The Russian President seems to be telling Zelensky that he either does what he wants or, he’s gonna level and grab as much as he can, civilans be damn….
Biden will be in Europe this week…
Putin hs just announced that relations between the US and Russia could be cut based on the Ukraine….
Ukraine rejected Russia’s demand that soldiers defending the embattled southern port of Mariupol surrender at dawn on Monday, even as a powerful blast rocked the capital, Kyiv, and reduced a sprawling shopping mall to rubble.
After nearly a month of fighting, the war has reached a stalemate, with Russia turning to deadlier and blunter methods, including targeting civilians. A New York Times reporter saw six dead bodies at the mall in Kyiv covered in plastic as rescue workers battled fires and pulled more victims from the wreckage Monday morning.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the nation overnight, said that a relief convoy in northeastern Ukraine near the city of Kharkiv had been hijacked by Russian forces. And efforts to reach hundreds of thousands of people trapped in Mariupol remained fraught with danger.
“The enemy desperately does not want civilians to break through,” Olena Zelenska, the president’s wife, said in a statement. “But they will. Please hold on, dear people, I beg you. I will repeat my husband’s words, ‘Ukraine doesn’t abandon her people.’”
Across eastern Ukraine, there were signs that Russia was seeking to consolidate control, including a drive to conscript men to fight in their war effort. At the same time, Ukrainian officials and witnesses said they were forcibly deporting people, including children. Oleg Nikolenko, the spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, said in a statement that 2,389 children were taken from their parents in the Donbas region and sent to Russia on a single day, Saturday. The claim could not be independently confirmed.
In other major developments:
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President Biden is making his biggest diplomatic push of the war. On Monday, he will speak to his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy and Britain. He will travel to Brussels on Wednesday to meet with NATO and European leaders, then head to Poland on Friday.
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The United States has said it opposes Poland’s proposal for a NATO peacekeeping mission.
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The deputy commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Andrei Paliy, died in combat in Mariupol, according to the governor of Sevastopol, the Crimean city where the fleet is based. Paliy is one of several high-ranking Russian officers who have been killed in action in Ukraine.
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President Zelensky called for renewed peace talks with Russia, despite few signs of progress after four days of negotiations last week….
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Russian shelling Sunday near the city center of the capital, Kyiv, killed eight people, according to emergency officials. The attack devastated a shopping center and damaged a nearby high-rise building. Russian troops are now trying to surround the Ukrainian capital, which had nearly 3 million people before the war.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said a Russian shell struck a chemical plant outside the city of Sumy a little after 3 a.m. Monday, causing a leak in a 50-ton tank of ammonia that took hours to contain.
Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed the leak was a “planned provocation” by Ukrainian forces to falsely accuse Russia of a chemical attack…..
CNN is reporting that Russian military units are operating on their own with little overall central control….