Ten million Ukrainians are without power just as temperatures fall to freezing and below after more Russian missile attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. CNN spoke to Kyiv residents and how they’re coping
The last time Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down face to face, they declared triumphantly the arrival of a “new era” in international relations.
Amid a Western diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics and a looming crisis in Ukraine, the world’s two most powerful autocrats shared their vision for a new world order: it would better accommodate their nations’ interests, and no longer be dominated by the West.
In a 5,000-word joint statement, the two leaders declared a friendship with “no limits” and spelled out their shared grievances toward the United States and its allies.
“The world is going through momentous changes,” their joint statement said, noting the “transformation of the global governance architecture and world order.”
More than 200 days later, Xi and Putin are to meet again at a regional summit in the city of Samarkand in southeastern Uzbekistan. Much has changed, but not necessarily in ways China or Russia could have predicted.
Three weeks after meeting Xi in Beijing — and just days after the Winter Olympics ended, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He had expected a quick victory, but seven months in, Russia is far from winning. Its forces are exhausted, demoralized, and fleeing territories they have occupied for months.
And that is making China nervous. Having grown ever closer to Moscow under Xi, Beijing has a direct stake in the war’s outcome. A defeated Russia will strengthen the West and become a less useful and reliable asset in China’s great power rivalry with the US. A weakened Moscow might also be less of a distraction for the US, thereby enabling Washington to focus more squarely on Beijing.
Xi has a fine line to tread. If he leans too much into helping Russia, he risks exposing China to Western sanctions and diplomatic blowback that would harm its own interests. The backlash would also come at a sensitive time for Xi, who is only weeks away from seeking a norm-breaking third term at the 20th Party Congress.
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Britain’s capital city expects hundreds of thousands of people to visit Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state in Westminster Hall ahead her funeral on Monday, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan told QT, adding that the situation was “unprecedented.”
The world has not seen a funeral like this,” he said, adding, “She was loved, revered, our monarch for more than 70 years.”
“We expect to see over the course of the next few days hundreds of thousands of people personally pay their respects to her majesty the Queen, but also we expect to see prime ministers, presidents, members of the royal family, and others from across the globe,” he continued.
“The really reassuring thing is our King, King Charles III, had the best possible mentor, and the best possible apprenticeship and that’s why I’m so confident he will be a wonderful king,” he added.
As world leaders and their teams arrive in London for the Queen’s funeral, Khan said the city has never before seen such crowd and this presence.
“In just a couple of days, we will have almost 300 world leaders and their teams and entourages coming to London. I don’t think our city’s ever seen the sort of presence we’re going to see over the next few days,” Khan told Sky News.
The number of mourners far exceeds the scale of other events, such as the London Olympics and other Royal events, he said, suggesting that the crowds for the Queen’s passing are larger than all those events combined.
“If you think about the London marathon, the carnival, previous royal weddings, the Olympics — it’s all that, in one,” Khan said.
“This is a massive operation and we’re working really hard together to make sure that we can do her, we can do King Charles, we can do the Royal Family, our city, our nation, and the Commonwealth, what it deserves,” the London mayor added.
People in a 2.5-mile-long line in London to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II explained why they wanted to visit her coffin in Westminster Hall.
“I just feel like I will regret it if I don’t. And I just felt like I needed to come and say goodbye. That’s just me. And also, when my family has children — my boys have children — I’d like to teach them the history of it all. So, it just needed to be done today,” one woman told QT’s Anna Stewart as she waited in line.
A group told Stewart that they were told the line could last about five hours from where they stood, but the queue is moving.
Prince Pavlos of Greece remembers his late cousin, Queen Elizabeth II
Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece, told QT that his cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, was “one of the kindest people I knew.”
“She was always smiling … knowledgeable about everything… and had a very good sense of humor,” he said.
He also expressed his love and praise for King Charles III, and he acknowledged the unique position of being an heir.
“What you’ve been waiting for your whole life is also the saddest day of your life,” he said.
King Charles III, according to Pavlos, is “best prepared” to inherit the Crown due to his vast knowledge of his country and the Commonwealth that he has acquired through his charity work under the Prince’s Trust.
Around 100 jobs are now at risk at King Charles III’s former official residence, union says
Around 100 employees at King Charles III’s former official residence, Clarence House, were given notice that they could lose their jobs after he became king, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said Wednesday.
