Ukraine war news – live: Russia responds to China’s 12-point peace plan for ending the war

Russia is paying “a great deal of attention” to China’s 12-point peace plan to end the invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has responded to China’s plan, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying anything that could lead to peace is worthy of attention.

Details of the plan will have to be analyzed and for now Russia’s so-called “special military operation” will continue in Ukraine, Peskov confirmed.

Peskov added that he has not seen any specific signs indicating a peaceful ending at this point.

Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly claimed that President Vladimir Putin will one day be killed by his own inner circle, saying: “Predators will devour a predator”.

Mr. Zelensky said: “There will definitely be a moment when the fragility of Putin’s regime will be felt inside [Russian] state.

“And then the predators will devour a predator. They will find a reason to kill a killer.”

The comments were made in an Ukrainian documentary called Year, according to The Times.

It comes as the Russian leader Mr. Putin warned his people that they might not survive as a nation if Ukraine wins the war.

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The subversive Slovenian rock band Laibach were due to play a concert in Ukraine but it has been canceled after remarks they made about Kyiv.

The group reportedly angered Ukrainians by comments that were taken to mean Kyiv is a client state fighting the war for its western masters.

Laibach claimed they would have been the first foreign band to perform a full show in Kyiv since the start of the war in February last year.

They were due to play at the Bel Etage Music Hall in a few weeks on March 31.

Neighboring country Poland has launched a joint initiative with the European Commission to help find children who have been abducted from Ukraine during the ongoing war.

Poland’s EU affairs minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk said the aim of the scheme is to find the missing children and to “ensure those responsible are brought to justice”.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, gave his thanks to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.

He tweeted:@EU_Commission and Poland launched an initiative to find children illegally abducted from #Ukraine by russia. We are grateful to @vonderleyen and @MorawieckiM. We need to return the abducted children to Ukraine and punish Russia for its crimes.

Speaking exclusively to The IndependentMajor General Malyuk, Ukraine’s domestic spy chief, makes it clear that the threat from Russia comes from all sides.

From the battlefield, his Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) has launched more than 64,000 criminal proceedings across Moscow’s forces – nearly half of them war crimes cases.

He says the SBU has also uncovered or detained 360 enemy agents since the invasion erupted last February.

And the country has fended off thousands of cyberattacks.

• A Russian missile strike killed one person in the western town of Khmelnitskyi, the mayor said.
• Moscow said its forces destroyed a Ukrainian ammunition depot near Bakhmut, also shooting down four HIMARS missiles and five drones. A Ukrainian court has jailed two captured soldiers accused of taking part in Russian shelling of residential areas in eastern Ukraine, the SBU security service.
• The commander of Ukrainian ground forces visited the besieged Bakhmut to boost morale.
• Ukraine’s armed forces said Russia is concentrating offensive actions along the Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtar parts of the frontline.
• Battlefield accounts could not be independently verified
• Belarusian anti-government activists said on Sunday they had blown up a sophisticated Russian military surveillance aircraft in a drone attack at an airfield near Minsk.

Apple has paid a fine of 906 million rubles (£10m) in a Russian antitrust case alleging the US firm abuses its dominance in the mobile apps market, authorities in Moscow have said.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) determined in August 2020 that Apple had abused its dominant position, then issued a directive requiring Apple to remove provisions giving it the right to reject third-party apps from its App Store.

Apple has previously “respectfully disagreed” with the FAS ruling that Apple’s distribution of apps through its iOS operating system gave its own products a competitive advantage.

In a separate case, the FAS said in January that it had fined Apple around £14m for allegedly forcing Russian developers to use Apple’s payment services with the iOS App Store.

Apple paused all product sales and limited its Apple Pay service in Russia a year ago, after Moscow invaded Ukraine.

A Ukrainian court has jailed two captured Russian soldiers accused of shelling residential areas in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s SBU security service has said.

One of the soldiers received a 10-year sentence and the other was jailed for nine years, the SBU said on Monday. It did not name them, say how they had pleaded and when they were sentenced, but said both had fought in eastern Ukraine and were captured last year.

“As a result of investigative actions, indisputable evidence on the guilt of two more militants who joined the ranks of the occupation groups of the aggressor country at the beginning of the full-scale invasion was collected,” it said.

Both “took an active part in the storming of Ukrainian cities on the Eastern Front”, it said. One had started fighting for separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and fought for the Russian army in the Bakhmut area of ​​eastern Ukraine last year.

The other was in charge of Russian troops that shelled the eastern cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, and was captured along with a number of his subordinates, according to the SBU.

They were found guilty under laws on the encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine, and on participation in paramilitary or armed formations not provided for by law, the SBU added.

A Ukrainian court has jailed two captured soldiers accused of taking part in Russian shelling of residential areas in eastern Ukraine, the SBU security service said on Monday.

The SBU said in a statement that one of the soldiers had received a 10-year sentence and the other had been jailed for nine years.

It did not name them, say how they had pleaded and when they were sentenced, but said both had fought in eastern Ukraine and were captured last year.

“As a result of investigative actions, indisputable evidence on the guilt of two more militants who joined the ranks of the occupation groups of the aggressor country at the beginning of the full-scale invasion was collected,” it said.

Both “took an active part in the storming of Ukrainian cities on the Eastern Front”, it said.

The aircraft, worth £274 million, was hit in an attack by Belarus supporting partisans Ukraine.

The AWACS Beriev A-50U aircraft was “significantly damaged”, according to the Belarusian Hajun project, and the front and central parts of the aircraft, its avionics and radar antennae were hit.