Russia evacuates children from border after ‘invasion’ by rogue troops

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Around 9,000 children will be evacuated from the Russian region of Belgorod, the local governor said, as Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine carry out cross-border raids in the region.
The first group of 1,200 children will be evacuated on March 22, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Belgorod governor, said
The announcement comes after shelling in the region this morning injured three people and left the border district of Grayvoronsky without power, Tass, the Russian state-owned media agency, reported.
Pro-Kyiv Russian soldiers, who have captured prisoners and villages in the regions of Belgorod and Kursk over the past week, have repeatedly called for residents to evacuate to avoid being caught up in military strikes.
The groups have targeted several Russian ammunition depots in recent days, with one reportedly destroyed this morning in the border village of Tetkino, Kursk.
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German prosecutors have charged an officer in the military procurement agency with attempting to pass secret information to Russian intelligence, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The German national, whom the prosecutor’s office identified only as Thomas H., has been in custody since August.
He is accused of repeatedly approaching Russia’s consulate in Bonn and embassy in Berlin from May last year on his own initiative to offer his cooperation.
On one occasion, Thomas H. handed over information obtained during the course of his work with the intention that it be passed to a Russian intelligence service, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
He was arrested in Koblenz, the procurement agency’s seat in western Germany, and his home and workplace were searched.
The nature of the information he attempted to pass to Moscow was not specified.
Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, said that any French troops sent to Ukraine would be a priority target for Russian forces, Tass, the state-owned news agency, reported.
“It (a French contingent) will become a priority and legitimate target for attacks by the Russian Armed Forces. This means that the fate of all Frenchmen who have ever come to the territory of the Russian world with a sword would await it,” Naryshkin said.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in late February opened the door to European nations sending troops to Ukraine.
Ukraine hopes to have enough ammunition for its outgunned troops to repel Russian aggression starting from April,  Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, said.
His comments come as a Czech-led initiative to source ammunition for Ukraine has so far raised the funds to deliver hundreds of thousands of rounds.
“We hope that this Czech initiative, which Luxembourg joined, will help us, and beginning since April we will have enough ammunition to deter our front line,” Mr Shmyhal told a news conference on a visit to Luxembourg.
Prague earlier this year located 800,000 artillery rounds with which to supply Ukraine and has so far raised funds to purchase a first batch of 300,000.
Moldova has expelled a Russian diplomat after Moscow opened polling stations for its presidential election in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
“The Russian ambassador, Oleg Vasnetsov, has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry,” Mihai Popsoi, the Moldovan foreign minister, said on Twitter. “The Moldovan side expressed its protest against the presidential elections held by Russia in the Transnistrian region, against Moldovan authorities’ stance.
“A diplomat was declared persona non grata,” Popsoi added.
The decision to summon Mr Vasnetsov was made in protest against the Kremlin’s decision to open six polling stations in Trasnistria, despite having previously agreed to open just one polling station at its embassy in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau. 
Relations between Chisinau and Moscow have grown increasingly fraught in recent weeks, with officials in Moldova concerned that the Kremlin is stoking opposition among pro-Russian rebels in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria in order to derail the country’s EU accession plans. 
‘Russia has paid a staggering cost for Putin’s imperial dreams’, Lloyd Austin, the US defence chief, has said.
Speaking at a meeting of Ukrainian allies held in Ramstein, Germany, Mr Austin hammered home the impact Vladimir Putin’s war has had on Russian lives and the country’s economy.
At least 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since Putin’s all-out invasion in February 2022,” he said. “Russia has squandered up to $211 billion to equip, deploy, maintain, and sustain its imperial aggression against Ukraine.”
See post at 12.16pm for more details.
Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, has announced a 500 million euro (£427.4 million) aid package for Ukraine, including 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
“We have once again put together an aid package worth almost half a billion euros,” Pistorius told reporters on the sidelines of talks with the United States and other allies at Ramstein Air Base in south western Germany.
The package also includes 100 armoured vehicles, 100 units of transport equipment, 180,000 155mm artillery shells pledged by Berlin as part of the Czech Republic ammunition initiative as well as 100,000 155mm shells newly ordered in Germany.
Despite his offer of aid, Mr Pistorious reaffirmed Germany’s commitment not to have boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Josep Borrell, the European Union foreign policy chief, has said he will propose that the EU uses 90 per cent of the revenues from Russian assets frozen in Europe to buy arms for Ukraine.
The EU’s top diplomat told reporters in Brussels he will propose that the remaining 10 per cent be transferred to the EU budget to be used to boost the capacity of the Ukrainian defence industry.
He said he would submit the proposal to EU member states on Wednesday, ahead of a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday.