[The] decision to announce redundancies in the Royal Household during the period of national mourning is nothing short of heartless,” PCS said in a statement published on its website, calling for an “immediate halt to the redundancy process.”
Some employees have worked there for decades, PCS noted.
This is a “significant majority of the household and many of these staff will be the same people who have so diligently supported the new king during this period of mourning, working extremely hard over recent days only to be given redundancy notices as thanks,” PCS added.
“While some changes across the households were to be expected, as roles across the royal family change, the scale and speed at which this has been announced is callous in the extreme. Least of all because we do not know what staffing the incoming Prince of Wales and his family might need,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said.
Clarence House’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Latest developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited newly liberated Izium: Ukrainian forces took back control of the northeastern region of Kharkiv on Saturday. Zelensky thanked the military Wednesday and observed a minute of silence to honor those who had been lost in the war.
Izium’s liberation is a huge strategic blow to Russia’s military assault in the east as it had become an important hub for Moscow to launch attacks southward into the Donetsk region and Kupyansk.
About 8,000 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) of territory has been liberated by Ukrainian forces so far this month, according to Zelensky. Most of this reclaimed land is in the country’s northeast and south, he added.
The counteroffensive is, however, slowing down: Ukraine is liberating swathes of territory from Russia’s occupation in the east, but presidential military adviser Oleksiy Arestovych says the country’s counteroffensive has “slowed down slightly because most of the Ukrainian forces are fighting to capture the city of Lyman, to open our way into the Luhansk region. We will intensify our strikes and liberate new territories in a different way,” he told QT’s Becky Anderson in an interview.
Lyman, an important rail hub, is roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of the strategically important Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk.
The US says Russian forces retreated back across the border: “We’ve seen a number of Russian forces, especially in the northeast, in the Kharkiv region, cross over the border back into Russia as they’ve retreated from the Ukrainian counter-offensive,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. But Russian forces still “do exist en masse in Ukraine,” he added.
But Russia has been trying to gain ground in other parts of Ukraine: The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said Ukrainian units had successfully repelled Russian attacks around the city of Bakhmut, while Russian artillery and air force are pounding settlements near the front lines across Donetsk. There was also Russian mortar and tank fire in the Zaporizhzhia region, the General Staff said.
Looting claims: The military claimed that in the south, around the city of Polohy, Russian troops were also stealing private cars. And in Nova Kakhovka, in the Kherson region, Russians “began to massively remove furniture and household appliances from temporarily abandoned settlements.” QT is unable to confirm the military’s claims, but there has been widespread evidence of looting in Kharkiv and other previously occupied Russian areas.
Russian shelling killed at least two people and injured six in Mykolaiv: The head of the region’s civil military administration provided this update, adding that educational institution, infrastructure facilities and residential buildings were damaged in the southern port city near the Black Sea on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials claim that they’ve taken back about 500 square kilometers of territory in the south so far, along the borders of Mykolaiv and Kherson.
Take a look at the territory reclaimed by Ukraine through its counteroffensive
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited newly liberated Izium on Wednesday — five days after the Ukrainian forces took back control of the northeastern region of Kharkiv.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues to liberate swathes of territory from Russia’s occupation, with most of this reclaimed land is in the country’s northeast and south, according to Zelesnky.
Take a look at the map of control as it stands currently:
President Zelensky he is “shocked” by seeing destruction in Izium
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is shocked by what he has seen on his visit to the newly liberated Izium district in Kharkiv.
“What we see is shocking, although we have already seen this in Bucha [near Kyiv], in the first de-occupied territories. Likewise, destroyed buildings, killed people,” he told journalists during the visit. “Unfortunately, this is part of our history today. And this is part of the modern Russian nation – what they did.”
He thanked foreign governments for sending investigators and prosecutors to Ukraine to investigate alleged human rights abuses by occupying forces.
“We all understand that this process takes time … I am sure, there will be verdicts for all this, there will be a tribunal. I don’t doubt it for a second,” he said.
He also expressed confidence that all occupied areas would eventually return to Ukraine.
“We should send signals to our people who, unfortunately, are still under occupation. And my signal to the people in Crimea: we know that these are our people, and it is a terrible tragedy that they have been under occupation for more than eight years. We will return there. I don’t know when exactly. But we have plans,” Zelensky said.
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