Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told G20 leaders on Wednesday that there was a “terrorist state” among them, and accused Russia of a missile strike on Poland that killed two people.
Speaking via video link, Zelensky called the strike “a real statement made by Russia to the G20 Summit”.
He addressed the G20 summit for the second time, but many leaders have already left the Indonesian island of Bali, which hosted the meeting. Among them was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who flew in on Tuesday evening.
Those who remain hear Zelensky telling the summit: “There is a terrorist state among you, and we are defending ourselves against it. This is the reality.”
He also called for a “quick reaction” to the strike in Poland.
Poland said there was no clear evidence of who fired the missile, and US President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” that the missile was launched from Russia, which has denied involvement.
After the killing in Poland, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
“We’ve been calling for the sky to be closed because the sky has no limits. Not for out-of-control missiles. Not for the threat it poses to our EU/NATO neighbours. The gloves are off. It’s time to win,” he wrote on Twitter.
Here are the other headlines of the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, November 16:
Russia says its strikes in Ukraine were no closer than 35 km (35 km) from Poland
The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes it launched into Ukraine on Tuesday were no closer than 35 km (22 miles) from the Polish border.
“High-precision strikes were carried out on targets only on the territory of Ukraine and no further than 35 km from the Ukrainian-Polish border,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday.
According to Konashenkov, the cause of the explosion in Poland was the Ukrainian S-300 air defense missile.
The president of Poland, a NATO member, said earlier that Poland had no concrete evidence to show who fired a missile that hit a Polish grain facility 6 kilometers (4 miles) inside the border with Ukraine and killed two people.
Biden and Snack condemn the “barbaric” attacks on civilians in Ukraine
US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians as “barbaric” at the G20 summit in Bali.
Biden said in a meeting with Sunak.
“I agree with your words – barbaric,” said the British Prime Minister, meeting with Biden for the first time since taking office.
Russia has fired waves of missiles, often at civilians, across Ukraine in the wake of its expulsion from the city of Kherson, which Moscow occupied and illegally declared part of Russia after a “referendum”.
“It’s way over the top,” Biden said. Russia can and should stop the war.
Biden told Sunak that they are “on the same page in terms of supporting the right of the Ukrainian people to be free from all Russian forces in their country.”
Sweden will send military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine
Sweden said it would provide Ukraine with military and humanitarian aid worth 343 million euros ($356 million) to help it adapt to the coming winter.
The government said Stockholm would contribute about 3 billion kronor (276 million euros) ($287 million) worth of military aid, as well as an additional 720 million kroner (66 million euros or $69 million) in humanitarian aid.
The military assistance would include an air defense system and ammunition, but the government would not disclose any system or its value due to “operational secrecy”.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the aid package, Sweden’s ninth to Ukraine since the war began, was the largest so far.
The humanitarian package will be channeled through the World Food Programme, World Bank funds and Ukraine’s Green Recovery programme, while military aid also includes winter supplies such as tents and clothes.
Part of the humanitarian aid will also go to Ukraine’s impoverished neighbor Moldova, which has taken in a large number of Ukrainian refugees and suffered direct consequences of the war, including the disruption of electricity supplies from Ukraine.
CIA chief visits Kyiv after warning Moscow
CIA Director William Burns met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and senior intelligence officials to brief them on his warning to Moscow against the use of nuclear weapons, a US official said.
Burns traveled to Kyiv on Tuesday, a day after he held talks in Ankara with Russian intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin about the war and Moscow’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons to defend its interests.
It was the highest level of face-to-face meeting between US and Russian officials since the start of the war, and Burns delivered a stern warning to Naryshkin “about the consequences of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability,” according to a White House statement.
Burns then traveled to Ukraine to inform Zelensky and his Ukrainian counterparts of the talks with Naryshkin, and to confirm US support for Kyiv’s war effort.
Burns was in Kyiv on a day when Russian forces fired a barrage of missiles at targets across Ukraine, including the capital. However, he was safely inside the US Embassy at the time, and has now left.
Reactors were shut down at two nuclear plants in Ukraine after the Russian strikes
President Volodymyr Zelensky said several reactors at two Ukrainian nuclear plants shut down automatically as a result of the Russian missile strikes on Tuesday, adding that millions of people were left without electricity.
“As a result of the strikes, today’s automation disabled several nuclear units at two plants – these are calculated consequences, and the enemy knew exactly what he was doing,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Zelensky did not say which power plants were affected, but said the strikes hit the capital, Kyiv, as well as Lviv, Rivne and Volyn in the west, Kharkiv in the northeast, Kryvyi Rih and Poltava in the center, Odessa and Mykolaiv in the south, and Zhitomir. in the north.
More about the war in Ukraine
World leaders used the G20 declaration to criticize Russia’s war in Ukraine, which dominated the summit in Bali. They also expressed economic concerns, especially for middle-income countries.
dh/sms (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)
