প্রকাশ: 27/02/2022
The United
Nations’ refugee agency says the latest count of Ukrainians arriving in
neighboring countries now exceeds 200,000.
The UN
High Commissioner for Refugees said on Twitter that the numbers of those
fleeing invading Russian troops are constantly changing and another update
would be issued later Sunday.
The
agency’s estimate on Saturday was that at least 150,000 have fled Ukraine into
Poland and other countries including Hungary and Romania.
Poland’s
government said Saturday that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had crossed the
Polish-Ukrainian border in the past 48 hours alone.
KYIV,
Ukraine — Ukraine’s president says his country is ready for peace talks with
Russia but not in Belarus, which was a staging ground for Moscow’s 3-day-old
invasion.
Speaking
in a video message Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named Warsaw,
Bratislava, Istanbul, Budapest or Baku as alternative venues. He said other
locations are also possible but made clear that Ukraine doesn’t accept Russia’s
selection of Belarus.
The
Kremlin said Sunday that a Russian delegation had arrived in the Belarusian
city of Homel for talks with Ukrainian officials. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said the delegation includes military officials and diplomats.
“The
Russian delegation is ready for talks, and we are now waiting for the
Ukrainians,” Peskov said.
Russia
invaded Ukraine on Thursday, with troops moving from Moscow’s ally Belarus in
the north, and also from the east and south.
MOSCOW —
The Kremlin says a Russian delegation has arrived in the Belarusian city of
Homel for talks with Ukrainian officials.
Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the delegation includes military officials and
diplomats. “The Russian delegation is ready for talks, and we are now waiting
for the Ukrainians,” Peskov said.
There was
no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who previously expressed their
own readiness for peace talks with Russia but haven’t mentioned any specific
details on their location and timing.
Russia
invaded Ukraine on Thursday, and its troops are closing in on the capital,
Kyiv, and making significant gains along the country’s coast.
KYIV,
Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities say that Russian troops have entered Ukraine’s
second-largest city of Kharkiv and fighting is underway in the streets.
Oleh
Sinehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional administration, said Sunday that
Ukrainian forces were fighting Russian troops in the city and asked civilians
not to leave their homes.
Russian
troops approached Kharkiv, which is located about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles)
south of the border with Russia, shortly after Moscow launched its invasion of
Ukraine on Thursday. But until Sunday, they remained on its outskirts without
trying to enter the city while other forces rolled past, pressing their offensive
deeper into Ukraine.
Videos on
Ukrainian media and social networks showed Russian vehicles moving across
Kharkiv and a light vehicle burning on the street
TEL AVIV,
Israel — An organization that facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel says it
is ramping up its efforts along Ukrainian border crossings to absorb what it
expects to be a wave of new immigrants fleeing the Russian invasion
The Jewish
Agency for Israel said late Saturday it plans to open six processing facilities
along Ukraine’s borders with Poland, Moldova, Romania and Hungary. The
organization said in a statement it also plans to assist Ukrainian Jews with
temporary housing in bordering countries until they can leave to Israel.
The agency
said it assisted a group of new immigrants to cross into Poland on Saturday
where they are awaiting a flight to Israel.
Israel’s
Foreign Ministry estimates there are at least 120,000 Jews in Ukraine. Israel
also has a sizeable population of Ukrainian emigres.
LOS
ANGELES — Elon Musk says his SpaceX company’s Starlink satellite internet
service is now “active” in Ukraine.
The tech
billionaire made the announcement on Twitter in response to a tweet by
Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation saying that while Musk tries to
“colonize Mars,” Russia is trying to occupy Ukraine. The minister called on
Musk to provide his country with Starlink stations.
In his
response Saturday, Musk said: “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More
terminals en route.”
Starlink
is a satellite-based internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to
bring internet access to underserved areas of the world. It markets itself as
“ideally suited” for areas where internet service is unreliable or unavailable.
UNITED
NATIONS -- The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is aware of
requests by Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador and others to repatriate the bodies of
Russian soldiers killed in action in Ukraine but has no numbers.
Ambassador
Sergiy Kyslytsya tweeted Saturday that Ukraine has appealed to the ICRC “to
facilitate repatriation of thousands of bodies of Russian soldiers” killed
during its invasion of Ukraine. An accompanying chart claimed 3,500 Russian
troops have been killed.
