LAST UPDATE | 5 Mar 2022
TODAY MARKS THE tenth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A ceasefire to evacuate residents from two cities in Ukraine has quickly fallen apart today.
Russia said it would observe a ceasefire to allow civilians to leave, but Ukrainian officials said the evacuation was halted amid shelling hours after the deal was announced.
Last night, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy hit out at Nato for refusing to enforce a no-fly zone over the nation.
He said: “All the people who die starting today will also die because of you. Because of your weakness, because of your disconnection.”
Good morning. Orla Dwyer here starting off today’s liveblog bringing you the latest on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Here’s a quick rundown of what has happened since yesterday:
On the Irish side, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney was on Newstalk this morning.
“Irish people are angry. Irish people are disgusted with what they’re seeing. We have war on the continent of Europe on a massive scale,” he said on The Anton Savage Show.
Most people thought that those kind of images had been consigned to history and Russia has decided to change that.
He said this war “changes Europe fundamentally and permanently in terms of how we look to the future, how we have shown that the European Union can come together”.
“What we don’t know is, of course, where this war goes next.”
In an interview on Russian TV yesterday, the Russian Ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov alleged that death threats have been made against embassy staff at their home addresses.
Asked about this, Coveney said that under no circumstances should Russian citizens in Ireland be targeted.
He said Irish people aren’t anti-Russia but are angry about the Kremlin’s decision to “wage war on a European country”.
There’s a reason why Russia has actually shut off Twitter, Facebook and virtually every other western-based media to the Russian public – because they don’t want them to see the truth of what their own leadership are doing.
The Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said the government will donate an extra €10 million – on top of €10 million in humanitarian aid announced last week – to “help the people of Ukraine”.
The Government, on behalf of the Irish people, will donate an additional €10m to help the people of #Ukraine - on top of the €10m in humanitarian aid announced last week.#WeStandWithUkraine
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) March 5, 2022
It was reported earlier that citizens were to be evacuated from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol after surrounding Russian forces announced a ceasefire to allow its population to leave.
Evacuations were due to begin this morning but city officials have since said in a statement on social media that this has been postponed “due to the fact that the Russian side does not adhere to the ceasefire”.
The statement said Russian forces have “continued shelling both of Mariupol itself and its environs”.
Sky News has published a shocking account of how their team in Kyiv were attacked earlier this week.
A camera operator was shot in the incident.
Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, who was also wounded in the attack, wrote about their journey returning to Kyiv from a nearby town:
We set off, but it was deadly quiet, and it’s fair to say we were concerned. But we travelled slowly forwards towards an intersection. There was rubble in the road, but that’s normal now. There were no soldiers, it all seemed deserted.
And then out of nowhere a small explosion and I saw something hit the car and a tyre burst. We rolled to a stop.
And then our world turned upside down.
The first round cracked the windscreen. Camera operator Richie Mockler huddled into the front passenger footwell. Then we were under full attack.
Bullets cascaded through the whole of the car, tracers, bullet flashes, windscreen glass, plastic seats, the steering wheel, and dashboard had disintegrated.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were later told by the Ukrainians that we were being ambushed by a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad. It was professional, the rounds kept smashing into the car – they didn’t miss.
Medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières said several staff members are sheltering in Mariupol – the Ukrainian port city under attack by Russian forces.
They’ve issued a release with an account from one staff member in the city:
The situation is the same as in recent days. This night the shelling was harder and closer. We collected snow and rainwater yesterday to have some utility water.
We tried to get free water today but the queue was huge. We also wanted to get ‘social’ bread but it is not clear the schedule and the places of distribution.
They said there is still no power, water, heating or mobile connection in the city.
The Kremlin has defended its new legislation that could see people jailed for up to 15 years for publishing “fake news” about the Russian military, saying the country was facing “an information war”.
The BBC temporarily suspended its base of journalists in Russia yesterday in response to the law.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie said it “appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism”.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “The law was necessary and needed urgently because of the unprecedented – not even campaign – but information war that has been unleashed against our country.”
PA has put together an image showing the extent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as of yesterday.
A protest against Russia’s invasion is set to take place outside the GPO at 2pm today.
And Dublin isn’t the only city throwing more support towards Ukraine today with hundreds of protesters already gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square.
A number of protests have been held there since the attack began last week.
Demonstrators have unfurled a giant banner on the steps of the National Gallery reading: “When the last Ukrainian soldier falls, Putin will come for you ladies & gents.”
