Ukraine live briefing: Blinken and Lavrov meet in New Delhi
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Key developments
- The Russian Volunteer Corps, which calls itself a group of anti-Kremlin fighters, claimed responsibility for an attack Thursday on Russian territory that Russia’s federal police earlier blamed on “armed Ukrainian nationalists.” The federal police said the attackers struck a village in the Bryansk region, near Russia’s border with Belarus. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the episode as a “terrorist act,” saying that the fighters opened fire on civilians. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the Russian report a “classic deliberate provocation.”
- No visual evidence of the attack had emerged by Thursday morning. Russia has a history of so-called “false flag attacks,” or attacks staged or carried out by Russia and blamed on others.
- The Russian Volunteer Corps called itself a “liberation army that came to its own land” and urged Russians to “take up arms and fight Putin’s bloody regime” in a video posted to social media. It also said the Russian claim that Ukrainians entered Bryansk was “a lie of the Kremlin propagandists.”
- Putin said the attack in Bryansk was a “terrorist act” by “people who set out to deprive us of historical memory, history, traditions, and language.” Addressing an online ceremony for teachers, he added: “They opened fire on civilians. They saw that it was a civilian car and that children were sitting there.”
- Blinken and Lavrov’s encounter lasted less than 10 minutes, during which Blinken urged Russia to reverse its decision to suspend cooperation in the New START nuclear arms treaty and to accept a U.S. proposal for the release of American citizen Paul Whelan, said a senior State Department official familiar with the discussion.
- Russia’s war on Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda at the G-20 meeting. The talks come amid high tensions between the United States and China, with White House officials warning that Beijing may step in to aid Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Battleground updates
- Ukrainian authorities will exhume bodies from a newly discovered burial ground in Bucha, the area near Kyiv where alleged atrocities last spring set off worldwide outrage and were condemned by world leaders as evidence of Russian war crimes. The exhumation is set for Wednesday afternoon local time. Officials had thought they reached a final death count in August — 458 bodies — but the exhumation is set to raise that figure.
- Russian forces are making advances in Bakhmut, the besieged city in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has intensified, Ukrainian military officials and the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Wednesday. Geolocated footage from Wednesday showed that Russian forces have advanced on the southern limits of the city, the ISW said. Analysts say capturing the city would be a largely symbolic victory for Russia.
- A Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia killed two people overnight, Anatoly Kurtev, the city’s acting mayor, said on Telegram. He added that people were trapped under the rubble of a five-story residential building damaged in the strike and that the injured were being evacuated.
- Russia is probably trying to further constrain the International Atomic Energy Agency’s presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said. In early February, the nuclear watchdog agency was forced to delay a rotation of personnel at the plant for security reasons. Later that month, dozens of detonations occurred near the plant, the ISW said.
Global impact
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Beijing not to supply weapons to “the aggressor” and to use its sway with Moscow to “push for the withdrawal of Russian troops” from Ukraine. Scholz said it was disappointing that China has not yet condemned the war. He made the remarks Thursday in a speech to Germany’s parliament to mark one year since he declared to the body that the war was a “turning point” for the world.
- Proposed amendments to Russian wartime censorship laws could further outlaw dissident speech, notably by making it illegal to criticize “volunteer formations” such as the Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group. The amendments were proposed Wednesday in the Russian parliament and face a vote this month. Lawmakers proposed a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for anyone found guilty.
- President Biden signed an executive order extending a “national emergency” over the war in Ukraine on Wednesday. The order said Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine “continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
- The Sakharov Center, a museum in Moscow named for Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was forced to close amid Russia’s wartime purge of human rights activists. The center has until the end of April to dismantle its museum exhibition focused on the repressions of the Soviet gulag and to remove Sakharov’s archives and his bust.
From our correspondents
Pregnant Russians are streaming into Argentina. Officials are suspicious. The war has sparked an exodus of Russians, more than 22,000 of whom have arrived in Argentina in the past 14 months. Some of them were pregnant, including Natasha Slepenkova, 30, report David Feliba, Samantha Schmidt and Natalia Abbakumova.
Argentina is one of few countries around the world that have allowed Russians to enter — and it grants citizenship to children born on Argentine soil, offering them passports at a time when doors are shutting to their parents around the world.
John Hudson, Natalia Abbakumova and Kate Brady contributed to this report.
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