Approximately 270,000 refugees from Ukraine have arrived in the Czech Republic, and the authorities are already running out of resources to accept everyone who wants to stay in the country without any problems, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Thursday.
“We have to admit that we are at the very edge when we can accept [these refugees] without problems,” the Associated Press (AP) quoted the prime minister as saying.
According to the agency, the majority of Ukrainian refugees are women and children.
AP notes that the Czech government is making efforts to issue long-term residence permits to refugees in the country, to ensure their access to health care and education. Also, a plan is being discussed at the parliament to allow refugees to be hired even without documents authorizing the performance of work.
Losses among civilians from February 24, 2022, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, amounted to 1,761 civilians (in the report a day earlier 1,663), including 636 dead (596), reports the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration,” the UN said in the document.
According to him, this applies, for example, to Izium (Kharkiv region), and Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region) where there are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
“Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” the UN said in the report.
According to confirmed UN data, some 127 men, some 91 women, ten boys and six girls killed, while the gender of 30 children and 372 adults has not yet been determined.
Among the 1,125 injured, some15 girls and four boys, as well as 43 children, whose gender has not yet been determined.
Compared to the previous day, according to the UN, three children were killed and five more were injured.
OHCHR said that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight March 14, there were 122 (111) dead and 442 (431) injured in government-controlled territory, and 26 (26) dead and 130 (127) injured in territory controlled by self-proclaimed “republics.”
In other regions of Ukraine under government control (Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 488 (459) killed and 553 (509) wounded.
The summary also states that, according to the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and Child Rehabilitation, as of 09:00 on March 14, 90 (85) children were killed and more than 100 children were injured in government-controlled territory.
OHCHR also notes the report of the National Police of Kharkiv region, according to which, as of 18:00 on 13 March, 212 civilians (205) had died in the region.
The increase in the figures in this report compared to the figures in the previous report should not be attributed only to new cases that occurred on March 13, since OHCHR also verified a number of cases that occurred in previous days during the day, according to the document.
A curfew is introduced in Kyiv for a day and a half from 20:00 on March 15 to 07:00 on March 17, mayor of the capital Vitali Klitschko said.
“From 20:00 on March 15 to 07:00 on March 17 is a curfew in Kyiv,” Klitschko wrote on his Telegram channel.
The mayor stressed that at the moment there is a difficult and dangerous moment in the capital.
“Prohibition of movement around the city without special passes. You can only go out to reach the shelter. The curfew will be in effect until 07:00 am on March 17,” he stressed.
The mayor asked all the people of Kyiv to prepare for the fact that they will have to stay at home for two days or, on an alarm signal, in a shelter.
The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer will continue humanitarian supplies of medicines to the Russian Federation, all the profits of the Russian branch will be directed to humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
“Pfizer will immediately donate all profits of our Russian subsidiary to causes that provide direct humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine. This will be in addition to all other recently announced donations from Pfizer to Ukraine. In addition, we will no longer initiate new clinical trials in Russia and will cease enrollment of new patients in our ongoing clinical trials in the country,” Pfizer said on its website on Monday.
The company also clarified that it will transfer all current clinical trials to alternative sites outside the Russian Federation, but will continue to provide the necessary medicines to patients already included in clinical trials.
“While Pfizer does not own or operate any manufacturing sites in Russia, we will terminate all planned investments with local suppliers to increase manufacturing capacity in the country,” the company said.
At the same time, the company notes that the voluntary suspension of drug supplies to the Russian Federation “would be a direct violation of the fundamental principle of patient priority.”
The bravery of the Ukrainian leadership and people is immense, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted after a conversation with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
“The UK is doing all we can to support including defensive weapons and humanitarian aid,” Truss said.
The needs of Ukrainian farmers are met by 84% for the sowing season of 2022, by 55% in crop protection agents, by 78% in seed material, the most critical shortage of fuel for agricultural equipment, but the situation is already being resolved at the level of top officials.
This comment was given by Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Roman Leschenko to Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.
“The total need for fertilizers for sowing is covered by 84%, in crop protection agents – by 55%. This indicator is unsatisfactory, but not critical, because the lack can be compensated for by imports from the EU countries, which are ready to provide us with all the necessary support. Especially that the agronomic deadlines for the introduction of crop protection agents fall mainly in May. The most critical problem is with fuel, it is solved at the level of top officials of the state,” the minister said.
He recalled that the agrarians begin preparations for the sowing season in the autumn of the previous year, so before the war they were able to prepare the necessary resources for the sowing season in approximately the same volumes.
Leschenko said that the need for seed material in Ukraine is provided by 78%. The vast majority of the material is already in the warehouses of agricultural producers.
“As for food security, it is too early to give any assessments – everything will depend on the military situation in the state. Ukrainian farmers are very courageous and ready to work in difficult conditions to ensure food security. There are no optimal calendar dates for sowing, they depend on weather conditions. We have a cold spring, so the start of the sowing campaign has been somewhat postponed. The main period this year will be in April-May,” the minister said.
According to him, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy is in constant contact with large distributors and producers of seeds and crop protection agents, which are doing everything possible to provide food and prevent a food crisis.
