We have more in from Agence France-Presse(AFP) on the German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Beijing to meet China’s president, Xi Jinping (see earlier post at 08.46 for more details).
Xi laid out what state media described as “four principles to prevent the Ukraine crisis from spiralling out of control and to restore peace”.
The “four principles” echoed a Beijing paper last year that called for a “political settlement” to the conflict, which western countries said could enable Russia to hold much of the territory it has seized in Ukraine.
Countries must focus on “the upholding of peace and stability and refrain from seeking selfish gains”, Xi said, as well as “cool down the situation and not add fuel to the fire”.
“We need to create conditions for the restoration of peace and refrain from further exacerbating tensions,” Xi added, while aiming to “reduce the negative impact on the world economy”.
China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, visited Beijing just days before he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After the war began, China’s government sought to present itself as a neutral peacemaker.
Germany has become one of Ukraine’s biggest suppliers of military aid since the Russian invasion, but is extremely wary of steps that would draw the Nato alliance into direct conflict with Russia.
Scholz arrived in China on Sunday, accompanied by a large delegation of ministers and business executives, on his second visit to the country since taking office.
On Tuesday, the German chancellor said he hoped Berlin and Beijing could help achieve a “just peace” in Ukraine.
Olaf Scholz attends a welcome ceremony with Chinese Premier Li Qiang outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Photograph: Andreas Rinke/Reuters
Kremlin dismisses Macron's call for 'Olympic truce'
The Kremlin reacted coolly on Tuesday to France’s president Emmanuel Macron’s call for a truce in international conflicts during the Paris Olympics, saying Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm, Reuters reports.
Suspending armed conflicts under an “Olympic truce” is a longstanding tradition of the Games, and Macron said in an interview on Monday that he would work towards achieving one when Paris hosts the Olympics from 26 July to August 11.
Asked about Macron’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that both Vladimir Putin and the Russian military had “noticed that, as a rule, the Kyiv regime uses such ideas, such initiatives to try to regroup, to try to rearm, and so on and so forth. This, of course, significantly complicates the process of considering such initiatives.”
Peskov said there had been no official steps so far on the subject of a truce.
Thousands of people in Ukraine were left without power on Tuesday after strong winds and heavy rain damaged electrical infrastructure, authorities said.
“Due to the bad weather, 173 settlements in four regions are without power supply,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said.
In the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, the worst affected area, over 15,000 people in 96 towns and villages were cut off, it said.
One of the main energy providers, DTEK, said its engineers had worked “all night and in the morning” to restore power to the region.
The storms come weeks after national grid operator Ukrenergo warned Ukraine needed to completely overhaul its energy system amid a series of deadly Russian strikes.
Russia routinely struck Ukrainian power and hydroelectric plants, substations and heat generation facilities in the winter of 2022-23, and launched a massive wave of missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure last month as well.
Here are some images that have come out on the newswires over the last day:
A local resident walks past apartment buildings destroyed by air bomb in the village of Ocheretyne, not far from Avdiivka town in the Donetsk region, on 15 April 2024. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
A worker cleans a sculpture of a historical figure in the destroyed local history museum in Mariupol. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
A private residential building stands heavily damaged by a missile fragment explosion on 15 April in Dnipro, Ukraine. Photograph: Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
Russia-Ukraine Black Sea shipping deal was almost reached last month - report
Russia and Ukraine negotiated for two months with Turkey on a deal to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea and reached agreement on a text that was to be announced by Ankara last month, but then Kyiv suddenly pulled out, sources told Reuters.
A deal was reached in March “to ensure the safety of merchant shipping in the Black Sea”, and though Ukraine did not want to sign it formally, Kyiv gave its assent for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to announce it on 30 March, the day before critical regional elections, the sources said.
“At the very last minute, Ukraine suddenly pulled out and the deal was scuttled,” said one of the four sources who spoke to Reuters. A reason for the apparent withdrawal was not given.
Turkey and the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, have been trying to months to get merchant shipping sailing more freely though the Black Sea, which in some areas has been turned into a naval war zone since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia was reported to have targeted 13 Ukrainian regions: Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Luhansk, Odesa, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Kharkiv and Donetsk. Casualties were reported in the latter three regions.
These claims have not yet been independently verified by the Guardian.
Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has unveiled a complicated proposal for passing wartime aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, rejecting pressure to approve a package sent over by the Senate and leaving its path to passage deeply uncertain.
The Republican speaker huddled with fellow GOP lawmakers on Monday evening to lay out his strategy to gain House approval for the funding package.
Facing an outright rebellion from conservatives who fiercely oppose aiding Ukraine, Johnson said he would push to get the package to the House floor under a single debate rule, then hold separate votes on aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and several foreign policy proposals, according to Republican lawmakers.
However, the package would deviate from the $95bn aid package passed by the Senate in February, clouding its prospects for final passage in Congress.
Warnings over nuclear danger after attacks on Zaporizhzhia power plant
As we reported in our opening summary, Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, has accused Russia of a “a well-planned false-flag operation” endangering the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP).
