Russia-Ukraine Crisis: The Russia-appointed administration of Ukraine’s Kherson region will ask Moscow to set up a military base on its territory. Russia seized the Kherson region adjacent to Crimea, has installed a new administration there and started introducing the Russian rouble as a currency. Meanwhile, as the European Union mulled an embargo on Russian oil imports, Moscow said it saw its economic ties growing with China amid its isolation by the West.
In Russia, a rare public expression of opposition to the war emerged from the ranks of the Russian elite with a veteran Kremlin diplomat Boris Bondarev resigning and sending a scathing letter to foreign colleagues in which he said of the invasion, “Never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24th.”
In other news, a captured Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a civilian was sentenced by a Ukrainian court on Monday to life in prison — the maximum — amid signs the Kremlin may, in turn, put on trial some of the fighters who surrendered at Mariupol’s steelworks.
US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the crisis in Ukraine was a global issue which heightened the importance of maintaining international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says last week’s attack on the town of Desna resulted in 87 deaths. Desna is 55 kilometers north of Kyiv.