Two Ukrainians freed from Dutch jail to join fight in their homeland

Two Ukrainian men in the Netherlands have been released from prison to go and join the fight in their homeland. 

The men had been detained for six months on suspicion of human trafficking but last Friday a court freed them to answer the Ukrainian government's call to defend the country.

The two men, aged 27 and 29, are from Lutsk in northwest Ukraine, and are suspected of helping eleven Albanians who were trying to reach England by boat. 

The court said that due to "the war situation in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government's appeal to its people to defend the country", the defendants' wish to respond to this appeal and their interest to be with their families, was the reason why they were being released. 

These circumstances are "extraordinary" and "serious", according to the court, which also considers that the interest of the suspects in being released "outweighs the social interest served by the continued detention on remand". 

"To our knowledge, this has never happened before in the Netherlands," a court spokeswoman told AFP news agency.

The suspects will not have to be in court for their trial, but if they receive a prison sentence they're supposed to come back to serve time. 

'Civilians cannot leave Mariupol'   

Witnesses fleeing the besieged port of Mariupol say they are leaving behind a city that has been almost entirely destroyed by Russian bombardment and heavy fighting.

Maria Fiodorova crossed the border from Ukraine into Medyka, Poland, on Monday after an arduous, five-day journey. The 77-year-old woman told The Associated Press that the city is almost 90 per cent destroyed, with every building razed to the ground.

Video captured by The Associated Press shows residents pushing carts and carrying bags of food and supplies along debris-ridden streets and passages. The siege has caused shortages of food, water and energy supplies, according to city officials who say at least 2,300 civilians have been killed thus far in Mariupol.

Residents have fled Mariupol not knowing what, if anything, will be left — if and when they return.

Another Ukrainian woman who made it to the Polish border said she left behind a sister in Mariupol who reported that Russian soldiers there are not allowing anyone to leave.

“She told me that they have already switched to a Russian time zone, that there are lots of Russian soldiers walking around the city. Civilians cannot leave,” Yulia Bondarieva, who fled Kharkiv for Medyka, told the AP. She feared that her sister and family would soon run out of food and water.

Red Cross chief heading to Moscow for talks

The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer, is heading to Moscow this week for talks with Russian officials to discuss the conduct of hostilities and prisoners of war in particular. 

The Russia trip comes after Maurer spent five days in Ukraine last week where he met with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and other ministers. 

"I have to go to Moscow tomorrow and I hope to have conversations in Moscow on Wednesday and Thursday. I will meet with senior representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs" Maurer said on Monday in an interview with AFP news agency. 

"My objective is to advance certain issues including the issue of prisoners of war, the deceased, the conduct of hostilities... all issues that arise directly from our role as guardian of the Geneva Conventions" he explained. 

One of the main roles of the ICRC is to ensure that belligerents respect the rights of prisoners of war. In international armed conflicts, the Geneva Conventions also recognize the ICRC's right to visit prisoners of war.

The organization has not yet started visiting Ukrainian or Russian detainees, but Maurer was optimistic about it.

Alleged attack on Russian teenager in Germany is 'fake', say police

An alleged fatal attack on a Russian teenager in Germany by a group of Ukrainians is "fake," police have said.

Authorities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia said they had "no information about such a violent assault or a death", despite viral video footage of a woman crying as she shared a friend's story about an alleged assault on a 16-year-old Russian-speaking boy in the town of Euskirchen.

Read more in our story here:

Alleged attack on Russian teenager is 'fake,' says German police

Russians claim shelled Kyiv shopping centre was weapons storage facility

The Russian military says it targeted a shopping centre on the outskirts of Kyiv because it was being used to store rockets. 

At least eight people were killed in Sunday's attack on the Retroville shopping centre in northwest Kyiv. 

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Monday that Ukrainian forces were using the shopping mall to reload multiple rocket launchers and store rockets used for shelling Russian troops.

He said that a battery of multiple rocket launchers and ammunition for them were destroyed in the strike. The defense ministry spokesman’s claims could not independently verified.

Residents of a nearby building, whose windows were blown out by the blast, said they had seen a mobile rocket launcher near the Retroville shopping centre several days earlier.

The shopping center in the densely populated Podil district was reduced to a smoldering ruin after being hit late Sunday by shelling that killed eight people, according to Ukrainian emergency officials. The attack shattered every window in a neighboring high-rise.

EU Commissioner highlights 'huge risk' of trafficking for Ukrainian women and children

There is a "huge risk" that Ukrainian children and women fleeing the war may fall victim to human trafficking, the European Union's Home Affairs Commissioner warned on Monday.

Speaking during a visit to Estonia, Ylva Johansson told reporters there had been only a few reports of trafficking but that one big concern is the number of orphans in Ukraine, and the risks of vulnerable children being trafficked or being the victims of forced adoption.

Read more in our story here: 

'Huge risk' Ukrainian children can fall into trafficking

Russian court bans Facebook and Instagram for 'extremism'

A Moscow court banned the Facebook and Instagram social media networks on Monday, saying they carry out "extremist" activities.

"The court has satisfied a lawsuit filed by the First Deputy Prosecutor General against the holding company Meta Platforms Inc. relating to the prohibition of its activities on Russian territory," the court said in a message on Telegram.

Social networks run by Meta are "banned for extremist activity", the court added.

