President Putin has rallied tens of thousands of flag-waving Russians at a pro-war concert in Moscow featuring Kremlin-friendly rock groups and artists.
The concert at the vast Luzhniki Stadium took place one day before Russia’s national “Defender of the Fatherland” public holiday, on Thursday, and two days before the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.
Flanked by members of the armed forces, Putin said in a short speech that Russia’s assault on Ukraine was aimed at protecting its own culture, interests and language, as well as what he claimed were Moscow’s “historical lands”.
President Putin said in a short speech that the invasion was aimed at protecting Russia’s culture, interests and language
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“Our entire people are defenders of the fatherland!” Putin said. “I bow to you.” He then led the stadium in a rendition of the national anthem. “Ru-ss-ia! Ru-ss-ia!” he chanted before
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By Mattea Bubalo
BBC News
UN head António Guterres has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an "affront" to the world's collective conscience at a meeting of the General Assembly nearly one year on.
The meeting was debating a motion backed by Ukraine and its allies demanding Russia pull out immediately and unconditionally.
Ukraine hopes that by supporting the motion countries will show solidarity.
The Kremlin has accused the West of wanting to defeat Russia at any cost.
Vasily Nebenzya, the Kremlin's ambassador to the UN, said the US and its allies were prepared to plunge the entire world into war.
The devastating war that ensued has left at least 7,199 civilians dead and thousands of others injured, according to a UN estimate, but that number is likely to be much higher.
The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where mass executions are alleged to have taken place, estimated in April that 21,000 people had died there alone.
Russia and Ukraine have each seen at least 100,000 of their soldiers killed or injured, according to the US military.
More than 13 million people were made refugees abroad or displaced inside Ukraine.
Mr Putin's claim that his operation was needed to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine, a country with historic ties to Russia, was dismissed by Ukraine and its allies as a ruse for an unprovoked attack.
"That invasion is an affront to our collective conscience," Mr Guterres told the General Assembly. "It is a violation of the United Nations Charter and international law."
The possible consequences of a "spiralling conflict" were, he said, a "clear and present danger".
Mr Guterres said the war was "fanning regional instability and fuelling global tensions and divisions, while diverting attention and resources from other crises and pressing global issues".
There had, he said, been "implicit threats to use nuclear weapons".
"It is high time to step back from the brink," he said.
"Complacency will only deepen the crisis, while further eroding our shared principles proclaimed in the Charter. War is not the solution. War is the problem. People in Ukraine are suffering enormously. Ukrainians, Russians and people far beyond need peace."
Sixty countries have sponsored the resolution, which stresses "the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine in line with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."
The UN is likely to approve the resolution, which is not legally binding but carries political weight. However, it is unlikely that the vote will have much influence on Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Voting will take place later on Thursday, the eve of the invasion's first anniversary.
Over the past year, the General Assembly has voted on similar resolutions opposing Russia's invasion. In October 143 member states voted to condemn Moscow's illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine. Russia, Belarus, Syria, and North Korea opposed the motion, while India and China were among the 35 states that abstained.
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In his address to the nation on Tuesday, Mr Putin also announced Russia's decision to suspend a key nuclear arms treaty after US President Joe Biden, fresh from a surprise visit to Kyiv, praised Western democracy for standing up to Russian aggression.
Mr Biden has called the decision to suspend the treaty, designed by the US and Russia in 2010 to prevent nuclear war, a big mistake.
On Wednesday, Mr Putin met China's top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, in Moscow and said co-operation with Beijing was "very important to stabilise the international situation". The visit marked an end to China's claim to neutrality regarding the war in Ukraine.
A TV reporter and a nine-year-old girl have been fatally shot near Orlando, Florida, close to the scene of a murder that took place hours earlier.
A second reporter and the girl's mother were shot and injured by the same gunman, who is also suspected of the other homicide, police say.
The two Spectrum News 13 journalists were covering the killing of a woman in the area that morning when the teenage suspect returned, police say.
It is unclear if they were targeted.
The suspect was armed when he was arrested and was not co-operating with police, said investigators.
None of the three people killed in Wednesday's two attacks in Pine Hills, a suburb west of Orlando, has yet been identified.
