Live updates: Biden to announce new sanctions against Russia

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to announce new sanctions against Russia on Thursday while in Brussels for meetings with NATO and European allies, according to a top national security aide.

Biden, who will take part in a special meeting of NATO and address the European Council summit, is also expected to underscore efforts to enforce the avalanche of existing list of sanctions already announced by the U.S. and allies.

“He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who declined to further preview the new sanctions the president will announce.

Biden is travelling to Brussels and Poland — which has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled since the Feb. 24 invasion — looking to press for continued unity among western allies as Russia presses on with its brutal invasion of Ukraine.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

— Ukraine says it has retaken a strategically important suburb of Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Russian siege of Mariupol continues.

— A pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper briefly reported that almost 10,000 Russian soldiers had been killed.

— Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to nine year in prison

— Ukrainian orphans who are headed to refuge in the UK are stuck in Poland due to missing paperwork

— An Associated Press journalist recounts his team’s harrowing escape from Mariupol

Go to https://ift.tt/eBIH2Ca for more coverage

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia’s state TV says another flight from Belgrade to Moscow had to turn back after receiving a bomb threat.

The RTS said Tuesday police are investigating the 8th anonymous bomb alert at the Belgrade airport in 10 days. All previous alarms turned out to be false.

Serbian state media say all the threatening emails came either from Ukraine or Poland.

Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic has blamed the previous threats on unidentified foreign secret services that want to harm Serbia.

Besides Turkish carriers, Serbia’s national airline AirSerbia is the only airline in Europe still flying to and from Russia.

Serbia, which formally seeks European Union membership but has maintained close relations with ally Russia, has refused to join an international flight ban against Moscow in response to the war in Ukraine.

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PARIS — French energy giant TotalEnergies said it has decided to halt all its purchases of Russian oil and petroleum products by the end of 2022 at the latest.

The French company said in a statement it will “gradually suspend its activities in Russia” amid the “worsening situation” in Ukraine.

Russia represented 17% of the company’s oil and gas production in 2020.

TotalEnergies holds a 19.4% stake in Russia’s natural gas producer Novatek.

It also has a 20% stake in the Yamal LNG project in northern Russia. The group said it continues to supply Europe with liquefied natural gas from the Yamal LNG plant “as long as Europe’s governments consider that Russian gas is necessary.”

“Contrary to oil, it is apparent that Europe’s gas logistics capacities make it difficult to refrain from importing Russian gas in the next two to three years without impacting the continent’s energy supply,” the statement said.

TotalEnergies has also decided to put on hold its business developments for batteries and lubricants in Russia. It will provide no further capital for the development of projects in Russia, the statement said.

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BUCHAREST, Romania — Romanian President Klaus Iohannis held a meeting with his Polish counterpart in Bucharest on Tuesday in which the two leaders discussed security issues amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda met with Iohannis at the presidential Cotroceni Palace in Romania’s capital. The leaders agreed to organize a Bucharest Nine meeting ahead of a NATO summit scheduled for June in Madrid, Iohannis told the media.

“We urgently need a consistent and balanced consolidation of the Eastern Flank, a united and strengthened Forward Presence,” Iohannis said. “An increased allied military presence is needed in our country and in the Black Sea region, in response to a strictly defensive response to Russia’s aggression.”

The so-called Bucharest Nine is a group of the easternmost NATO members, which Romania and Poland launched in 2015 to give Eastern alliance members a platform to discuss regional issues and forge a united voice within the 30-country alliance.

Iohannis also said that he discussed with Duda the “deep humanitarian crisis” caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has so far forced more than 3.5 million refugees to flee the conflict into neighboring European countries. More than 2.1 million have already sought safety in Poland, and more than half a million in Romania.

Duda’s visit to Romania comes just two days ahead of an extraordinary NATO summit set to be held in Brussels on Thursday, which U.S. President Joe Biden will attend. Biden is scheduled to visit Warsaw for a bilateral meeting with Duda on Saturday.

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WASHINGTON — Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have been shelling Mariupol from offshore over the last 24 hours, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday.

The official said that there are about seven Russian ships in that area, including several warships, a minesweeper and a couple landing ships.

By contrast, the official said the U.S. did not see indications that ships in the Black Sea were firing on Odesa, as they had done days ago. The officials said the U.S. assesses that the Russians have about 21 ships in the Black Sea, including about a dozen surface combatant warships and some landing ships that carry troops.

According to the official, Russian ground forces are still largely stalled outside Kyiv – with troops still about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of the city, and 15 kilometers (9 miles) northwest of the city. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide the U.S. military assessment.

