(Reuters) – Russia is beefing up its forces for a new assault on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, setting the stage for a protracted battle that is certain to inflict heavy losses on both sides as the Russians try to encircle Ukraine’s fighters.
FIGHTING
* Russia’s defence ministry said that 1,026 soldiers of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, including 162 officers, had surrendered in the besieged port city of Mariupol. Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesman said he had no information on such a surrender.
* The mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, said in televised remarks that more than 100,000 people remained in the city awaiting evacuation. He said earlier that some 21,000 civilian residents had been killed during the siege.
* Ukraine’s General Staff, in its morning report, said that Russian forces were proceeding with attacks on Azovstal and the port.
* At least seven people were killed and 22 wounded by shelling in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Kharkiv over the past 24 hours, Governor Oleh Synegubov said.
* Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said it was not possible to open any humanitarian corridors and accused occupying Russian forces of violating a ceasefire and blocking buses evacuating civilians.
* The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it is closely watching the war in Ukraine after an unconfirmed report of chemical weapons use in Mariupol.
* Russia said that claims by the United States and Ukraine that its forces could use chemical weapons were disinformation because Moscow destroyed its last chemical stockpiles in 2017.
DIPLOMACY
* U.S. President Biden said for the first time that Russia’s invasion amounts to genocide.
* Polish President Andrzej Duda and the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are on their way to Kyiv to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an adviser to the Polish leader said.
* Russian President Putin reappeared after a rare public silence to say the invasion was a “noble” cause and that peace talks had reached a dead end.
* Ukraine told Russia to release prisoners of war if it wants the Kremlin’s top political ally in the country freed from detention.
ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
* Russia’s economy is on track to contract by more than 10% in 2022, the biggest fall since after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, a former finance minister said.
* Ukrainian President Zelenskiy urged the European Union to impose sanctions on all Russian banks and Russian oil and to set a deadline for ending imports of Russian gas.
* Russia’s energy minister told Izvestia newspaper that Moscow was ready to sell oil and oil products to “friendly countries in any price range”, Interfax news agency reported.
QUOTES
* “The United States is ready to fight with Russia until the last Ukrainian – that is the way it is.” – Putin
* “We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies (as genocide), but it sure seems that way to me.” – Biden
(Compiled by Michael Perry; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Alex Richardson)
