Live Updates: Zelenskyy suspends parties with Russian ties

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the suspension of the activities of 11 political parties with ties to Russia.

The largest of these is the opposition Platform for Life, which holds 44 of the 450 seats in the country’s parliament. The party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who has friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Also on the list is the Nashi (Bear) party led by Yevheniy Murayev. Before the Russian invasion. the British authorities had warned that Russia wanted to install Murayev at the head of Ukraine.

Speaking in a video address early on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that “given a full-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and the links between it and certain political structures, the activities of a number of political parties are suspended during the period of martial law. He added that “the activities of politicians aimed at discord and collaboration will not succeed”.

Zelenskyy’s announcement follows the introduction of martial law which provides for the banning of parties associated with Russia.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINE WAR:

— Ukrainian leader warns war will cost Russia for generations

– Even if Russia is denied an easy win, Putin can keep beating Ukraine for months

— Putin rallies to Russian troops as deadly bombings rain down on Ukraine

— Ukraine’s cultural capital discovers it is no longer far from war

— Minister: Clearing live ammunition currently strewn across Ukraine will take years and outside help

— Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS TODAY:

KYIV, Ukraine – In peacetime, Ukraine has a thriving surrogacy industry, one of the few countries where foreigners can trick Ukrainian women into carrying their pregnancies. Today, at least 20 of those babies are stuck in a makeshift bomb shelter in the Ukrainian capital, waiting for their parents to travel to the war zone to pick them up.

They are well cared for now. Nurses at the surrogacy center are stuck with them, as the constant shelling makes it too dangerous for them to go home. Russian troops attempt to encircle the city, Ukrainian defenders holding them back for now, the threat comes from the air.

Nurse Lyudmilla Yashchenko says they are staying in the air-raid shelter to save their lives and those of the babies, some of whom are only a few days old. They have enough baby food and supplies for now, and can only hope and wait for the newborns to be retrieved and the war to end.

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The UK Ministry of Defense said the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defense Forces “continue to effectively defend Ukrainian airspace”.

“Russia has failed to take control of the air and relies heavily on ranged weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets in Ukraine,” the official said. ministry on Twitter. “Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s primary objectives for the early days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress.”

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian military official confirmed to a Ukrainian newspaper that Russian forces carried out a missile strike on Friday on a missile and ammunition warehouse in the settlement of Delyatyn, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine. western Ukraine.

But Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainskaya Pravda on Saturday that the missile has not been confirmed to be a hypersonic Kinzhal.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said earlier on Saturday that the Russian military struck the Delyatyn underground warehouse on Friday with the hypersonic missile Kinzhal during its first combat use. According to Russian officials, the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound.

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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the siege of Mariupol will go down in history for what he calls war crimes committed by the Russian military.

“Doing this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries,” he said in his late-night video address to the nation early Sunday.

Zelenskyy told the Ukrainians that the ongoing negotiations with Russia were “neither simple nor pleasant, but they are necessary”. He said he discussed the progress of the talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.

“Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution. Also, we are interested in peace now,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Russian army is not even recovering the bodies of its soldiers in some places, Zelenskyy said.

“In places where there were particularly fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defense. And no one is recovering these bodies,” he said. He described it as a battle near Chornobayivka in the south, where Ukrainian forces held their positions and six times repelled the Russians, who kept “sending their people to slaughter”.

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WASHINGTON — The calculation of military conquests and occupation may be against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely. Yet even conservative numbers are in the thousands. This is a much faster pace than in previous Russian offensives, threatening support for the war among ordinary Russians. Russia suffered 64 deaths in five days of fighting in its 2008 war with Georgia. He lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan in 10 years and more than 11,000 during the years of fighting in Chechnya.

The number of Russian dead and wounded in Ukraine is approaching the benchmark of 10% reduced combat effectiveness, said Dmitry Gorenburg, Russia security researcher at the Virginia-based think tank CNA. The reported deaths on the battlefield of four Russian generals – out of an estimated 20 in the fight – signal a weakened command, he said.

Researchers who track only Russian equipment losses that have been photographed or videotaped say that Russia has lost more than 1,500 tanks, trucks, mounted equipment and other heavy machinery. Two out of three were captured or abandoned, signaling the failures of Russian troops to let them go.

When it comes to the hard work of capturing and holding cities, conventional military measures suggest Russia needs a 5-to-1 advantage in urban combat, analysts say. Meanwhile, the formula for governing a troubled territory in the face of armed opposition is 20 fighters for every 1,000 people – or 800,000 Russian troops for Ukraine’s more than 40 million people, Michael Clarke said, former head of the UK-based Royal United Services Institute. , a defense think tank

That’s almost as much as the entire active-duty Russian army of 900,000, and means that long-term control of substantial Ukrainian territory could require more resources than Russia can commit, did he declare.

“Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal – they could raze all the big cities, and the Ukrainians will rise up against the Russian occupation – there will only be constant guerrilla warfare,” he said. said Clarke.