Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had “very substantive and warm talks” on energy and defense cooperation with Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov during his visit to Kyiv on Thursday.
Zelenskyy said they agreed that damaged Ukrainian military equipment could be repaired at Bulgarian plants and then sent back to Ukraine.
“Another issue we agreed on was the supply of Ukrainian electricity to Bulgaria and the joint use of the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline” to diversify energy supplies in the region,” Zelenskyy said late Thursday in his nightly video address to the nation.
Russia this week cut off natural gas supplies to Bulgaria and also to Poland, two NATO members which have been among the strongest European supporters of Ukraine in the war.
Although Bulgaria gets over 90% of its gas from Russia, the cutoff does not immediately put the country in dire trouble because of other potential suppliers. The Trans-Balkan gas pipeline runs from Greece through Bulgaria and Romania to Ukraine.
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An 11-year-old Ukrainian boy was one of at least three people wounded in what emergency officials are calling the first Russian strike in a residential area of the southern city of Zaporizhzhia since Russia’s invasion began.
The city has been a crucial waypoint for tens of thousands of people fleeing the besieged southern port of Mariupol.
The rocket strike came Thursday as parts of southern Ukraine prepared for a further onslaught by Russian forces who seek to strip the country of its coastline.
Residents said at least eight homes in the modest neighborhood were damaged or destroyed.
Glass shards cut the boy’s right leg to the bone. The injured boy’s father, Vadym Vodostoyev, said “it just takes one second and you’re left with nothing.”
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Russia struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv shortly after a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday evening.
At least one person was killed and several were injured, including some who were trapped beneath the rubble, according to rescue officials. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the Shevchenkivskyi district in the northwestern part of the city was hit twice, causing fires in at least two high-rise buildings.
The explosions, which sent plumes of black smoke into the air, came just shortly after the two leaders held a press conference in which Guterres condemned the atrocities committed in towns like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia retreated. Authorities said the U.N. chief and his team were safe.
Appearing to be one of boldest attacks on Kyiv since Russian forces retreated from around the capital weeks ago, the explosions came as residents have been increasingly returning to the city. Cafes and other businesses have reopened, and a growing number of people have been out and enjoying the spring weather.
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Ukraine’s prosecutor on Thursday identified 10 Russian soldiers she accused of atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, one of the war’s major flashpoints that helped galvanize Western support of Ukraine.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook that the 10 soldiers in Russia’s 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Ground Forces Brigade who occupied Bucha were “involved in the torture of peaceful people.” She did not specifically say that her office had filed criminal charges, and appealed to the public to help develop evidence.
The Russian government denies it targets civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently honored the brigade’s work, and Venediktova said he bears responsibility for the soldiers’ actions as their commander-in-chief.
“During the occupation of Bucha, they took unarmed civilians hostage, killed them with hunger and thirst, kept them on their knees with hands tied and eyes taped, mocked and beat them,” Venediktova said, adding that the Russian soldiers threatened to shoot the hostages and looted houses.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, visiting Bucha on Thursday, called for a thorough investigation of alleged war crimes. Ukrainian authorities have said they are investigating thousands of possible war crimes, including killing of civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture, sexual crimes and use of prohibited weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address to his nation, renewed a pledge to hold Russian soldiers accountable for crimes. He added about the 10 suspects identified Thursday: “Some of them may not, after all, live until a trial and fair punishment. But only for one reason: This Russian brigade has been transferred to the Kharkiv region. There, they’ll receive retribution from our military.”
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President Joe Biden is rejecting the idea that Russia’s war in Ukraine could grow into a larger proxy conflict between Moscow and the United States and NATO allies that may even bring the world closer to nuclear confrontation.
At an event at the White House where Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to aid Ukraine, the president said Thursday that the idea of a larger proxy war was concerning but “not true.”
He blamed Russian authorities for exaggerating such speculation, saying “it shows the desperation that Russia is feeling about their abject failure” with the invasion of Ukraine.
“Instead of saying that the Ukrainians, equipped with some capability to resist Russian forces, are doing this, they’ve got to tell their people that the United States and all of NATO is engaged,” Biden said.
He added that “no one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons” and called doing so “irresponsible.”
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The British government says a U.K. national has been killed in Ukraine, and another is missing.
The Foreign Office confirmed Thursday that it is supporting the family of a British national killed in Ukraine. It also said it was “urgently seeking further information” on another Briton who is missing.
The government did not provide further details.
Sky News reported that the Britons were believed to have been fighting with Ukrainians against the Russian invasion.
Volunteers from Britain and many other countries have traveled to Ukraine to fight, despite being discouraged from doing so by their governments.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says both U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and Russian President Vladimir Putin have told him that their talks in Moscow earlier this week were “positive.”
Erdogan told reporters before leaving for a trip to Saudi Arabia, that he held separate telephone calls with Guterres and Putin.
“Mr. Guterres ... informed me that the talks (with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov) were positive. In our discussion with Mr. Putin yesterday, Putin expressed the same views.”
Erdogan added that the Russian president had “conveyed the opinion that a U.N. intervention is positive for the future.” He did not elaborate.
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Ukrainian troops defending a steel plant that is the last Ukrainian bulwark in the key port of Mariupol say an intensive Russian bombing has inflicted more casualties.
The Azov Regiment holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant on Thursday posted a video showing people combing through the rubble to remove the dead bodies and help the wounded after the Russian bombing overnight. The Azov said the Russians hit an improvised underground hospital and its surgery room, killing an unspecified number of people and wounding others there.
The video couldn’t be independently verified.
The Russian troops have pummeled the mammoth seaside plant with relentless airstrikes and artillery barrage, trying to uproot its defenders holed up in a 24-kilometer (15-mile) maze of underground tunnels, passages and bunkers.
