Russia – The 110 Russians freed include 72 seamen from commercial vessels held since February while 108 Ukrainian female prisoners of war are released.

Moscow and Kyiv have carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps of the war so far, exchanging a total of 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women, officials from both countries say.

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s staff, said there were 12 civilians among the women freed on Monday.

“Another large-scale exchange of prisoners of war was carried out today,” Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “… We freed 108 women from captivity. It was the first [Ukrainian] all-female exchange.”

He said 37 of the women had been captured after Russian forces took the Azovstal steelworks in the city of Mariupol in May.

Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine, withstood weeks of Russian bombardment. Resistance was concentrated in a dense network of tunnels under its Azovstal steel plant.

“Ukraine does not abandon anyone,” Yermak said. According to him, some of the people exchanged were mothers and daughters who had been held together.

Images released by Yermak showed dozens of women, some wearing coats and military fatigues, disembarking from white buses.

The oldest woman is 62 years old while the youngest is 21, the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said.

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the swap, saying 110 Russians were freed, including 72 seamen from commercial vessels held since February. It said all those returned would be flown to Moscow and provided with medical and psychological assistance.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said some of the released women had been in jail since 2019 after being detained by pro-Moscow authorities in eastern regions.

Source – https://www.aljazeera.com/

Russia and Ukraine swap prisoners, including Ukrainian women
justice

Ukraine War – The UK will provide an additional £1 billion in military aid for Ukraine, a near-doubling in its support for the fight against the Russian invasion.

The new funding takes the military aid given to Kyiv to £2.3bn – and the UK has also spent £1.5bn in humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine.

Boris Johnson said British spending was “transforming Ukraine’s defences”.

The pledge came after President Zelensky urged Nato leaders to do more to help Ukraine’s war effort.

Mr Zelensky told Nato leaders the monthly cost of defence for Ukraine was around $5bn (£4.12bn).

The UK is second only to the US in terms of military aid for Ukraine – the US recently approved a $40bn (£33bn) package of support.

The new British aid will go towards paying for “sophisticated air defence systems”, drones, electronic warfare equipment, and “thousands of pieces of vital kit”, the UK government said.

The new £1bn is set to come from departmental underspends, the UK government said, plus £95 million from the Welsh and Scottish governments’ budgets.

An “underspend” means departments spent less than anticipated, not that government finances were in surplus overall. Public sector borrowing was £151.8bn in the year ending March 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Announcing the extra support, the government claimed the equipment was the first step to helping Ukraine recover territory lost to Russia, on top of their “valiant defence”.

But questions remain about whether the aid will be sufficient.

Addressing Nato leaders at their summit in Madrid on Wednesday via video link, Mr Zelensky said they needed more modern weapons systems and artillery to “break the Russian artillery advantage”.

Read Also – Prince Charles has ‘very emotional’ first meeting with granddaughter Lilibet

“Russia still receives billions every day and spends them on war. We have a multibillion-dollar deficit, we don’t have oil and gas to cover it,” Mr Zelensky said.

Also speaking in the Spanish capital, Mr Johnson said: “Putin’s brutality continues to take Ukrainian lives and threaten peace and security across Europe.

“As Putin fails to make the gains he had anticipated and hoped for and the futility of this war becomes clear to all, his attacks against the Ukrainian people are increasingly barbaric.

“UK weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defences against this onslaught.”

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Ukraine War: UK pledges an extra £1bn in military support
justice

Richard Branson met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday as he toured the war-torn country that has faced ramped-up attacks in recent days from invading Russian forces.

Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, wrote in a letter on his website that he spoke with Zelensky, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kubela and a group of Ukraine business leaders while also visiting some of the sites Russians have attacked since war broke out in February.

“My main purpose in going to Kyiv was to meet and listen to Ukrainians, to understand their fears and concerns and also to learn what business, in partnership with civil society and governments, can do to support Ukraine most effectively,” he wrote.

Branson said he saw Zelensky near the end of his trip for a “personal meeting” that included members of the president’s cabinet.

“The contrast to our first conversation, just two days prior to the invasion, couldn’t be any greater,” Branson said. “In the eyes of the world and his own people, the President has emerged as a rare wartime leader who projects both unbreakable spirit and indefatigable determination to see this war through and repel the aggression.”

Read Also – Elon Musk sued for $258bn over claims he ran a pyramid scheme

Branson first stopped in Poland before he headed to Kyiv where he spoke with business leaders and people on the street.