Many are draped in the blue and yellow national flag of Ukraine.
Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot will suspend all of its international flights from 8 March as Moscow faces down waves of Western sanctions over its invasion.
An Aeroflot statement on the “temporary suspension of all international flights from March 8,” cited new “circumstances that impede the operation of flights”.
The airline said its domestic routes would continue as normal along with flights to Belarus, a country also targeted by a lot of western sanctions.
Belarus was used as a base for Russian soldiers to enter and attack Ukraine.
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was also on the airwaves earlier today.
He said he met Vladimir Putin a few times and “always felt with Putin that he presented himself not so much as the elected president” but rather an “emperor looking for a place alongside Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great”.
He added that Putin “for whatever reason just hates Ukraine” and “sees them as an ungrateful lot”.
Ahern told Newstalk’s The Anton Savage Show that he’s not in favour of closing the Russian Embassy in Ireland, amid calls for the government to expel the ambassador.
“There are Irish people on the border of Russia and Ukraine, there are Irish people in Russia, so you do need to have your contact there,” he said.
Our fact checker Brianna Parkins has debunked a number of social media posts showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in combat uniform.
According to other posts, Zelenskyy has been joined by his wife Olena Zelenska on the front line – with images showing the alleged First Lady armed with a gun in military uniform.
But these images are misleading and in some cases were taken before the current invasion began.
Zelenskyy released a number of social media videos from Kyiv early in the invasion, but his current location is unknown as artillery attacks intensify on the city.
The UK government has said it will make it easier to sanction Russian oligarchs and align those sanctions with the EU and the US over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The UK has been criticised for not doing enough to clamp down on oligarchs’ ill-gotten gains which are frequently invested in luxury real estate in London, a popular destination.
Amendments will be introduced to the Economic Crimes bill, which the government now wants to be passed by the lower House of Commons on Monday, “to crack down on corrupt elites and ramp up pressure on [President Vladimir] Putin’s regime”, a statement said.
The changes “will allow the UK to align more rapidly with the individual designations imposed by our allies such as the US, Canada and the EU via an urgent designation procedure,” the UK government said after criticism that sanctions lists were not always aligned.
Afternoon all, Tadgh McNally here taking over the liveblog for the rest of the afternoon.
Around about now, the #StandwithUkraine protest outside the GPO in Dublin city is getting underway.
There have been a series of protests taking place in the capital in recent days against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, with many taking place outside the Russian embassy in Rathmines.
There were several incidents of paint being thrown on the walls of the embassy, including by Father Fergal MacDonagh, who spoke on RTÉ’s Liveline yesterday.
Following calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a no-fly zone to be created over Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that any country who did so would be deemed part of the war.
He said that any intervention would have “colossal and catastrophic not only for Europe but also the whole world”.
“Any movement in this direction will be considered by us as participation in an armed conflict by that country.”
According to AFP, Putin also dismissed rumours that martial law was being considered in Russia.
“Martial law should only be introduced in cases where there is external aggression … we are not experiencing that at the moment and I hope we won’t.”
In recent days, the actions of the Russian army have been under intense scrutiny, with Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney branding the army’s actions as war crimes.
“They’re war crimes and they should be called that,” Coveney said.
My colleague Céimin Burke has done some work on what war crimes are and whether or not the Russian President could be arrested and put on trial for war crimes in the future.
Human Rights expert, Professor Ray Murphy told him that he believes Vladimir Putin is guilty of the crime of aggression,which involves large-scale and serious aggression using state military force.
Following calls for countries to stop buying Russian gas, Germany has said that it will work to build a liquid natural gas terminal off its North Sea coast in an effort to become less reliant on Russian gas.
Germany’s Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck said that it was “necessary to reduce our dependence on Russian gas as quickly as possible”.
The country currently imports 55% of its gas from Russia and was set to open a second pipeline directly from Russia, Nord Stream 2, before it was cancelled due to the invasion.
It comes as Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called on countries to stop buying Russian oil and to act soon.
Stop Putin. Stop buying Russian oil. Act now. pic.twitter.com/W9OxGqbuBU
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 5, 2022
Photos of the protest against the war in Ukraine outside the GPO are starting to come in now, with hundreds of people turning out this afternoon.
People can be seen carrying banners with “I stand with Ukraine” written on them while wearing the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.
More photos from the protest outside the GPO here.
The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken is currently visiting the border between Poland and Ukraine this afternoon, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have fled to in recent days.
