For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the occupied city of Mariupol in Ukraine controlled by Moscow’s forces today, a day after making a surprise visit to Crimea, officials said.
The city in Donetsk was captured by Russian forces after a gruesome battle in May last year and has remained under the control of Moscow’s fighters since.
The Russian president reached Mariupol and was seen driving a car around the city as he visited several districts of the city.
Mr Putin also met with the top brass leading his military operation in Ukraine, state media reported.
The leader, facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes, also met with chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov who is in charge of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The court specifically accused him of bearing personal responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country, which started almost 13 months ago.
Putin meets top command of Russia's military operation in Ukraine
Russian president Vladimir Putin has met with the top brass leading his military operation in Ukraine, state media said today.
The leader, facing an arrest warrant for war crimes, also met with chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov who is in charge of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The meeting took place at the Rostov-on-Don command post in southern Russia, reported TASS news agency.
Putin reaches Ukraine in a first since war: What do we know
Vladimir Putin visited the Russia-occupied city of Mariupol in Ukraine on Sunday, reported news agency TASS.
Mariupol in Donetsk region was captured by Russian forces after a bloody battle in May last year and has remained under the control of Moscow’s fighters since.
The Russian president was seen driving a car around the city as he visited several districts.
He also made stops along the way and spoke to the residents, reported TASS news agency.
Read the full story here:
Putin and Xi might have a bromance but it’s clear who holds the power
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have met around 40 times since China’s leader assumed the presidency in 2012. In many ways, the camaraderie between the pair has come to define the diplomatic relations between Moscow and Beijing across the last decade (Chris Stevenson writes).
Xi made Moscow his first overseas visit as president in 2013 and this latest visit comes next week in the wake of him being handed an unprecedented third term as president. During that time, the greetings between Xi and Putin have evolved from “dear president” to “dear friend” and later to “my old friend”. Last year, just a few weeks before Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine the leaders met and announced a “no limits” partnership between their two nations.
Historically, relations between China and Russia have been fraught with distrust and confrontation, particularly at the height of their Cold War schism in the late 1960s, but Putin and Xi have changed the dynamic. On his last visit to Moscow, in 2019, Xi spoke of his “deep personal friendship” with his Russian counterpart. “In the past six years, we have met nearly 30 times. Russia is the country that I have visited the most times, and President Putin is my best friend and colleague,” Xi said. Both leaders share an objective of altering the world order, and they will continue to pursue that.
The Body in the Woods: Watch now on Independent TV
Bel Trew, The Independent’s foreign correspondent, has spent the past year covering the war in Ukraine on the ground.
One month into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, after Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv, Ms Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp.
His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager.
As she tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead.
The Body in the Woods by Bel Trew is streaming now on Independent TV and on your smart TV.
The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary
It was a month into Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp. His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager. As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead. The Body in the Woods by Bel Trew is streaming now on Independent TV and on your smart TV.
Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate
Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk‘s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility.
The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill.
They spread fearmongering posts that preyed on legitimate concerns about pollution and health effects and compared the response to the derailment with America’s support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.
Regularly spewing anti-US propaganda, the accounts show how easily authoritarian states and Americans willing to spread their propaganda can exploit social media platforms like Twitter in an effort to steer domestic discourse.
Read the full story here:
Vladimir Putin visits Crimea to mark nine years since annexation as Ukraine grain deal extended
Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Crimea on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine.
In Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city, Mr Putin met Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev, with whom he visited an art school and a children’s centre that are part of a project to develop a historical park on the site of an ancient Greek colony, Russian state news agencies said.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in a move most of the world denounced as illegal and which soured relations between Moscow and the West. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said any peace settlement would involve Russia withdrawing from the peninsula as well as the regions it has occupied since last year.
Mr Putin has shown no intention of relinquishing the Kremlin’s gains. Instead, he stressed on Friday the importance of holding Crimea.
Liam James has more:
Ukraine still resupplying troops in battered Bakhmut despite Russian assault
Ukrainian forces outside the eastern city of Bakhmut are managing to keep Russian troops at bay so ammunition, food, equipment and medicines can be delivered to defenders, the army said on Saturday.
Kyiv said its troops had killed 193 Russians and injured 199 others during the course of fighting on Friday.
Russia has made the capture of Bakhmut a priority in its bid to take control of the country’s eastern Donbas region. The city has been largely destroyed in months of fighting, with Russia launching repeated assaults.
“We are managing to deliver the necessary munitions, food, gear and medicines to Bakhmut. We are also managing to take our wounded out of the city,” military spokesperson Serhiy Cherevaty told the ICTV television channel.
It comes as widespread Russian attacks continued in Ukraine following the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.
Russian attacks continue in wake of Putin arrest warrant
Widespread Russian attacks have continued in Ukraine following the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights
Have other courts put world leaders on trial?
Apart from the ICC, several former leaders have been tried by other international courts.
Among the notable cases is that of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia who became the first former head of state to appear before an international tribunal since World War Two when he was tried at a UN court for alleged crimes during the 1990s Balkan wars. He died in custody in 2006 before a verdict was reached.
Liberian former leader Charles Taylor was jailed for 50 years in 2012 after he was found guilty of war crimes by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. He was the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes by an international court since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War Two.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, one of Milosevic’s adversaries in the 1990s Balkan wars, left office after being indicted for war crimes by the Kosovo war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He denies all the charges and is due to go on trial next month.
Kosovar former president Hashim Thaci will go on trial for alleged war crimes later this year
Has the ICC issued arrests warrants for other heads of states?
Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi are the only other leaders to have been indicted by the ICC while serving as head of state. Charges against Gaddafi were terminated after he was overthrown and killed in 2011.
Bashir, who was indicted in 2009 for genocide in Darfur, remained in office for another decade until he was toppled in a coup. He has since been prosecuted in Sudan for other crimes but has not been handed to the ICC.
While in office, he travelled to a number of Arab and African countries, including ICC member states Chad, Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda, which declined to detain him. The court rebuked those countries or referred them to the UN Security Council for non-compliance.
The ICC has tried one former head of state after he left office: former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, who was acquitted of all charges in 2019 after a three-year trial.
The ICC previously issued an arrest warrant for Muammar Gadaffi
Can Putin be detained abroad over ICC arrest warrant?
The ICC’s 123 member states are obliged to detain and transfer Putin if he sets foot on their territory. Russia is not a member and neither are China, the United States or India, which is hosting a summit later this year of leaders of the G20 group of big economies, which includes Russia.
The world’s permanent war crimes court was created by the Rome Statute, a treaty ratified by all the EU states, as well as Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, 33 African countries and 19 nations in the South Pacific.
Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but withdrew its backing in 2016 after the ICC classified Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula as an armed conflict.
“Putin is not stupid. He’s not going to travel abroad to a country where he might be arrested,” said assistant professor of history at the Utrecht University Iva Vukusic.
“He is not going to be able to travel pretty much anywhere else beyond the countries that are either clearly allies or at least somewhat aligned (with) Russia,” Vukusic said.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGVwZW5kZW50LmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvZXVyb3BlL3VrcmFpbmUtd2FyLWxpdmUtbWFwLXJ1c3NpYS1wdXRpbi1hcnJlc3QtYjIzMDM2MTQuaHRtbNIBamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGVwZW5kZW50LmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvZXVyb3BlL3VrcmFpbmUtd2FyLWxpdmUtbWFwLXJ1c3NpYS1wdXRpbi1hcnJlc3QtYjIzMDM2MTQuaHRtbD9hbXA?oc=5
2023-03-19 05:56:49Z
1832758179
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar