Russia is continuing to withdraw some of its troops from the Kyiv region, the head of the city’s regional administration said Friday, amid growing fears of a Russian onslaught in eastern Ukraine. Follow our live blog for the latest developments. All times are Paris time [GMT+2].
11:40am: Ukraine has shown ‘much more understanding’ of the situation in Crimea and Donbas, says Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that some progress had been made at peace talks with Ukraine and that Moscow was preparing its response to Ukrainian proposals.
Speaking at a briefing after talks with his Indian counterparts, Lavrov said that peace talks with Ukraine needed to continue but that Kyiv had shown “much more understanding” of the situation in Crimea and Donbas and the necessity of its neutral status.
11:15am: Russian forces withdrawing from Chernihiv area, says local governor
Russian forces are withdrawing from the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine but have not yet left entirely, the local governor said in a video address on Friday.
“Air and missile strikes are (still) possible in the region, nobody is ruling this out,” Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, adding that Ukrainian forces were entering and securing settlements previously held by Russian troops.
Chaus said it was still too early for Ukrainian forces in the Chernihiv region to let their guard down as Russian troops “are still on our land”. Russia said on Tuesday it would scale down operations in the Chernihiv and Kiev regions.
10:59am: ‘Not yet clear’ if Mariupol evacuations will happen on Friday, says Red Cross
The Red Cross said it was “not yet clear” that the evacuation of civilians from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol would go ahead as planned on Friday.
“We remain hopeful, we are in action moving towards Mariupol … but it’s not yet clear that this will happen today,” Ewan Watson, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told reporters in Geneva, as an ICRC team of three cars and nine staff headed towards the city.
09:05am: Ukraine air strike on petrol depot in Russia’s Belgorod, says local official
“There was a fire at the petrol depot because of an air strike carried out by two Ukrainian army helicopters, who entered Russian territory at a low altitude,” Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel.
Two employees at the storage facilities were injured as a result of the fire, he said in another post. Some 170 personnel were trying to put out the blaze, according to Russia’s emergencies ministry. Rosneft, which owns the facility, told Russian news agencies that it had evacuated staff from the premises.
On Wednesday, explosions could be heard from an arms depot in Belgorod but the authorities did not provide any explanation for the blasts.
Belgorod lies some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Russia’s border with Ukraine and some 80 kilometres from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has been pummelled by Russian forces since Moscow launched its war on February 24.
08:54am: French actor criticises Putin’s ‘crazy, unacceptable excesses’ in Ukraine
French actor Gérard Depardieu, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, has criticised his “crazy, unacceptable excesses” in Ukraine.
Depardieu, who took up Russian nationality in 2013, told Agence France Presse on Thursday: “the Russian people are not responsible for the crazy, unacceptable excesses of their leaders like Vladimir Putin.”
Depardieu also said he would give all the proceeds from three nights of concerts in Paris from April 1 to “Ukrainian victims of this tragic fratricidal war”.
08:14am: Russia preparing for ‘powerful strikes’, says Zelensky
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Russia is consolidating and preparing “powerful strikes” in the country’s east and south, including besieged Mariupol, where a new attempt will be made Friday to evacuate civilians from the devastated city.
Russia meanwhile threatened to turn off its gas taps to Europe if payments are not made in rubles, as US President Joe Biden ordered a record release of strategic oil reserves to ease soaring US prices.
Over a month into Russia’s invasion of its neighbour, Vladimir Putin’s troops have devastated cities like Mariupol with shelling, killing at least 5,000 people in the port city alone.
In peace talks this week, Russia said it would scale back attacks on the capital Kyiv and the city of Chernigiv, but Ukrainian and Western officials have dismissed the pledge, saying Moscow’s troops were merely regrouping.
“This is part of their tactics,” said Zelensky in a late-night address.
07:15am: EU to push China at virtual summit to not support Russia
Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold the videoconference with EU leaders Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, carrying through on an annual exercise that was skipped last year as tensions simmered.
“The meeting will focus on the role we are urging China to play, to be on the side of the principles of international law without ambiguity and exert all the necessary influence and pressure on Russia,” said French European affairs minister Clement Beaune, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
“This was not the initial purpose of the summit but it necessarily became one,” Beaune said, though he insisted other topics such as climate and trade “would not disappear”.
The EU-China summit is usually an effort to deepen trade ties. But, last year’s exchange of tit-for-tat sanctions over the plight of China’s Uyghur minority, followed by Beijing’s trade coercion of EU-member Lithuania over Taiwan, soured preparations for the meeting.