“Entering a country at war is a humbling and emotional experience. I remembered Kyiv very well from previous visits in 2014 and 2015. It’s a beautiful capital, with a stunning historic cityscape built along the banks of the majestic Dnieper,” he wrote. “But the scars of war are inescapable throughout this sprawling city, most notably in the burned-out shells of residential buildings hit by indiscriminate Russian airstrikes and missile attacks.”

One of the first sites he visited was a residential area that was hit by Russian missile strikes a few days prior. Ukraine capital city was bombed for the first time since early June.

“Looking at the ruins of a burned-out kindergarten, far away from any kind of target of strategic relevance, it is clear these kinds of attacks are not unintended and arbitrary,” he wrote. “They are part of a deliberate strategy to spread fear and terror among Ukraine’s civilian population. I hope the Russian perpetrators of these shocking acts will be held to account.”

Branson also stopped by Gostomel Airport, a short drive from the centre of Kyiv that was the scene of early fighting between Russian and Ukraine forces. There he saw the wreckage of the destroyed Antonov AN-225, the “world’s largest transport plane and the pride of Ukrainian aviation.”

He later had lunch with Kuleba, the foreign minister, and then met with Ukraine business leaders.

Source – https://nypost.com/

Richard Branson meets with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky
justice

Boris Johnson has warned the world against letting “Ukraine-fatigue” set in as he returned from a surprise visit to the war-torn country.

Mr Johnson had pulled out of a planned appearance at a conference of northern Tories on Friday in order to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Asked if he had timed the visit to dodge a frosty reception from red wall MPs following the partygate scandal, he said it was important to show support for Ukraine at a “particularly critical time”.

Speaking to reporters at RAF Brize Norton upon his return, Mr Boris Johnson said it was important to demonstrate the UK’s support at a time when the Ukrainians were “suffering terribly” in the face of the ongoing Russian offensive in the Donbas.

“The worry that we have is that a bit of Ukraine-fatigue is starting to set in around the world,” he said.

It is important we show “we are with them for the long haul” and provide the “strategic resilience that they need,” he said.

Read Also – India: Protesters set fire to trains over plans for new short-term military jobs

He warned it would be a “catastrophe” if Russian President Vladimir Putin won the war.

In his talks with President Zelenskyy, Mr Johnson said Britain would be prepared to train tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops as they continue to fight back against the Russians.

He said Ukrainians deserved help to regain territory but stopped short of calling for the recovery of all the lands Ukraine had lost since 2014, including Crimea.

The PM said that it was important to prevent the Russians from “freezing” the conflict in order to consolidate their gains before mounting another attack.

“We’ve got to make it clear that we are supporting the Ukrainians in their ambitions… to expel the Russians, expel Putin’s armies, from everything that he has obtained since February 24, and make sure the Ukrainians are not encouraged to go for a bad peace, something that simply wouldn’t endure.”

Plagued by challenges at home, Mr Johnson enjoyed a warm reception in Ukraine.

Television footage following Mr Zelenskyy as he showed the prime minister the wreckage of burned out Russian tanks and other vehicles on display in Kyiv’s St Michaels’ Square.

The Tories are widely expected to lose a crucial by-election in Wakefield in West Yorkshire on Thursday.

Source – SkyNews

Boris Johnson warns against ‘Ukraine-fatigue’
justice

Ukrainians Refugees don’t need all their official documents, but it is helpful if they can provide identification cards or passports, birth certificates of children travelling with them and medical documentation.

To get refugee status, they need to be Ukrainian citizens or people legally living in Ukraine, such as foreign students.

There have been reports of people from African countries being prevented from leaving Ukraine.

What help are countries offering refugees?

In countries bordering Ukraine, refugees can stay in reception centres if they can’t stay with friends or relatives. They are given food and medical care, and information about onward travel.

The EU has granted Ukrainians who flee the war a blanket right to stay and work throughout its 27 member nations for up to three years.

They will also receive social welfare and access to housing, medical treatment and schools.

The government of Poland, which has received the highest number of refugees, has said it will need more money than the EU is currently offering in order to host the number of people arriving there.

Moldova, which has the largest concentration of refugees per capita, has also appealed for international help in dealing with the numbers arriving.

Where are people fleeing inside Ukraine?

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, warned people in the east of the country to evacuate ahead of the latest Russian assault, or risk their lives.

It’s not clear how many people were able to leave.

The UN’s 6.5 million figure is based on research carried out by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) between 9 and 16 March.

The actual total is likely to have increased in the subsequent weeks.

