Russia has not taken control of Bakhmut, says deputy mayorThe deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets.
Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There is fighting in the city and there are also street fights but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces they still haven’t taken control over the city.
He said of the Russian attack:
Their only goal is killing people and the genocide of the Ukrainian people…the tactic that the Russians are using is the tactic of parched land.
They want to destroy Bakhmut, they want to destroy the city…and I honestly can’t understand why they’re doing this.”
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut, Oleksandr Marchenko, pictured in November last year. REUTERS/Joseph Campbell Photograph: Joseph Campbell/ReutersHe said they believed there were approximately “4,000 or 4,500” Ukrainian civilians in the city adding that “they did not know for sure” the exact number.
Those who are in Bakhmut are living in the shelters “there’s no water or gas or electricity”, he said, but they have been given heaters.
He added:
The city is almost destroyed and there’s not a single building that has remained untouched in this war.
There are completely detroyed, districts, buildings and apartment blocks.”
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G20 audience laughs as Russian foreign minister says Ukraine war ‘was launched against us’ – videoSergei Lavrov’s description of Russian invasion as ‘the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people’ was met with laughter at an event in Delhi. The foreign minister said Moscow would be looking for alternative energy partners, adding: ‘India and China are certainly among them’.
Ukraine EU membership talks could begin ‘this year’ – European Parliament presidentEuropean Parliament president Metsola attends a meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy in Lviv. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/ReutersThe president of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday.
Metsola, who was in the western city of Lviv, said:
I am hopeful that accession negotiations can begin already this year.
Ukraine’s future is in the European Union.”
Brussels granted Kyiv formal candidate status in June last year, four months after Russia launched an all-out invasion, but the process of joining the European Union usually takes several years, Agence France-Presse reports.
A final decision will depend on EU member state governments, some of which are sceptical that Ukraine can recover from war and enact the necessary democratic and anti-corruption reforms to qualify for membership any time soon.
But Metsola, who met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, is among those in Brussels who are optimistic that both the membership bid and reforms can be fast-tracked.
She said:
The pace with which the Verkhovna Rada and the government is making progress on the EU application impresses me.
In a message on social media after the meeting, Zelenskiy thanked Metsola for her role in securing the European Parliament’s support for the membership application.
He said:
Ukraine aims to complete the implementation of the recommendations of the European Commission as soon as possible and to start negotiations on joining the EU already this year.”
Once formal negotiations begin, the European Commission will have to judge whether Kyiv has met the EU membership criteria in terms of good governance, democratic freedoms and the rule of law and then issue its opinion.
Then, the leaders of the 27 current EU memberships will decide if and when to admit Ukraine.
The process has often taken more than five years and for some candidates such as Turkey and the countries of the western Balkans it has all but ground to a halt.
A worker welds part of a shelter in a plant of the Metinvest company, in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Photograph: Thibault Camus/APThe Associated Press reports on the steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine where instead of its usual job of repairing mining equipment some workers are busy making metal bunkers for front-line troops.
The report adds that Ukrainian mining and metals company Metinvest launched the project, and the plant workers say they are happy to contribute to the resistance to Russia’s invasion.
They have already shipped 123 of the structures to areas that include eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces.
Workers weld and cut metal as they build a shelter. Photograph: Thibault Camus/APEach shelter requires nearly two tons of steel. The bunkers can accommodate up to six soldiers and need to be buried 1.5 metres (about 5 ft) underground,” the Associated Press adds.
“This is so they can rest, sit out the attacks,” said Petro Zhuk, who manages the 40-person team building the shelters.
The structures take 165 man-hours to produce including the prefabrication, his team can build one a day, Zhuk said.
Vitalii Yevzhenko, 54, a plant worker involved in assembling the bunkers, said he believes what he and his colleagues are doing is very important.
This is for the victory of Ukraine. The sooner the war ends, the better it will be.”
Germany is making slow progress in enforcing sanctions against Russian oligarchs and institutions, according to government numbers seen by Reuters on Saturday.
Germany has frozen around €5.25bn ($5.57bn) in assets belonging to sanctioned oligarchs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the German finance ministry.
The figure was €4.28bn six months ago.
The ministry shared the information in reply to a request from Christian Goerke, a member of the German parliament.
Goerke said:
Since December, only €200m in oligarch assets have been frozen, and for half a year, just one billion.
Not a single oligarch has reported his assets since December.”
Under Germany’s sanctions law, targets of European Union sanctions must declare their assets immediately, under penalty of a fine or up to a year in prison.
Eight oligarchs have reported 31 asset positions to the Bundesbank so far, according to government figures. The value equals about €577m. It is distributed among account balances, company holdings and securities.
The Kyiv Independent reports that the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is in talks with the Ukrainian officials about building a tank plant in Ukraine, citing a report in the magazine Der Spiegel.
According to the company’s boss, Armin Papperger, a plant could be set up in Ukraine for around €200m and could produce up to 400 Panther-type main battle tanks annually.
Papperger described the talks with the Ukrainian government as “promising”, adding that he hoped for a decision “within the next two months”.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, called for more concentrated help for Ukrainian forces. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The GuardianMore from BBC Radio 4’s Today.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, told the programme that some countries view the conflict in Ukraine as a “European war”.
He said:
There are many countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where the battle of the narrative has not been won, and that’s something that I think the West absolutely need to focus on.
I think there needs to be a recognition that many of the impacts of the war are hitting particularly African countries and other parts of the world very hard and that support needs to be given… and avoid the perception this is very much seen as a European war.”
On Bakhmut he said:
The Ukrainians have arguably achieved a strategic success thusfar in forcing the Russians to expend vast amounts of manpower and equipment in what is likely to be, if they take it, a Pyrrhic victory…”
He also urged for speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine.
What we’ve seen from the West and Nato countries is a sort of incremental supply … it’s dribbled in rather that coming in in a concentrated way. If they’d had the stuff that they need months ago, we probably wouldn’t be where we are now. So this places a real imperative on speeding up the supply, the integration, the logistics support, the training and all the other stuff that needs to be done to give the Ukrainians the tools they need to do the job.”
Russia has not taken control of Bakhmut, says deputy mayorThe deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets.
Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There is fighting in the city and there are also street fights but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces they still haven’t taken control over the city.
He said of the Russian attack:
Their only goal is killing people and the genocide of the Ukrainian people…the tactic that the Russians are using is the tactic of parched land.
They want to destroy Bakhmut, they want to destroy the city…and I honestly can’t understand why they’re doing this.”
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut, Oleksandr Marchenko, pictured in November last year. REUTERS/Joseph Campbell Photograph: Joseph Campbell/ReutersHe said they believed there were approximately “4,000 or 4,500” Ukrainian civilians in the city adding that “they did not know for sure” the exact number.
Those who are in Bakhmut are living in the shelters “there’s no water or gas or electricity”, he said, but they have been given heaters.
He added:
The city is almost destroyed and there’s not a single building that has remained untouched in this war.
There are completely detroyed, districts, buildings and apartment blocks.”
David Smith
Marjorie Taylor Greene said Biden is ‘putting the entire world at risk of world war three’. Photograph: Dominic Gwinn/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/ShutterstockMarjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, giving added voice to a grassroots revolt in the party that threatens bipartisan support for the war against Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The Georgia congresswoman is a notorious provocateur who has made racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements and promoted bizarre conspiracy theories.
Yet she has emerged as a prominent voice in the House of Representatives after forging a bond with the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who vowed that Republicans will not write a “blank cheque” for Ukraine.
Greene told the Guardian that Joe Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”, a view widely held at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), America’s biggest annual gathering of conservatives.
“I think the US should be pushing for peace in Ukraine instead of funding and continuing a war that seems to be escalating and putting the entire world at risk of world war three,” Greene said during CPAC at the National Harbor in Maryland on Friday.
Greene called for US funding to cease immediately, insisting that, while she voted for a resolution to support the Ukrainian people and condemning Russia’s invasion, “we are actually accelerating a war there”.
She added: “We should be promoting peace. Europe should have peace and the United States should do their part. Ukraine is not a Nato member nation and Joe Biden said in the beginning he would not defend Ukraine because they’re not a Nato member nation. It doesn’t make sense and the American people do not support it.”
You can read the full report here:
Ukraine’s top prosecutor has said the country is moving towards opening an office of the international criminal court as Kyiv seeks to establish a special tribunal to prosecute the leadership in Moscow.
The ICC is currently investigating possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian troops during the war on Ukraine but it has no mandate to pursue the broader crime of aggression.
“Today, the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine approved a memorandum between the Ukraine government and the international criminal court, which will allow the opening of the office of the prosecutor of the international criminal court in Ukraine in the near future,” Andriy Kostin said.
Kostin told a justice conference in Lviv it will “allow the ICC prosecutor to more fully investigate international crimes committed in Ukraine”.
