EU aid for Ukrainian refugees insufficient - Polish official
The European Union’s offer of 500 million euros (£415m) in aid for countries helping Ukrainian refugees is insufficient, a Polish deputy foreign minister has said. “This amount will certainly not be enough, especially as it is to be distributed among all countries,” Pawel Jablonski said in an interview with Polsat News.
Around 1.2 million people, 90% of the Ukrainian citizens, have fled Ukraine to Poland since the war began. Jablonski said initial calculations estimate that the cost of hosting one million refugees will cost Poland up to 10 billion zlotys ($2.2 billion/2 billion euros) if education, healthcare, and social insurance costs are taken into account.
“This is an estimate for a million people and we will have many more,” he added.
Russia ramping up nuclear weapon accusations against Ukraine - UK
There has been an intensification of Russian accusations that Ukraine is developing nuclear or biological weapons since February, the UK's Ministry of Defence says. The MoD says that while these are "long-standing narratives", they are likely being amplified "as part of a retrospective justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine".
As we reported in an earlier post, Ukraine's military has accused Russia of resorting to psychological warfare, saying that groups of Russian forces have been conducting propaganda work in occupied territories to influence local residents.
People are also evacuating Irpin, a town to the west of Kyiv, which has seen heavy fighting in recent days. The evacuation of the town's population through the village of Romanivka to the city of Kyiv continues, said the head of the region, Oleksiy Kuleba.
As of 9:30 (07:30 GMT), more than 150 people had been evacuated, he added. "The aggressor is preventing the evacuation of the population. Within a day, those who were able to get to the gathering place were taken out of Irpin on their own. Now the district is preparing for a large-scale evacuation and delivery of humanitarian aid."
Russia may have broken laws of war in Irpin - HRW
An analysis by Human Rights Watch (HRW) of Sunday's Irpin attack suggests the laws of war were violated by Russia during the shelling of the town, west of Kyiv.
For several hours on 6 March 2022, Russian forces bombarded an intersection on a road that hundreds of civilians were using to flee the Russian army’s advance in northern Ukraine to Kyiv, Human Rights Watch said.
"The repeated nature of the attacks, which according to the government killed at least eight civilians, suggests that Russian forces violated their obligations under international humanitarian law not to conduct indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks that harm civilians, and failed to take all feasible measures to avoid civilian casualties."
1.2 million people have fled to Poland
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According to the Polish Border Guard Agency, 1.2 million people have fled from Ukraine to Poland since the war began. On Monday alone, 141,500 people crossed the frontier, the agency wrote on Twitter - just under Sunday’s daily record of 142,300.
About 90% of the people fleeing are Ukrainian citizens, mostly women, and children. One academic estimates about 40% of refugees have already left Poland for other countries.
Poland was already home to many Ukrainians - estimates range between one and two million people - and a lot has come to stay with family or friends here. Thousands of Poles are hosting refugees in their own homes too, and today Poland's parliament will debate emergency legislation to compensate those who do for their additional costs.
The legislation would also allow Ukrainians to live and work in Poland for 18 months and receive free healthcare and schooling.
We need to do more for refugees - Wallace
On the subject of refugees, the UK defence secretary acknowledged the UK needed to do more to address the situation of Ukrainians arriving in Calais, some of whom have been told they need to travel back to Paris or Brussels to apply for a visa.
"We need to do more," he said. "We need to upscale it. I know that the home secretary has already doubled, or trebled in some cases, more people in different processing centres." He said the government's compassion was "huge" and would result in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians coming to the UK.
"It's not the case that we are only allowing 300 people in, it is the case that the system has not been quick enough, which is what we're going to address."
No-fly zone would hurt Ukraine as well as Russia - Wallace
On the subject of a no-fly zone, Mr Wallace reiterated the UK's position on not being in favour of imposing such a zone over Ukraine - which Ukrainians have been calling for. He says neither Russian missiles nor artillery would be affected by a no-fly zone, which would also be stopping Ukrainian aircraft from flying.
“If we have a no-fly zone, no one flies.” But we can provide anti-air capability instead, he said. “That’s another way of achieving the same aim.”
Russia threatens to cut off the gas supply to Europe
On Monday, Russia warned it might close off its main gas pipeline to Germany if the West went ahead and banned Russian oil. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said such a move would lead to "catastrophic consequences" for global supply and lead to the oil price doubling to $300 a barrel.
The US has been exploring a potential ban with allies as a way of punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But Germany and the Netherlands rejected the plan on Monday. The EU gets about 40% of its gas and 30% of its oil from Russia and has no easy substitutes if supplies are disrupted.
Novak said Russia has every right to retaliate, and pointed to Germany's decision last month to block certification for the second Nord Stream pipeline between the two countries.
Source: BBC
