Pope Francis voices concern in unusual step

Pope Francis went to the Russian embassy in Rome on Friday to personally express his concern about the war in Ukraine, in an extraordinary papal gesture that has no recent precedent.

Popes usually receive ambassadors and heads of state in the Vatican. For Francis to travel a short distance to the Russian embassy outside the Vatican walls was a sign of his strength of feeling about Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Vatican officials said they knew of no such previous papal initiative.

Also Read: Zelensky says West slow in helping Ukraine against Russian invasion

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed the pontiff wanted “clearly to express his concern about the war.” Pope Francis was there for just over a half-hour, Bruni said.

Francis has called for dialogue to end the conflict and has urged the faithful to set next Wednesday as a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Ukraine.

But he has refrained from publicly calling out Russia, presumably for fear of antagonizing the Russian Orthodox Church, with which he is trying to build stronger ties.

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Geneva: The UN human rights office says it is receiving increasing reports of civilian casualties in Ukraine in the wake of Russia's military invasion.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says its staffers have so far verified at least 127 civilian casualties. They include 25 people killed and 102 injured, mostly from shelling and airstrikes.

She cautioned Friday that the numbers are “very likely to be an underestimate.”

Shamdasani also said the rights office was “disturbed by the multiple arbitrary arrests” of demonstrators in Russia who on Thursday protested against the conflict.

“We understand more than 1,800 protesters were arrested,” she said, before adding that it was unclear how many might have been released already.

Meanwhile, spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said its latest update had that more than 100,000 people were believed to have left their homes in Ukraine. She said the agency's planning figures anticipated that “up to 4 million people may flee to other countries if the situation escalates.”

Also Read: 'I don't want to die': Ukrainians fear as invasion closes in

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London: Latvia's defense minister is criticizing European nations for failing to cut Russia off from the global bank payments network and refusing to provide weapons to help Ukraine defend itself.

Artis Pabriks' comments came after the US and European Union stopped short of blocking Russia's access to the SWIFT payments system when they announced a new round of sanctions late Thursday.

Pabriks also chided fellow EU nations that have refused to provide “lethal aid” to Ukraine, saying only the U.K., Greece, Poland and the Baltic states had done so.

In an interview with the BBC on Friday, Pabriks suggested that many European leaders don't want to take these steps because they would cause economic hardship for their own countries.

“If you are really not ready yourself to spill blood, at least spill money now,'' he said. “Do it now, because if you lose Ukraine all European geopolitics will change. … There will be much more pressure on Poland, much more pressure on the Baltics.''

The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia fear they could be the Kremlin's next target.

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Damascus: Syrian President Bashar Assad is praising Russia's military incursion into Ukraine and denouncing what he calls western “hysteria” surrounding it.

Assad spoke by phone Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“What is happening today is a correction of history and a restoration of balance which was lost in the world after the breakup of the Soviet Union,” Assad said, according to state-run news agency SANA.

He said confronting NATO expansionism is Russia's right.

Russia is a main backer of Assad's government and its military intervention in 2015 in the country's civil war helped tip the balance of power in his favor.

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Moscow: The Kremlin says it will analyze the Ukrainian president's offer to discuss a non-aligned status for his country, as a Russian military invasion pushes closer to Kyiv.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to hold talks on the issue.

Asked about Zelenskyy's offer, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday described it as “a move in a positive direction.”

He said in a conference call with reporters that “we paid attention to that, and now we need to analyze it.”

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Zelenskyy “is simply lying” when he offers to discuss non-aligned status for Ukraine.

Lavrov said at a briefing that Zelenskyy “missed the opportunity” to discuss a neutral status for Ukraine when Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed it.

Putin says the West left him no option but to invade when it rejected Moscow's demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

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Brussels: A senior European Union official says the 27-nation bloc intends to slap further sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

EU Council president Charles Michel tweeted Friday: “Second wave of sanctions with massive and severe consequences politically agreed last night. Further package under urgent preparation.”

Michel announced the move after a call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Michel said Kyiv “is under continued attack by Russian forces” and called on Russia to immediately stop the violence.

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