Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy urges talks with Putin; Biden flags ‘clear sign’ Russia considering chemical weapons – live | World news

Our Emma Graham-Harrison reports in transit in Ukraine.

A quick Reuters snap here that 3,528,346 Ukrainians have fled abroad according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). More than 2 million have crossed into Poland, the agency said.

Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gurin has described the situation in his hometown of Mariupol as a “war crime”, telling Sky News in the UK that “the shelling never stops, the shooting never stops. Now there’s 300,000 people in Mariupol without food. It’s not war any more. We clearly see that Russia wants to start hunger just to force its diplomatic position.”

Gurin said he was currently “very pessimistic” about a diplomatic resolution to the situation, saying that any agreement with Vladimir Putin would be worth “less than the paper it was written on”.

Finland’s Nokian Tyres has said it would continue production in Russia to retain control of its local factory.

Nokian’s chief executive, Jukka Moisio, told Helsingin Sanomat in an interview that the company did not want its Russian factory to end up “in wrong hands” to avoid its Russian factories being used to make tyres for the military.

“In our opinion it is better that the factory is in our control than in someone else’s,” Moisio told the paper.

Anne Kauranen reports for Reuters that shares in Nokian fell as much as 13% on Monday, after Finnish media reported that the company had seemed to tell analysts in a call last week that it would seek to win market share from rivals that are exiting Russia. Nokian denied this on Tuesday.

Ika Ferrer Gotić, who is a news producer and anchor at the N1 news channel, has posted this video clip which she says shows Ukrainian children sleeping on the floor in Warsaw’s Central Station in Poland.

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been found guilty of large-scale fraud by a Russian court, report Reuters.

Russian prosecutors are seeking to move Navalny to a maximum security penal colony for 13 years on charges of fraud and contempt of court.

Navalny is already serving a two-and-a-half year sentence at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were trumped up to thwart his political ambitions.

Kirsten Grieshaber has been reporting for Associated Press from Berlin on the enrolment of young refugees from Ukraine into makeshift schools there. On Monday seven-year-old Myroslav Kerashchenko was one of 40 children who joined classes.

His mother, Mariia, told reporters: “It gets me emotional when I see all the help and solidarity here. Every day, I hope that we can go back to Ukraine, but it is too dangerous for now, so in the meantime it is wonderful that my son can go to school in Germany,” she added.

The classes for the refugees were put together by Burcak Sevilgen and Faina Karlitski, who in only two weeks raised the funds, organised the rent-free classrooms and advertised their programme on the messaging service Telegram. The lessons will prepare the children for entering Berlin’s regular school system.

Natalia Khalil, 33, from Rivne in western Ukraine, is teaching the third and fourth graders, while Tatjana Gubskaya, 56, will be in charge of the first and second graders. Gubskaya fled Ukraine with her daughter and a seven-year-old grandson, who is in her classroom.

“The kids are grateful to have some kind of routine again and meet other children from Ukraine — they and their mothers have all been very stressed lately,” said Gubskaya.

The teachers will be paid €500 per month (£420) in donations until they have work permits and can be officially hired.

On Sky News this morning in the UK, the government’s small business minister Paul Scully has been appearing, and he was asked about US President Joe Biden’s chemical weapons warning. He told viewers:

President Biden and Prime Minister [Boris Johnson] have been really resolute in making sure that we can take every action in the international community to address these crimes of Vladimir Putin. We’ve got to remember with all of this that this is Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. It is not the Russian people. So we’ve got to make sure that we can appeal to the Russian people to bring an end to this.

He was also asked about the UK’s efforts to impose economic sanctions on individuals, and said:

We’ve sanctioned more than 1,000 individuals and entities. We’ve been very much on the front foot in passing the Economic Crime Bill, which I did last last week, which included registering the beneficial ownership of properties within the UK so that we can use that as a tool to better target sanctions against the individuals that are supporting Putin.

A quick snap from Reuters here that Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday it was continuing to supply gas to Europe via Ukraine in line with requests from European consumers. The company said requests stood at 108 million cubic metres for 22 March, up from 104.7 million cubic metres for 21 March.

Before I hand over to my colleague, Martin Belam, here is where the crisis currently stands as of 9am in Ukraine this morning.

• The Ukrainian military has claimed Russian forces have stockpiles of ammunition and food that will last for “no more than three days” in its operational report this morning. Officials said the situation is similar with fuel, adding: “Mobilisation is carried out chaotically … most of them have no military specialty, because they have never served in the military.” Ukraine also claimed its forces have retaken the town of Makariv, just 50km west of Kyiv.

• The UK’s ministry of defence says Ukrainian forces continue to repulse Russian attempts to occupy the southern city of Mariupol while Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine have “endured yet another day of limited progress” with most forces largely stalled in place.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged direct talks with Vladimir Putin, saying: “Without this meeting it is impossible to fully understand what they are ready for in order to stop the war.” He also said his country will never bow to ultimatums from Russia and cities directly under attack, including the capital, Kyiv, and Mariupol and Kharkiv would not accept Russian occupation.

• Russia’s false accusations that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons is a “clear sign” that Vladimir Putin is considering using them himself, Joe Biden said. “[Putin’s] back is against the wall and now he’s talking about new false flags,” he said. The Pentagon has accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine, saying there is “clear evidence” of such, and the spokesman of the US Defence Department said it would help gather evidence of them.

