Ukraine morning briefing:
1⃣Ukraine 'past the point of negotiations'
2⃣Thousands transported from Ukraine to Russia
3⃣Mariupol civilian evacuations to continue
4⃣Johnson to address Ukraine's parliament
5⃣Patel faces legal action over Ukraine visas telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🔴Priti Patel could face legal action over delays in the visa system for Ukrainians fleeing the war.
The process has been criticised amid cases of families being unable to travel to the UK because of system delays telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🇸🇰Slovakia will seek an exemption from any oil embargo of Russian oil agreed by the European Union in its next set of sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, Slovakia's Economy Ministry has said telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
Pope Francis says he has requested a meeting in Moscow with Putin but has heard nothing back.
🗣️"We have not yet received a response and we are still insisting, though I fear that Putin cannot, and does not, want to have this meeting at this time" telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🇺🇦Evacuees from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol "are on the way" toward government-controlled areas away from the most intense combat zones where Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting, says the WHO telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🇷🇺Putin has signed a decree on retaliatory economic sanctions in response to the "unfriendly actions of certain foreign states and international organisations", the Kremlin has said telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🔴NEW: Boris Johnson invokes Churchill as he addresses Ukraine parliament
🗣️"You have exploded the myth of Putin’s invincibility and you have written one of the most glorious chapters in military history and in the life of your country," Boris Johnson has said whilst addressing the Ukrainian parliament telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🔴Britain will donate 13 armoured vehicles to help evacuate civilians from besieged areas in eastern Ukraine, the government has said
🚨Russia appears to have dodged its first foreign debt default in a century after the Kremlin tapped domestic dollar reserves in a humiliating U-turn for Vladimir Putin
🔴 The Russian defence ministry said that Russian troops have resumed shelling the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol after Ukrainian soldiers moved into fighting positions
🇺🇦 A UN humanitarian official said on Tuesday that it had successfully evacuated some 101 people from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, with most of the evacuees now in Zaporizhzhia, where they are receiving humanitarian assistance
🗣️ Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, has accused Russia of using rape as a weapon of war, and labelled Vladimir Putin “the main war criminal of the 21st century”
🇫🇷 French President Emmanuel Macron told Vladimir Putin to put an end "to this devastating aggression" in Ukraine during their telephone conversation on Tuesday, his office said
🇫🇮 With its brightly coloured slides, trampolines and tunnels, the soft play area near the centre of Helsinki, looks much like any other....
➡️ The difference is that it lies 25m below ground and is designed to withstand nuclear, biological and chemical attacks
Above ground, the only visible clue to its second identity is a small orange and blue triangle on the wall by the entrance that states: “VÄESTÖNSUOJA SKYDDSRUM”, or “defence shelter”
🇺🇦 Volodymyr Zelensky has said 156 people who fled the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol had arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday. Follow the latest updates below 👇
🇪🇺The European Union's leader has called on the 27-nation bloc to ban oil imports from Russia in a sixth package of sanctions targeting Moscow for its war in Ukraine
🗣️Russia's defence ministry has said that it had disabled six railway stations in Ukraine used to supply Ukrainian forces with Western-made weapons in the country's east telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🔴 Senior MPs have called for an inquiry into claims that France deliberately withheld secrets about missiles that killed 46 British sailors in the Falklands War.
📅 Ahead of Wednesday's 40th anniversary of an Exocet attack on HMS Sheffield – which caused the first British fatalities of the conflict – France has been urged to come clean about what it did and did not share with Margaret Thatcher's government
🗣️ Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of Parliament's defence select committee, said the matter "warrants further investigation", while Liam Fox, a former defence secretary, said France – a vital defence partner of the UK – should be "open and honest" about what happened
🇺🇦🇬🇧 It's a culture war/actual war hybrid nobody was expecting.
However, the combination of fish and chips – according to pro-Kremlin minister Andrey Isayev – is not a British idea but Russia’s own
📺 During a television rant in which Isayev railed against our “evil” nation, urging UK-dwellers to “catch your fish and chips from your foggy marshes”, the show’s host, Yevgeny Popov, chimed in that “white fish, fish and chips is Russian."
🔴The US Supreme Court has reportedly voted to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade decision that legalised abortion in America half a century ago telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🔴"This is the biggest step back for women in decades. It will have proven consequences. You can have now a flat ban on abortion in any state," Neal Katyal, the former acting US Solicitor General, said