Ukrainian officials say that up to 1,000 civilians also were sheltering in Azovstal. They are demanding that Russia provides a safe exit for them under the United Nations aegis.
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Poland’s border guard agency says that it has recorded 3 million crossings into Poland from neighboring Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, while there have been 904,000 crossings into Ukraine.
Border guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska said Thursday that the number includes people who cross a number of times because, for example, they regularly do shopping in Poland and then go back.
Polish authorities say some 1.6 million refugees have applied for and received special ID numbers that will allow them to work and receive free health care and education in Poland.
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The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says radiation levels in “excavations” found in the exclusion zone around the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant were well below the maximum authorized levels for plant workers.
Ukraine’s state power company said after Russian troops withdrew at the end of March that they received “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches in the area.
IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said Thursday that, during a visit this week, experts from his agency took measurements from “excavations” probably made by occupying soldiers.
He said that the levels were “three times or more lower than the authorized levels for workers in areas exposed to radiation.”
As for whether anyone was actually exposed to those radiation levels, he said: “We have asked about possible exposures or situations; we haven’t received any answer.”
Although that suggested the health risk wasn’t as great as feared, Grossi stressed that “it’s not a place to have a picnic or excavate.”
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Senior European Union officials say countries or companies bowing fully to the terms of a Russian presidential decree insisting that they pay their gas bills in rubles will be in breach of the bloc’s sanctions.
The Kremlin says importers should establish an account in dollars or euros at Russia’s Gazprombank, then a second account in rubles. They would pay the gas bill in euros or dollars and direct the bank to exchange the money for rubles.
The officials warn that Russia’s central bank could hold on to the money before converting it and in essence use the funds as a temporary loan for the national economy or to prop up the ruble. The EU’s sanctions prohibit any transaction with the Russian Central Bank.
One official said Thursday that “if the member states and the European companies apply strictly the decree … it will constitute a breach of the sanctions.” His job description does not allow him to be named publicly.
The violation essentially comes with the use of the second bank account. The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, has said that companies could remain in compliance by paying in euros or dollars, as per their contract, and then notifying Gazprombank that their payment obligations are over.
Ultimately, it’s up to the 27 EU countries to judge whether the rules are being broken. Some of those countries are heavily reliant on Russia for gas.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is defending his country’s ongoing purchase of gas and other fossil fuels from Russia.
Speaking during a visit to Japan on Thursday, Scholz said that “it is a challenge that many European countries, including Germany, are dependent on imports of fossil resources from Russia.”
Scholz said his government aims to end imports of Russian coal and oil this year. He said that “the same will happen for gas, but that is a process that will require more time.”
Asked whether he was concerned Russia might stop shipping gas to Germany, like it did this week for Poland and Bulgaria, Scholz acknowledged that “any interruption would have consequences for the economic situation.”
He said this was also the reason why no sanctions have so far been imposed on energy supplies from Russia, adding this had been decided “in close cooperation with our partners who themselves are energy exporters and therefore in a different starting position, such as the United States.”
Scholz said: “Whether and what decisions the Russian government takes in this regard one can only speculate, but it makes little sense to do so.”
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has discussed the war in Ukraine in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The leaders also discussed a prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia that took place in Turkey on Wednesday. Erdogan’s office said he told Putin on Thursday that Turkey’s mediation in the exchange was an indication of the importance Ankara attaches to “peace, dialogue and cooperation.”
He reiterated Turkey’s readiness to mediate between Russia and Ukraine and its wish to establish peace in the region “by increasing the momentum” generated in face-to-face talks that were held between the two countries’ delegations in Istanbul late last month.
It was the second telephone call between the two presidents this week. On Tuesday, Erdogan urged Putin to agree to direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart.
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Russia says that Turkey gave it advance notice before moving to bar Russian planes from flying to Syria over its territory.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that Turkey had asked Russia more than a month ago not to send Syria-bound planes over its territory. She added that “the reasons for that were clear to us and the Russian side isn’t using that route.”
Zakharova made the comment when asked about Turkey’s weekend announcement that it had halted Russian flights to Turkey over its territory from the start of this month.
It wasn’t clear whether the move was related to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Turkey has close relations with both countries and has positioned itself as a mediator.
Russia and Turkey have backed opposite sides in the Syrian civil war.
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Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has said during a visit to the Ukrainian town of Borodyanka that he hopes Bulgarian lawmakers will agree next week to send military assistance to Ukraine.
Petkov was due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv later Thursday. He said after viewing damage caused to Borodyanka during the initial Russian advance that “we cannot be indifferent. We cannot say that this is a Ukrainian problem, we cannot say some people are dying but we are not interested in that.”
He criticized the argument of some politicians in Bulgaria that denying military aid to Ukraine would bring about a faster peace.
Petkov said: “If this is the price of peace, if the Russian state continues to fire and no one can defend himself — is this the peace we want?”
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Mariupol authorities are sounding the alarm about unsanitary conditions in the ravaged port city that they say pose a “deadly danger” to its remaining residents.
Mariupol City Council said on the messaging app Telegram Thursday that “deadly epidemics may break out in the city due to the lack of centralized water supply and sewerage, the decomposition of thousands of corpses under the rubble, a catastrophic shortage of drinking water and food.”
It said that the lives of 100,000 people who still remain in Mariupol, out of 450,000 pre-war residents, may be in danger — pointing to diseases like cholera and dysentery.
The Telegram post cited Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko as saying that “the invaders are not able to provide the remaining population with food, water and medicines — or are simply not interested in that.” He said that “living conditions in the ruined Mariupol are now medieval” and that “an immediate and complete evacuation is needed.”
AP
