LIVE: UN overwhelmingly votes to condemn Russian invasion of Ukraine, demands withdrawal
Live Updates
Dubai’s Mashreq Bank has stopped lending to Russian banks and is reviewing its existing exposure to the country, due to heightened risks following the invasion of Ukraine.
This is one of the first reported steps taken by a bank in the Middle East to halt ties with Russia.
Mashreq declined to comment on the move, which comes as banks worldwide lessen ties with Russian lenders, as new sanctions continue to be announced by world powers that include limiting access for some banks to the SWIFT international payment system.
Bankers have said that Mashreq’s actions indicate that emerging-market banks are also nervous about their Russian exposure and the possible risk of secondary sanctions.
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the UAE’s biggest sovereign fund, also declined to comment on its Russian exposure.
The Kremlin has said that the Russian delegation is ready to continue peace talks with Ukraine on Wednesday evening, as the conflict enters its seventh day.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Our delegation will be ready to continue talks.”
Peskov added that President Putin’s aide, Vladimir Medinsky, remained Russia’s top negotiator on Ukraine, but he did not say where the next round of talks would take place.
The first round of talks between the two countries took place on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, but there was no breakthrough.
For many Ukrainian Americans who migrated to the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s invasion has left them fearing for their loved ones back in Ukraine.
Middle East Eye’s Azad Essa speaks to those who have been protesting weekly against the invasion in different parts of New York, in the hope that the US steps in to end the conflict.
Luke Tomycz, a Ukrainian American neurosurgeon based in Jersey City, whose parents and grandparents were displaced after World War Two, came to the US in the 1950s. He said it felt “like history repeating itself. Unfortunately, the refugee crises is how this war becomes everyone's war. Europe only recently had to deal with an influx of Syrian refugees. Now it looks like they might have a lot of Ukrainian refugees, too. This is how we are all interconnected."
Read more: 'Like history repeating itself': Ukrainian Americans unite against Russian invasion
If you have been following the coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you may be led to believe that some victims of war are more deserving of sympathy than others.
The reactions to the conflict from journalists and politicians have been in stark contrast to the Syrian refugee crisis years earlier, raising questions about double standards in western media.
Middle East Eye's Mohamed Hassan breaks down the two refugee narratives in Europe: one for the "civilised", another for the "terrorist".
Russia cancelled a bid to send four of its warships through Turkish waters into the Black Sea at Turkey's request, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, adding the decision was made before Ankara closed the straits over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey borders Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea and has good ties with both. On Monday, Ankara said it had closed its Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits under a 1936 pact, allowing it to curb some Russian vessels from crossing.
The pact exempts vessels returning to their bases.
Cavusoglu told broadcaster Haberturk late on Tuesday that Turkey had asked Russia not to send its ships through, before it labelled Moscow's invasion a "war" on Sunday, legally allowing it to curb passages under the Montreux Convention.
"Russia has said four of its ships would cross the straits on Feb 27-28, three of which are not registered to bases in the Black Sea," Cavusoglu said. "We told Russia not to send these ships and Russia said the vessels would not cross the straits.
"Nobody should be offended by this, because the Montreux Convention is valid today, yesterday and tomorrow, so we will implement it," he said.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Wednesday the country has received new Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 armed drones.
“New Bayraktars have arrived and they are ready for combat,” Reznikov said in a Facebook post.
He also said that Kyiv was set to receive Stinger and Javelin missiles from abroad.
Several western countries have pledged to supply Ukraine with weapons to fend off a Russian invasion.
Russian paratroopers have landed in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv on Wednesday amid heavy fighting.
Ukrainian officials say a hospital has been attacked and the barracks of a flight school is on fire after an air strike.
"There are practically no areas left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet hit," says Interior Minister official Anton Gerashchenko.
Meanwhile, Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday that armed forces have captured the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, RIA news agency reported.
Hello readers, here is the evening update from Middle East Eye.
As the sixth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine comes to an end, and after Moscow's military warned that it intends to strike parts of Kyiv, large explosions were heard in the capital city. Russia bombed a TV tower in Kyiv killed five people, Ukrainian authorities said.
A 40-mile Russian military convoy that was moving toward Kyiv has not moved in 24 hours due logistics problems that are stalling it, according to a US official.
Meanwhile, protests across the world are continuing to take place against the Russian invasion. MEE spoke with several Ukrainian Americans about their fears for their families back home and for the devastation that could take place all over the country.
US President Joe Biden will be delivering his State of the Union speech later on Tuesday, where the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be a key topic.
In an excerpt of the speech obtained by The New York Times, Biden will say in his speech: Putin’s war was premeditated and unprovoked. He rejected efforts at diplomacy. He thought the west and Nato wouldn’t respond. And, he thought he could divide us here at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready.
