Russia Ukraine war breaking news: G20 summit ends without agreement on Ukraine as China refuses to condemn war

It can take decades to identify Ukraines war death, a leading forensic agency has predicted.

Forensic anthropologist Photis Andronicou of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) said identifying victims of the horrific war could take decades without significant help from the Ukrainian authorities and the international community.

“From other contexts that I have worked with – and experience – I would say that this process in Ukraine will take years, many years,” Andronicou said The independent.

The real gain in foreign commercial opportunities will be through investment in a revitalized nation, where reconstruction has delivered a broad and unifying peace dividend that will solve many of the country’s pre-war challenges, writes Fergus Drake

CIA Director Bill Burns has confirmed that China is considering sending lethal aid to Russia.

In an interview with CBS News, Burns said, “We are confident that the Chinese leadership is considering providing lethal equipment.”

However, he stressed that China has not yet made the decision to transfer lethal aid to Russia.

“We also don’t see that a final decision has been made yet, and we don’t see any evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment.”

He continued: “And that’s why, I think, Secretary (Anthony) Blinken and the president have felt it’s important to make very clear what the consequences of that would be as well.”

Mr Burns said sending this kind of aid to Russia would be a “very risky and unwise venture” for Xi Jinping.

Russia’s senior diplomat to the United Nations has accused the West of “cowboy” methods and “arm-twisting” by some countries during last week’s UN General Assembly vote calling for Moscow to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

“The methods to achieve the result are ‘cowboy’ again,” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, said on the Telegram messaging platform.

He added that a number of representatives from “developing countries” complained to the Russian mission about pressure from their Western counterparts allied with Kiev.

“According to our calculations, almost 30 pairs of arms were twisted,” Polyansky said.

There were 141 votes in favor and 32 abstentions. Six countries joined Russia in voting no – Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua and Syria. Russia’s close ally China abstained from voting in the UN vote.

Mr Polyansky dismissed the action at the UN as “worthless”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter: “This resolution is a powerful signal of an unforgettable global support for Ukraine”.

China has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just days after Beijing unveiled a peace plan to end the war.

G20 finance ministers failed to agree on a final statement after a summit in India after China refused to condemn the war.

China has reportedly declined to accept parts of the statement that deplores Russia’s invasion “in the strongest terms”.

Meanwhile, Moscow said “anti-Russian” Western countries had “destabilized” the G20.

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said forces from his Wagner group had captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday.

But Ukrainian military reports issued a day after the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggested that villages near the central city remained under Kiev’s control.

Reuters could not independently confirm Prigozhin’s claim, in a brief audio message, or the report from the Ukrainian military’s general staff.

“At 1900 on February 25, storm units of Wagner’s private military company secured complete control of the Yagodnoye (Yahidne) area north of Bakhmut,” Prigozhin said in the audio clip.

A day earlier, he said, Wagner had taken control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

The months-long battle for Bakhmut, where only about 5,000 of its 70,000 residents remain, has seen some of the bloodiest battles of attrition during Russia’s invasion.

Wagner units have suffered heavy losses, prompting Prigozhin to complain bitterly that the Russian defense establishment has failed to properly recognize their contribution.

This week he even accused top army leaders of treason for failing to supply his men with sufficient ammunition, although he later said the situation had been rectified.

The protracted siege has prompted Ukrainian analysts to openly consider whether its troops should consider abandoning their defense of the city.

On Thursday, Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov admitted in a YouTube presentation that Berkhivka had come under Russian control.

The latest General Staff report said Russian forces had made unsuccessful advances against villages around Bakhmut, including Berkhivka.

There was no mention in the report of Yahidne. But it said 18 localities in the area had been shelled by Russian forces, including villages on Bakhmut’s southern and western approaches.

The Russian president’s grip is loosening both on the battlefield and at home, writes Mark Galeoti. But is it really the end of the road?

In a converted former mint in Berlin on Saturday, crowds danced in a blaze of strobe lights as a rapper shouted Ukrainian lyrics to powerful beats.

In other parts of the complex, revelers gazed at painted bulletproof vests hanging from the ceiling and queued for plates of Ukrainian dumplings and borscht served by women with blue and yellow ribbons woven into their hair.

The “Art Weapon” event – which opened in Berlin’s sprawling Alte Muenze complex on Saturday – also featured live painting by Ukrainian artists, Ukrainian-language theater and the chance to sit for a Ukrainian tattoo artist.

The marathon event ran non-stop until Sunday morning and sold more than 1,000 tickets two hours after opening, organizers said. The goal is to show that Ukrainian contemporary culture has flourished since the beginning of the war.

“The war strengthened our artists and they are now super passionate about what they do and understand their mission,” said Harry Pledov, the Kiev-based organizer.

Pledov organized several festivals in Ukraine before the war and has held two such events in the country since Russia launched what it calls its “special military operation”. But curfews and blackouts in Ukraine made it increasingly difficult to continue.

He decided to apply for funding through a German organization that supports cultural initiatives, enabling him to organize “Art Weapon” in Berlin.

In a room at Alte Muenze, artist Vitalii Shupliak explained the meaning behind a work consisting of two prints showing buttered bread with nails poking through the surface. The images are mounted on separate stacks of cages.

When reading “Snow Comes with the Sole of a Russian Soldier,” the work represents both the impoverishment of Ukraine and the detached soles of Soviet-era military boots, Shupliak said.

“The invasion has definitely changed art in Ukraine,” he added. “It has forced us to reflect on our identities.”

The real gain in foreign commercial opportunities will be through investment in a revitalized nation, where reconstruction has delivered a broad and unifying peace dividend that will solve many of the country’s pre-war challenges, writes Fergus Drake

“All wars end in negotiations, as former Indian President Jahrwal Nehru once said. But a large part of those negotiations, at least in modern war, lies in securing a path to reconstruction and recovery.”

It is still impossible to know with certainty when and how the war will come Ukraine will end, but it is clear that Vladimir Putin will not achieve either his original grand goal of installing a puppet regime in Kiev, or his fallback of conquering all the regions of southeastern Ukraine.

Even retaining the territories he occupied before the February 2022 invasion looks like a difficult, if not impossible, task.

Even if his myth is irrevocably tarnished and his system of control is in disrepair, Putin can conceivably survive defeat and the trajectory of a post-Putin Russia is equally uncertain. Three main variables will be decisive: the fate of Crimea (which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014), the speed of that victory, and Western policy.

Read more about how Putin was able to hold on to power here: