LAST UPDATE | 31 Mar 2022
HERE ARE THE latest developments in the war in Ukraine today:
Good morning, Lauren Boland here. We’ll be bringing you all the latest developments on the 36th day of the war in Ukraine.
Here’s a look at what’s happening so far this morning:
Russian troops are preparing for a renewed assault in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Despite a Russian pledge to reduce military activity, shelling has continued in Kyiv and Chernihiv, and Zelenskyy has told the country brace for a new Russian onslaught in the eastern Donbas region.
“We don’t believe anyone, not a single beautiful phrase,” Zelenskyy said in a late-night video message.
“There is an accumulation of Russian troops for new strikes in Donbas and we are preparing for it.”
In Chernihiv, a city covered by Russia pledge earlier this week to reduce military activity, authorities say the area was once again shelled throughout the night.
Elsewhere, frequent explosions were heard from the suburb of Irpin, while officials said a Red Cross facility was hit by Russian strikes in Mariupol.
Ukraine is sending 45 buses to Mariupol to evacuate civilians from the port city – one of the hardest-hit by Russian attacks.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has told the Ukrainian government that Russia said it is ready to “open access” to a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia via the Russian-controlled port of Berdiansk. It said it would observe a ceasefire from 10am local time (7am GMT)
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that buses are heading to the city.
Tens of thousands of peopled have been trapped in the besieged city with limited food, water or medicine.
Previous attempts to agree on a humanitarian corridor have failed despite international pressure.
Meanwhile, a meeting betweeen Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba could be on the cards in the coming weeks.
That’s according to the foreign minister of Turkey,which hosted talks between the two countries this week in Istanbul.
“There could be a higher-level meeting, at least at the level of foreign ministers, within about a week or two weeks,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a televised interview.
“What matters is that the two sides come together and agree on a lasting ceasefire,” he said.
We would like to host a foreign ministers’ meeting as an honest mediator.
“Is everything over? It’s not… Some steps were taken to reduce the tension, even though we don’t see it much on the ground,” he said.
“Some say it’s tactical manoeuvering. Some raise doubts. We are cautious.”
He also praised Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, who was present at the talks, for his “useful role” in working to end the war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is preparing to facilitate the evacuations from Mariupol.
In a statement it said that its teams are “travelling right now with pre-positioned relief items and medical supplies to be ready to facilitate the safe passage of civilians out of Mariupol”.
For logistics and security reasons, we’ll be ready to lead the safe passage operation tomorrow, Friday, provided all the parties agree to the exact terms, including the route, the start time, and the duration.
“It’s desperately important that this operation takes place. The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it.”
The latest intelligence update from the UK’s ministry of defence reports that significant Russian shelling and missile strikes have continued around Chernihiv.
A limited number of Russian units have withdrawn, but many still hold their positions.
Ukrainian forces remain in control of the centre of Mariupol.
In a video address to the Dutch parliament, Zelenskyy has called on the Netherlands to boycott Russian energy exports.
“Be willing to stop energy [exports] from Russia… so you don’t contribute billions to the war,” Zelenskyy told lawmakers.
The EU plans to reduce its dependency on Russian energy imports by two-thirds before the end of this year.
The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands is the largest in the EU and supplies around 4% of the continent’s gas, but the country has turned down the taps in recent years because of earthquakes in the area.
There have been calls since Russia invaded Ukraine for the Netherlands to increase production from the Groningen field.
In his speech to the Dutch parliament, Zelenskyy urged Prime Minister Mark Rutte to back Ukraine’s application for European Union membership.
“Our EU membership is dependent on you,” the Ukrainian president said.
“And you know that too, Mark Rutte,” he said.
The Dutch cabinet previously said that it is a “complex and complicated process”.
Zelenskyy compared the besieged port city of Mariupol to Rotterdam, which the Nazis bombed in May 1940.
“Many European cities are now in the shadow of Rotterdam,” said Zelenskyy.
He received a standing ovation from the Dutch parliamentarians.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said it is probable that tents will be used temporarily to house Ukrainian refugees in Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Today with Claire Byrne, Martin said it is “not just a possibility, but a probability in the short-term that those would have to be used”.
“We have to make the provision for it. We hope we don’t have to and we’re walking through a whole range of options that are there to try and avoid that.”
On Russian tactics and its pressure on the port city of Mairupol, the Taoiseach said that there’s “no doubt, in my view, that it’s the strategy to really target civilians. And Putin wants to create this migration flow and this migration pressure on Europe.”
We have to be clear to President Putin that we will not buckle under that.