More broadly, the defense official said the U.S. continues to see Russia struggling to get food and fuel to its force, and has been seeing indications that some troops don’t have proper cold weather gear and are suffering frostbite. The food and fuel shortages have been persistent logistical and supply problems since the early days of the war.

The official said there also are indications that Russia is exploring ways to resupply troops and is considering bringing in reinforcements, but so far there has been no active moves seen to do either. There also are indications that Russian has used a significant number of its precision guided munitions, particularly its air-launched cruise missiles, and is exploring ways to resupply those weapons, the official said.

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Associated Press Writer Lolita Bandor in Washington contributed to this report.

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LVIV, Ukraine — Thousands of Ukrainians arrived by train in the western Ukraine city of Lviv on Tuesday as others departed.

Families exchanged tearful farewells as women and children boarded trains to Poland while men of fighting age stayed behind, barred from leaving the country.

Julia Krytska, her husband and and her son left Mariupol on Saturday, arriving in Lviv on an overcrowded train.

She said they were lucky to get out after volunteers found them in the besieged city that has lost nearly all connection with the outside world.

“The people in Mariupol, they don’t have a chance to be heard,” she told journalists at the train station. “There is no one you can ask for help.”

An air raid siren could be heard blaring over the city.

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CHISINAU, Moldova — The war in Ukraine is severely impacting the physical and mental health of millions of people, World Health Organization regional director Hans Kluge said Tuesday at a refugee center in Moldova.

Since the beginning of the war, more than 367,000 refugees from Ukraine have passed through Moldova, and more than 100,000 people, including 50,000 children, remain in the country.

“Our priority is to help ensure Moldova and all countries involved in the humanitarian response have the infrastructure and expertise in place to face this challenge which is placing a huge strain on resources, both human and financially,” Kluge said at a joint news conference with Moldovan Health Minister Ala Nemerenco.

Around 1,300 refugees in Moldova have requested medical assistance with 400 having been hospitalized since the beginning of the war. Around 100 are cancer and dialysis patients, Nemerenco said.

Nemerenco spoke of Moldova’s challenges in dealing with the influx of refugees, especially those with health problems.

“We must face it, our resources are limited, and we wouldn’t like to see that the burden of this crisis is affecting our citizens,″ Nemerenco said.

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LONDON — A Western official says Ukrainian resistance has slowed Russia’s advance almost to a halt, and Ukraine has repulsed Russia’s attempts to take the strategic southern port of Mariupol despite weeks of bombardment.

But the official said Russian troops have not been pushed back from established positions, and had the capability to keep up a grinding war of attrition for some time — making a rapid breakthrough in negotiations aimed at ending the violence unlikely.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said Odesa, another strategic port on the Black Sea, was a key objective for Russia but there are no indications of an imminent siege.

Odesa has been spared major attack, though Russia has ships operating off the Black Sea coast. The U.S. also says Russia has increased naval activity in the northern Black Sea, but there are no indications at this point of an imminent amphibious assault on Odesa.

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Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says his government would like to see Turkey join sanctions against Russia but said the country, which is talking to both Ukraine and Russia, is playing an invaluable role in trying to end the conflict.

Rutte made the comments during a visit to Ankara Tuesday ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels that is scheduled to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

“We would very much favor Turkey to implement all (of) the sanctions,” Rutte said during a joint news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “But I think we also have to be happy with the fact that Turkey is playing now its diplomatic role and its leadership role in trying to end the conflict.”

Turkey has criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as unacceptable but has also pledged to maintain its close relations with both Moscow and Kyiv, while trying to mediate between the two sides. It has closed the Turkish Straits at the entrance of the Black Sea to some Russian warships but is not imposing sanctions on Russia.

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BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has again dismissed calls to boycott Russian energy supplies in the wake of the attack on Ukraine.

Scholz said Tuesday that the sanctions already imposed on Russia were already hitting its economy “and this will only get more dramatic every day.”

At the same time, the sanctions were designed to be “tolerable” for those imposing them, including in the long term, he said.

“That is why Germany’s position on this question (of an energy boycott) remains unchanged,” said Scholz.

He added that other countries in Europe are even more dependent on Russian oil, coal and gas than Germany “and nobody must be left standing out in the rain in this regard.”

Scholz said Germany is working to diversify its energy supply and that, while this will take time, it will eventually have the same effect as a boycott.

European countries pay Russia hundreds of millions of dollars each day for fossil fuels. Ukrainian officials say this trade effectively finances Russia’s war against their country.

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BERLIN — Germany has condemned the latest verdict against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

In a statement, Germany’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the new prison sentence “is part of the systematic instrumentalization of the Russian judicial system against dissidents and the political opposition.”

The ministry noted that the latest trial took place largely behind closed doors and accused Russian authorities of breaching fundamental principles of rule of law while failing to present any credible evidence against Navalny.

