World News | Powerful Explosion in Kyiv Near Rail Station

Kyiv, Mar 2 (AP) Ukrainian officials have reported a powerful explosion in Kyiv, between the Southern Railway station and the Ibis hotel, an area near Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office told The Associated Press on Wednesday night that it was a missile strike.

Also Read | China To Maintain Normal Trade Relations With Russia Despite International Sanctions.

Officials said it wasn't immediately clear how damaging the strike was, whether there were any casualties or where exactly the missile hit.

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Also Read | India Abstains From Voting on UNGA Resolution That Deplores Russia's Aggression Against Ukraine.

Washington: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week will visit six European countries, including the Baltic states and Moldova, which are on particular edge as Russia intensifies its war in Ukraine.

The State Department says Blinken will travel Thursday to Belgium for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers before heading to the Polish border with Ukraine to meet refugees, and then Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Poland and the three Baltics are members of NATO and fall under its Article 5 defense provisions, which means the allies are bound to defend them if they are attacked.

Given their location immediately adjacent to Russia, they are believed to be at special risk should the Ukraine conflict spread.

Western-leaning Moldova is not a NATO member but has relations with the alliance and has long objected to the presence of Russian troops in the disputed territory of Transnistria.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has picked up steam, most NATO members, including the Baltics, have steadily increased military and financial assistance to Kyiv even as Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of reprisals for any nation that interferes in what he calls a “special military operation.”

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has decried Russia's escalation of attacks on crowded cities as a blatant terror campaign.

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Warsaw: An international organization made up only of democracies held an emergency meeting on Wednesday following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Warsaw-based Community of Democracies said in a statement that its members at the gathering “condemned Russia's aggression and backed Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic aspirations of its people.”

Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, whose country holds the community's rotating presidency, called for continued support for Ukraine's right to choose its own foreign policy and for more attention to be given to other places facing Russian pressure, including Moldova, Georgia and the Western Balkan region.

“This seems to be the beginning of the most difficult period in generations. And this is the fight of our generation and a real test on our democracies,” Aurescu said.

Thomas Garrett, the organisation's secretary general, “underlined that democracies worldwide must unequivocally show they stand with Ukraine.”

A Ukrainian lawmaker in Kyiv addressed the political representatives. She called on Russia to “stop bombing our towns and cities” and appealed to the UN, EU, and other international organisations to help Ukraine obtain a ceasefire for humanitarian relief.

The lawmaker was not identified for security reasons.

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Washington: A senior US defense official says the Russian convoy still appears to be stalled outside the city centre of Kyiv, and has made no real progress in the last couple days.

The official on Wednesday said the convoy is still plagued with fuel and food shortages and logistical problems, as well as facing continued fierce resistance from Ukrainians.

He said there has been an increase in the number of missiles and artillery targeting the city, suggesting the Russians are trying to make a more aggressive move to try and take the city.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russians have not been able to achieve air superiority and Ukrainian air defenses remain operable and their aircraft continue to fly.

The official said that about 82% of the Russian troops that had been arrayed around Ukraine are now inside the country — just a slight uptick over the last 24 hours, and that Russia has launched more than 450 missiles at various targets in the country.

In other areas of the country, the US official said that the US is seeing preliminary indications that Russian forces are going to try to move south towards Mariupol from Donetsk, in what appears to be an effort to encircle the city.

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Brussels: European Union finance ministers on Wednesday convened for the second time in less than a week to weigh the likely impact on Europe of the full-scale Russian military assault on Ukraine, a country that borders the bloc's eastern flank.

Policymakers are scrambling to recalculate economic projections made less than a month ago, when the European Commission — the EU's executive arm — predicted the bloc's economic growth would slow from 5.3% last year to 4% this year and 2.8% in 2023.

Top European commissioners said on Wednesday those figures are too optimistic because the conflict in Ukraine will probably stoke rises in energy prices, financial-market turbulence, supply-chain bottlenecks and a weakening of consumer confidence.

“We don't expect the recovery to be derailed completely but to be weakened,” said European Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni.

The gloomier outlook has also raised the prospect of a prolonged period of unrestrained spending by member countries to support their economies.

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Zahony: Some of the nearly 1 million people who have fled Russia's devastating war in Ukraine in recent days count among society's most vulnerable, unable to make the decision on their own to flee and requiring careful assistance to make the journey to safety.

At the train station in the Hungarian town of Zahony on Wednesday, more than 200 young Ukrainians with disabilities — residents of two orphanages in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv — disembarked into the cold wind of the train platform after an arduous escape from the violence gripping Ukraine.

The refugees, most of them children with mental and physical disabilities, were evacuated from their care facilities once the Russian assault on the capital intensified.

“It wasn't safe to stay there, there were rockets, they were shooting at Kyiv,” said Larissa Leonidovna, the director of the Svyatoshinksy orphanage in Kyiv. “We spent more than an hour underground during a bombing.”

The UN refugee agency says more than 874,000 people have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion last week and the figure is “rising exponentially,” putting it on track to cross the 1 million mark on Wednesday.

Moving from the train in groups of 30, the children — also from the Darnytskyy orphanage in Kyiv — were escorted to buses waiting to take them to Opole, Poland, where they would be settled and receive further care.

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Washington: The White House has announced additional sanctions against Russia and its ally Belarus, including extending export controls that target Russian oil refining and entities supporting the Russian and Belarusian militaries.

Among Wednesday's new measures are sanctions targeting 22 Russia defense entities that make combat aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, electronic warfare systems, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles for Russia's military.

The US Commerce Department also announced additional export controls on oil and gas extraction equipment that would hurt Russia's refining capacity over the long term.

The Biden administration, and Western allies, have largely stayed away from hitting the Russian energy sector to avoid causing tremors to the global supply of energy.

The White House, however, said in a statement that US and allies “share a strong interest in degrading Russia's status as a leading energy supplier over time.”

The latest sanctions imposed on Wednesday include the US closing off its air space to all Russian flights. President Joe Biden previewed that he would making the move in his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening. (AP)

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