Ukraine Russia War Latest News: Putin to meet Xi Jinping in Moscow after Mariupol visit

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with top brass leading his military operation in Ukraine, state media reported today.

The leader, facing an arrest warrant for war crimes, also met with Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov who is in charge of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The meeting took place at the Rostov-on-Don command post in southern Russia, TASS news agency reported.

The war has presented Beijing with opportunities it might once have considered far more remote, writes Mary Dejevsky.

Read Mary’s full article here:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian officials have said an unprecedented wartime deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where the Hunger is a growing threat and where high food prices are pushing more people into poverty has been prolonged.

* Xi Jinping walks a diplomatic tightrope as he visits Moscow on Monday, seeking to portray China as a global peacemaker while strengthening ties with Putin, his closest ally, increasingly isolated by the West.

* Russia, China and Iran have completed three-way naval drills in the Arabian Sea, which included firing artillery at targets at sea and in the air, the Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday. Defense.

* Three senior US security officials held a video call with a group of their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss military aid to Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said.

* Ukrainian forces outside the eastern town of Bakhmut manage to keep Russian units at bay so that ammunition, food, equipment and medicine can be delivered to the defenders, a the army said on Saturday.

* The Russian mercenary group Wagner plans to recruit around 30,000 new fighters by mid-May, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday.

* Reuters could not verify reports from the battlefield.

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

* Putin may not see inside a cell anytime soon, but his International Criminal Court-issued war crimes warrant could hamper his ability to travel freely and meet other world leaders , who might feel less inclined to talk to a wanted man.

* The ICC issued the warrant on Friday, charging Putin with the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Moscow denies committing atrocities in the conflict and has dismissed the mandate as outrageous but meaningless to Russia.

Countries that supply arms to Russia can only be “marginal in the free world”, said Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine’s president made the comments in a video shared overnight on Twitter as fighting continued on the frontline.

“Anyone who produces weapons for terror against Ukraine, who helps Russia incite aggression, including by supplying Shahed drones, who supports Russia’s destruction of international law, can only be marginal for the world,” he said.

Trainspotter Mikhail Korotkov’s blog was his passion – but closing up shop and leaving the house seemed like the only option after photos he posted of his favorite target attracted unwanted attention, Robyn Dixon finds.

Germany will have to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he enters its territory and the International Criminal Court is demanding that the contracting nation execute him, the country’s Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said today.

A warrant for Mr Putin’s arrest has been issued by the ICC in The Hague, which charges him with war crimes in removing hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages.

The court accuses Mr. Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, of “illegal deportation” of children “from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.

President Xi Jinping is something of an unlikely peacemaker. His government has been responsible for untold cruelties against the Uyghur Muslim people in the Xinjiang region, the crackdown on protests, the rule of law and democracy in Hong Kong, and the systematic human rights abuses in the whole people’s republic.

Its armed forces have been buzzing and intimidating Taiwan for many years, as well as threatening neighbors in the South China Sea. Yet now China’s tyrannical supreme leader is traveling the world brokering peace deals. It’s an enigma.

Mr. Xi is actually on a roll. After getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations and thus begin to end their ruthless proxy war in Yemen, he is heading to Moscow next week to preach the ways of peace to Vladimir Putin, a tough client.

Read The Independent’s Editorial here:

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

The new residential area was built by the Russian army and the first people moved in last September.

Residents returned “actively”, said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, who accompanied the leader, quoted by Russian agencies.

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

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

Russian media released videos showing the Russian leader driving a car at night through a built-up area and entering what media said was a philharmonic, restored in just three months.

There was also no immediate reaction to kyiv’s visit.