Summary and welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These are the latest developments as of 7:30 a.m. Kyiv time.
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Ukrainian authorities have found a mass burial site of more than 440 bodies in the eastern city of Izium that was retaken from Russian forces, a regional police chief said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy compared the discovery to what happened in Bucha outside Kyiv earlier in the war, Reuters reported. “Russia is leaving death behind everywhere and must be held accountable,” he said.
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European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to face the international criminal court for war crimes in Ukraine. “That Putin has to lose this war and has to face his actions, that’s important to me,” he told German news channel Bild TV on Thursday.
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Ukraine has lost almost 15% of its grain storage capacity during the war, threatening its role as a key food supplier to the world, a report says. The US government-backed Conflict Observatory said the Russians had seized 6.24 million tonnes of food storage capacity and destroyed another 2.25 million tonnes of capacity in their hands of Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported. As a result, farmers were running out of space to store their produce for shipment, which could discourage planting for the next crop, especially winter wheat, the report said.
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Pope Francis said it was morally legitimate for countries to provide weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russian aggression. “This is a political decision that can be moral, morally acceptable, if it is done under moral conditions… Self-defense is not only lawful, but also an expression of love for the motherland,” he said. “Someone who doesn’t defend himself, who doesn’t defend something, doesn’t love it. Those who defend [something] I love it.”
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Vladimir Putin thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his “balanced” approach to the Ukraine crisis and criticized Washington’s “ugly” policies, in a meeting that followed a major setback for Moscow in battlefield Putin told his Chinese counterpart on Thursday: “We understand your questions and your concerns in this regard, and we will certainly provide a detailed explanation of our position on this issue during today’s meeting, although we have already spoken before”.
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Germany will supply Ukraine with armored vehicles and additional rocket-launching systems, but not the battle tanks that Kyiv has long demanded, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht says. He said on Thursday that Soviet-made BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles would also go “very quickly” to Ukraine from Greece.
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The 35-nation board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog approved a resolution demanding Russia end its occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, Reuters reports. This Thursday’s resolution is the second on the Russian invasion of Ukraine approved by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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US President Joe Biden announced a new $600 million arms package for Ukraine, according to a White House memo sent to the State Department on Thursday.
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The US has imposed new sanctions on 22 Russian individuals and two Russian entities. Among the people is Maria Alexeyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, who has led Russia’s efforts to deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and forced the adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families. The entities include Task Force Rusich, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has fought alongside the Russian military in Ukraine.
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A Ukrainian volunteer doctor captured by Russian forces during their deadly siege of Mariupol gave devastating testimony to US lawmakers on Thursday, recounting his experiences of torture, death and terror. Yuliia Paievska, who was arrested in the port city in March and held by Russian and pro-Russian forces for three months, spoke before the Helsinki Commission, a government agency set up in part to promote international human rights enforcement .
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Kremlin-linked military contractors the Wagner Group have been conducting an active recruitment campaign among Russian prisoners since at least July, according to the latest UK Ministry of Defense intelligence briefing.
Russian military academies have also shortened training periods for cadets, indicating an “increasingly severe” shortage of junior officers and combat infantry.
Updated at 06.15 BST
According to the latest report from the Institute for the Study of War, Russia has launched a national campaign to recruit new troops in the wake of its setbacks in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
The institute said Russia had “almost certainly” drained a large part of the forces originally stationed in the former Soviet states, likely weakening its presence in those areas.
The moves were notable against the backdrop of renewed tensions between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the institute said, as hundreds of Russian troops have reportedly withdrawn from bases in each country since the invasion began.
The war in Ukraine has brought 70 million closer to starvation, according to the UN
UN Food chief says world faces ‘a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude’, with up to 345 million people at risk of starvation and 70 million more close to starvation due to the war in Ukraine.
The Associated Press reports:
David Beasley, executive director of the UN’s world food programme, told the UN security council that the number of people with acute food insecurity had doubled since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the 2020
“What was a wave of hunger is now a tsunami of hunger,” he said, noting the rise in conflict, the economic effects of the pandemic, climate change, rising fuel prices and the war in Ukraine .
Since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, Beasley said, rising food, fuel and fertilizer costs have pushed 70 million people closer to starvation.
Despite the July deal allowing Ukrainian grain to be shipped from three Black Sea ports that had been blocked by Russia and continued efforts to return Russian fertilizer to global markets, “there is a real and dangerous risk of multiple hungry this year,” he said. said
A ship carrying wheat from Ukraine docks in Djibouti last month. Photo: World Food Program/Reuters
The US Department of Defense has announced details of the $600 million in new military aid the White House approved for Ukraine on Thursday, Agence France-Presse reports.
The package will include 37,000 artillery rounds, of which 1,000 will be precision-guided, and four counter-artillery radars, among other weapons and equipment.
More ammunition for the Himars rocket system will also be provided, the Pentagon said, without specifying whether that would include the long-range missiles known as ATACMS that Kyiv has been requesting for months.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the US has provided more than $15 billion in military assistance to Kyiv.
Ukrainian soldiers prepare to fire a US-supplied M777 howitzer. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Updated at 06.01 BST
Kyrgyzstan’s border guard service said Tajik forces opened fire again on several of its outposts, escalating tensions between the Russian allies after a brief clash earlier this week, Reuters reports.
Kyrgyz border guards were returning fire as clashes took place along the entire border, the service said, adding that Tajik forces were using tanks, armored personnel carriers and mortars.
In turn, Tajikistan accused Kyrgyz forces of shelling one of its outposts and seven villages with “heavy weapons.” One civilian was killed and three were wounded, authorities in the Tajik city of Isfara said.
The governors of Kyrgyz and Tajik provinces adjacent to the border were ready to meet at a border crossing point and try to defuse the situation, Kyrgyz border guards said.
Clashes over the poorly demarcated border between the two former Soviet republics are frequent but tend to de-escalate quickly, although they nearly erupted into full-scale war last year.
Both host Russian military bases and have close ties to Moscow, which urged a cessation of hostilities this week.
When Vladimir Putin met Xi Jinping for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president said he understood China’s “questions and concerns” about the war.
It was a rare nod to the tensions between the two states caused by the invasion, and the Russian leader seemed particularly keen to curry favor with Xi, striking a conciliatory tone on an issue where he is often volatile and intransigent.
You can read our full report on the meeting here:
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Thursday. Photo: Alexandr Demyanchuk/AP
Ukraine discovers mass burial in Izium
Ukrainian authorities have found a mass burial site of more than 440 bodies in the eastern city of Izium that was retaken from Russian forces, a regional police chief said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, the chief police investigator for the Kharkiv region, told Sky News that some of the people had been killed by shelling and airstrikes.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy compared the discovery to what happened in Bucha, outside Kyiv, and said in a video address on Thursday night: “Russia is leaving death everywhere and must be held accountable “.
“The necessary procedures have already started there. More information, clear and verifiable information, should be available tomorrow,” he said.
Tombs in a forest outside Izium. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Updated at 05.42 BST
Summary and welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These are the latest developments as of 7:30 a.m. Kyiv time.
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Ukrainian…