High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has announced an additional EUR500 million for Ukraine, he said this at a press conference following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.
He said he was pleased to announce that they had reached a political agreement on an additional EUR500 million within the European peacebuilding opportunities. He added they would continue to support Ukraine economically, financially, with humanitarian aid, and support the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
According to Borrell, all member states remain extremely united in supporting Ukraine diplomatically in the international arena, will continue to isolate Russia, call for accountability for war crimes, for violations of international and humanitarian law.
He also said that the EU regards what is happening in Ukraine as large-scale war crimes committed by the Russian armed forces against the Ukrainian people. And this will not remain unpunished. Therefore, they welcome the commission established by the UN Human Rights Council. They welcome the investigation (into these crimes) by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the high representative said.
In this regard, he stated that the ministers call on Russia to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice, according to which it must stop the invasion of Ukraine. Borrell also assured that the EU is ready for further restrictive measures, in coordination with their partners, in order to continue to put pressure on Russia.
Australia will provide Ukraine, at the request of the Ukrainian government, with at least 70,000 tonnes of thermal coal to strengthen energy security, according to the Facebook page of the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine.
“Australia is recognized internationally as a leading and reliable supplier of energy resources. We thank our Australian partners for helping Ukraine at this difficult time, when our state is resisting an illegal and brutal military invasion by Russia,” Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko said.
As noted in the message, the Australian government has worked with enterprises of the country’s coal industry to accumulate coal volumes, which will be the country’s contribution to providing Ukrainian consumers with reliable electricity. The cost of coal and its delivery will be covered by the Australian government.
Australia’s Whitehaven Coal will arrange the appropriate shipment. Now, along the government line, together with the Ukrainian side, the issue of prompt delivery is being worked out, the Ministry of Energy said.
Losses among civilians from February 24, 2022, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 00:00 on March 18, 2022 amounted to 2,246 civilians (in the report a day earlier some 2,149), including 847 killed (816), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Saturday.
“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.” it said in the document.
According to the office, this applies, for example, to Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Severodonetsk and Rubizhne (Luhansk region), Trostianets (Sumy region), where there are reports of numerous civilian casualties. They are subject to further verification 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 multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” the office said.
According to confirmed UN data, some 155 men, some 119 women, some 21 boys and seven girls killed, while the gender of 36 children and 509 adults is yet unknown.
Among the 1,399 wounded, some 18 girls and nine boys, as well as 51 children, whose gender is yet unknown.
Compared to the previous day, five children were killed and four others were wounded, according to the UN.
OHCHR said that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight on March 19, there were 187 (172) killed and 547 (503) wounded in government-controlled territory, and 53 (50) killed and 181 (178) wounded in territory controlled by self-proclaimed “republics.”
In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 607 (594) killed and 671 (652) wounded.
The Meest international postal and logistics group with Ukrainian roots, through its subsidiary Meest China, has resumed the purchase and delivery of goods from China to Ukraine.
According to the company’s announcement on Wednesday, delivery to Ukraine of both postal items and commercial cargo is available.
Earlier, Meest resumed international delivery of parcels to the countries of the European Union: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
At the same time, the company said on its website that due to the war on the territory of Ukraine [which Russia unleashed with its invasion on February 24] and the introduction of martial law in the country, the delivery time for international shipments to European countries may be extended and will depend on further development situations.
Washington hopes that China will exert the necessary influence on the Russian Federation in connection with the events in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday.
“We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support,” he said.
At the same time, Blinken recalled that the events in Ukraine will be one of the topics of a telephone conversation scheduled for Friday between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“President Biden will be speaking to President Xi tomorrow and will make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression, and we will not hesitate to impose costs,” Blinken said.
Later, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the conversation between Biden and Xi Jinping would clarify China’s attitude towards the situation in Ukraine.
“This is an opportunity for President Biden to assess where President Xi stands,” she said.
The budget of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the provision of humanitarian assistance in Ukraine has been increased to 250 million Swiss francs, the organization’s president, Peter Maurer, said.
“Some 75 million Swiss francs until February 24 (Russian invasion of Ukraine) per year was the approximate budget of the International Committee of the Red Cross for Ukraine. We asked our donors for 150 million Swiss francs. As a result, now our budget for Ukraine is 250 million Swiss francs. Then there are donors who are very generous in everything related to the situation in Ukraine, and this will allow us to expand our activities,” Maurer said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine and the Ukraine 24 TV Channel.
According to him, the ICRC’s humanitarian operation in Ukraine is the largest in the world in recent decades.
“Just for comparison: before the escalation in Ukraine, the largest Red Cross operations were carried out in Afghanistan, Syria. That is, with a budget of 180-190 million. Now Ukraine is our largest operation in the world,” he said.
Maurer also noted that the ICRC has already delivered 200 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Ukraine and is ready to start distributing it.
Among other types of support, he named the intention of the organization to locally purchase goods and receive services, to support the economy. The president of the humanitarian organization also said that he had agreed with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on the implementation of a cash support scheme for the country, similar to the one during the COVID-19 crisis.
