Russia’s foreign minister has said Moscow will focus on developing relations with China, though would consider offers from the west to re-establish ties. Sergei Lavrov, in a question and answer session at an event in Moscow, said western countries had espoused “russophobia” since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s ministry of defence claims to have destroyed a warehouse full of ammunition in Razdolovka which was stockpiling 155mm shells manufactured for American-made M-777 howitzers supplied to Ukraine.
Russia has increased the intensity of its operations in the Donbas as it seeks to encircle Sieverodonetsk, Lyschansk, and Rubizhne in order to place the whole of Luhansk oblast under Russian occupation, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.
Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev said that Russia will achieve its objectives in Ukraine and is not “chasing deadlines”. “All the goals set by the president will be fulfilled. It cannot be otherwise,” he said.
The Russia-appointed administration of Ukraine’s Kherson region will ask Moscow to set up a military base on its territory, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reports. Russia successfully seized Ukraine’s southern Kherson region in mid-March which is adjacent to Crimea, the peninsula which Moscow has controlled since 2014.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, saidVladimir Putin was the only Russian official he was willing to meet with to discuss how to end the war. “The president of the Russian Federation decides it all,” he said in a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I cannot accept any kind of meeting with anyone coming from the Russian Federation but the president.”
A team of Colombian soldiers will travel to Europe to
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