to escape Russian bombardment across the former Soviet republic, Marco Burstein, 18, of Los Angeles, and Avi Schiffman, 19, of Seattle, used their coding skills to create UkraineTakeShelter.com over three frenzied days in early March.

Since then, more than 18,000 prospective hosts have signed up on the site to offer assistance to refugees seeking matches with hosts in their preferred or convenient locations. On a recent day, Burstein and Schiffman logged 800,000 users.

Disruptions to supplies of commodities, financial strains and higher prices are among the impacts of the war in Ukraine that will slow economies in Asia in coming months, the World Bank says in a report released Tuesday. The report forecasts slower growth and rising poverty in the Asia-Pacific region this year as “multiple shocks” compound troubles for people and for businesses.

Growth for the region is estimated at 5%, down from the original forecast of 5.4%.

The “low case” scenario foresees growth dipping to 4%, it said. The region saw a rebound to 7.2% growth in 2021 after many economies experienced downturns with the onset of the pandemic.

The World Bank anticipates that China, the region's largest economy, will expand at a 5% annual pace, much slower than the 8.1% growth of 2021.

A top official in the global campaign against the use of land mines urged Russia on Monday to stop its troops in Ukraine from laying the weapons that too often kill and maim civilians. Alicia Arango Olmos, Colombia's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and this year's president of the state parties to the 1997 convention banning the production and use of land mines, expressed deep concern at media reports that Russia is using land mines in its war in Ukraine.

She pointed to Human Rights Watch, which said on March 29 that Ukrainian explosive ordnance disposal technicians located banned anti-personnel mines in the eastern Kharkiv region a day earlier. The rights group said Russia is known to possess the type of mines that were discovered, but Ukraine doesn't have them.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi returned from Poland on Tuesday with 20 Ukrainians displaced by Russia's ongoing war on their country as Tokyo seeks to play a greater role in international support for Ukraine. During three days in Poland, Hayashi visited facilities for Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and held talks with Polish officials, international humanitarian organizations and civil groups to assess how Japan can provide support.

“As I observed the severe situation faced by Ukrainians who were forced to flee their country because of the Russian invasion, I have renewed my resolve that Japan should cooperate with international society and provide the utmost assistance so they can return to ordinary lives as soon as possible,” Hayashi told reporters.

Meta-owned Facebook app and Instagram on Monday unblocked hashtags for Bucha killings, outside Kyiv in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
The social media site had briefly blocked the hashtags owing to its automated system of blocking violent content.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said automated systems that scan for violent imagery on Facebook and Instagram, which the company also owns, were responsible for blocking hashtags including #bucha and #buchamassacre.

"This happened automatically because of the graphic content people posted using these hashtags. When we were made aware of the issue yesterday, we acted quickly to unblock the hashtags," he wrote on Twitter.

Women across Ukraine are grappling with the threat of rape as a weapon of war with growing evidence of sexual violence emerging from areas retaken from retreating Russian forces, The Guardian reported.

The world was horrified on Sunday by a picture taken by Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20 km outside Kiev, in which the bodies of one man and three women were piled under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies had been partially burnt, the photographer said.

Consumer sentiment in Germany "deteriorated massively" in April due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to the Consumer Barometer published by the German Retail Federation (HDE).

The index tracks German consumers' propensity to buy and to save, their financial situation as well as other factors relevant to consumption. It has declined for five months in a row to its current all-time low, according to the monthly HDE survey of 1,600 German consumers.

Like the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has worsened German consumers' economic expectations, Xinhua news agency reported.

Moscow hopes Kiev will follow its national interests at Russia-Ukraine peace talks, but not listen to "advisers" from afar, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"It is not the talks that influence the course of the operation, but external 'players' who are trying to hinder these negotiations and keep the clashes 'on the ground' going on for as long as possible," he told a press conference on Monday following talks with Arab League (AL) representatives on Ukraine, according to a statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"We know who gives such 'advice' to our Ukrainian neighbours. This is done with useless goals that have nothing to do with the interests of the Ukrainian people, the security of Ukraine, the security in the region of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and in our European region," he added.

Roughly half of Canadian firms expected to be affected by the conflict in Ukraine, results from a special business survey in March have showed.

In the interviews conducted on Monday by the Bank of Canada's regional offices with the senior management of more than 100 firms selected to reflect the composition of the gross domestic product of Canada's business sector, 77 out of 152 firms anticipated that they would be affected by the conflict, Xinhua news agency reported.

The most common expected impact is upward cost pressure, tied mainly to increased prices for energy and other commodities as well as further supply chain disruptions, the central bank said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has formed a delegation to participate in talks with Russia on the preparation and approval of a draft 'Treaty on Security Guarantees of Ukraine'.

