Russia Ukraine war live: Putin ally Lukashenko warns of ‘serious stalemate’

Trade and economy officials from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies strengthened their pledge Sunday to work together to ensure smooth supply chains for essentials like energy and food despite global uncertainties.

The nations promised to maintain “a free and fair trading system based on the rule of law and enhancing economic resilience and economic security,” officials said in a joint statement.

Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who co-hosted the two-day event in the western city of Osaka, pointed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war as the latest threats to stable energy and food supplies.

Russia’s former President, Dmitry Medvedev, was quoted as saying on Sunday that cooperation with Europe in energy matters was frozen or pointless as European countries had fallen on hard times and had poor growth prospects.

“Europe has castrated itself in bloody fashion and without anaesthesia by walking away from energy cooperation with our country,” Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev, now Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, as saying on social media. “This cooperation is either spoiled or frozen for some time.”

Medvedev, president from 2008 to 2012, has positioned himself as one of Russia’s most vocal hardliners

So brutal is the conflict in the heavily fortified battlefields around the city of Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, that Western intelligence suggests some Russian commanders are now executing soldiers who refuse to advance into the tempest of rocket and gunfire.

Avdiivka, a scarred and jagged outpost of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, has become the new focal point of Kremlin efforts to snatch something they can present as a victory. Despite severe censorship, Russians now understand that Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-blown invasion has been a catastrophe, with casualties, by some estimates, topping more than a quarter of a million dead and wounded.

Soldiers who don’t follow the suicidal Kremlin orders now risk gunfire from both sides of the war, says Askold Krushelnycky in Ukraine:

Around 2,000 Ukrainians ran a one-kilometer race on Sunday in Kyiv, wearing bibs displaying the name of a person instead of a number.

Each runner chose one person to whom they dedicated their run. Spouses, children, friends, siblings, neighbors, and colleagues ran for someone they knew who either was killed, taken captive or injured during Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

The crowd cheered the runners, and many in the audience wept while waiting for participants at the finish line. Amid the lively backdrop of Ukrainian songs, joy and sorrow intermingled in the air as life carried on despite the war.

Russia accused Ukraine on Saturday of damaging a nuclear waste storage facility in a drone strike on the Kursk nuclear power plant while fighting raged on for the control of the key eastern city of Avdiivika, where Russians apparently suffered heavy losses.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that three drones armed with explosives targeted the power plant on Thursday evening. 26, hitting both the station’s administration building and a warehouse storing nuclear waste.

The press service for the Kursk nuclear power plant confirmed the strike on Friday, but told journalists that there had been no significant damage or casualties and that operations were continuing as normal.

For years, the health of Vladimir Putin has been the subject of lurid speculation and rumours. Recent reports have included body doubles, secret chemotherapy, Parkinsons disease and claims that he fell down the stairs, landed on his coccyx and soiled himself.

Yet this week, the most drastic rumour of ill health began to circulate about the 71-year-old. According to shadowy sources, members of his security service were alerted to banging from his private bedroom, only to discover him convulsing on the ground.

Food and drinks were allegedly overturned, with doctors rushing to perform resuscitation while the news of his supposed cardiac arrest caused panic amongst his inner circle.

Ukraine aims to hold a global “peace summit” of world leaders this year, Deputy Minister Mykola Tochytskyi said on Sunday after international representatives met in Malta over the weekend to discuss Kyiv’s peace formula for its war with Russia.

“This aim remains necessary and possible … it has been demonstrated that there is interest in this,” Deputy Minister Mykola Tochytskyi told Reuters by phone shortly after concluding his meetings. Heads of state and heads of government would attend the meeting, he said.

The Malta meeting on Saturday and Sunday was attended in person or online by representatives from 66 countries, Kyiv said, with over 20 more countries participating than at the last such meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in August.

The talks do not include Russia.

Tochytskyi said the Malta meeting discussed five points of the 10-point formula put forward by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last year: Nuclear safety, food security, energy security, release of prisoners and deported persons, and territorial integrity.

Around 2,000 Ukrainians ran a one-kilometer race on Sunday in Kyiv, wearing bibs displaying the name of a person instead of a number.

Each runner chose one person to whom they dedicated their run. Spouses, children, friends, siblings, neighbors, and colleagues ran for someone they knew who either was killed, taken captive or injured during Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

The crowd cheered the runners, and many in the audience wept while waiting for participants at the finish line. Amid the lively backdrop of Ukrainian songs, joy and sorrow intermingled in the air as life carried on despite the war.

As rumours swirl about the health of the Russian president, Mary Dejevsky explains what the death of Putin could mean for Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world:

“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Mr Kirby said.