Six In The Morning Friday 1 April 2022

 

Firefighters still trying to put out oil depot blaze

Firefighters are still trying to put out the blaze, which started this morning. Ukraine's defence ministry will neither confirm nor deny it was behind the attack.

Belgorod is just across the border from Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv.

Verified security camera footage from the depot shows two low-flying helicopters releasing missiles, followed by huge explosions.

The Kremlin said the attack did not create "comfortable conditions" for peace talks.

Summary

1. Ukraine's foreign ministry says it can not confirm or deny whether its forces attacked an oil depot in Russia
2. Russia says Ukrainian helicopters attacked the depot in Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border
3. If confirmed, it would be the first known time Ukraine has flown into Russian airspace to attack
4. The strikes do not create "comfortable conditions" for peace talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says
5. Top-level Ukrainian and Russian authorities have approved a plan for further evacuations from Mariupol, the Red Cross says
6. Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in the devastated city in Ukraine's south
7. Ukrainian forces say they are making gains around Kherson - the only major city held by Russian forces

First food aid for 100 days enters Tigray under ‘humanitarian truce’

Besieged region has an estimated 2 million people suffering from an extreme lack of food

Lizzy Davies

A convoy of aid trucks has arrived in Tigray, the first emergency food supplies to reach the besieged region of northern Ethiopia by road for more than 100 days.

Two weeks after Abiy Ahmed’s government declared an immediate “humanitarian truce” with rebel Tigrayan forces to allow aid in, the World Food Programme said it had received the assurances it needed to dispatch 20 trucks containing vital supplies of food.

Since mid-December no aid has reached Tigray on the land route from Semera, in neighbouring Afar, to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. In a video posted online earlier on Friday, WFP said the convoy contained 500 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies “for communities on the edge of starvation”.

Russian forces accused of blocking Mariupol evacuation buses and ‘seizing humanitarian aid’

Ukraine accuses the Russian military of stealing about 14 tons of humanitaria

Bel Trew

in Zaporizhzhia

Fresh efforts by Ukraine to rescue civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol were hampered after Russian forces allegedly blocked buses and stole humanitarian aid, but The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was hopeful evacuations would still begin on Friday.

Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian soldiers blocked a convoy of 45 buses that had headed towards Mariupol on Thursday to evacuate people after Moscow had agreed to a limited cease-fire and to open a humanitarian corridor.

“The Russian Federation, again, does not let our buses pass,” Ms Vereshchuk said, adding that buses were stopped outside Berdyansk, about 75km to the west of Mariupol.

EU-China summit underway with crisis and conflict on the table

The EU's top diplomats are holding a summit via videoconference with China's leadership. Talks are focusing on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Top diplomats from the EU are meeting via videoconference Friday with China's leaders to discuss urgent matters including the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the afternoon session with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. He called on the EU and China "to prevent spillovers of the crisis."

Anti-war protester arrested in Russia for holding up a poster saying 'two words'

A video showing police arresting a woman during a Moscow protest against the war in Ukraine on March 13 went viral earlier this month. The woman was holding a sign that said, in Russian, “two words” – a reference to an anti-war slogan. Cleverly, her sign doesn’t feature the “war”, as a new law bans the spread of what the government considers false information about the invasion they call a “special operation". 

A woman attended a protest on March 13 in Moscow against the war in Ukraine, carrying a sign reading “two words” in Russian, a reference to the popular anti-war slogan in Russian “niet voyne", which roughly translates as “no to the war”. The woman was arrested by at least seven officers who were wearing riot gear.

Activatica, the Russian independent media outlet that filmed the arrest, sent our team a second video, showing another woman being arrested after reciting a pacifist poem, proof that police are cracking down even on indirect speech.

Press secretary Jen Psaki plans to depart White House for MSNBC in coming weeks

By Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter, CNN

Updated 1529 GMT (2329 HKT) April 1, 2022

White House press secretary Jen Psaki plans on departing the Biden administration in the coming weeks and heading to MSNBC, two people familiar with the matter told CNN on Friday.

Psaki has not officially signed a contract with the progressive cable news network, but the talks are in the advanced stages, the people said.

Axios, which first broke the news, reported that Psaki will host a show for NBC's streaming platform Peacock. She will also appear on MSNBC's shows.