High-level talks between Kyiv and Moscow are set to take place on the Ukraine-Belarus border.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls the next 24 hours “crucial” for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military claims the pace of Russia’s assault has slowed.
The civilian death toll now stands at 352 people, including 14 children, Ukraine’s health ministry says.
Moscow shifts its nuclear forces to a high alert footing.
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Ukrainian president asks for fast-track EU membership
Zelinsky has asked the European Union to immediately admit Ukraine as a member state via a special procedure.
“Our goal is to be with all Europeans and, most importantly, to be equal. I’m sure that’s fair. I am sure we deserve it,” he said in a video speech shared on social media.
Russia’s strategic position ‘deteriorating rapidly’: Analyst
Nikolay Mitrokhin, a Russia expert and researcher at Germany’s Bremen University, says Russia’s offensive has “practically stopped on all fronts”.
“A large morning assault on [the eastern city of] Kharkiv has been repelled and an attempt to enter Kyiv from the [town of] Irpen [to the west] has been stopped,” Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.
“Russia’s strategic position … is deteriorating rapidly. The Russian military is suffering great losses,” he added.
Mitrokhin identified three possible angles from which Moscow’s forces may, however, refocus their efforts and attack – on Kyiv from the north, on the southern port city of Odesa, and on the eastern city of Poltava.
Russia tells Google to restrict ads containing casualties information
Russia’s state communications regulator has ordered Alphabet Inc’s Google to immediately restrict access to the information posted as part of Google Ads that it claims contains inaccurate information about casualties sustained by Russian forces and Ukrainian civilians.
Roskomnadzor said it had sent a letter to Google demanding that the offending materials be removed and said it would block internet resources that publish such information.
Moscow has steadily ramped up efforts to control the narrative concerning its invasion of Ukraine playing out in news media and on tech platforms since launching its attack.
Ukraine civilian death toll at least 102 but feared higher, UN rights chief says
The UN’s human rights chief says at least 102 civilians have been killed since Russia launched its invasion, with a further 304 injured, but warns the real figure is feared to be “considerably higher”.
Michelle Bachelet said most of the deaths were a result of the use of “explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and airstrikes”.
“The real figures are, I fear, considerably higher,” she told the opening session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which earlier agreed to hold an urgent debate on Ukraine later this week.
Bachelet added that about 422,000 Ukrainians have now fled their homeland, with many more displaced within the country.
NATO allies ‘stepping up’ military support to Ukraine
NATO member states are “stepping up” their support for Ukraine by providing Kyiv with air-defense missiles and anti-tank weapons, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says.
Stoltenberg said in a tweet that the United States-led alliance was also providing Ukraine with “humanitarian and financial aid”.
Russia’s defense ministry appeals to Kyiv’s residents to ‘leave the city’
Russia’s defense ministry has appealed to Ukrainian civilians to leave the capital, Kyiv, as Moscow presses ahead with its offensive.
“We are appealing to Kyiv’s population to leave the city on a certain road that we can guarantee safe passage, I want to reiterate that Russian troops are only hitting military targets,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a televised address.
Lithuania to request probe into alleged ‘war crimes in Ukraine
Lithuania’s government has said it will ask prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to investigate “war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine”.
“There is new material coming in every day, but we have enough of it by now to file the request,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in a televised cabinet meeting.
‘Hard to see quite where these talks have to go’
Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from the city of Lviv, in western Ukraine, says Moscow “has not given any hint or indication” that it intends to step back from its key demands ahead of the Russia-Ukraine talks.
“These demands include the neutrality of Ukraine, guarantees that it will never join NATO and that Kyiv recognizes the declared independence of breakaway regions in the east of the country,” Hull said, citing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).
“And you can probably include in that recognition that Crimea is officially part of Russia after it was annexed [by Moscow] back in 2014, most of the world and certainly Ukraine does not recognize that,” he added.
“This Ukrainian delegation is certainly not going to accede to those demands and it seems highly unlikely that the Russians are suddenly going to withdraw their forces and therefore it is hard to see quite where these talks have to go.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
