For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flash point Ukraine.
Recent developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
01:16: Britain’s defense minister said on Thursday that with forces in Belarus conducting regular military exercises, Russia is likely to “inflate the threat to Ukraine” from Belarus in order to retain more Ukrainian forces in the north of the country and not deploy to eastern Ukraine.
01:10: Reuters reported that five civilians had been killed by shelling by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Luhansk region in the past 24 hours, Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Thursday. Gaidai said the shelling focused on Sievierodonetsk and Popasna, Hirske and Lysychansk.
01:00: Russia promised to observe a ceasefire on Thursday in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where its forces have controlled everything but a steelworks complex where Ukrainian troops are trapped along with civilians the UN is working to evacuate. Russia said its ceasefire would continue again during the day on Friday and Saturday to facilitate further evacuations from the Azovstal site.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the early hours of Thursday morning that a long ceasefire was needed to evacuate the remaining civilians in Mariupol. “It will take time to simply lift people out of these basements, out of the underground shelters. Under the current conditions, we can not use heavy equipment to clear away the debris. Everything has to be done by hand,” he said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price expressed skepticism about Russia’s commitment to a ceasefire. “What we have consistently seen, and we have seen in recent days, is the tendency on the part of the Russian Federation to adopt a so-called humanitarian pause in order to hide itself in the guise of an actor who has only humanitarian affairs to quickly and immediately resume shelling and violence, including against civilians trapped in besieged areas, including in Mariupol. “
12:46: Washington Post uploads a video documenting a family’s escape from Mariupol.
12:29: CNN quotes a Ukrainian commander who said that Russian forces that broke into the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol are fighting “bloody battles” inside the complex.
12:01: The Holocaust is at the center of a growing diplomatic rift between Moscow and Jerusalem. This week, Russia accused Israel of supporting what Moscow describes as the “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov angered Israelis when he said that Jews like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could be anti-Semitic and that Hitler had Jewish blood. At the same time, an estimated 500 Ukrainian Holocaust survivors have been forced to flee their homes again for the second time in their lives. Linda Gradstein reports from the Israeli city of Petach Tikva.
Some information in this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Source: sn.dk