War Crimes Verdict Looms as Russian Offensive Intensifies

Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha. (File/AFP)
Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha. (File/AFP)
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War Crimes Verdict Looms as Russian Offensive Intensifies

Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha. (File/AFP)
Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha. (File/AFP)

With a verdict due Monday in the conflict’s first war crimes trial, Moscow's offensive in eastern Ukraine is only intensifying, with the city of Severodonetsk under "round-the-clock" bombardment as Russian troops attempt its encirclement.

The trial in Kyiv -- seen as a public test of the Ukrainian judicial system's independence -- comes as international institutions conduct their own investigations into alleged abuses that have turned cities like Bucha and Mariupol into watchwords for destruction, AFP said.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose country is a vital staging area for Western arms shipments and host to millions of the war's refugees, pointed to the devastation in those cities as a reason for why "business as usual" with Russia was no longer possible.

"An honest world cannot return to business as usual while forgetting the crimes, the aggression, the fundamental rights that have been trampled on," he told Ukraine's parliament Sunday.

Three months after launching an invasion that failed in its initial goal of capturing Kyiv, Moscow's forces are now squarely focused on securing and expanding their gains in the Donbas region and on Ukraine's southern coast.

But as its relentless offensive continues, Russia's lead negotiator said Sunday that Moscow was willing to resume negotiations with Ukraine, which it blames for "freezing" earlier talks.

Any talks, however, will not include concessions of land, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who tweeted the war must end with "complete restoration of (Ukraine's) territorial integrity".

- First war crimes trial -
On Monday, Zelensky will continue his drive to rally Western support for his country's cause, targeting the world's political and business elite gathering in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum.

As Ukraine's president addresses the forum's attendees via videoconference, a panel of judges in Kyiv will be determining the fate of Russian Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin in the conflict's first war crimes trial.

The shaven-headed 21-year-old from Siberia has admitted to killing a 62-year-old civilian in the early stages of the invasion, but told the court he was pressured into an act for which he was "truly sorry".

"I was nervous about what was going on. I didn't want to kill," he said from the glass defense box, wearing a grey and blue hoodie, as the trial concluded Friday.

Shishimarin's lawyer has argued for an acquittal, saying his client was carrying out what he perceived to be a direct order that he initially disobeyed.

Prosecutors, who have asked for a life sentence, said he was "well aware" he was executing a "criminal order".

- 'Scorched-earth tactics' -
In the eastern city of Severodonetsk, a focus of recent fighting, regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Russian forces attempting its encirclement were "using scorched-earth tactics, deliberately destroying" the city.

Gaiday said Russia was drawing forces from a vast area -- those withdrawn from the Kharkiv region, others involved in Mariupol's siege, pro-Russian separatist militias, and even troops freshly mobilized from Siberia -- and concentrating their firepower on the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

At least seven civilians were killed and eight others wounded in Sunday's bombardment of the Donetsk region, according to the Ukrainian army's Facebook page.

Shelling and missile strikes also continued to pound Kharkiv in the north, as well as Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia in the south, Ukrainian officials said.

With the nation under relentless assault, Ukraine's parliament on Sunday voted to extend martial law through August 23.

Millions of ordinary Ukrainians, meanwhile, face a daily struggle to survive.

"There is no work, no food, no water," said Angela Kopytsa, 52, breaking down into tears as she spoke to AFP reporters on a Russian-organized tour of captured Mariupol.

Kopytsa said her home had been destroyed during the fighting in the port and that "children at maternity wards were dying of hunger".

Once-bustling Mariupol, which has been without electricity since early March, has now been reduced to a wasteland of charred buildings

- Davos snubs Moscow -
Thousands of miles away, Monday's meeting in Davos is expected to be dominated by the political and economic fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russian business and political leaders, who once participated in debates and mingled with other A-listers at champagne parties, have been barred from this year's gathering -- dubbed "History at a Turning Point" -- over the war.

Zelensky is due to confer with Davos delegates via videoconference to mark the opening of the Ukraine House Davos, a forum for Kyiv and its international backers.

And a strong Ukrainian contingent, including the foreign minister, has made the journey to plead their case.

"The major request to the whole world here is: do not stop backing Ukraine," Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told reporters on the eve of the summit.

More than 50 heads of state or government will be among the 2,500 delegates, ranging from business leaders to academics and civil society figures.



France Holds Rare Defense Cabinet Meeting over Iran as Tensions with US Mount

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo
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France Holds Rare Defense Cabinet Meeting over Iran as Tensions with US Mount

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo

French President Emmanuel Macron was convening key ministers and experts on Wednesday to discuss Iran, including its nuclear program, amid growing tensions between Tehran and US President Donald Trump, three diplomatic sources said, Reuters reported.

Such a cabinet meeting dedicated to a specific subject is rare and highlights mounting concern among Washington's European allies that the United States and Israel could launch airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities unless there is a quick negotiated deal on its nuclear program.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reinforced US military capability in the Middle East with more warplanes, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, amid a US bombing campaign against the Houthis who control much of Yemen and are supported by Iran.

A senior European official said European strategists were asking themselves whether the campaign could be a precursor to a US strike on Iran in the coming months.

Trump, who has urged Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to engage immediately in negotiations, threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if it did not come to an agreement over its nuclear program, which Western countries say amounts to weapons development.

The foreign minister of Iran's direct adversary Israel will be in Paris on Thursday. Diplomatic sources said ministers from France, Britain and Germany were hoping to discuss the Iran dossier with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio when they convene in Brussels for a NATO ministerial meeting this week.

Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed strict limits on Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions.

Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal's limits on uranium enrichment, producing stocks at a high level of fissile purity, well above what Western powers say is justifiable for a civilian energy program and close to that required for nuclear warheads. Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon.

France, Britain and Germany have sought in recent months to raise pressure on Iran in a bid to coax it back into discussions over its nuclear program.

They have held several rounds of talks with Iran including at technical level last week, to try to lay the groundwork for some form of agreement.

But the Trump administration has focused initially on a campaign of "maximum pressure", and the Europeans have found coordination complicated, diplomats say.

The European powers had hoped to convince Iran to begin negotiating new restrictions on its nuclear activities with a view to having a deal by August at the latest.

That would give enough time to set new limits for Iran's program and lift sanctions before the 2015 accord expires in October 2025.