Putin: China peace plan could be basis to end war

China’s peace plan for Ukraine could be used as a basis to end the war, Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russian leader met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in Moscow to discuss the conflict, and relations between the two countries.

Mr Putin said the peace initiative could be put forward “when they are ready for it in the West and in Kyiv”.

But China’s plan - published last month - does not call for Russia to leave Ukraine.

Listing 12 points, it calls for peace talks and respect for national sovereignty.

It also condemns “unilateral sanctions”, in what is seen as a veiled criticism of Ukraine’s allies in the West.

Ukraine has insisted on Russia withdrawing from its territory as a condition for any talks.

And the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said calling for a ceasefire before Russia withdrew “would effectively be supporting the ratification of Russian conquest”.

In a joint news conference after talks with Mr Xi ended, Mr Putin said: “Many provisions of the Chinese peace plan can be taken as the basis for settling of the conflict in Ukraine, whenever the West and Kyiv are ready for it.”

But Russia had yet to see such “readiness” from the other side, he added.

Standing alongside the Russian leader, Mr Xi said his government was in favour of peace and dialogue and that China was on the “right side of history”.

He again claimed that China had an “impartial position” on the conflict in Ukraine, seeking to cast Beijing as the potential peacemaker.

The pair also discussed growing trade, energy and political ties between the two nations.

“China is the leading foreign trade partner of Russia,” President Putin said, pledging to keep up and surpass the “high level” of trade achieved last year.

There are growing concerns in the West that China might provide military support for Russia.

“We haven’t seen any proof that China is delivering lethal weapons to Russia but we have seen some signs that this has been a request from Russia, and that this is an issue that is considered in Beijing by the Chinese authorities,” Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.

A joint statement released by China and Russia after the meeting between the two leaders said the close partnership between the two countries did not constitute a “military-political alliance”.

Relations “do not constitute a bloc, do not have a confrontational nature and are not directed against third countries,” they added.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Xi was given a fanfare welcome when he arrived at the Kremlin for a second day of talks.

He said he was “very happy” to be in Moscow and described talks

Memorial raids: Russia targets leaders of banned Nobel Prize-winning group

Nine leaders of one of Russia’s oldest human rights groups, Memorial, have been targeted in raids on their homes, 15 months after their organisation was shut down by the courts.

Among them was Memorial’s co-chair, Oleg Orlov, who is facing a criminal case for “discrediting” the military.

Founded in 1989, Memorial aimed to remember millions of innocent people persecuted by Soviet repression.

But it was liquidated ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The raids took place after Russia’s investigative committee opened a criminal investigation against Memorial for alleged “rehabilitation of Nazism”.

Memorial has come under political pressure for years and that intensified in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and Russian proxy forces seized areas of eastern Ukraine.

It won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties and Belarusian civil rights activist Ales Bialiatski.

Mr Bialiatski was sentenced to 10 years in jail this month in a trial condemned beyond Belarus as a sham.

Memorial chairman Yan Rachinsky was one of the leaders targeted in Tuesday’s raids. When he picked up the Nobel Prize in Oslo last December, he told the BBC the group had been advised by Russian authorities not to go Liberal outlets in Russia described the searches as part of a new crackdown by the authorities on dissent.

President Vladimir Putin recently accused the West of seeking to provoke civil unrest by using a fifth column of “scum and traitors”.

Oleg Orlov is being investigated under a law introduced days after Russian troops marched into Ukraine last year.

The offence of “discrediting the military” has been used repeatedly to give long jail terms to Russians who have dared to criticise the war, including opposition figure Ilya Yashin and Moscow councillor Alexei Gorinov.

Last week the former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Roizman, was jailed for two weeks for posting “extremist” symbols on social media, which he denied.

Allegations of “rehabilitation of Nazism” levelled at Memorial appear to date back to 2021.

According to Memorial, its exstaff were accused of having three men on its database - of more than three million victims - who authorities took issue with. They included two sentenced for treason and another convicted of working for a Nazi police unit.

The three names in question were highlighted at the time by

President Putin. Memorial said the men had been blocked from the database. With such a large database there were always errors, it said, which it was trying to identify and correct.

Ukraine says Russian missiles destroyed in Crimea

An explosion in the north of annexed Crimea has destroyed Russian missiles being transported by rail, Ukraine’s defence ministry has said.

The Russian-installed head of the city of Dzhankoi said the area had been attacked by drones.

Ukraine announced the explosions but, as is normal, did not explicitly say it was behind the attack.

If confirmed, it would be a rare foray by Ukraine’s military into Crimea, which has been annexed since 2014.

Russia has suffered attacks in Crimea before, but in most cases, responsibility has either been unacknowledged by Ukraine or blamed on some kind of partisan sabotage.

This strike, if confirmed, suggests that the capacity of the Ukrainian air force to deploy drones has increased.

Until now, Crimea has largely seemed out of the range of Ukrainian missiles. But this attack indicates that a drone at least can reach deeper behind Russian lines than previously thought.

The “mysterious” explosions destroyed Russian Kalibr-NK cruise missiles, intended for use by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Ukrainian defence intelligence said. Kailbr missiles have been widely used in attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure in recent months.

One unconfirmed report from a resident cited on Ukrainian TV spoke of “booms” that went on for 30 minutes, leaving part of Dzhankoi with no electricity. The blasts “continue the process of Russia’s demilitarisation and prepares the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea for de-occupation”, the defence ministry said.

Dzhankoi has been used by Russian forces as a rail hub between Crimea and other areas of occupied Ukraine. Russian TV reports said that Tuesday’s strike had not caused any damage to rail infrastructure.

Russia’s investigative authority said a residential building and a shop were damaged, according to initial findings. All the targets were civilian, it claimed.

Ihor Ivin, the Russian-installed administrator, said a 33-year-old man was taken to hospital for treatment for a shrapnel injury from a downed drone. He made no mention of any military targets being damaged.

Several buildings caught fire and the power grid was damaged, Mr Ivin was quoted as saying by local media. Another Russianappointed official said a drone had been hit over a technical school, between an instruction area and a student residence.

Russia’s top official in occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said air defences near Dzhankoi had been activated and the situation was under control. He urged residents not to pay attention to “fakes disseminated by Ukrainian propaganda”.

Last August, an ammunition depot was targeted near Dzhankoi. Weeks later, Russia blamed Ukraine for carrying out a drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol in which a warship was damaged.

This latest attack suggests Kyiv is determined to continue harrying the supply chains of Russian forces, targeting in particular its stock of missiles, as well as the routes along which they may be transported into southern occupied Ukraine via Crimea.

Speaking on Ukrainian TV, military spokeswoman Natalia Humeniuk reminded viewers that Dzhankoi was a hub station for the occupying force and that, from the start of the Russians’ full-scale invasion, it had been made clear that defeating their logistics would play a big part in the future status of Crimea. BBC