On whether he trusts Russian promises to pull back its forces from Kyiv and Cheriniv, the Taoiseach said: ”No, I don’t and actions will have to speak louder than words.”
In Scotland, hundreds of knitters have crafted teddies for Ukrainian children arriving in the country.
Retired primary school teacher and grandmother, Eilidh Dow, started knitting bears for children from Ukraine after spending the winter making “trauma teddies” for young people in distressing environments worldwide.
A Facebook group, Teddies for Ukraine, shared the knitting pattern for the teddies to enable more knitters to create the bears.
Eilidh Dow said that “these children have had their lives turned inside out; so many traumas rolled into one almighty nightmare”.
“We hope this sends a message to Ukraine and its people just how much people in Scotland are thinking about them, how much we care and how much we all want to do what we can to help.”
My colleage Niall O’Connor is here for the next while to take you through the latest developments.
The British Ministry of Defence have produced this map to show that they claim is the current state of play in Ukraine.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 31, 2022
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 31 March 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/GRcIfxoaxN
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/PyOYOM2pM6
My colleague Tadgh McNally reports that Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said a short time ago that there is a lack of willingness by Russia to find a political solution to the situation and he said that the Russian troops are more likely to be repositioned to the Donbass rather than leaving Ukraine.
“According to our intelligence, Russian units are not withdrawing but repositioning. Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region.
“At the same time, Russia maintains pressure on Kyiv and other cities. So, we can expect additional offensive actions, bringing even more suffering,” he said.
Hi all, Lauren back here again. Let’s do a quick recap of what’s happened so far today:
The United Nations says the movement of refugees from Ukraine is a “massive humanitarian crisis” that is growing by the second.
Another 40,000 people fled the country in the last 24 hours and a total of 4,059,105 Ukrainians have left since 24 February, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“We are confronted with the realities of a massive humanitarian crisis that is growing by the second,” UNHCR said.
It noted that millions displaced within Ukraine and 13 million are estimated to be stranded in affected areas or unable to leave.
Among children, UNICEF reports that more than half of the country’s estimated 7.5 million children have been displaced.
2.5 million are displaced internally and two million have travelled abroad.
“As the number of children fleeing their homes continues to climb, we must remember that every single one of them needs protection, education, safety and support,” said UNICEF head Catherine Russell.
Before the Russian invasion five weeks ago, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control, excluding Russia-annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist regions in the east.
From the UNHCR, here’s a breakdown of the number of refugees from Ukraine who have arrived in neighbouring countries.
Many travel onto other countries, while others remain in place.
Poland: Nearly six out of 10 Ukrainian refugees — 2,362,044 so far — have crossed into Poland, with more than 1.1 million children.
Romania: 616,592 people have entered Romania including a large number who crossed over from Moldova.
Moldova: 388,837
Hungary: 368,807
Russia: 350,632. Additionally, 113,000 people crossed into Russia from the separatist-held pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine in the days before the war between 21 and 23 February.
Slovakia: 283,824
Belarus: 11,821
The US says its intelligence has found that Putin’s relations with his staff has deteriorated and he is not being kept fully informed.
The White House earlier gave a briefing on declassified intelligence which found that Putin’s relations with his staff had deteriorated.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said Putin “felt misled by the Russian military”.
Additionally, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters spy agency chief, Jeremy Fleming, said that “Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth” about military progress and Ukraine’s resistance.
However, the Kremlin has unsurprisingly denied the claims from the US and UK.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that they showed “that neither the Department of State nor the Pentagon have real information about what is happening in the Kremlin”.
“They don’t understand President Putin, they don’t understand the mechanism for taking decisions and they don’t understand the style of our work,” he said.
He said “it was not just a pity” that such claims were made, but also that it “causes concern, because such complete non-understanding is what leads to mistaken decisions, to hasty decisions that have very bad consequences”.
The Kyiv Independent reports that a loud explosion was heard in central Kyiv in the last short while
New: Russia has announced that ‘unfriendly’ states will need to pay for gas supplies in rubles, starting tomorrow.
Putin has said that Russia will cut off gas to Western countries that do not pay in rubles from 1 April.
France’s economy minister has responded to say that France and Germany are ‘preparing’ in case Russia cuts gas deliveries.
The EU heavily depends on Russian imports to meet the current rate at which fossil fuels are burned.
In a televised address, Putin said “they must open ruble accounts in Russian banks”.
“It is from these accounts that payments will be made for gas delivered starting tomorrow.”
He said that missing payments will lead to “existing contracts being stopped”.