The power plant reportedly suffered at least three direct strikes on 7 April and another drone attack at the plant’s nearby training centre on 9 April, prompting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to warn of a “major escalation” in nuclear danger.
Russia has claimed that Ukrainian drones carried out the April attacks on the nuclear power plant, allegations Kyiv rejects.
“What happened at the ZNPP on 7th and 9th of April 2024 and thereafter was a well-planned false-flag operation by the Russian Federation,” Kyslytsya said at a UN security council meeting last week.
“It was aimed at shifting the focus from the above root cause and the only way to remove all threats to nuclear safety and security, and that is de-occupation of the station.”
“The Russian Federation attempts to hide its own guilt and move our debate to fabricated issues designed to blame Ukraine in the hope of removing the issue of de-occupation from the agenda.”
The nuclear plant was captured in the early stages of the two-year-long war, and despite occasional efforts to reconnect to the Russian energy grid its reactors have gradually been put into shutdown.
The IAEA said on 13 April that all six of the plant’s reactors had been moved into a state of cold shutdown, but the IAEA head, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has said “reckless attacks” significantly increase the risk of a “major nuclear accident” and called for them to stop immediately.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said he hoped Berlin and Beijing could help achieve a “just peace” in Ukraine, as he met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the Chinese capital.
Meeting with Xi at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on Tuesday, Scholz told the China’s president that he hoped to discuss “how we can contribute more to a just peace in Ukraine”.
Scholz – who arrived in China on Sunday in his second visit to the country since taking office – told Xi that “the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and Russia’s armament have a very significant negative impact on security in Europe”, according to a recording provided by the chancellor’s office.
“They directly affect our core interests,” he told Xi, adding they “damage the entire international order because they violate a principle of the United Nations Charter”.
China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, visited Beijing just days before he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
US officials have recently said that China was helping Russia in the production of drones, space-based capabilities and machine-tool exports vital for producing ballistic missiles.
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, has accused Russia of a “a well-planned false-flag operation” endangering the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as the two countries traded accusations at the UN security council over alleged attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
The Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant reportedly suffered at least three direct strikes on 7 April and another drone attack at the plant’s nearby training centre on 9 April.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, said, without attributing blame, that the “reckless” attacks had put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident”.
“Let me put it plainly. Two years of war are weighing heavily on nuclear safety” at the plant, he was also quoted as saying.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaks at a special meeting of the IAEA Board of governors in Vienna, Austria, on 11 April 2024. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Ukraine and its allies on Monday again blamed Russia for dangers at the site. “Russia does not care about these risks … If it did, it would not continue to forcibly control the plant,” US deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the security council.
Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused one another of targeting Zaporizhzhia since it was captured by Russian forces in the first weeks of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in Februrary 2022 (though both sides deny attacking it).
We will have more on this story shortly. In other developments:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on allies to show Ukraine the same unity they displayed in helping Israel fend off Iranian attacks. The Ukrainian president issued a fresh plea for air defences to protect against Russian strikes on cities and infrastructure. Zelenskiy said: “Israel is not a member of Nato … and no one was drawn into the war,” he said. “They simply helped save lives. Shaheds [drones] in the skies of Ukraine sound just like in the skies of the Middle East. Ballistics strike the same everywhere if not shot down.” Western allies have hesitated to send additional air defences to Ukraine which needs 26 Patriot systems for full protection. Germany has pledged to deliver one additional system.
In the US, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has unveiled a proposal to separate out Ukraine military aid from other assistance for Israel and Taiwan, instead of passing a $95bn combined bill that already has Senate approval. The US president, Joe Biden, called on the House to take up the Senate funding package immediately: “They have to do it now.” Johnson insisted the House would this instead this week consider separate bills for Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific security.
Johnson said the new House bills provide roughly the same amount of foreign aid as the Senate bill but would include differences including some aid in the form of a loan. However, critics say it amounts to further unnecessary delay as the Senate bill was passed two months ago. “If House Republicans put the Senate supplemental [spending bill] on the floor, I believe it would pass today, reach the president’s desk tonight and Israel would get the aid it needs by tomorrow,” said the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer.
Airdefence systems destroyed all nine drones launched in a Russian attack across eastern and southern regions, the Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday morning.
The US has imposed sanctions on 12 Belarus entities and 10 individuals, accusing them of supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine. The treasury department said among the entities targeted was a machine tool building firm, a company selling control systems for the Belarus armed forces, and another producing radio communication equipment.
Asylum claims from Russians, including soldiers who have deserted, have surged since the full-scale invasion but few are winning protection, the Associated Press has reported. In France, asylum requests rose more than 50% between 2022 and 2023, to a total of about 3,400 people, according to the French office that handles the requests. In 2023, Germany got 7,663 first-time asylum applications from Russian citizens, up from 2,851 in 2022. US Customs and Border Patrol officials encountered more than 57,000 Russians at US borders in fiscal year 2023, up from about 13,000 in fiscal year 2021. The Independent Russian media outlet Mediazona has documented more than 7,300 cases in Russian courts against deserting soldiers since September 2022; cases of desertion leapt sixfold in 2023, AP said.