That's it from us here at MEE this evening, make sure to follow us on Twitter @MiddleEastEye and on Instagram @middleeasteye to stay updated.
Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial has condemned the rocket attack on a TV tower in Kyiv which damaged a nearby Holocaust memorial.
The museum, which is dedicated to remembering the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War Two, voiced its "vehement condemnation" to what it called a "deadly Russian attack on the vicinity of the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial site".
"We call on the international community to take concerted measures to safeguard civilian lives as well as these historical sites because of their irreplaceable value for research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust," it said.
Israel's Foreign Minister in a statement called for "the sanctity of the site to be preserved and honoured", but did not condemn Russia for the attack.
The memorial is built on Europe's largest mass grave of the Holocaust, where Nazi death squads killed more than 33,000 Jewish people in the space of just two days in 1941.
While it has condemned the invasion and voiced solidarity with Kyiv, Israel has said it is keeping open channels of communication with Moscow in hope of helping to ease the crisis.
Ambassadors from the Group of Seven (G7) - a bloc that includes: Canada; France; Germany; Italy; Japan; the United Kingdom; and the United States - and the EU have called on Egypt to issue a "clear and unanimous condemnation" of Russia's unprovoked invasion and support Ukraine's "territorial integrity and sovereignty".
"We look forward to our partners, including Egypt, upholding the fundamental principles of the UN Charter," the G7 said in a statement on Tuesday.
Egypt has remained muted when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The North African country is toeing the line between the US - of which it is the second-largest recipient of the country's aid - and Moscow, as they have forged closer ties over the years.
Egypt also relies on both Ukraine and Russia for 80 percent of its wheat imports, while it also receives hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian visitors each year that contribute to the tourism industry.
Two Jordanian military planes left Amman for Romania on Tuesday to bring back 215 of the kingdom's citizens who fled the conflict in Ukraine.
"Two military planes took off to Romania to evacuate Jordanian nationals who crossed the border from Ukraine after the increase in tensions and military actions there,” Jordan's foreign ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the planes were sent "under directions" from King Abdullah II, and announced that 415 of its citizens had made it out of Ukraine during the past few days.
Hundreds of Jordanians living in Ukraine have fled the country into Romania, Moldova, Slovakia and Hungary since the Russian invasion began last week.
Several thousand Arabs, many of them students, are trying to escape Ukraine.
The International Court of Justice has said it will hold hearings on 7 and 8 March over the war in Ukraine as fighting intensifies.
"The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, will hold public hearings in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation) on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 March 2022," the court said in a statement.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan already announced he was launching an investigation on the "situation in Ukraine" following Russia's invasion.
"In invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has made the biggest mistake of his 22-year career as leader of Russia," writes Middle East Eye's editor-in-chief David Hearst.
"Whether this was intended is another matter. It is now done, and cannot be undone. Putin’s power at home and abroad was to a large extent built on ambiguity and surprise. Plausible deniability was an art form in his hands.
"Russia was neither as weak nor as powerful as it seemed. Putin was neither as autocratic nor as liberal as he appeared. A small library of books was feverishly penned to uncover the real Putin. Ultimately the consensus settled on the word pragmatist…
"A fiscal conservative, he learned in power not to challenge the oligarchs, but become one of them. Just as long as they presented him with the right gifts like loyal boyars they were, he did not touch their assets. Yet it has only taken days for Putin the pragmatist to become Putin the war criminal, little more than a Milosevic or Karadzic. Ukraine has become a rerun of Kosovo in reverse.
"This, from Putin’s point of view, is a huge miscalculation. And we should never make the mistake of thinking that Putin is remotely moved by the bloodshed or human suffering he causes."
"There are countless differences between Moscow’s ongoing attack on Ukraine and its six-year-old military intervention in Syria that turned the tide of the war for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," writes Danny Makki in Damascus for Middle East Eye.
"But the two are inextricably linked now more than ever. In Syria, Russia has tested and refined cutting-edge weapons and secured air and naval bases on the Mediterranean, all of which are proving key for Ukraine, say analysts.
"Perhaps most importantly, they say, Russia’s powerplay in Syria has set the tone for a more aggressive, adventurous foreign policy, initially in the Middle East and now unfolding in Ukraine."
Middle East Eye has contacted Egyptian citizens attempting to escape the Russian bombardment in Ukraine by crossing the country's borders into Poland and Romania.
Stories emerged of people feeling abandoned or given misinformation by Egypt's authorities, of being treated appallingly by border guards that "prioritised white people", of being left to freeze without shelter and, in some cases, beaten.
