The European Union will make every effort to support the energy sector of Ukraine, primarily to provide fuel to its agricultural sector in order to avoid a food crisis, European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson assured. “We will support Ukraine in terms of energy. There are many sectors that need support, for example, the agricultural sector. This is very important for Ukrainian farmers. Also, the importance of this issue lies in the fact that African and Middle Eastern countries depend on the state of the agricultural sector in Ukraine. Therefore, we will do everything to supply fuel here to support your economy so that it does not suffer more,” Simson said on the air of the nationwide UA telethon on Monday. She stressed that the EU countries really want to help Ukraine with fuel supplies, including providing funding, but for this, important logistics issues need to be resolved right now. At the same time, Simson pointed out that the EU, dependent on Russian gas, has already done a lot to strengthen its independence from Russian energy carriers, and continues to do so, and takes into account the interests of Ukraine in the search for alternative options. “The European Commission advises all EU members to intensify work to increase their own energy independence, we are looking for alternative directions for the supply of energy carriers for our countries. These are, for example, Azerbaijan, other countries. The world has not come together in Russia,” the European Commissioner noted. “When we discuss this issue with our suppliers, partners, we always take into account the interests of Ukraine,” she stressed.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the creation of a special justice mechanism in Ukraine to investigate the crimes of Russian occupiers.
“I have decided to create a special justice mechanism in Ukraine to investigate and prosecute every crime of the occupiers on the territory of our state. The essence of this mechanism is the joint work of national and international specialists: investigators, prosecutors and judges,” he said in a video message on Sunday.
According to him, “this mechanism will help Ukraine and the world to bring to justice persons who in any way participated in this terrible war against the Ukrainian people and in crimes against our people.”
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the National Police, the Security Service, intelligence and other structures, according to their competence, should direct all efforts to ensure that the mechanism works immediately,” he said.
Zelensky called on “all our citizens and friends of Ukraine in the world to join this work and help establish justice.”
“The world has already seen many war crimes. At different times. On different continents. But it is time to do everything possible to make the war crimes of the Russian military the last manifestation of such evil on earth. Everyone guilty of such crimes will be included in a special Book of Torturers, will be found and punished,” Zelensky said.
Germany creates the main difficulties for tightening sanctions against the Russian Federation, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a press conference on Monday. “This is Germany, which is the main hindrance to the sanctions,” Western media quoted the prime minister as saying. Hungary, according to Morawiecki, does not block the possibility of strengthening sanctions against Russia. On the eve of the President of the European Council Charles Michel said that the EU authorities are preparing for new sanctions against Russia.
The presence of specialists from the International Nuclear Energy Agency (IAEA) at Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is very important, and they will arrive there in the very near future, primarily at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, Director General of the agency Rafael Mariano Grossi HAS said.
“We see this as a step in the right direction. We are going to be there very soon, because in Chernobyl there is a lot of work to be done,” he said at a press conference in Vienna on Friday, following visits to Ukraine and Russia March 29 through March 31.
According to him, at this facility, due to power outages or physical damage, there could be a lot of things that could be turned off or fail. At the same time, during the occupation, remote monitoring of radiation indicators did not work.
Ukrainian specialists know how to do their job. But this does not mean that international assistance and cooperation will be superfluous, Grossi said.
According to him, the experience of operating nuclear power plants in the conditions of hostilities has shown that assessing the situation on the spot is much more reliable and efficient than using information from other sources.
In addition, the head of the agency added, it is necessary to check the safety of nuclear material. There are some things that can only be done by IAEA experts, Grossi added.
According to him, he does not know for what reason the Russian troops left the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. They did not tell him about why they left. He said that this could be the decision of the military authorities. And this is not what we discussed with the Russian side in Kaliningrad after a visit to Ukraine, the head of the IAEA said.
He called the general radiation situation around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant quite normal, while allowing some increase in radiation indicators during the withdrawal of troops, which was also observed during their entry to the plant site.
There was a relatively elevated level of localized radiation due to the movement of heavy vehicles during the occupation of the station. And, apparently, this could take place again at the exit, Grossi said.
He confirmed that he had heard about the possibility of radiation contamination of some of the Russian military, but noted that he had no evidence of this.
As for the provision of assistance to Ukraine, according to Grossi, due to hostilities, it may be complicated. However, the IAEA will try to provide it, he said.
In the case of Chornobyl, it is one thing, and in the case of the other plants, it is about the distance and the military situation. One of them remains under the control of the Russian forces. So this will undoubtedly require a different approach, but nothing makes Grossi think that this impossible to do, the head of the IAEA said.
He did not specify what kind of assistance could be discussed, referring to ongoing negotiations with the Ukrainian side on this issue, and asked journalists to be patient.
Commenting on the progress of his initiative on the necessary steps to reduce risks at Ukrainian nuclear facilities, Grossi said that he had abandoned the idea of a trilateral plan in favor of working on a bilateral basis.
Losses among civilians from February 24, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, until 24:00 on April 2, 2022, amounted to 3455 civilians (3342 in the report a day earlier), including 1417 dead (1325), reports the Office of the UN High Commissioner for human rights on resurrection. “OHCHR believes that the actual figures are much higher as information is delayed from some areas of intense fighting and many reports are still awaiting confirmation,” the document says. According to him, this applies, for example, to Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izyum (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), Irpin (Kyiv region), where there are reports of numerous civilian casualties. They are subject to further verification and are not included in the above statistics. “The majority of civilian deaths or injuries were caused by the use of explosive devices with a wide area of effect, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, as well as rocket and air strikes,” the report says. According to confirmed UN data, 293 men, 201 women, 40 boys and 22 girls died, while the sex of 59 children and 802 adults has not yet been determined. Among the 2,038 injured, 41 are girls and 38 boys, as well as 92 children whose gender has not yet been determined. Compared to the previous day, according to the UN, a child died and three more were injured. OHCHR points out that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight on April 3, there were 401 (381) dead and 784 (793) injured in government-controlled territory, and 67 (67) dead and 252 (246) injured in territory controlled by self-proclaimed “republics”. In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporozhye, Kiev, Sumy, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 949 (877) dead and 1002 (978) injured . The report also states that, according to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, as of 08:00 on April 3, 158 (158) children were killed and 258 (254) were injured. The increase in indicators in this report compared to the figures in the previous report should not be attributed only to new cases that occurred on April 2, since during the day OHCHR also verified a number of cases that occurred in previous days, the document specifies.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, about 537 thousand citizens of Ukraine have returned to their homeland, the State Border Service of the country reports.
“Over the past week, 144,000 people left Ukraine. 88,000 arrived in Ukraine. In general, since the beginning of open aggression from the Russian Federation, about 537,000 of our compatriots have returned to Ukraine,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a telegram message with reference to State Border Service data.