• Biden spoke after the Pentagon said it had seen “clear evidence” Russian forces were committing war crimes and that it was helping collect evidence.

• Biden said only India among the Quad group of countries was “somewhat shaky” in acting against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, as India tries to balance its ties with Russia and the west.

• Japan criticised Russia’s decision to withdraw from bilateral peace treaty talks to formally end World War Two hostilities between Moscow and Tokyo.

• Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, heralded new plans to develop an “EU Rapid Deployment Capacity” that could allow the bloc to “swiftly deploy up to 5,000 troops” for different types of crises. He insisted a “European army” will not be created.

• Almost 10,000 Russian soldiers may have already been killed in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded almost four weeks ago, and more than 16,000 wounded, according to reports of previously-undisclosed figures from the defence ministry in Moscow revealed in a pro-Kremlin tabloid newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. The paper later released a statement claiming it had been hacked.

• British prime minister Boris Johnson is “desperate” to go to Ukraine and has a “real emotional connection” with the Ukrainian people, the Tory party chair has claimed. It was reported at the weekend that Johnson wanted to go to Kyiv but on Monday No 10 sources indicated this was unlikely to happen.

• Some of Chernobyl’s exhausted workers have been permitted to leave the site. They have been on duty for the last three weeks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fuelling concerns about the site’s safety.

• The UK defence attaché has said Russia’s claims that it fired “hypersonic” missiles in western Ukraine is probably an effort to detract from the lack of progress in its ground campaign.

• The Ukrainian military said Russian forces hold the land corridor with Crimea and are blocking access to the Sea of Azov, according to a recent operational report.

• A total of 2,421 civilian casualties have been recorded in Ukraine since Russia invaded, including 925 killed and 1,496 injured, according to an update from the UN Human Rights office (OHCHR).

Japan has criticised Russia’s decision to withdraw from bilateral peace treaty talks to formally end World War Two hostilities between Moscow and Tokyo.

Russia and Japan have still not formally ended hostilities because of the standoff over the islands located off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. They are known in Russia as the Southern Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories.

Moscow’s decision to withdraw from the talks come in retaliation to sanctions imposed by Tokyo over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The islands were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War Two, and Russia claims the acquisition was as fair as any international change of boundaries after the war. Japan has disputed this.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday:

“Under the current conditions Russia does not intend to continue negotiations with Japan on a peace treaty” citing Japan’s “openly unfriendly positions and attempts to damage the interests of our country”.

During a parliamentary session on Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida responded:

This entire situation has been created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s response to push this onto Japan-Russia relations is extremely unfair and completely unacceptable. Japan would like to protest this move.

We will unite with the international community and take resolution action so Japan can continue following the foundation of the international order.”

Japan has imposed sanctions on 76 Russian individuals, seven banks, and 12 other bodies, including defence officials and the state-owned arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

The UK’s ministry of defence has just released its latest intelligence report, saying Ukrainian forces continue to repulse Russian attempts to occupy the southern city of Mariupol.

The report reads:

Despite heavy fighting, Ukrainian forces continue to repulse Russian attempts to occupy the southern city of Mariupol.

Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine have endured yet another day of limited progress with most forces largely stalled in place.

Several Ukrainian cities continue to suffer heavy Russian air and artillery bombardment with the UN reporting that more than 10 million Ukrainians are now internally displaced as a result of Russia’s invasion.”

A superyacht linked to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich was nearing the Turkish tourist resort of Marmaris on Tuesday, ship tracking data showed, a day after another yacht linked to him docked in the resort of Bodrum, also in southwest Turkey, according to a Reuters report.

The yacht Eclipse was heading in the direction of Marmaris, about 3km (1.9 miles) from its port after cruising southeast of the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes, according to Marine Traffic data.

The data also showed the 140-metre (460-foot) superyacht Solaris remained moored in Bodrum, some 80km (50 miles) away, having skirted the waters of European Union countries which have sanctioned the oligarch over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There was no indication that Abramovich was aboard either of the vessels. He was among several wealthy Russians added last week to a European Union blacklist, and EU governments have acted in recent days to seize yachts and other luxury assets from them.

US President Joe Biden has said only India among the Quad group of countries was “somewhat shaky” in acting against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, as India tries to balance its ties with Russia and the west.

While the other Quad countries – the United States, Japan and Australia – have sanctioned Russian entities or people, India has not imposed sanctions or even condemned Russia, its biggest supplier of military hardware.

Biden told a Business Roundtable event on Monday:

In response to his aggression, we have presented a united front throughout the Nato and in the Pacific.

The Quad – with the possible exception of India being somewhat shaky on some of these – but Japan has been extremely strong, so is Australia in terms of dealing with Putin’s aggression.”

After a virtual summit between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on Monday, India’s foreign ministry said Australia understood India’s position on Ukraine, which “reflected our own situation, our own considerations”, according to a Reuters report.

India still depends on Russia for a continuous supply of arms and ammunition amid a Himalayan border standoff with China and tension with Pakistan.

India is also considering buying more Russian oil at a discount, with two Indian state companies recently ordering 5m barrels.

As Russia’s invasion against Ukraine rages on, many civilians have increased their war effort.

In Zaporizhzhia, women are seen making steel vests for Ukrainian soldiers using scrap metals from cars.