“However, there are currently no legal mechanisms that would allow the ICC to bring to justice for the crime of aggression those who planned and launched this brutal and unprovoked war,” Kostin said.
“This requires the establishment of a special international tribunal,” he added.
Speaking at the conference, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukraine “will further strengthen our relationship with the ICC”.
“Russian president Vladimir Putin and all his accomplices must receive lawful and fair sentences,” Zelenskiy said, adding that “over 70,000 Russian war crimes” have been registered in Ukraine.
Russian defence minister visits troops in UkraineThe Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
In a statement published on Telegram, the country’s defence ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the South Donetsk direction”.
In video published by the ministry, Shoigu is seen awarding medals to Russian military personnel and touring a ruined town with the district’s commander, Col Gen Rustam Muradov.
Russia’s top military chiefs have visited the frontline in Ukraine only sparingly since Russia invaded the country a year ago.
Shoigu, who has served as defence minister since 2012, has come under harsh criticism of his performance during the war from pro-war advocates, with Wagner Group mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last month accusing him and others of “treason”.
Sergei Shoigu (right) tours a ruined town with Col Gen Rustam Muradov in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine. Photograph: Russian defence ministry/ReutersExcept, he wasn’t joking …
Speaking in India, whose government has been sympathetic to Putin’s claims on Ukraine and helped Moscow mitigate the effect of western sanctions, Lavrov says “the war we are trying to stop was launched against us.”
The audience laughs at him.
— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 3, 2023 Ukrainian forces under ‘severe pressure’ in Bakhmut, UK saysUkrainian resupply routes out of the besieged city of Bakhmut are becoming “increasingly limited”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
In its latest intelligence update, the MoD tweeted that Kyiv is “reinforcing the area with elite units” and destroying key bridges, but Russian forces are making further advances.
“The Ukrainian defence of the Donbas town of Bakhmut is under increasingly severe pressure, with intense fighting taking place in and around the city,” the MoD said.
“Regular Russian Army and Wagner Group forces have made further advances into the northern suburbs of the city, which is now a Ukrainian-held salient, vulnerable to Russian attacks on three sides.
“Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, and within the last 36 hours two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed, including a vital bridge connecting the city to the last main supply route from Bakhmut to the city of Chasiv Yar.
“Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the town are increasingly limited.”
A destroyed van amid damaged buildings on an empty street in Bakhmut. Photograph: Reuters“It’s really frightening, especially at night,” Tetiana, 52, tells the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont. “Before we could tell who was firing, whether it was our guys or the Russians. Now it’s too loud to tell.”
Read Peter’s account from Kupiansk, a city liberated by the Ukrainian military in September but now once again under threat of Russian occupation.
Last routes out of Bakhmut under intense Russian shellingRussian artillery is pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city in the east of Ukraine.
Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.
A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was damaged by Russian tank shelling.
Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline in a sign that Ukraine was not yet ready to give up the city.
To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited Bakhmut on Friday for briefings with local commanders on how to boost the defence capacity of frontline forces.
Denys Yaroslavskyi, a commander of a Ukrainian army unit in Bakhmut, told Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to rotate to more secured positions, describing the situation on Friday as “a slaughterhouse on both sides”.
The head of Russia’s Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had earlier said the city was almost completely surrounded with only one road still open for Ukraine’s troops.
A Ukrainian armoured personnel carrier on a road outside Bakhmut. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty ImagesWelcome and summaryHello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Our top story this morning:
There have been reports of intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, in an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the besieged city.
A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was also damaged by Russian tank shelling.
But in a sign that Kyiv was not yet ready to give up Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline. To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.
More on this story soon. Here are the other key recent developments:
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, met at the White House on Friday, where both leaders praised each other’s country’s support towards Ukraine. “As Nato allies, we’re making the alliance stronger and more capable,” Biden said. Scholz told Biden that it was important that the US and Germany organised in “lockstep” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, made an unannounced trip to Ukraine on Friday, according to Department of Justice officials. Garland had traveled to the western city of Lviv on an invitation from the Ukrainian prosecutor general, USA Today reported officials saying.
Serbia has denied that it has supplied weapons to Ukraine, its foreign minister said. Following Moscow’s demand on Thursday to know whether Serbia provided thousands of rockets to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Ivica Dačić said that zero weapons have been exported from the country to any parties involved in the “conflict”.
The US has announced a new military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said he is confident that western countries will supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he is optimistic that the war will end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expects to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.