As Moscow threatens to cut off gas supplies to “unfriendly” countries that refuse to pay in rubles, the Russian army is regrouping for new attacks in Ukraine, according to kyiv and NATO. Follow the latest information live.
10:13 p.m.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his “gratification” to Roberta Metsola, the Maltese President of the European Parliament, for having come “heroically” and “personally” to Kyiv, welcoming him to the Ukrainian capital where he has been holed up since the end of February.
8:36 p.m.
Bulgaria has announced the expulsion of the first secretary of the Russian embassy suspected of being involved in a case of espionage, two weeks after having already dismissed ten diplomats.
8:35 p.m.
The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow has announced that a “heroic” ballet will be presented on Saturday in support of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, with all proceeds from the show to be donated to the families of Russian soldiers killed in this offensive launched at the end of February.
8:00 p.m.
Kyrgyzstan has banned all demonstrations linked to the Russian offensive in Ukraine in its capital, says the Kyrgyz police, while the Russian-Ukrainian conflict seems to divide the society of this former Soviet republic of Central Asia.
6:45 p.m.
The Red Cross announced that the team sent to Mariupol in Ukraine had to turn back, the planned evacuation of thousands of civilians from this city besieged by Russian forces being “impossible”.
“The ICRC team, which includes three vehicles and nine people, did not reach Mariupol and was unable to facilitate the safe passage of civilians today,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said. in a statement, adding that a new attempt would take place on Saturday.
5:34 p.m.
Five weeks after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, 36,000 displaced persons fleeing the war have been registered in France, announces Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate for Citizenship.
“Today we have welcomed around 36,000 people from Ukraine to France. These people are overwhelmingly of Ukrainian nationality, but there are also people who are of other nationalities”, indicated the Minister in charge of reception and integration of refugees, during a hearing in Paris by several associations helping exiles, during which she represented the candidate Emmanuel Macron.
5:24 p.m.
At least 53 cultural sites have been damaged in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) reported.
5:24 p.m.
Ukraine announces that it has exchanged 86 of its soldiers for Russians, without specifying the number of the latter. “An exchange has just taken place, 86 Ukrainian soldiers, including 15 women, are already safe,” deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram.
3:51 p.m.
The EU has warned Beijing that any support for Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions will “seriously tarnish the reputation” of China and damage its economic relations with Europe, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
2:28 p.m.
A German army reserve officer has been charged with spying between 2014 and 2020 for the benefit of Russia, the federal prosecutor’s office announced on Friday.
The suspect is accused of having provided the Russian intelligence services with information on the reservists of the Bundeswehr, the “civil defense” or even on the consequences of economic sanctions imposed on Moscow from 2014 as well as the site of the controversial gas pipeline North Stream 2, connecting Russia and Germany and suspended in February, specifies the federal prosecutor’s office in a press release.
2:06 p.m.
Human Rights Watch has called on Ukrainian authorities to investigate potential “war crimes” against Russian prisoners after footage emerged that appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting them in the legs.
In a video released on March 27, three men in fatigues can be seen, their hands tied behind their backs, thrown to the ground from a van by other armed men, who shoot them in the legs. If the authenticity of the images could not be independently established, AFP geolocated the video as being shot in the village of Mala Rogan, in the Kharkiv region (northeast), resumed at the beginning of the week by Ukrainian forces after an offensive.
AFP journalists who were able to get to Mala Rogan on March 28 saw the bodies of two Russian soldiers, a bag over their heads, lying in one of the alleys of the village, largely destroyed by fighting, while at least two other bodies were thrown into a well.
1:16 p.m.
The Kremlin offered Friday to “explain” the conflict in Ukraine to Gérard Depardieu, believing that the famous French actor did not “understand” the situation after his release the day before on the “crazy drifts” of Vladimir Putin.
Thursday, Gérard Depardieu, holder of a Russian passport and usually complimentary of the Russian president. He criticized the offensive in Ukraine, saying that “the Russian people are not responsible for the unacceptable mad excesses of (its) leaders like Vladimir Putin”. “I think Depardieu probably doesn’t understand everything that’s going on, because he’s not totally immersed in political news,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quipped on Friday.
“He does not understand (…) what are (the pro-Russian separatist regions in Ukraine of) Donetsk and Lugansk, he is not aware of the bombing of civilians”, of which Moscow accuses kyiv, he added . “If necessary, we are ready to tell him and explain it to him so that he understands better. If he wishes,” concluded Dmitri Peskov.
As a sign of the annoyance aroused in Moscow by the critics of Depardieu, a Russian deputy, Soultan Khamzaev, called on the authorities to withdraw his Russian nationality and to transfer his real estate in the country to charities.
11:57
The Kremlin judges that the Ukrainian attack on Russian soil will weigh on the talks.
11:07
The inflation rate in the eurozone hit a new high in March, at 7.5% year on year, according to Eurostat, as the war in Ukraine has further accelerated soaring energy prices.
In February, inflation had reached 5.9% for the 19 countries that have adopted the single currency, which was already the highest level recorded by the European statistics office since the start of this indicator in January 1997. Inflation has hit a new all-time high every month since November.
10:55
It is uncertain whether the planned evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine, can take place this Friday, said Ewan Watson an ICRC spokesman in Geneva.
“There are a lot of moving parts and not all the details are worked out to make sure it happens safely… It’s not clear yet if it’s going to happen today,” added spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross during a regular UN briefing.
9:26
More than 6,800 Ukrainian children are currently enrolled in schools, colleges and high schools in France, mainly in the academies of Nice and Versailles, the Ministry of National Education announced in a press release on Friday.
According to the latest figures from the “Ukrainian cell” located rue de Grenelle and which works every day to anticipate the reception of Ukrainian children in the classes of France, 6,873 pupils arriving from Ukraine are currently welcomed in the first and second classes. degree.
These figures, stopped at Thursday 4:00 p.m., are increasing rapidly since Monday evening, there were 5,266 Ukrainian students attending school in France, a figure which had already been “multiplied by 20 since March 8”.
7:43 am
A Russian official on Friday accused Ukraine of carrying out a helicopter attack on an “oil depot” in the western Russian city of Belgorod, about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
“A fire in an oil depot occurred because of an airstrike by two Ukrainian army helicopters that entered Russian territory at low altitude,” the governor of the region said on his Telegram account. of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
In another message, he indicated that the firefighters were hard at work to put out the fire and that two employees of the depot had been injured. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations says that 170 rescuers are involved.
5:33
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl power plant they had occupied since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, taking hostages, officials said Thursday evening.
“Leaving the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Russian occupiers took with them members of the National Guard whom they had been holding hostage since February 24,” Ukrainian state agency Energoatom said on Telegram, citing employees. .
It was unclear how many Ukrainian soldiers were held hostage by Russian forces.
