🔴 Live: Ukraine considering ‘strategic’ withdrawal from Bakhmut

Issued on: 02/03/2023 – 08:01Modified: 02/03/2023 – 08:05

8:06am: German foreign minister calls on Russia to return to new START at G20

German Foreign Minister Baerbock on Thursday called on her Russian counterpart to return to the full implementation of the new START nuclear arms control treaty. “I ask you, Mr (Sergei) Lavrov, to return to full implementation of new START,” Baerbock said during the first G20 session on multilateralism, according to the German delegation.

7:46am: Russian missile strike kills 3 in Zaporizhzhia 

A Russian missile hit a five-storey building in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, killing three people and wounding at least four, Ukraine’s police said.

Eleven people have been rescued from the part of the building that collapsed, the state emergencies service said in a statement.

5:07am: India PM Modi calls for common ground on global issues at G20 meeting 

Top diplomats from the world’s major industrialised and developing nations on Thursday opened what are expected to be contentious talks dominated by Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s moves to boost its global influence. 

Host India appealed for all members of the fractured Group of 20 to reach consensus on issues of deep concern to poorer countries even if the broader East-West split over Ukraine cannot be resolved. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on world leaders to find common ground on divisive issues on Thursday as he inaugurated a ministerial meeting of the Group of 20 bloc where Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine is taking centre-stage. “We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can,” Modi said in a video message that was broadcast before the first session of the foreign ministers’ meeting in the Indian capital of New Delhi.

>> East-West showdown over Ukraine war looms at G20 meeting in India

10:06pm: Ukraine considering ‘strategic’ withdrawal from Bakhmut, Zelensky aide says

The Ukrainian military might pull troops back from the key stronghold of Bakhmut, an adviser to Ukraine’s president said Wednesday in remarks that suggested Russia could capture the city that has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

Kremlin forces have waged a bloody, months-long offensive to take Bakhmut, a city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine that has become a ghost town. 

“Our military is obviously going to weigh all of the options. So far, they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back,” Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told CNN.

“We’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing.”

>> Ukraine’s Bakhmut: Inside the frontline city

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)