France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire following talks in Berlin with his German counterpart Robert Habeckas, says: “There could be a situation tomorrow in which … there is no longer any Russian gas.”
“It’s up to us to prepare for these scenarios and we are preparing,” he said.
But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says that countries will continue paying for Russian gas in euros or dollars.
“We looked at the contracts for the gas deliveries,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin.
“They say that payments are made in euros, sometimes in dollars… and I made clear in my conversation with the Russian president that that will remain the case,” he said, referring to a call with Putin yesterday.
Pictured: A woman cries after saying goodbye to her husband in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, where several humanitarian corridors for evacuation lead
I’m wrapping up here for the day and handing you over to my colleague Gráinne Ní Aodha.
Hello, Gráinne Ní Aodha here. Taking over the Liveblog for the afternoon.
The latest breaking development – and it’s good news.
Russian troops who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on 24 February began leaving the station and other exclusion zones today, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom.
“This morning, the invaders announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” Energoatom said on Telegram.
Russian troops “marched in two columns towards the Ukrainian border with Belarus” and a “small number” of Russian forces remain in the station, it said.
“There is also evidence that a column of Russian soldiers who are besieging the town of Slavutych is currently being formed to move towards Belarus,” it said.
Slavutych houses the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
The EU staying in close contact with Zelenskyy.
Held regular talks with President of the European Council @eucopresident. Discussed key issues for us - the negotiation process with Russia, the prospects of restoring peace, as well as 🇺🇦's movement to 🇪🇺 membership. I appreciate the support from our 🇪🇺 partners and friends!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 31, 2022
Denmark is to send 800 troops to Latvia in May, in response to a request from NATO, the Danish prime minister has said.
On Tuesday, the Danish government said it was ready to send 800 soldiers to the Baltics if NATO requested them.
“We have now received a formal request from NATO to place the battalion in Latvia,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a visit to the Baltic nation today.
The troops are due to arrive in May, the Danish military said.
NATO has sent a large number of troops to the alliance’s eastern flank with reinforcements in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Some 100,000 US troops are now present in Europe, more than 40,000 of them under direct NATO command in eastern Europe.
Denmark sent fighter jets to Lithuania before the invasion of Ukraine, and in early March it sent 200 troops to Estonia, two fighter jets to Poland and a frigate to the eastern waters of the Baltic Sea.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on it will be expanding its list of EU figures banned from entering the country in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow over its military actions in Ukraine.
“The restrictions apply to the top leadership of the European Union including a number of European commissioners and heads of EU military structures as well as the vast majority of members of the European Parliament promoting anti-Russian policies,” the ministry said in a statement.
France’s military intelligence chief is shown the door for failing to accurately predict that Russia would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, defence sources say.
General Eric Vidaud had only been in the position since last summer.
Ukrainian volunteers pile sandbags to protect the monument to Princess Olga, the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, and Enlighteners Cyril and Methodius from Russian army missile attacks.
The areas lost to war.
This used to be a place where my family gathered for dinners over the years. Russia turned it to ruble pic.twitter.com/EqVNgbuiCe
— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) March 31, 2022
“Five buses came under direct fire from the enemy as they tried to get to the surrounded city to evacuate people,” Ukraine’s ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said on Telegram.
There were only civilian volunteers on the buses. As a result of the shelling, one person is dead, four were gravely injured.
Denisova said Russian forces were “denying any chance of evacuating peaceful citizens from besieged Chernihiv, essentially holding tens of thousands of people hostage without food, water or heat.”
She said Russian troops were continuously shelling residential neighbourhoods.
Chernihiv, a city of some 280,000 people before the war, has seen the most ferocious bombardment, second only to Mariupol in the south, which has been practically destroyed.
Chernihiv mayor Vladyslav Atroshchenko said earlier this week that the city had lost 350 people during the war, most of them civilians.
Russia promised to “radically” scale back fighting around Chernihiv and Kyiv, but shelling continued there.
“The enemy is moving around the territory of the region. Can we call this a withdrawal of troops? I’m not sure,” regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus said in a video address on Telegram.
Ukrainian soldiers pass on top of armored vehicles next to destroyed Russian tanks in the outskirts of Kyiv. Photo taken today.
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear plant site, AFP said.
The soldiers got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine’s state power company said.
Energoatom, the company, gave no immediate details on the condition of the troops or how many were affected.
But it said the Russians had dug in in the forest inside the exclusion zone around the now-closed plant, the site in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
The troops “panicked at the first sign of illness”, which “showed up very quickly,” and began to prepare to leave, Energoatom said.
Contains additional reporting by AFP and Press Association
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