AFP is reporting that he is being told about the humanitarian crisis that was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Blinken said that the US government would be providing over $2.75 billion in funding for humanitarian aid in the region.
“The people of Poland know how important it is to defend freedom,” he said after talks with Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau.
“Poland is doing vital work in response to this crisis.”
According to Polish border guards, over 827,000 people have fled Ukraine into Poland since the war broke out.
Rau said that Poland would continue to take in refugees and that their priority is organising aid for those who have been displaced.
Our priority is organising effective aid to hundreds of thousands, and soon to be millions of refugees.
Over 1.3 million refugees
At least 1,368,864 refugees have fled Ukraine since the war broke out on 24 February, according to the latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
This is almost 160,000 more than were reported yesterday.
The UN has said that more than four million people may flee Ukraine due to the war
1.3 million people have now fled Ukraine to seek safety. Unless there is an immediate end to the conflict, millions more are likely to be forced to flee. Here's how you can help: https://t.co/H2WrdGDq5z pic.twitter.com/WB2016SvDE
— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) March 5, 2022
Italian government seize €140 million in Russian assets
Massive superyachts and property belonging to Russian oligarchs have been seized by the Italian government this afternoon.
The significant seizure, estimated to be worth over €140 million, was announced earlier this afternoon.
These actions follow asset freezes for Russian oligarchs who are close to the Putin regime and were part of sanctions aimed at hitting the wealthiest Russians in the world.
The biggest asset seized today was the “Lady M Yacht”, which belonged to Alexei Mordashov who is a metals magnate with close ties to Putin.
Current estimates value the ship at €65 million.
Another yacht, as well as property on Sardinia and elsewhere in Italy, was also seized.
Breaking: Russia resumes ‘offensive actions’
The Russian defence ministry has announced that it will be recommencing “offensive actions” this afternoon after a ceasefire was agreed to allow civilians flee Mariupol.
Defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said:
Due to the unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to influence nationalists or extend the ceasefire, offensive actions have been resumed at 18:00 Moscow time (1500 GMT).
Earlier today there were reports from Ukrainian officials that Russia had begun shelling the area covered by the ceasefire causing the evacuation to be halted.
A meeting between farming organisations and Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue is being set up due to the disruption to the sector caused by the invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement, McConalogue said that the meeting will take place on Tuesday and will assess the impact of the invasion on the sector and how it can be mitigated.
At times like these, food is our most important resource so, as a Department, we are taking every possible proactive step to ensure that we are agile and can respond to this rapidly evolving situation.
Israeli PM meets with Putin
The Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, has just met with Russian President Vladimir Putin this afternoon to discuss the invasion of Ukraine.
AFP is reporting that Bennet offered to have Israel mediate talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
A statement from Bennet’s spokesperson said:
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has just concluded a meeting in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting lasted for about two and a half hours
While the large protest against the war in Ukraine was taking place in Dublin city centre this afternoon, some protestors did gather outside the Russian embassy earlier today.
The embassy has been splattered with paint in recent days following protests.
In the city centre, thousands attended the rally outside the GPO this afternoon, including the Ukrainian ambassador to Ireland, Larysa Gerasko.
Third round of Ukraine-Russia talks agreed
News is just coming in that a third round of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia is set to take place early next week.
The Kyiv Independent is reporting that the talks were confirmed by Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia and that they are set to take place this Monday.
⚡️Third round of Ukraine-Russia talks to be held on March 7.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 5, 2022
Member of the Ukrainian delegation, lawmaker David Arakhamia, announced the date in a Facebook post.
The International Monetary Fund have said that if the war between Russia and Ukraine were to escalate further, the economic damage would be far worse than it is now.
In a statement this evening, the IMF have said that there would be “price shocks” worldwide and that it would mostly impact poorer households where food and fuel is a higher proportion of their spending.
The IMF said:
Should the conflict escalate, the economic damage would be all the more devastating.
Price shocks will have an impact worldwide, especially on poor households for whom food and fuel are a higher proportion of expenses.
It added that the current uncertainty due to the invasion was “already very serious”.
Blinken meets with Ukraine FM
AFP is now reporting that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is meeting Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba.
The news agency has said that Kuleba has asked the US for jets and air defence systems, while he has also slammed the rejection of a ‘no-fly zone’ by NATO, calling it a “sign of weakness.
Here’s a rundown of the key events so far today:
We’re going to wrap up the liveblog here, thanks for tuning in today. Keep an eye on The Journal for more updates later tonight.
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