Warning: These updates contain details that are of concern.
KYIV, Ukraine – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged all Spanish companies to suspend all trade with Russia and called for tougher Western sanctions against Moscow that would include a ban on Russian oil imports.
Speaking in a video speech to the Spanish parliament on Tuesday, Zelensky denounced Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukrainian cities, saying they represented war crimes for which Russian officers would have to face an international tribunal.
Zelensky said “sanctions must be really strong.”
“How are Russian banks allowed to generate income, even when the Russian army is torturing ordinary citizens to death in Ukrainian cities, how can European companies do business with the state that is deliberately destroying our people?” asked.
In an emotional speech, he drew parallels between Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and the 1937 bombing of the Basque city of Guernica by Nazi aircraft during the Spanish Civil War.
Zelensky said that “the fate of the whole European venture, the values that unite us all” is decided in Ukraine and urged Spanish lawmakers “to do even more to force Russia to start seeking peace and respecting international law.”
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LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called on the Russian people to seek the truth about a war he has described as a “stain on Russia’s honor”.
In a video message, Johnson said the Russians were being held in the dark over the invasion of Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin “knows that if you could see what was happening, you would not support his war.”
Johnson said Russian authorities were hiding the truth about the “sick” killings of civilians and other crimes, which “betray the confidence of every Russian mother who proudly bids farewell to her son as he heads to join the army.”
He told the Russians that they only needed a VPN internet connection to gain access to independent information from around the world.
Switching from English to Russian, Johnson said: “Your president is accused of committing war crimes. “But I can not believe he is acting in your name.”
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WASHINGTON – The United States and its European allies will impose tough new sanctions, including a ban on new investment in Russia on Wednesday, a US official said in retaliation for Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the announcement.
The joint action will include a ban on new investment in Russia, tougher sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and more sanctions on Russian government officials and members of their families.
The official said they would promote Russia’s economic, financial and technological “isolation” from the rest of the world as punishment for its attacks on civilians in Ukraine.
– AP author Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
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ANKARA, Turkey – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that everyone in the Russian leadership and army involved in the war is responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine.
In an interview with Turkish television station Haberturk in Kyiv on Tuesday, Zelensky also accused Russia of trying to hide its actions in the besieged southern city of Mariupol and did not want humanitarian aid to enter the city “until everything is cleared”.
Zelensky spoke after the discovery of civilian bodies in cities around Kyiv that had been recaptured by Russian forces.
“In my opinion, the Russian military-political leadership and all those who took part in planning this war and all those who gave this order committed war crimes,” Zelensky said in comments translated into Turkish. “We are not dealing with a situation where only one person can be prosecuted and found guilty.”
Regarding the situation in Mariupol, Zelensky said thousands may have been killed or injured there.
“I think Russia is afraid that we will successfully send humanitarian aid to Mariupol and that everyone will see what is happening there,” he said. “Russia does not want anything to be seen until they take control of the city (and) until everything is cleared.”
Zelenski said Turkish ships were involved in efforts to evacuate injured civilians from Mariupol, but gave no further details.
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BUCHAREST, Romania – Authorities in Romania said on Tuesday that the country was deporting 10 diplomats from the Russian embassy in Bucharest.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry said the actions of 10 embassy staffers, who have been declared persona non grata, “violate the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”.
Romania’s move follows a series of deportations of Russian officials from the 27-nation European Union following a wave of criticism and shock following the indictment of Russian troops for war crimes in Ukraine.
By Tuesday, more than 200 Russian diplomats or officials had been deported from at least a dozen countries, including Germany, France and Italy.
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PROVIDENCE, RI – Ukrainian officials are again pressuring Chinese drone maker DJI to block a tool that they say allows Russian troops to find and attack Ukrainian drone pilots.
Ukraine’s top cyber security official Victor Zhora told reporters on Tuesday during a press conference that the DJI AeroScope drone detection tool was “sharing information about Ukrainian drones to Russians”.
Both sides of the war have flown small consumer drones to monitor troop movements and assist in targeting attacks. However, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that they had evidence that DJI’s location and flight information tool for nearby drones worked for Russians, not Ukrainians. A government report called for the exclusion of “all DJI products operating in Ukraine which were purchased and operated in other countries”, such as Russia.
DJI had previously denied such allegations, saying in March that it did not apply privileged treatment, but also could not disable the AeroScope tool. It has openly used technology that could trap its drones in the war zone if Ukraine formally requests it, but the no-fly zone would apply to both Ukrainian and Russian drones, and some will remain. to be able to fly.
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RICHMOND, Va. A senior Ukrainian cybersecurity official says cyber-attacks against his country have escalated in the past two weeks and there are indications that Russian military hackers trying to break into Ukrainian state services have also tried to hack Latvians’s email accounts.
Victor Zora told reporters on Tuesday that a major Ukrainian telecommunications provider, Ukrtelecom, had been attacked on March 28 but had been able to repair most of the affected service within a day.
Kirill Goncharuk, head of intelligence at Ukrtelecom, said the hackers had used an employee’s compromised credentials in Russian-occupied territories to invade his company’s network. He said the officer was OK, but could not reveal additional details for security reasons.
Zhora said the hackers also recently had access to emails from Ukrainian Foreign Ministry staff. He said that despite increased hacking attempts in recent days, he had not seen any successful “complex attack” on any Ukrainian vital infrastructure target.
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HOUSTON – Record-breaking NASA astronaut Mark Vade Haye says he and his Russian colleagues focused on their mission, not on the “heartbreaking” news unfolding in Ukraine while serving on the International Space Station.
His 355-day space flight ended last Wednesday with a landing in Kazakhstan. He returned to Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, the latter of whom also spent a year in orbit.
In his first press conference back to Earth, Vande Hei said on Tuesday that he did not avoid the issue with his Russian colleagues while he was on the space station. “It was not a big discussion, but I asked them how they felt and sometimes I asked sharp questions. But our focus was really on our common mission. “
Vande Hei also cleared up any misunderstandings about the yellow-and-blue flight suits worn by the Russian replacements when they arrived at the space station last month. These were the school colors of their university, said Vande Hei of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, not as a political statement. “People who wore them had no idea that people would realize that it had something to do with Ukraine; I think they were a bit blind to it.”
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UNITED NATIONS – The President of Ukraine told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes, blaming the invading troops for the worst atrocities since World War II.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video appeal, described the atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians in the city of Bucha on the outskirts of the capital Kiev, saying they were no different from other terrorists such as the Islamic State extremist group.
Images of the dead on the ground, particularly from the city of Bucha, have sparked global outrage and led to calls for tougher sanctions and the prosecution of war crimes against Russia.
Zelensky, making his first appearance before the UN supreme body, stressed that there are more places in Ukraine that have suffered similar horror. He called for a court similar to the Nuremberg tribunal set up to try war criminals after World War II.
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WARSAW, Poland – British Foreign Secretary says …