Plans are in place for three more grain ships to leave Ukraine on Friday, Turkey said, following the departure of the Sierra Leone-registered Razoni on Monday. France has welcomed 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began more than five months ago, authorities said Thursday. Read about the day’s events as they unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
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2:16am: Ukraine says it was forced to cede some territory in the east
Ukraine said it had been forced to cede some territory in the east of the country in the face of a Russian offensive, and the head of the NATO military alliance said Moscow must not be allowed to win the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week described the pressure his armed forces were under in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine as “hell”. He spoke of fierce fighting around the town of Avdiivka and the fortified village of Pisky, where Kyiv has acknowledged its Russian foe’s “partial success” in recent days.
12:29am: Canada will send military trainers to the UK to teach Ukrainian troops
Canada is sending military trainers to the United Kingdom to teach Ukrainians how to fight invading Russian forces, Defense Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday.
Up to 225 members of the Canadian Armed Forces will eventually be based in the U.K. for an initial period of four months, said Anand. They will work alongside counterparts from Britain, the Netherlands and New Zealand in training Ukrainian troops on the basics of soldiering.
“This is an all hands on deck moment for allies and partners that support Ukraine,” Anand said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
An earlier Canadian military training mission based in Ukraine was suspended only weeks before the invasion began.
11:38pm: Zelensky accuses Amnesty of excusing Russian ‘terrorist state’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Amnesty International for excusing Russian acts of “terror” after the rights group said Kyiv’s forces were endangering civilians by establishing bases in residential areas.
“There is no condition, even hypothetically, under which any Russian strike on Ukraine becomes justified. Aggression against our state is unprovoked, invasive and terrorist,” he added.
8:55pm: EU sanctions former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych
EU member states imposed sanctions Thursday on Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian former president Viktor Yanukovych and his son Oleksandr for their alleged role in threatening Ukraine’s security.
In a statement, the European Council said the pair were added to an existing EU sanctions list set up “in response to the ongoing unjustified and unprovoked Russian military aggression against Ukraine”.
7:53pm: Turkey says three grain ships plan to leave Ukraine on Friday
Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said there are plans for three ships to set out from Ukrainian ports on Friday under the deal to unblock the country’s grain exports, his ministry said on Thursday.
Akar also said an empty ship was expected to head towards Ukraine after being inspected in Istanbul. The statement said Akar had held talks with Ukraine’s defence and infrastructure ministers to discuss the situation around grain deliveries.
3:52pm: Ukraine slams Amnesty report findings on military in civilian areas
Ukraine’s foreign minister on Thursday criticised as “unfair” a report from Amnesty International alleging Kyiv put civilians at risk by stationing troops in residential areas as it fights Russia’s invasion.
In a report released Thursday, Amnesty International said its researchers found that Ukrainian forces have exposed civilians to Russian attacks at times by basing themselves in schools, residential buildings and other places in populated areas.
Amnesty also said it found Ukrainian forces using hospitals as military bases in five places, which the human rights group called “a clear violation of international humanitarian law”.
“This behaviour of Amnesty International is not about finding and reporting the truth to the world, it is about creating a false equivalence – between the offender and the victim, between the country that destroys hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories, and a country that is desperately defending itself,” Dmytro Kuleba said in a video posted on Facebook.
1:30pm: Zelensky says Schroeder remarks for a ‘negotiated solution’ with Russia are ‘disgusting’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was “disgusting” for former European leaders to work for Russia, in an apparent reference to former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s comments that Moscow wanted a “negotiated solution” to the war.
The war-torn country’s leader spoke out in his daily address on Wednesday, after the publication of an interview in German media in which Schroeder called for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “The good news is that the Kremlin wants a negotiated settlement,” the 78-year-old, the immediate predecessor of Angela Merkel, was quoted as saying after he confirmed meeting Putin in Moscow last week. Schroeder has also called on Berlin to reconsider its position on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
“It is simply disgusting when former leaders of powerful states with European values work for Russia, which is fighting against these values,” Zelensky said in the video address, without referring to Schroeder directly.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to huge public pressure in Germany for Schroeder to turn his back on Putin and to sever his ties with Russia’s energy giants. Schroeder was chairman of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Rosneft.
1:30pm: Russian shelling kills 8 at bus stop in east Ukraine
Russian shelling of a bus stop Thursday in the frontline east Ukraine town of Toretsk killed eight people and left four wounded, the regional governor said. “According to preliminary information, there was artillery fire. They hit a public transport stop, where there was a crowd of people at that time,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Ukraine-run Donetsk region administration, wrote on telegram.
10:49 France welcomes 100,000 Ukrainian refugees
France has welcomed 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began more than five months ago, Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office for Immigration and Integrain (Ofii), told AFP on Thursday.
“Since Wednesday evening, the 100,000 threshold” of people displaced by the conflict in Ukraine “has been passed”, said Leschi, confirming information published in French daily Le Figaro.
9:08am: UN nuclear watchdog appeals for access to Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia power plant
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog appealed for access to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, now controlled by Russian forces to determine whether it was a source of danger.
Contact with the Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which is at Zaporizhzhia and is being operated by Ukrainian technicians, was “fragile” and communications did not function every day, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi told Swiss paper Tages-Anzeiger.
“We can’t afford faulty communication with the plant in areas relevant to safety. We know of allegations that live ammunition is stored in the plant, that there are attacks on the power plant,” he said in interview published in German. “Frankly, if I don’t have access, I can’t determine that. There are contradictions between the accounts of the Russian and Ukrainian sides. I receive information, I also mention it in my situation reports, but I have no way of determining whether it corresponds to the facts.”
A Russian-installed official in Ukraine said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had repeatedly used Western arms to attack the plant, which has two of six reactors operating and has been the subject of repeated warnings from Ukraine, the West and Russia.
8:15am: Russian troops shell towns near Kharkhiv
Ukrainian authorities in the East said that several towns have been shelled in the last hours, including in the region of Kharkhiv. In the Donetsk region, Kyiv has launched mandatory evacuations due to hard shelling. But many refuse, claiming they don’t have anywhere else to go.
7:45: Ukraine warns of new Russian southern offensive
On the battleground, Russian forces were engaged in considerable military activity, firing from tanks, barrel and rocket artillery in several parts of Ukraine, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Thursday. Ukraine said Russia had begun creating a strike group in the Kryvyi Rih direction and that it could be preparing new offensive operations in southern Ukraine.
The steel-producing city of Kryvyi Rih, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grew up, lies around 50 km (30 miles) from the southern frontline, between the Russian-occupied city of Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv.
2:00am: Zelensky reportedly seeking ‘direct talks’ with China to help end Ukraine war
Ukraine is seeking an opportunity to speak “directly” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help end its war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.
In an interview with SCMP, the Ukrainian leader urged China to use its outsize political and economic influence over Russia to bring an end to the fighting.
“It’s a very powerful state. It’s a powerful economy … So (it) can politically, economically influence Russia. And China is [also a] permanent member of the UN Security Council,” the report quoted Zelensky as saying.
12:34am: US Senate passes resolution ratifying Sweden and Finland’s membership to NATO
The US Senate ratified the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO Wednesday, strongly backing the expansion of the transatlantic alliance in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Senate voted 95 to 1 in favor of the two Nordic countries’ accession, making the United States the 23rd of the 30 NATO countries to formally endorse it so far, after Italy approved it earlier Wednesday and France on Tuesday.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)