In a news conference, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said the journalists were "in or near their vehicle", which he said did not look like a TV station's official vehicle, when they were attacked at around 16:00 local time (22:00 GMT).
He said the journalists had been reporting on a shooting that took place earlier in the day at around 11:00 local time, which saw a woman in her 20s fatally shot inside a car, when the suspect returned to the crime scene and opened fire.
After attacking the journalists, the alleged gunman - Keith Moses, 19 - went into a nearby home and shot the girl and her mother, the sheriff said.
The mother was in hospital in a critical condition, he added.
Other journalists nearby helped provide first aid to the victims, according to local reporters.
This is 19-year-old Keith Melvin Moses, the suspect in a series of shootings today that left three dead, in OCSO custody. This is a sad day for our community. Three were murdered today, including a woman in her 20s, a 9-year-old girl and a @MyNews13 employee. pic.twitter.com/DXXkxzRHl5
— Orange County Sheriff's Office (@OrangeCoSheriff) February 23, 2023
Spectrum 13 continued live coverage after the death of their reporter was announced.
Greg Angel, a news presenter for the station, said the injured journalist had "been able to speak with investigators and colleagues".
The suspect, Mr Mina said, "has a lengthy criminal history, to include gun charges, aggravated battery and assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and grand theft charges".
He described him as an "acquaintance" of the woman shot in the morning, "but as far as we know, he had no connection to the reporters and no connection to the mother and the nine-year-old".
Asked about the possibility that the gunman purposefully targeted the reporters, Mr Mina said "it's something we'll be taking a look at".
He added that it was also possible the suspect mistook the journalists for police.
A reporter for Orlando TV station WESH 2 reported that she and her camera operator had left the crime scene only moments before the shooting.
"We got a gut feeling" and decided to leave for their own safety, said Senait Gebregiorgis.
Charter Communications, the company that owns the TV station, released a statement calling the attack "a terrible tragedy for the Orlando community".
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and the other lives senselessly taken today," the company said.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted condolences, saying: "Our hearts go out to the family of the journalist killed today and the crew member injured in Orange County, Florida, as well as the whole Spectrum News team."
There were 40 journalists killed in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Only one of those killed was in the United States.
Police attended Saint-Thomas d'Aquin school with the local prosecutor, where the student was arrested.
French newspaper Sud Ouest said the attacker entered the classroom while the teacher was giving a Spanish class and attacked her.
The teacher was in her 50s and died of cardiac arrest after emergency services arrived at the school, local media reported.
French TV station BFM said the attacker locked the classroom door and stabbed the teacher in her chest.
Local prosecutor Jerome Bourrier said that an investigation had been opened by local police for assassination and the suspect was in custody. He added that the suspect was not known to the police or the justice system.
The prosecutor will give a news conference on Thursday afternoon to give further details about the investigation.
France's Education Minister Pap Ndiaye called the attack "a tragedy of extreme gravity" and expressed his condolences.
"Today is a time of emotion and a time for solidarity," he said on a visit to the school. "The whole nation is present here to express its sorrow and emotion."
Local media reported the student might have been suffering from mental health issues. They said at this stage of the investigation there was no suggestion the incident was terror-related.
A teacher has been stabbed to death by a pupil during a lesson at a school in southwest France, government officials have said.
The victim, a 50-year-old Spanish teacher, was stabbed in the chest at Saint Thomas d'Aquin private high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, near Bordeaux, broadcaster BFM TV reported.
A 16-year-old student at the Roman Catholic high school has been arrested and police are at the scene.
The suspect told another teacher he was possessed and heard voices that instructed him to carry out the attack, according to local media reports.
The teacher suffered cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at around 11.30am.
Pupils fled in panic after the stabbing, according to the local newspaper Sud Ouest.
Education minister Pap Ndiaye is travelling to the scene.
"My thoughts are with the family, colleagues and the pupils," he said.
Here in Ukraine, we’ve been hearing today from
Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, who says he is confident Russia will face
justice for war crimes.
Kostin said more than
68,000 war crimes had reportedly been carried out by Russia in
Ukraine since the invasion nearly a year ago.
More than 9,600 civilians, including 461 children,
had been killed, he said.