Of the 2,000 internally displaced people the IOM surveyed:

• nearly 30% had come from Kyiv, more than 36% had fled from the east of Ukraine and 20% had come from the north
• nearly 40% were now in the west of Ukraine, with less than 3% in Kyiv
• only 5% had left their homes in anticipation of the invasion, with the vast majority fleeing either at the start of the war or when it reached their area

The IOM estimates that more than half of the people who are internally displaced are women, and many are deemed particularly vulnerable because they are pregnant, have a disability or are a victim of violence.

What is being done for refugees within Ukraine?

The UN, which is working alongside other organisations to provide help to people in Ukraine, says it is offering humanitarian assistance “wherever necessary and possible”. This includes:

• giving cash to people for basics like food and rent
• delivering supplies from west to east, including food and tarpaulins for homes damaged by shelling
• providing folding beds to people in bomb shelters
• setting up reception and transit points for internally-displaced people

About 12 million people are also thought to be stranded or unable to leave areas affected by the fighting.

Continue Reading

Ukrainians flee their homes where have they gone?
justice

War in Ukraine – Is the Russian military having to change its plans? Perhaps even reduce the scale of Moscow’s ambitions in Ukraine?

It’s probably too early to tell, but there’s definitely a shift in emphasis.

A top Russian general – Sergey Rudskoy – says the “first stage” of what President Vladimir Putin calls Russia’s “special military operation” has been mostly accomplished and that Russian forces will now concentrate on “the complete liberation of the Donbas”.

This is likely to mean a more concerted effort to push beyond the “line of contact” that separates Ukrainian government-held territory in the east of the country from the Russian-backed separatist “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Read Also – Expo 2020 Dubai – An Exciting and Final Segment of the Nigerian Trade & Investment Forum

The pace of Russia’s advance in other areas of the War in Ukraine remains glacial. Its forces have been pushed back from positions around the capital, Kyiv, and are said to have started digging defensive positions to avoid losing more or prepare for some kind of pause.

It’s probably way too early to conclude that Russia has given up on capturing Kyiv, but Western officials say that Russia continues to experience setback after setback.

On Friday, they said Russia had lost another general – the seventh – and that morale was at rock bottom in some units.

They believe General Rudskoy’s announcement implies that Moscow knows that its ambitious pre-war strategy has failed.

“Russia is recognising that it can’t pursue its operations on multiple axes simultaneously,” one official said.

As many as 10 new Russian battalion tactical groups are being generated, officials say and are heading for the Donbas.

Even before the War in Ukraine began last month, they voiced the fear that Russia would make a concerted effort to encircle and envelop Ukraine’s best fighting units which make up the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), stationed along the line of contact.

Retreat may not mean tame ambitions

A renewed push now could see Russian troops pushing out into so-far unconquered areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, possibly aiming to link up with forces moving south from Kharkiv and Izyum.

And if Russia can succeed in finally pacifying the port of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, then other forces could move north and complete the encirclement of the JFO.

Some of these objectives still seem out of reach. Mariupol’s defenders are putting up a ferocious fight, preventing Russia from fully achieving another of its pre-war ambitions – a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula to the Donbas.

But if Moscow has concluded that it makes more sense to concentrate, for the time being, on achieving one objective at a time, it’s likely to concentrate its firepower, especially from the air.

The Ukrainian military, disciplined and motivated as it is, will need all the help it can get to withstand the pressure.

“I hope that’s where the Western supply of arms will make a significant contribution to Ukrainian forces,” one Western official said.

If the coming days do see a shift of focus to the Donbas, that doesn’t yet mean that Moscow has abandoned its wider ambitions.

“We don’t see a re-evaluation of the invasion as a whole,” a senior US defence official said.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

War in Ukraine: Change of emphasis or admission of failure by Moscow
justice

Vladimir Putin’s alleged love child has deleted her Instagram account after being heavily trolled in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Luiza Krivonogikh, whose Instagram boasted 84,000 followers, faced severe backlash online since her rumoured father gave the orders for Russian troops to attack last month.

As of Monday, all traces of the 18-year-old’s account — which had featured photos of her lavish lifestyle — had been removed.

It wasn’t immediately clear when her page was taken down.

The teen is the daughter of cleaner-turned-multimillionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh, 46, who has long been rumoured to have been Putin’s mistress in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Before the page was deleted, Luiza’s photos were hit with a deluge of hostile comments, including one that read: “Are U sitting in the bunker?? Like a rat?”

Others accused her of being “the daughter of that devil” and “war criminal.”

“She is guilty of passive complicity. It is the same as most of the Germans in the Nazi period,” one writer said.

Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral

Some users commenting on Luiza’s photos urged her to tell Putin to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.

“Call him — if he loves you … maybe you can convince him not to kill,” a commenter wrote.

Another said, “She could at least show that she does not agree with what her father is doing, somehow influence him.”

Luiza, who also goes by the surname Rozova, hadn’t shared any new photos since she abruptly stopped posting about five months ago.

At the time, it sparked concern from her followers who believed she might have been silenced by Putin after she boasted on Instagram about the $4.1 million Monte Carlo penthouse apartment she shares with her mom.

The penthouse she posted photos of and gushed about on Instagram was detailed in a trove of leaked “Pandora Papers” documents in October.

Putin and Svetlana have never commented on their alleged relationship or Luiza’s rumoured paternity. Luiza was outed by the Russian media as Putin’s alleged daughter in 2019.

Putin has two adult daughters, Maria, 36, and Katerina, 35, from his decades-long marriage to former flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva.

Source – https://nypost.com/

Putin’s love child deletes Instagram after verbal abuse over Ukraine
justice

Ukraine – Nearly two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the flow of false or misleading information about the war hasn’t let up and now there are some outlandish theories being shared online.

Some have begun to circulate claims the war is a hoax, a media fabrication, or has been exaggerated by the West in terms of its scale.

We’ve examined some of them.

False claims about “crisis actors”

A video of a young woman and a young man having fake blood applied to their faces has racked up millions of views on multiple platforms.

It is shared as supposed evidence that the war in Ukraine is a hoax and civilian victims are actually “crisis actors” – people hired to act out scenes from an attack.

But the video is unrelated to the war. It was shot in 2020 on the production set of Ukrainian TV series Contamin.

Read Also – ‘Z’ become a Russian pro-war symbol – Ivan Kuliak

The male actor can be seen in behind-the-scenes images from the set tweeted in December 2020.

A video of a news reporter in front of multiple body bags has gone viral on several major social networks and has been spread widely by pro-Kremlin accounts.

Seconds into the clip, one of the body bags start moving, a man removes the cover and is attended to by a photographer.

Social media posts claim the video was shot in Ukraine and proves the war is either a hoax or manufactured by “Western propaganda”.

But the claims are false. The video clip is from a climate change protest in Vienna in early February, as reported by Austrian newspaper Osterreich. Organised by “Friday for Future” climate activists, the depiction of body bags aimed to highlight the danger of carbon emissions to human life.

The same video was shared by conspiracy groups last month with false claims that it showed a Covid “crisis actor”.

False wooden guns claim

A screenshot of a Fox News broadcast showing two Ukrainian men holding what appear to be wooden guns has gone viral.

It is often accompanied by false claims that the war in Ukraine is a hoax and the fact that they are not real guns is proof of this.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60589965

Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral
justice

‘Z’ – Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak is facing disciplinary proceedings by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) for displaying the letter “Z” on the podium next to a Ukrainian rival in Qatar. But what does the symbol mean?

In Russia, the “Z” is fast becoming seen as a staunchly pro-war symbol of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It has been sported by politicians, seen on the sides of cars, vans and advertising hoardings – as well as daubed on bus shelters. It has even been used by Serbs at pro-Russian demonstrations in Belgrade. Photographs have been widely shared on social media.

It has become a social media conversation, says Aglaya Snetkova, a lecturer in international politics at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at UCL. “In many ways, this shows the extent to which Russia is, or has been, very much part of the global world.”

While zed in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is written differently – and looks like a 3 – most Russians recognise Latin letters. Emily Ferris, Research Fellow Russia and Eurasia at RUSI, says the “Z” is a powerful and easily recognisable symbol.

“Often with propaganda, the simplest things catch on the quickest,” she says. “It looks rather intimidating and quite stark. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s a very powerful symbol.”

It has taken less than a fortnight for the “Z” to spread among those supportive of President Putin’s invasion.

In the central Russian city of Kazan, about 60 children and staff at a hospice were photographed outside in the snow forming a giant “Z” in front of their building.

Initially, it was thought that the “Z” was in fact a number “2” – representing the 22 February (22/02/2022). That was the day Russia ratified an agreement on “friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance” with the self-proclaimed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine – Donetsk and Luhansk.

But it is now believed the symbol is simply a way for Russia’s military to identify its own forces.

Last week, viewers to a news programme on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One were told that a “Z” was a common marking on Russian military equipment. The Orthodox Christian pro-Putin website Tsargrad told readers the simple marking could “avoid friendly fire” and couldn’t be “mixed up with anything else”.

‘Z’ become a Russian pro-war symbol – Ivan Kuliak
justice