Today, March 14, is Day 20 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here’s what you need to know about the war now:
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded 1,663 civilian casualties in Ukraine from February 24 until March 13: 596 killed and 1,067 injured.
The numbers include: a total of 596 killed (124 men, 85 women, 6 girls, and 10 boys, as well as 27 children and 344 adults whose sex is yet unknown); a total of 1,067 injured (97 men, 69 women, 14 girls, and 4 boys, as well as 39 children and 844 adults whose sex is yet unknown).
The killing of Brent Renaud, a 50-year-old American journalist in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, is the second reported death of a journalist in this war, and another tragic reminder of the dangers faced by media professionals covering conflict. A Ukrainian camera operator, Yevhenii Sakun, was reported to have been killed after Kyiv’s TV tower was shelled in the early days of the invasion.
Last July, the Pulitzer-prize winning Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed covering the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan. And in December last year, Myanmar journalist Sai Win Aung died in artillery fire while covering the plight of refugees in the southeastern state of Kayin, where the Myanmar army is battling an ethnic armed organisation.
Andriy Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv region police, said in a Facebook post that Renaud had been shot by Russian forces.
Irpin is 25 km north-west of Kyiv. Over the last few days, it has been battered by Russian troops assembling to advance into the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainian defence forces have been trying to stop the advance.
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The civilian population of the small town has been badly hit by the fighting.
At the time he was killed, Renaud, an independent documentary film maker, was travelling in a taxi with two other journalists, trying to reach a spot where they could speak to civilians fleeing to safety from the fighting.
The two other journalists were injured in the same shooting incident that killed Renaud. From his hospital bed, Colombian-American Juan Arredondo, one of the two injured journalists, provided some details of what happened.
🔴🔴 Two American journalist shot by Russian at Irpin bridge. One is under surgery at the main hospital in Kyiv and the other was shot at the neck. pic.twitter.com/9lihX1JJ58
— annalisa camilli (@annalisacamilli) March 13, 2022
Renaud’s work was well known and awarded in the US.
The United Nations said 55 journalists were killed in 2021.
Progress of diplomacy
The United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s former foreign minister Yang Jeichi, who was also ambassador to the US, will meet in Rome on Monday.
In a statement, Sullivan’s spokesperson said the meeting was part of “ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication” between the US and China.
“The two sides will discuss ongoing efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on regional and global security,” spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement.
A Ukrainian firefighter walks inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv on Sunday. (Photo: AP)
Sullivan’s meeting with Yang will take place amid reports in two major international newspapers, the Financial Times and The Washington Post, that Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance for its invasion of Ukraine.
Before leaving on Sunday, Sullivan told NBC television that China should not help Russia evade Western sanctions. “We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses,” Sullivan said.
SCOOP – Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance to support its invasion of Ukraine. #UkraineWar @FT https://t.co/OVY0OnHVp1
— Demetri・Financial Times (@Dimi) March 13, 2022
Last week Beijing said once again that sanctions would aggravate the conflict.
“I want to stress that wielding the big stick of sanctions cannot solve the Ukraine issue. It has long been proven that rather than addressing the problem, sanctions will create new problems. Apart from economic loss on multiple sides, sanctions will disrupt the process of political settlement and are truly nonconstructive,” China foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
“When dealing with its relations with Russia, the US should not impose so-called sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Chinese companies and individuals or undermine the legitimate rights and interests of China, otherwise China will make strong and resolute response,” he said.
Last week, China was also seen as supporting Russian allegations that the US maintains military purpose bio-labs in Ukraine, claims that the US has dismissed as a Russian disinformation campaign.
People take part in a protest against the Ukraine conflict in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo: AP)
Meanwhile, Turkish foreign minister Melvut Cavusoglu’s remarks that Russian president Vladimir Putin had told President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he was not averse to meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy have increased hope that such a meeting might take place.
Advisor to the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office Mykhailo Podolyak said the Ukrainian side is “doing everything” to make it happen, according to Interfax.
“I think that it will not take long for us to make it happen. I am not ready to say that this meeting may take place in the near future. A day, two, three, no. It will still take some time, but we will try to make it happen as soon as possible,” Podolyak is reported to have said on Sunday.
President Zelenskyy has said Israel could be a possible venue for such a meeting. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has offered to mediate to end the war.
The Kremlin said such a meeting could be held, but that it wanted to understand in advance the agenda and the expected outcome.
“We have reiterated on many occasions that no one rules out the possibility of Vladimir Putin’s meeting with President Zelenskyy. But we need to understand what should be an outcome of this meeting and what will be discussed at it,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Interfax.
Podolyak said officials from the two sides, who have had three rounds of face-to-face discussions in Belarus were in “constant negotiations” through videoconferencing. A video conference between the two sides is scheduled for Monday.
State of the war
The Russian missile attack on the Yavoriv Military Range, also known as the International Centre for Peace and Security, located 20 km from the Polish border near Lviv, has spurred a debate on the role of foreign fighters in the conflict.
It has been argued that while security experts flagged the dangers of foreign fighters in the context Al Qaeda and ISIS, they are lauding the commitment of non-state actors — military and civilian — from countries like the US and UK willing to fight for Ukraine.
The Russian military said it had killed up to 180 “foreign mercenaries” in strikes on Sunday against military range.
Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol in Ukraine. (Photo: AP)
The claim was denied by Ukrainians who said 35 people had been killed in the attack, but it did not say if any foreigners were among them.
A report in The New York Times said about 1,000 foreigners who had arrived in Ukraine to help it fight Russia were being trained at the base. Ukraine has invited volunteers from across the world to join an “international legion for the defence of Ukraine” and claims some 20,000 volunteers have signed up already from across the globe.
Russia says it does not recognise these “mercenaries” as combatants, as defined under the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, it is raising its own international volunteers in the fight against Ukraine. Last week Putin signed orders allowing the enlisting of foreign fighters in the Russian Army. A Kremlin statement, quoting Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, said “more than 16,000 applications” had been received already. Shoigu said most “volunteers” were those who had been helped by Russia against the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.
They want “to take part in what they consider a liberation movement”, he was quoted as saying.
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