“The German government renews its demand for Navalny’s immediate release,” it said.

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KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian photojournalist has gone missing in a combat zone near the capital, raising fears he could have been injured, killed or taken captive by Russian forces.

The UNIAN news agency reported Tuesday that Maksym Levin has been unaccounted since March 13 when he contacted his friend from Vyshhorod near Kyiv. His friend, Markiyan Lyseiko, said Levin went to the area in his car to report on fighting there.

Lyseiko said Levin left his car near the village of Huta Mezhyhirska and was going to head to the village of Moshchun. Levin hasn’t contacted him ever since and hasn’t been seen online, Lyseiko said.

Levin has worked as a photojournalist and videographer for many Ukrainian and international publications.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday that Ukrainian refugees should not be integrated into the Danish society but must instead return to Ukraine and help rebuild their homeland as soon as possible.

“Being a refugee is temporary, so you have to return and help build up your homeland when you get the opportunity. It gives us the opportunity to help other refugees,” Frederiksen said in Parliament during a debate.

Under a newly adopted law in Denmark, Ukrainian refugees can stay in the Scandinavian country for two years and can work, get an education and have access to health services.

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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief says his discussions with officials indicate “there is enough on the table to cease hostilities now” and seriously negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Tuesday that the war is “unwinnable,” and the only question is how many more lives will be lost and how many more cities like Mariupol will be destroyed before the war moves from the battlefield to the peace table.

“From my outreach with various actors, elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues,” he said, enough to end hostilities now.

Guterres did not state what those elements are or answer any questions.

He said the war is intensifying and “getting more destructive and more unpredictable by the hour.” Ten million Ukrainians have already been forced to flee their homes.

“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” the secretary-general said.

Guterres said “the Ukrainian people are enduring a living hell,” and the war’s reverberations “are being felt worldwide with skyrocketing food, energy and fertilizer prices threatening to spiral into a global hunger crisis.”

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PRZEMSYL, Poland — The flow of refugees from Ukraine into a primary entry point in Poland has slowed to fewer than 8,000 people a day, the city’s mayor said.

That number is six to seven times lower than during the height of the Ukrainian exodus into Poland, Przemyśl Mayor Wojciech Bakun said Tuesday outside the city’s train station. He compared the Polish effort to provide safe harbor for refugees to a marathon.

“After one month, a lot of people are very tired, so we have to think about next month, or maybe, hopefully not, but maybe about years,” Bakun said. “So that’s the main thing at this moment. Not only for Poland, but also for EU countries.”

Poland has established a system to help new arrivals, providing them with immediate assistance and helping arrange travel to other parts of Poland and other European countries.

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BRUSSELS — Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister Nicu Popescu is warning that the plight of Ukrainian refugees in his country could get much worse if the war launched by Russia approaches its borders.

Popescu says that about 360,000 refugees have crossed into Moldova in recent weeks. Around 100,000 of them – equivalent to 4% of Moldova’s population – have remained, and many are minors. The rest have moved further into Europe.

“This is a very, very dramatic speed and scale of a humanitarian situation and, in our assessment, it could get much worse if the frontline approaches our borders,” he told European Union lawmakers on Tuesday.

Russia has troops in Moldova, a country of 2.6 million located between Ukraine and Romania, stationed in the disputed territory of Transnistria. Concern is rife in Europe that Russian President Vladimir Putin might push his forces west though Ukraine to join up with them.

Popescu says that “for now, the situation is calm” in Transnistria, but that things could change rapidly if the fighting spreads.

He says the war in Ukraine has hurt Moldova’s economy, notably its trade, just as the country struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic and an energy crisis.

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MEDYKA, Poland — Ukrainians, mostly women and children, continued to cross into the Polish border town of Medyka on Tuesday.

Viktoria Totsen, 39, arrived there from Mariupol.

“Mariupol is almost 99% destroyed,” Totsen said. “They bombed us for the past 20 days. During the last five days the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere, on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere. We live near the theater in the city center, and, as you know, they damaged the theater. It was horrible and we took a risk and we left. They city is under blockade, and when we left we got (mobile phone) connection, and we managed to find the route to Zaporizhzhia.”

Olena Almazova, 54, fled Kharkiv, a northeast Ukrainian city near the Russian border.

“It is a very difficult situation in Kharkiv,” Almazova said. “Every day they bomb, 40, 50, 60 times a day. They bombed suburbs and city center. They damaged the culture center, they damaged ancient architecture. So far, 700 buildings have been destroyed.”

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says this week’s meeting between NATO leaders should be focused on ways of securing a cease-fire in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and not just on sanctions and deterrence.

