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US, Japan, India, Australia say Putin’s nuclear threats ‘unacceptable’

03.03.2023 09:30
Top diplomats from the United States, Japan, India and Australia have condemned Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, calling them “unacceptable.”
Antony Blinken.
Antony Blinken.PAP/EPA/Orestis Panagiotou

The declaration was made following a meeting of the so-called Quad group in New Delhi on Friday, the Reuters news agency reported.

The four top diplomats, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said that "Russia cannot be allowed to wage war with impunity."

The Quad group brings together Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

Biden, Scholz to discuss Ukraine in Washington

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden was set to hold confidential talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Friday, news outlets reported.

The two leaders were expected to focus on the war in Ukraine, according to Polish state news agency PAP.

They were also planning to discuss growing concerns that China might supply Russia with weapons, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported.  

The US and German leaders were set to meet for an hour at the White House, with a substantial “one-on-one component,” giving them an opportunity to “exchange notes” on their respective recent meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and on the state of the war, according to a senior US official.

“Both of the leaders wanted this to be a working-level meeting, wanted it to be very much a get down into the weeds, focused on the issues of Ukraine,” the official was quoted as saying.

Death toll in Zaporzhzhia strike rises to five 

Ukrainian state broadcaster Suspilne reported on Friday that rescuers were continuing to comb through the rubble of a five-story apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia that was struck by a Russian missile the previous night.

The number of dead has risen to five, with a further 10 people considered missing, The Guardian reported.

Suspilne also reported that Russian forces fired more than 360 projectiles in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province over the past day, damaging residential buildings and killing one person, with a further 17 injured.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Donbas region, Russian troops continued to fire on populated areas along the entire frontline, Suspilne said, as quoted by The Guardian, adding that two people were killed and five injured as a result of shelling in the Donetsk region on Thursday.

Warsaw-Lviv rail line to be ready by end of 2023

Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper reported on Friday that a new European-gauge railway line between Warsaw and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv would be ready for use by the end of 2023.

The line will then be extended further in the next few years, including to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the paper said on its website.

Ukraine’s existing wide Russian-gauge rail lines have hampered transport of people and goods to and from Poland and Romania amid the Russian invasion, Rzeczpospolita reported. 

This is especially troublesome because, due to a Russian blockade of Black Sea ports, Ukraine has been forced to export its goods, including grain, by other routes, according to the paper.  

Friday is day 373 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

(pm/gs)

Source: PAP, Reuters, The Guardian, rp.pl