Russia assigns new ground commander for Ukraine
Russia has assigned Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov as the new ground commander in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official and a Western official.
The Western official said it had not been known that Russia had a single commander on the ground coordinating the entire military campaign across Ukraine until now. Instead, regional commanders had been in place.
Both officials who identified the new commander spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be identified.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the general would “just be another author of crimes and brutality against Ukrainian civilians.”
Dvornikov became prominent when he led the Russian group of forces in Syria, where Moscow has waged a military campaign since 2015 to shore up President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in a devastating civil war.
Dvornikov, a career military officer, has steadily risen through the ranks after having started as a platoon commander in 1982. He fought during the second war in Chechnya and took several top positions before he was placed in charge of the Russian troops in Syria in 2015.
In 2016, Russia President Vladimir Putin awarded him the Hero of Russia medal, one of the country’s highest awards. Dvornikov has been the commander of Russia's Southern Military District since 2016.
Provide weapons ‘so that you don’t have to step up and fight’ Putin: Ukraine's foreign minister
In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba talks Wbout western support for Ukraine and what the battle for eastern Ukraine will require.
NATO working on plans for permanent military presence on borders, secretary-general says
NATO is working on plans for a permanent, full-scale military force on its borders in an effort to prevent future Russian aggression, according to the organization's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
NATO was “in the midst of a very fundamental transformation,” that will reflect “the long-term consequences” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions, Stoltenberg said in an exclusive interview with British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph.
“What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security,” he added. “Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a longer-term adaptation of NATO.”
Stoltenberg added that decisions on the reset would be made at a NATO summit to be held in Madrid in June.
Pope calls for Easter truce in Ukraine leading to peace negotiations
Pope Francis on Sunday called for an Easter truce in Ukraine, leading to negotiations and peace.
“Put the weapons down!” he said at the end of a Palm Sunday service for tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square.
“Let An Easter truce start. But not to rearm and resume combat but a truce to reach peace through real negotiations,” he said.
Earlier in the morning, Pope Francis condemned the “folly of war,” as he led Palm Sunday services in St. Peter’s Square, saying in a reference to Ukraine that those who cause mothers to mourn and soldiers to kill know nothing of God.
7.1 million people displaced by war in Ukraine, U.N. says
The number of internally displaced people in Ukraine rose to 7.1 million as of Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced Sunday.
The preliminary estimate of internally displaced people was between 6.5 million and 6.7 million.
Russia seeks to bolster forces as losses mount, U.K. says
Russian armed forces was seeking to strengthen troop numbers with personnel discharged from military service since 2012 in response to mounting losses in its invasion of Ukraine, an intelligence briefing from Britain's defense ministry said Sundy.
The Russian forces’ efforts to boost their fighting power also includes trying to recruit from the unrecognised Transnistria region of Moldova, it said in a bulletin posted on Twitter.
Russia’s target is ‘the whole European project,’ Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged for more pressure to be applied on Russia in a late-night address Saturday, calling it the “moral duty” of all democratic countries to support his country and curb Moscow's threat to the rest of Europe.
“The Russian aggression did not have an objective to limit itself with just Ukraine, with ruining just our freedom and our life,” Zelenskyy said in the daily address. “The whole European project — that’s the target for the Russian Federation.”
His comments came after he was was visited by the Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Kyiv Saturday.
Zelenskyy also called for a complete oil and gas embargo on Russia, calling them “the two sources of Russian self-confidence and their sense of impunity.”
“The oil embargo has to be the first step, on the level of all democratic countries, the whole civilized world,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Then Russia will feel it, it will be a reason for them to search for peace, to stop the useless violence.”
Russian speakers in Estonia live in a tug-of-war between Russia and the West
This town of about 55,000 on the border with Russia could be at the edge of a new Iron Curtain created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a place between two worlds, where Russia and Russian identity meets Estonia and the West.
That’s apparent even in the architecture: Hard-edged brutalist buildings of the Soviet era house or sit between sushi restaurants, a German grocer and a startup incubator. A curvy new shopping center that boasts shops like H&M contrasts with a well-guarded and busy border checkpoint less than a mile away. Around 3,000 people cross daily. Russians come to Estonia to buy cheese they can’t buy at home or other Western goods, and Estonians sometimes travel to Russia for cheap fuel and building supplies.
Estonia, as well as the neighboring Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania, have populations that reflect this mix and the tense geopolitics. Many here describe three camps among Russian speakers. About a third are entirely opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine, while a middle group says it desires peace but expresses a sense of confusion among vacillating reports from Western news media and Russian propaganda sources. A small minority support Russia’s invasion.
9 humanitarian corridors to open Sunday
Nine humanitarian corridors will be set up to evacuate Ukranian civilians on Sunday, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a statement posted to her Telegram channel.
The majority will open in the country's east where Russia is expected to re-focus its onslaught in the near future.
Vereshchuk said the people could use their own transport to leave the besieged southern city of Mariupol and head towards the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Evacuations to Zaporizhzhia by bus and private transport would also be permitted from the towns of Berdyansk, Tokmak and Enerhodar, she added.
In the Luhank region, she said that people from the towns of Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Rubizhne and Hirs’ke village would be allowed to travel to the town of Bakhmut in the nearby Donetsk region.