“Everyone’s first aim should be a cease-fire,” Cavusoglu told Turkish journalists on the sideline of an Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Pakistan on Tuesday. “It should be to stop the war that is going on right now. Everyone should act responsibly and constructively.”

Cavusoglu continued: “Of course, we need to show unity and solidarity within NATO, we need to show deterrence. But who is paying the price of the ongoing war?”

U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders are scheduled to meet Thursday in Brussels. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the meeting is intended not just to show NATO’s “support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies,”

Cavusoglu said Turkey was pressing with its efforts as a “mediator and facilitator” to end the fighting and was in touch with negotiators on both sides. Turkey was also trying to bring the warring sides to meet face to face again, Cavusoglu said.

Earlier this month, the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey on the sidelines of a diplomacy forum.

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KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian actor is now serving in the Territorial Defense Forces on the outskirts of Kyiv in a unit packed with people from showbusiness.

Sergiy Volosovets said on Monday that the fight against Russian forces has drawn in people from all walks of life.

“There is a lot of very different people here, I met a lot of my friends here, as well as artists,” he said.

“I think maybe their artistic spirit just broke the fear and that allowed them to come and be here. For example in my units there were actors, singers, cameramen, photographers, people related to the showbusiness in various ways. Those people are artists, they believe they could change their country for better as well as defeat the enemy.”

Volosovets has acted in theater, movies and TV and has won awards for his work.

He now commands a unit of 11 men, and oversees the military training of volunteers in a base northeast of Kyiv, a few kilometers away from the frontlines where Ukraine’s army is trying to block the Russian advance towards the capital.

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BRUSSELS — International news channel Euronews says it has been blocked from broadcasting in Russia due to its Ukraine war coverage.

“We firmly condemn this intolerable restriction imposed on millions … in Russia who relied on us to get impartial news,” Euronews said, adding that Russian authorities pulled the channel off air and blocked its websites in Russia.

Euronews said it might launch legal action to continue to freely broadcast in the country. Euronews is broadcast in 160 countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has intensified a crackdown on media and individuals who fail to toe his line on Russia’s war in Ukraine, blocking Facebook and Twitter and signing into law a bill that criminalizes the intentional spreading of “fake” reports.

Euronews said it strongly rejected Russian claims it spread “fake news” and that it allegedly called on Russians to protest the war. It said it faced an “unacceptable threat of criminal liability” due to the new Russian law.

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ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s foreign minister says he intends to personally escort humanitarian aid into the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said Tuesday he had sent an official request to the Ukrainian side to facilitate the sending of humanitarian aid into the city, and an official request to the Russian side to let the delivery in. A sizeable Greek community lives in the Mariupol area.

Dendias did not provide any details on a possible date for the delivery or what the humanitarian aid would consist of.

He made the announcement after meeting with the Greek consul general in Mariupol, Manolis Androulakis, who arrived in Athens last Sunday after being evacuated from the city on March 15.

Androulakis was the last European Union diplomat to leave the city, which has been pummeled by Russian forces for weeks. Living conditions in the city are dire.

On arriving in Athens, Androulakis said civilians in the city were being hit “blindly and indiscriminately” and likened Mariupol to other cities decimated by war in the past, such as Guernica, Aleppo and Grozny.

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WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s president has compared the conduct of Russian forces in Ukraine to that of Adolf Hitler’s infamous SS troops during World War II.

“Today, the Russian army is behaving in exactly the same way … as the German SS,” President Andrzej Duda said during a visit to Bulgaria on Tuesday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, noted that Russia had already violated international law when it attacked Georgia in 2008 and first invaded Ukraine in 2014.

He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians in Ukraine would be brought before international courts.

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PARIS — The former Paris-based Europe correspondent for Russian state-controlled broadcaster Channel One says she quit her job earlier this month over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Zhanna Agalakova, who used to be a newsreader at the channel, said she believes Russian networks have been commandeered by the Kremlin to broadcasts lies and propaganda.

The 56-year-old journalist said there is little independent media in Russia, meaning that Russians are being “zombified” by the stream of media-sponsored untruths.

Agalakova quit March 3, leaving the channel officially on March 17.

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BELGRADE, Serbia — A senior Serbian official says Belgrade will never impose sanctions or join the Western “hysteria” against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Serbia’s Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said Tuesday: “Serbia will never be part of the anti-Russian hysteria in which the property of Russian citizens and the property of the Russian Federation is stolen, just as we will not ban Russian media.”

The Balkan country is a staunch ally of Russia, though it has condemned its invasion of Ukraine.

Serbia is seeking membership of the European Union, but it is the only European country that has refused to join international sanctions against the Kremlin.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/f0Ng3n9