Russia-Ukraine war latest: Boris Johnson criticised for comparing conflict with Brexit, as 190,000 civilians ‘evacuated from frontline’ – live | World news

This is Lauren Aratani in New York taking over for Nadeem Badshah.

Earlier today, Pope Francis paid a visit to a ward in the Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital in Rome that is treating Ukrainian refugee children. The children are undergoing treatment for illnesses like cancer or neurological diseases, according to the Catholic News Agency.

The hospital has treated 50 Ukrainian children since the start of the war, including 19 children who were brought in for treatment on Saturday.

In a message to a gathering of European Catholic representatives yesterday, the Pope denounced the “perverse abuse of power” in Ukraine and said that Ukrainians have been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and are “defending their land”. While the Pope clearly denounced the war, he did not speak of Russia as an aggressor during his speech.

Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion to British people voting for Brexit.

In his speech to the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool, Johnson said it is the “instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom”, with the Brexit vote a “famous recent example”.

The comparison was condemned by Tory peer Lord Barwell, who pointed out Ukraine is seeking to join the EU.

Writing on Twitter, he said: “Apart from the bit where voting in a free and fair referendum isn’t in any way comparable with risking your life to defend your country against invasion + the awkward fact the Ukrainians are fighting for the freedom to join the EU, this comparison is bang on.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister “is a national embarrassment”, adding: “To compare a referendum to women and children fleeing (Vladimir) Putin’s bombs is an insult to every Ukrainian.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said: “Boris Johnson’s comments comparing Ukraine’s life-threatening situation with Brexit was crass and distasteful, and shows just how dangerously obsessed the Tories are with Brexit.”

The governor of Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region said rescue work was ongoing at the site of an air strike on a facility where Ukrainian soldiers had been sleeping.

Speaking on national television, governor Vitaliy Kim said the attack took place on Friday but gave no further detail about the location or the number of possible casualties.

Local media reported the strike hit a barracks in the regional capital, Reuter reports.

Ukrainian mothers and their young children found shelter in an ornate theatre in the Polish border town of Przemysl on Saturday, Reuters reports.

For Tanya, a 34-year-old from Berdychiv in northern Ukraine, it was a relief to finally have some help with her five young children after their long trip to Poland.

Tanya, who did not give her last name, had stayed in her home until it was no longer possible to shield her children from the war.

“I tried to protect them from all of this. When the alarm sounded, I covered the windows with blankets so one couldn’t hear it. My small ones made up a monster, the siren monster,” she said.

Her children ran around her as she stood inside the theatre, which is tucked inside the Polish city’s Ukrainian cultural centre.

There were about 50 refugees sleeping side by side under borrowed blankets on fold-out cots in the theatre.

The UK’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said another plane has been grounded because of possible links to Russia.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said were helping to wage war on his country from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.

In an audiolink address to thousands attending an anti-war protest in Bern, Zelenskiy thanked Switzerland for its support since Russia launched its invasion, but speaking through a translator he also said:

Your banks are where the money of the people who unleashed this war lies. That is painful. That is also a fight against evil, that their accounts are frozen. That would also be a fight, and you can do this.

Ukrainians feel what it is when cities are destroyed. They are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in European, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege.

Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, has fully adopted the bloc’s sanctions against Russian individuals and entities, including orders to freeze their wealth in Swiss banks.

Ukraine has evacuated 190,000 civilians from frontline areas via humanitarian corridors since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.

The country’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said corridors in the Kyiv and Luhansk regions were functioning on Saturday, but a planned corridor to the besieged eastern port city of Mariupol was only partially operational, with Russian troops not allowing buses through.

• Poland has proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.
• Boris Johnson has spoken of the beginning of a “new age of intimidation” stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea if Vladimir Putin succeeds in his invasion of Ukraine.
• Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine.
• Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for “meaningful, fair” peace talks to take place urgently. He told Moscow that Russian losses would otherwise be so huge it would take generations to recover. “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine – meaningful, fair and without delay – are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes,” he said.
• The southern city of Zaporizhzhia entered a 38-hour curfew beginning at 1400 GMT on Saturday (1600 local time) after the Ukrainian military ordered people to stay home until early on Monday.
• Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the World Food Programme said.
• Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing season is disrupted by Russia’s invasion, the presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko has said.
• Ten humanitarian corridors were agreed on with Russia for the evacuation of citizens, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.

My colleague Nadeem Badshah will be taking over this liveblog shortly.

From CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto:

Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday it had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia’s deployment of hypersonic missiles was a warning to Ukraine and the west that it “has the means to escalate” the conflict further, defence expert Dr James Bosbotinis said.

Russia’s space agency has rejected western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) wore wear yellow suits with a blue accents in support of Ukraine.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’ press service said on its Telegram channel. “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from … To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

When asked about the suits during a live-streamed news conference from the ISS on Friday, mission commander Oleg Artemyev said: “Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour. The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That’s why we had to wear yellow flight suits.”

Activists in Kazakhstan have said they were refused permission to hold a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to AFP.

Kazakhstan is seeking a third way amid the war in Ukraine, attempting to distance itself from the Kremlin’s actions while not antagonising Moscow. The foreign ministry last month signalled its neutrality in the conflict over Ukraine, saying it is not considering recognition of two Russia-backed separatist entities in eastern Ukraine.

Although Kazakh authorities permitted activists in the former capital Almaty to hold a rally of more than 2,000 people demonstrating against the invasion earlier this month, they were blocked from putting on a second rally. Authorities in the country strictly control demonstrations, only allowing them to take place in designated locations with permission.

Activists showed AFP a letter from the Almaty mayor’s office refusing them permission to hold a second demonstration, explaining a square designated for demonstrations was being used for a rally in support of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instead.

“In reality they only held (the demonstration) to prevent us from holding our anti-war meeting,” activist Alnur Ilyashev told AFP, explaining they had “booked” the square for the whole day, meaning it would not be free for other rallies even after they left.