Kyslytsya
tweeted that parents in Russia should have a chance “to bury them with
dignity.” “Don’t let (Russian President Vladimir) Putin hide scale of tragedy,”
he urged.
Laetitia
Courtois, ICRC’s permanent observer to the United Nations told The Associated
Press Saturday night that the current security situation “is a primary concern
and a limitation for our teams on the ground” and “we therefore cannot confirm
numbers or other details.”
She said
“the ICRC can act as a neutral intermediary” on the return of bodies and other
humanitarian issues in conflict, including clarifying the fate of missing
persons, reuniting families, and advocating for the protection of detainees
“within its possibilities.
KYIV,
Ukraine — The Ukrainian president’s office said Russian forces blew up a gas
pipeline in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
The State
Service of Special Communication and Information Protection warned that the
explosion, which it said looked like a mushroom cloud, could cause an
“environmental catastrophe” and advised residents to cover their windows with
damp cloth or gauze and to drink plenty of fluids.
Ukraine’s
top prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, said the Russian forces have been unable to
take Kharkiv, where a fierce battle is underway.
The city
of 1.5 million is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border.
GENEVA —
The United Nations says it has confirmed at least 240 civilian casualties,
including at least 64 people killed, in the fighting in Ukraine that erupted
since Russia’s invasion on Thursday — though it believed the “real figures are
considerably higher” because many reports of casualties remain to be confirmed.
The U.N.
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs relayed the count late
Saturday from the U.N. human rights office, which has strict methodologies and
verification procedures about the toll from conflict.
OCHA also
said damage to civilian infrastructure has deprived hundreds of thousands of
people of access to electricity or water, and produced a map of “humanitarian
situations” in Ukraine — mostly in northern, eastern and southern Ukraine.
The human
rights office had reported early Friday an initial count by its staffers of at
least 127 civilian casualties – 25 people killed and 102 injured – mostly from
shelling and airstrikes.
PARIS —
French President Emmanuel Macron has asked his Belarus counterpart to demand
that the country, Ukraine’s neighbor, quickly order Russian troops to leave.
In a phone
conversation Saturday, Macron denounced “the gravity of a decision that would
authorize Russia to deploy nuclear arms on Belarus soil,” a statement by the
presidential palace said.
Macron
told Alexander Lukashenko that fraternity between the people of Belarus and
Ukraine should lead Belarus to “refuse to be a vassal and an accomplice to
Russia in the war against Ukraine,” the statement said.
Belarus
was one one of several axes used by Russia to launch attacks on Ukraine, with
Belarus the point to move toward the capital Kyiv, a senior U.S. defense
official has said.
Macron has
pushed persistently to try to claw out a ceasefire amid the war, using the
telephone to talk to all sides, diplomacy and sanctions by the European Union.
MOSCOW --
Russia is closing its airspace to planes from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and
Slovenia, a move that comes as Moscow’s ties with the West plunge to new lows
over its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s
state aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced early Sunday that the measure
was taken in retaliation for the four nations closing their airspace for
Russian planes.
On
Saturday, the agency also reported closing the Russian airspace for planes from
Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic in response to them doing the
same.
WASHINGTON
— The U.S., European Union, and United Kingdom on Saturday agreed to block
“selected” Russian banks from the SWIFT global financial messaging system and
to impose” restrictive measures” on its central bank in retaliation for its
invasion of Ukraine.
The
measures were announced jointly as part of a new round of financial sanctions
meant to impose a severe cost on Russia for the invasion.
EU
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she would push the bloc also to
“paralyze the assets of Russia’s Central bank” so that its transactions would
be frozen.
Cutting
several commercial banks from SWIFT “will ensure that these banks are
disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to
operate globally,” she said.
As a third
measure, she said the EU would “commit to taking measures to limit the sale of
citizenship—so called golden passports—that let wealthy Russians connected to
the Russian government become citizens of our countries and gain access to our
financial systems.”
COPENHAGEN—
Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet says two freelancers working for the paper were
injured when the car they were traveling in was hit by gunfire near the village
of Ohtyrka in eastern Ukraine.
The
reporter and photographer were taken to a local hospital, Ekstra Bladet said,
adding their injuries were not life-threatening. The paper was working with a
security firm to have the two journalists evacuated.
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