Kostin also said some 450 medical facilities had
been hit since the invasion.
“Since 24 February 2022, there isn’t a day that the
prosecutor’s office hasn’t worked,” he told reporters.
Kostin said war crimes were already being
prosecuted and that going forward 99% of the hearings would be carried out in
Ukraine, but with international support.
“We should make sure the aggressor is punished,
otherwise he will think that he can commit war crimes in other countries as
well,” he said.
Russia denies its troops intentionally target civilians or have committed atrocities in occupied areas.
There was perhaps only one truth spoken during Vladimir Putin’s two-hour state of the nation address: that Russia would suspend its participation in the New Start treaty with the US. The rest was yet another a trip down the rabbit hole into the Russian president’s parallel universe.
Those who were anticipating a major revelation in a speech that had been postponed from December were disappointed. In the absence of any groundbreaking advances on the military front, many expected Putin to finally admit that Russia was at war in Ukraine. But no, the “special military operation” is ploughing on “step by step”. Not only did he fail to offer any reassurance to those who dared hope he was considering making some concessions to the truth that the operation is not going well, but he also left the radical pro-war faction hungry for a more aggressive approach.
The president stayed within well-trodden terrain: the war was started by the west, and Russia needs to protect itself from the war-mongering decadent west that opened the door to nazism in the 1930s and where today pedophilia is the norm and God is gender neutral. He promised financial benefits to war widows and the wounded, and praised the Russian economy’s robust performance under sanctions, in a country where automobile production is down 67% year on year and biometric passports can no longer be issued because of the lack of chips. He praised the dramatic drop in unemployment while businesses are suffering from a dire lack of human resources due to the twin blows of mobilisation and exile.
Then, at the end of the speech, while some members of the audience were visibly struggling to stay awake, he delivered the punchline: Russia is suspending its participation in the New Start treaty, the only remaining arms control agreement between the US and Russia. It limits the number of nuclear warheads each side is allowed to have, and provides for bilateral inspections of each other’s nuclear facilities.
While this sounds dramatic, it only formalises a situation that has been playing out between the two nuclear superpowers since the end of 2022, when Russia cancelled a meeting with the US to discuss the revival of mutual inspections that had stopped since Covid. The official closure of the main forum for dialogue on nuclear weapons is regrettable, and increases the chances of a new nuclear arms race – but at least all sides know clearly where they stand.
Putin continues to make veiled nuclear threats, and did so again in this address when he stated that western declarations on ensuring a strategic defeat for Russia were an existential threat “to which we know how to react”. Threats to the existence of the Russian state allow for a first-use nuclear strike in Russia’s military doctrine.
Each time Putin makes these threats, the aim is clear: frighten western public opinion into pressuring governments to stop arming Ukraine and force Zelenskiy to the negotiating table.
It is impossible to know whether Putin will carry out his threats. But one thing is knowable: it is impossible to negotiate with someone who uses lies and blackmail to force his opponent’s hand, because nothing he says can be trusted. In his speech, Putin mentioned his efforts to bring the west to the negotiating table in late 2021 by the publication of two so-called security treaties – one between Russia and the US, and one between Russia and Nato. These were in fact ultimatums, insisting that Nato withdrew to its 1997 borders.
Beyond the fact that Putin knew from the outset that these conditions were not acceptable to the US or to Nato, when one discusses a treaty the presumption is that both parties were involved in negotiating it, and both parties actually knew that a treaty was being drafted. By framing his 2021 ultimatum as a fake treaty (that he knew was untenable), Putin is in fact engaging in a sophisticated disinformation campaign. It laid the ground for his relentless attempts to recast the war in Ukraine as a war with Nato – which is now the main reason why the Russian population is not rising up against the war as the body bags start to come home.
Although today’s address by Putin lacked the drama of his address to his security council last year, during which he recognised the independence of the Donestk and Luhansk republics and publicly humiliated his foreign intelligence chief, it is no less dramatic in what it portends. Putin has cemented Russia’s withdrawal from the international order – and the imprisonment of more than 140 million Russians in an empire built on lies and bloodshed.
Samantha de Bendern is an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and a political commentator on LCI television in France
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