Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is considering replacing several senior officials, including state leaders. In an interview with Italian TV, Zelenskiy said “a reset is necessary”, adding that “I have in mind something serious that does not concern a single person, but the direction of the country’s leadership.”
The comments come amid continued speculation that the president is about to dismiss the commander of Ukraine’s military, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
We’ll have more on this in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
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Russia said 28 people, including one child, have died in Saturday’s shelling of a bakery in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which is under Russian occupation. A further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services, according to officials.
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More than two dozen people, mostly journalists, were detained on Saturday at a protest in central Moscow where wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen mobilised to fight in Ukraine called for their return, according to a Reuters witness and independent Russian news reports.
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Belgium is asking G7 countries to consider using €260bn in seized Russian assets held by the west as collateral for loans to Ukraine, according to a report in the Financial Times. This would avoid questions around the legality of seizing the assets outright, as has also been considered by Ukraine’s allies, according to the paper.
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Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set a world record for the total amount of time spent in space on Sunday. As of 8:30GMT, Kononenko overtook his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, according to Russia’s space corporation, Roscosmos.
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US senators are racing to release a highly anticipated bill that pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies. The proposal is the best chance for president Joe Biden to resupply Ukraine with wartime aid. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it has already run into a wall of opposition from conservatives.
Key events
Russian anti-war presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin said that a working group of Russia’s central election commission had found 15% of the supporters’ signatures he submitted to back his election bid to be invalid.
That figure, if confirmed, is three times higher than the allowable error rate and would provide grounds for the commission to disqualify Nadezhdin from running against Vladimir Putin in March.
The commission will make a final ruling on the matter on Wednesday, Nadezhdin’s spokesperson said.
Nadezhdin, a centre-right candidate who has called himself a “principled opponent” of the war, wrote on Telegram that he would appeal to the supreme court if the commission refused to register him.
Nadezhdin’s is not the first anti-war candidacy to appear in this Russian election cycle.
Yekaterina Duntsova, a Russian TV journalist, had submitted documents to run as an independent candidate for president when she was disqualified by the Russian central elections commission in December. She has since announced her support for Nadezhdin’s campaign.
Putin has dominated Russia’s political system and the media for the past two decades, jailing prominent opposition politicians, such as Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, who could challenge him on the ballot.
Putin has won previous elections by a landslide, but independent election watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.
The European Commission will not add any new import bans in its package of sanctions on Russia, EU diplomats said, as a 13th package proposal takes its final shape.
The commission and EU member states want to quickly pass a new set of measures to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Despite calls from some EU countries to ban more Russian exports like aluminium, the commission will propose a package it hopes will cause minimal debate among member states so it is passed quickly, according to Reuters.
Member states need to vote unanimously to adopt new sanctions.
“There will be hundreds of listings … entities and individuals. No big (company) names,” one of the diplomats said.
Russia’s ambassador to France will be summoned to the foreign ministry on Monday over the deaths of two French aid workers last week in a bombardment in Ukraine, a diplomatic source told AFP.
The ministry “will also denounce reinforced disinformation targeting France,” the source said, days after defence officials flagged a “coordinated Russian scheme” to spread false information.
The two aid workers were killed on Thursday in a strike on Beryslav, a small Ukrainian town close to the frontline on the north bank of the river Dnipro, France’s foreign ministry said.
Three more French citizens, according to the ministry, were injured in the attack, which Paris has called an act of “barbarism”. French terrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation into it.
US senate releases deal on border and Ukraine aid
US senators on Sunday evening released the details of a highly anticipated $118bn package that pairs federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others.
The proposal is the best chance for Joe Biden to bolster dwindling US wartime aid for Ukraine – a major foreign policy goal that is shared by both the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.
Crucially, with Congress stalled on approving $60bn in Ukraine aid, the US has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned as they try to come out on top of a grinding stalemate with Russian troops.
In a bid to overcome opposition from House Republicans, McConnell had insisted last year that border policy changes be included in the national security funding package.
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Ed Pilkington and Joanna Walters, here:
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is considering replacing several senior officials, including state leaders. In an interview with Italian TV, Zelenskiy said “a reset is necessary”, adding that “I have in mind something serious that does not concern a single person, but the direction of the country’s leadership.”
The comments come amid continued speculation that the president is about to dismiss the commander of Ukraine’s military, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
We’ll have more on this in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
-
Russia said 28 people, including one child, have died in Saturday’s shelling of a bakery in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which is under Russian occupation. A further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services, according to officials.
-
More than two dozen people, mostly journalists, were detained on Saturday at a protest in central Moscow where wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen mobilised to fight in Ukraine called for their return, according to a Reuters witness and independent Russian news reports.
-
Belgium is asking G7 countries to consider using €260bn in seized Russian assets held by the west as collateral for loans to Ukraine, according to a report in the Financial Times. This would avoid questions around the legality of seizing the assets outright, as has also been considered by Ukraine’s allies, according to the paper.
-
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set a world record for the total amount of time spent in space on Sunday. As of 8:30GMT, Kononenko overtook his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, according to Russia’s space corporation, Roscosmos.
-
US senators are racing to release a highly anticipated bill that pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies. The proposal is the best chance for president Joe Biden to resupply Ukraine with wartime aid. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it has already run into a wall of opposition from conservatives.
