Russia-Ukraine live updates: Putin meets with Austrian chancellor as Russia steps up assault in east
Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Monday in the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and a European leader since his country’s invasion of Ukraine. Austria has been militarily neutral since the 1950s, but Nehammer has spoken against Russia’s war. In a tweet announcing the meeting, he called for “humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire & full investigation of war crimes,” adding that Putin “has to stop!”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continued his calls for Western nations to provide his country with more weapons. “They have to supply weapons to Ukraine as if they were defending themselves and their own people,” Zelensky said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Russian forces have shifted their focus to eastern Ukraine, where people are being urged to evacuate immediately amid heavy fighting. Evacuees have been trickling out of the seaside city of Mariupol, which faces continued heavy assault. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that 213 Mariupol residents were evacuated on Sunday, among 2,824 evacuees total across the country that day. Russian forces “made territorial gains” there this weekend but struggled farther inland in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to an assessment by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.