Putin hosts “strategic” meeting with Xi after visiting Mariupol – Live Broadcast

Russian state media reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin met with senior officers leading his military operation in Ukraine.

The leader, who is facing an arrest warrant for war crimes, also met with the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, in charge of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The Tass news agency reported that the meeting took place at the Rostov-on-Don command center in southern Russia.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian officials said an unprecedented wartime deal is allowing grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices are driving more people into poverty.

* Xi Jinping walks a diplomatic tightrope as he heads to Moscow on Monday, trying to present China as a global peacemaker while strengthening ties with Putin, his closest ally, who is increasingly isolated by the West.

* The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Russia, China and Iran had completed a trilateral naval exercise in the Arabian Sea that included artillery fire on targets in the sea and in the air.

– President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff said three senior US security officials held a video call with a group of their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss military assistance to Kiev.

* Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces outside the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut had managed to keep Russian units at bay until ammunition, food, equipment and medicine could be delivered to the defenders.

– Its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday that the Russian mercenary group Wagner plans to recruit nearly 30,000 new fighters by mid-May.

* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

* An agreement allowing safe export of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea for at least 60 days – half of the intended period – has been renewed after Russia warned that any further extension beyond mid-May would depend on the removal of some Western sanctions.

Putin may not see the inside of his cell anytime soon, but his arrest warrant for war crimes from the International Criminal Court could hurt his ability to travel freely and meet with other world leaders, who may feel less inclined to speak to a wanted man.

* The International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant on Friday, accusing Putin of a war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Moscow denies committing atrocities in the conflict and has dismissed the arrest warrant as outrageous but meaningless to Russia.

Volodymyr Zelensky said that the countries that supply weapons to Russia can only be “peripheral in the free world.”

The Ukrainian president made the remarks in a video posted overnight on Twitter as fighting continued on the front line.

“All those who produce weapons for terror against Ukraine, who help Russia incite aggression, in particular by providing them with the Shahed drones, who support Russia’s destruction of international law, can only be marginalized to the world,” he said.

Mikhail Korotkov’s Trainspotter blog was his passion — but closing shop and leaving home seemed like the only option after photos he posted of his favorite target attracted some unwanted attention, he discovers. Robin Dixon.

The Russian Minister of Justice, Marco Bushmann, said today, Thursday, that Germany will have to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he enters its territory and that the International Criminal Court is asking the contracting country to enforce the law.

An arrest warrant for Mr put it in Has been issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which accuses him war crimes By taking hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages.

The court accuses Mr Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova Belova of “illegal deportation” of children “from occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.

president Xi Jinping He is an unlikely kind of peacemaker. His government has been responsible for unspeakable atrocities against the Muslim Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region, suppression of protest, rule of law and democracy in Hong Kong, and routine violations of human rights throughout the People’s Republic.

His armed forces have been harassing and terrorizing Taiwan for many years, as well as threatening neighbors to the south China sea. However, the tyrannical supreme leader of China is now traveling around the world to broker peace agreements. It’s a mystery.

Mr. Xi is actually doing very well. Having succeeded in getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations, and thus begin to end their ruthless proxy war in Yemen, he will head to Moscow next week to preach avenues for peace. Russian President Vladimir PutinDifficult customer.

is reading The Independent’Gentlemen Editors:

Russian media reported that Vladimir Putin visited a family at their home in the Nevsky district of Mariupol during his visit to the Ukrainian city now under Russian control.

The new residential neighborhood was built by the Russian military with the first people moving in last September.

Russian agencies quoted Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khosnullin, who accompanied the leader, as saying that residents had returned “actively”.

Mariupol had a population of half a million before the war and was home to the Azovstal Steelworks, one of the largest steelworks in Europe.

“The city center has been badly damaged,” the deputy prime minister said. “We want to finish (reconstructing) the center by the end of the year, at least the façade part. The center is very beautiful,” he added.

Russian media broadcast videos showing the Russian leader driving at night through a built-up area as well as walking in what the media described as an orchestra, which was restored in just three months.

Nor was there an immediate reaction to the visit from Kiev.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said today that Russian forces fighting in Ukraine are “highly unlikely” to achieve their key pre-planned objectives in the coming months of the grinding war.

She referred to a decree published on March 3 in which authorities in the Russian-controlled part of Zaporizhia Oblast declared Melitopol as the oblast’s capital.

“The head of the Russian-installed region, Yevgeny Paletsky, said that this is a temporary measure until Russia takes control of the city of Zaporozhye,” the ministry noted.

She added, “The quiet announcement of an alternative capital is likely to be a tacit acknowledgment within the Russian regime that its forces are unlikely to seize major pre-planned targets in the near future.”

Zaporizhia is one of four provinces that Putin claimed to annex as part of the Russian Federation on September 30 last year.

The Defense Ministry noted that the invading country never occupied Zaporizhia, a major industrial center with 700,000 people, which is about 35 kilometers from the current front line.