The Russia-Ukraine war is now in its 390th day.
Monday, March 20, 2023
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has welcomed China's willingness to play a "constructive role" in ending the conflict in Ukraine, saying Sino-Russian relations were "at the highest point" in history.
His Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping heads to Russia hoping to deliver a breakthrough on Ukraine as Beijing seeks to position itself as a peacemaker.
The quality of ties between Moscow and Beijing is "higher than the political and military unions of the Cold War era", Putin said in an article written for a Chinese newspaper and published by the Kremlin on the eve of Xi's visit.
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0730 GMT - China says US, not China supplying weapons to Ukraine
China's foreign ministry has said it was the US, not the Chinese, who were supplying weapons to the Ukraine battlefield.
Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a news briefing in response to a question regarding US sources saying that Chinese ammunition have been used in Ukraine and fired by Russia.
0515 GMT - EU hammers out 2-bn-euro ammunition plan for Ukraine
European Union ministers will look to sign off on a 2-billion-euro plan to raid their stockpiles and jointly purchase artillery shells for Ukraine.
Ukraine has told the EU it wants 350,000 shells a month to allow them to launch fresh counter-offensives later in the year.
The first part of the plan involves committing a further one billion euros ($1.06The second part would see the bloc use another one billion euros to order 155-millimetre shells for Ukraine as part of a massive joint procurement push intended to spur firms to ramp up production.
0001 GMT - UK, Ukraine sign digital trade deal
Britain has signed a digital trade deal with Ukraine granting the war-torn country access to financial services "crucial" for its reconstruction efforts.
The deal facilitates cross-border data flows between the two countries, allowing Ukrainian businesses to trade more efficiently and cheaply with the UK through electronic transactions, e-signatures and e-contracts, the department of business and trade said.
"The historic digital trade deal signed today paves the way for a new era of modern trade between our two countries," Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said in a statement.
The deal comes as Ukrainian ministers and 200 UK and international businesses and officials meet in London to discuss future Ukraine reconstruction projects.
2300 GMT - Britain ready to fill Warsaw's air defence gaps
Britain is ready to help Poland fill its air defence gaps caused by Warsaw sending some of its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine but Poland has not yet made such requests, British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey has said.
Poland last week said it would send Ukraine four MiG-29 fighter jets in the coming days, making it the first of Kiev's allies to provide such aircraft and possibly creating a need to ramp up Poland's air defence equipment.
Britain would be able to help fill such gaps, as it previously did when Poland sent T-72 main battle tanks to Ukraine, providing Warsaw with Challenger 2 tanks, Heappey told German newspaper Welt. "We will look very positively at a Polish request to fill in the gaps that have arisen," Heappey said.
2219 GMT - China's proposal on Ukraine reflects maximum unity of global views: Xi
Xi has said that Beijing's proposal on how to reach a settlement in Ukraine reflects global views and serves to neutralise the consequences of the crisis, but acknowledged the solutions may not be easy.
"Complex problems do not have simple solutions," Xi wrote in an article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a daily published by the Russian government.For our live updates from Sunday (March 19),Source: TRTWorld and agencies
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(With input from news agency language)
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