Mr Borrell stressed the proposal was to use profits from the assets held in Europe rather than the assets themselves. He said this could yield some three billion euros annually.
“The concrete proposal will be tabled tomorrow,” he said. “This is for member states to agree.”
Vladimir Putin called on the FSB security service to identify and punish pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters who have taken part in an increasing number of deadly attacks on border regions.
“About these traitors… we must not forget who they are, we must identify them by name. We will punish them without statute of limitations, wherever they are,” Putin said, calling Russians fighting against their country “scum”.
Pro-Kyiv Russian forces have taken part in cross-border raids over recent weeks in the territories of Belgorod and Kursk, capturing villages and prisoners for exchange.
France has backed a proposal to impose restrictions on duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods to the EU – which are worth more than an estimated one billion euros a year, write James Crisp.
Paris swung behind Poland ahead of crunch negotiations to roll over the duty-free trade regime brought in to help the Ukrainian economy after Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.
It supported calls for limits on Ukrainian poultry, eggs, sugar and wheat, which Polish farmers argue is undercutting them in their domestic market.
Emmanuel Macron’s, the French president, move at a Monday night meeting of ambassadors in Brussels has put him at odds with allies including Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries.
Read James’ full report here.
A teenage orphan who became a posterchild for Moscow’s deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia said he was instructed by officials to recite pro-Russian talking points for television cameras and threatened with a beating when he complained about conditions.  
Denys Kostev, 18, is one of 4,000 orphans and children without parental care who, according to Kyiv, have been unlawfully taken to Russian-controlled territory following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia says it has done nothing unlawful and that it only moved the children to protect them from the war.
Denys was taken from the Ukrainian city of Kherson by Russian forces and emerged as a regular participant in a stream of pro-Russian videos filmed and shared widely online. 
The teenager, who left Russia last month and is now living in Poland, said he had no plans to return to Ukraine, where some see him as a collaborator and propagandist. He told Reuters he took part in the videos because he felt intimidated and “alone”.
“When your life is threatened, you will do anything to keep yourself safe,” he said. 
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has appealed to Kyiv’s allies to supply more air defences, saying Russia had launched 130 missiles, more than 320 attack drones and almost 900 guided bombs in attacks this month alone.
“We require more protection, specifically a fully realistic number of air defense systems that our partners possess,” Mr Zelenksy posted on Twitter.
“Patriots and other systems must do what they were designed for: protect lives, not collect dust in storage.”
Every day and night, Russia uses drones, missiles, and guided bombs to wage a terrorist war against our people, against ordinary Ukrainian cities and villages.Since the beginning of March, Russian troops have used 130 different types of missiles, over 320 ‘Shahed’ drones, and… pic.twitter.com/pZTm3n2V0r
Russia is “politicising sport” by launching its so-called Friendship Games from next September, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said.
The new competition will compete with the Olympic Games and Russian organisers are also planning a winter edition.
Announced several months ago, the first edition of the summer Friendship Games is “planned to be held in Moscow and Yekaterinburg” next September, the IOC said, with the first winter edition to take place in 2026 in Sochi, the venue for the controversial 2014 Winter Olympics.
The IOC called on the sporting world and the governments invited by Moscow “to reject any participation in and support of” the new event, it said in a statement.
Russian sportsmen and women have been permitted to compete in this year’s Olympics in Paris on the proviso that they compete under a neutral banner and do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The United States will not let Ukraine fail,” Lloyd Austin, the US defence chief, has said.
His reassurance comes despite Ukraine grappling with acute ammunition shortages as a $60 billion package of US aid remains stalled in Congress.
“We remain determined to provide Ukraine with the resources that it needs to resist the Kremlin’s aggression,” he said at the opening of a meeting of Ukraine allies in Germany.
Washington announced $300 million in assistance for Ukraine last week, but Mr Austin said it was only possible due to savings on recent purchases.
“We were only able to support this much-needed package by identifying some unanticipated contract savings,” Mr Austin said.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said in a statement yesterday that it is “critically important for us that the Congress soon completes all the necessary procedures and makes a final decision” on aid for Kyiv.
Russia said its forces have seized the village of Orlivka, in Donetsk, on Ukraine’s eastern front.
“On the Avdiivka front, units of the ‘Centre’ grouping of troops liberated the village of Orlivka,” the defence ministry said.
The reported capture comes a little over a month after Russian forces seized the nearby town of Avdiivka, 2.5 miles to the east, following one of the bloodiest battles in the conflict.
British Ministry of Defence analysis shows Russia has concentrated the majority of its attacks on the area west of Avdiivka and Marinka, also in Donetsk, in recent weeks. 
Petr Pavel, the Czech president, has said that, in the near future, European companies will be able to produce enough ammunition for themselves and Ukraine.