US-headquartered Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, but also of the messaging application WhatsApp, which is not affected by this decision because the court ruled that it was not used as a means of "public dissemination of information".

Russia's security services, the FSB, earlier on Monday demanded an "immediate" ban on Facebook and Instagram, accusing them of activities "directed against Russia and its armed forces".

Read more at our story here: 

'Extremist' Instagram and Facebook banned in Russia

euronewsMeta's Instagram and Facebook have been banned, but the court decided WhatsApp could stay.

People in Mariupol are being hit 'blindly and indiscriminately'

Greece’s consul general in Mariupol, who arrived in Greece after being the last European Union diplomat to be evacuated from the besieged Ukrainian city, said civilians in the city were being hit “blindly and indiscriminately.”

He estimated there were thousands of civilian victims.

“Mariupol will enter the list of cities that were completely destroyed by war,” Manolis Androulakis said Sunday after arriving at Athens airport, comparing it to cities devastated by past conflicts such as Chechnya’s Grozny, Syria’s Aleppo, Britain’s Coventry, Spain’s Guernica, and the Soviet Union’s Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

Androulakis left Mariupol on 15 March, on a day when tens of thousands of people managed to flee the city, and reached Moldova three days later. He had earlier assisted in evacuating dozens of Greek nationals and members of Ukraine’s Greek community from the city.

Androulakis urged people to “unite our voices for a ceasefire. Because at the moment civilians are being hit, blindly and indiscriminately”.

Radiation monitors at Chernobyl 'have stopped working'

Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency says the radiation monitors around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst meltdown in 1986, have stopped working.

In a statement Monday, the agency also said there are no longer firefighters available in the region to protect forests tainted by decades of radioactivity as the weather warms. The plant was seized by Russian forces on 24 February. 

According to Monday’s statement, the combination of risks could mean a “significant deterioration” of the ability to control the spread of radiation not just in Ukraine but beyond the country’s borders in weeks and months to come.

Management of the Chernobyl plant said on Sunday that 50 staff members who had been working nonstop since the Russian takeover have been rotated out and replaced.

More progress needed for Putin-Zelenskyy meeting

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says more progress must be made in talks with Ukraine before Russian President Vladimir Putin can meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Peskov says that “in order to talk about a meeting of the two presidents, first it’s necessary to do the homework, it’s necessary to hold talks and agree on the results.”

He adds that “so far significant movement has not been achieved” in the talks and that “there are not any agreements which they could commit to” at a joint meeting.

Ukraine and Russia’s delegations have held several rounds of talks both in-person and more recently via video link. Zelenskyy has said he would be prepared to meet Putin directly to seek agreements on key issues.

Latest from Kyiv

Here's Euronews' international correspondent Anelise Borges on the shelling of a shopping centre in Kyiv. 

UK MoD: Russia to prioritise encircling Kyiv 'over the coming weeks'

Britain’s defence ministry says heavy fighting is continuing north of Kyiv as Russian forces press on with a stalled effort to encircle Ukraine’s capital city.

UK officials said that “despite the continued lack of progress, Kyiv remains Russia’s primary military objective and they are likely to prioritise attempting to encircle the city over the coming weeks.”

In an update Monday on social media, the ministry said Russian forces advancing on the city from the northeast have stalled. Troops advancing from the direction of Hostomel to the northwest have been pushed back by fierce Ukrainian resistance.

It said the bulk of Russian forces were more than 25 kilometres from the city centre.

Ammonia leak in Sumy contained

Emergency officials have contained an ammonia leak at a chemical plant that contaminated a wide area in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, officials said Monday.

Sumy regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy did not say what caused the leak.

Earlier, he said the nearby village of Novoselytsya, about 1.5 kilometres southeast of Sumy, was under threat.

The Sumykhimprom plant is on the eastern outskirts of the city, which has a population of about 263,000 and has been regularly shelled by Russian troops in recent weeks.

Four killed overnight in bombardment of Kyiv

At least four people were killed, and a large shopping centre in the densely populated Podil district was devastated in shelling overnight on Monday.

Emergency services reported at least four people were killed by the overnight shelling near the city centre late Sunday. The force of the explosion shattered every window in the high-rise next door and twisted their metal frames.

Kyiv: At least six Russian generals killed in Ukraine so far

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says that six Russian generals and dozens of other senior officers have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion.

Podolyak tweeted on Sunday that “the high mortality rate among Russia’s senior military officers” reflects a “total lack of readiness,” adding that the Russian military relies on its large number of troops and cruise missiles.

The Russian military hasn’t confirmed the death of any of its generals. But an associate and an officers’ group in Russia confirmed the death of one, Major-General Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding officer of the 7th Airborne Division.

Mariupol will not surrender, Ukrainian authorities say

The Russian military offered the Ukrainian troops defending the strategic port of Mariupol to lay down arms and exit the city via humanitarian corridors, but that proposal was quickly rejected by the Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that Kyiv already had told Russia that “there can be no talk about surrender and laying down weapons.” She rejected the Russian statement as “manipulation”.

The authorities demanded that the humanitarian corridor be established as soon as possible instead.

Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev stated on Sunday that Russia will wait until 5 am on Monday for a written response from Kyiv to the Russian proposal for the Ukrainian troops to leave Mariupol but did not say what action Russia will take if its “humanitarian offer” is rejected.