Under a presidential decree issued on Monday, MP David Arakhamia, who also leads the Ukrainian side in the peace talks with Russia, was appointed head of the delegation, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

The other delegation members include Minister of Justice Denys Malyuska, Senior Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, Minister of Defence Oleksiy Reznikov and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mykola Tochytsky.

Sirens have been activated in the Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Vinnytsia, Volyn, Zakarpattya, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr oblasts and in Kyiv

The Ukrainian government says that 18 journalists have been killed in the country since Russia's invasion began on Feb. 24. The Ukrainian Culture and Information Ministry said in a statement on social media Monday that each of the deaths and other crimes against media representatives will be investigated.

The ministry added that another 13 journalists had been wounded, eight had been abducted or taken prisoner and three journalists were still missing. It said that several crimes had been committed against journalists from 11 countries, including Ukraine.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Monday that Russia was shifting its focus in its war in Ukraine to the country's east and south, after experiencing a stronger-than-expected defense by Ukrainians supported by Western allies.

Sullivan said “the Russians have now realized that the West will not break" in its support of the Ukrainian government. But he warned that Russia was redoubling its offensive after pulling many troops from around the capital of Kyiv to the east and south of Ukraine.

Sullivan said the U.S. expects Russia to continue to launch air and missile strikes against Kyiv and the western city of Lviv to cause terror and economic damage across the rest of the country. 

Moscow faced global revulsion and accusations of war crimes Tuesday after the Russian pullout from the outskirts of Kyiv revealed streets strewn with corpses of what appeared to be civilians, some of whom had seemingly been killed at close range. The grisly images of battered bodies left out in the open or hastily buried led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, namely a cutoff of fuel imports from Russia. Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies, and U.S. President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.

This guy is brutal, and what's happening in Bucha is outrageous,” Biden said, referring to the town northwest of the capital that was the scene of some of the horrors.

The United States will work with the world to ensure that there is full accountability for the crimes by Russia in Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said.

We had already concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine and the information from Bucha appears to show further evidence of the same. And as the president said, we will work with the world to ensure there is full accountability for these crimes,” he told reporters at a White House news conference on Monday.

The United States (US) is also working intensively with its European allies on further sanctions to raise the pressure and cost on Putin and Russia.
Early in the morning, President Joe Biden told reporters that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is a war criminal”

Russia will continue to exercise its veto in the United Nations Security Council on issues related to its invasion of Ukraine, the United States has said.
“Obviously, with Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC), it will be difficult to imagine that they will not attempt to exercise their veto to block something,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference on Monday.

But there have been creative solutions to the question of accountability in the past, and I am not going to prejudge what solution would be applied here or what forum or venue would be applied,” he said when asked about the challenges that the US and its other partners are facing in UNSC at a time when it is trying to hold Russia accountable for the atrocities in Ukraine.

The United States is going to seek Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council in close coordination with Ukraine, European countries and other partners at the United Nations, a top official from the Biden Administration has said. The remarks were made by US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a press avail in Bucharest, Romania on Monday.

She said she is returning to New York on Tuesday to start the process.

“I am immediately returning back to New York to do two things. One -- I will take this to the Security Council tomorrow morning and address Russia’s actions firmly and directly,” she said.

We have seen credible reports of torture, rape, and civilians executed alongside their families. Their reports and images of a nightmare litany of atrocities including reports of landmines and booby traps left behind by Putin's forces: US Dept of State Spokesperson Ned Pricee

Russia is revising its war aims and will redeploy forces from Northern Ukraine to the region around the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, rather than target most of the territory, said US National Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan.

Speaking at a White House press briefing, NSA Sullivan said Russian forces will retreat from Kyiv to Belarus, with the plan to deploy dozens of additional battalion tactical troops, constituting tens of thousands of soldiers to the front line in Ukraine's east.

"At this juncture, we believe that Russia is revising its war aims. Russia is repositioning its forces to concentrate its offensive operations in the Eastern and parts of Southern Ukraine, rather than target most of the territory," Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

The United States believes that it's not in India's interest to increase Russian energy imports and other commodities, said White House Press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday as Washington continues to mount pressure on countries around the world to shun cheaper Russian oil.

Responding to a question on India's import of Russian oil, Psaki said the US expects every country around the world should abide by the sanctions that we announced on Russia.

"Energy payments are not sanctioned. That's a decision made by each individual country, and we've been very clear that each country is going to make their own choices even as we have made the decision and other countries have made the decision to ban energy imports," Psaki said at a press briefing.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the U.N. Security Council for the first time at a meeting Tuesday that is certain to focus on what appear to be deliberate killings in the town of Bucha on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv.

The discovery after the withdrawal of Russian troops has sparked global outrage and vehement denials from the Russian government.