“In the near future, European companies will be able to produce the necessary amount of ammunition to replenish the stockpiles of European countries, as well as to provide Ukraine with ammunition if it still needs it,” Mr Pavel said.
His comments come after a Czech-led initiative last week raised enough funds to deliver 300,000 rounds of ammunition for Ukraine, with the goal of providing “much more”.
European countries have stepped up efforts to arm Ukraine in recent months as a US bill to provide a $60 billion package of aid to Kyiv remains tied up in Congress.
Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine say they have destroyed an ammunition depot in the border village of Tetkino, in Kursk.
Drone footage posted on social media shows smoke rising from the warehouse after it is hit by artillery, before a second strike causes the building to burst into flames.”We destroyed the ammunition depot of Putin’s army in Tetkino. To be continued!” the Legion of Freedom posted on Telegram.They are one of several pro-Kyiv groups currently involved in cross-border raids inside the Russian border regions of Kursk and Belgorod.
Russian attacks against Ukraine have killed four people and wounded six over the past day, local officials reported.
Russian forces struck the city of Kherson and eight more settlements in the region, killing three people, Oleksandr Prokudin, the local governor, reported. 
One more person was killed and another one injured in attacks on the village of Ocheretyne, Donetsk, some nine miles northwest of the recently captured Avdiivka, Vadym Filashkin, the regional governor, said on Facebook.
Around 22 miles south west in the village of Selydove, four people were injured after Russian missile fire, regional officials said, with images of the strike on social media showing houses reduced to rubble.
Russia targeted a total of nine Ukrainian regions – Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Donetsk – with casualties reported in the latter three.
Europe must shift to a “war economy” and significantly bolster its defence capabilities in the face of Russian aggression, Charles Michel, the European Council president, said.
“If we want peace, we must prepare for war,” Mr Michel wrote in an op-ed, published by several newspapers, imploring European leaders to no longer take US support for granted.  
“Russia is a serious military threat to our European continent and global security. If we do not get the EU’s response right and do not give Ukraine enough support to stop Russia, we are next,” he said.
“We must therefore be defence-ready and shift to a ‘war economy’ mode.”
The European Union (EU) is preparing to levy tariffs on grain imports from Russia and Belarus to placate farmers and some member states, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the plans.
The European Commission is expected to impose a duty of 95 euros (£81.22) per tonne on cereals from Russia and Belarus, thereby increasing prices by 50 per cent and nixing demand. Tariffs of 50 per cent are also to be placed on oil seeds and derived products.
The move comes as EU farmers protest against climate measures imposed on them by the bloc as well as cheap grain imports from Ukraine, which they say undercut their prices.
Poland has been gripped by protests in recent weeks as farmers demonstrate against EU measures. Meanwhile, Donald Tusk, the country’s prime minister, has been a leading voice calling for an EU ban on imports of Russian and Belarusian agricultural products.
Donald Trump has said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was “probably” involved in the death of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in an Arctic prison last month.
“I don’t know, but perhaps, I mean possibly, I could say probably, I don’t know,” the US Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with Fox News, when asked whether Putin bears responsibility for Navalny’s death.
“He’s a young man, so statistically he’d be alive for a long time … so something happened that was unusual,” Mr Trump added.
Mr Trump, who faces a rematch with Joe Biden in November’s US presidential race, has previously been accused of taking a soft stance on Putin. He was also criticised for only acknowledging Navalny’s death days after the event, without mentioning Putin directly.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is attempting to use the alleged record levels of voter turnout in Russia’s sham elections to justify a long-term war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said.
“Putin is likely continuing efforts to set informational conditions to justify a protracted conflict and long-term occupation of Ukraine under the guise of ‘protecting’ civilians in occupied Ukraine who are only in danger because of the Russian invasion,” the ISW said in its daily report.
The president supposedly won up to 95.23 per cent of the vote in Ukraine’s occupied territories, which he used to demonstrate that the people of occupied Ukraine are “grateful for Russian protection”. He said, therefore, that Russia will do everything to ensure the “protection” of occupied Ukraine.
Developing drones is key to giving Kyiv an advantage over the “numerically superior” Russian forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s Commander-in-chief, has said.
“The development of the use of unmanned systems is my priority,” Mr Syrskyi said on Telegram after meeting his deputy, Vadym Sukharevskyi. 
He added: “We are looking for asymmetric solutions to gain a qualitative advantage over a numerically superior opponent.”
As part of his military reforms, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, last month ordered the creation of a separate branch of Ukraine’s armed forces to be devoted to drones.
Britain, meanwhile, has announced the formation of a Ukraine drone coalition, under which it has pledged to deliver 10,000 drones to Kyiv throughout this year.