Scott Morrison has said Russia should be treated as an international outcast like North Korea after invading Ukraine.
The Prime Minister said Russia ‘self-nominated as a pariah state’ when Vladimir Putin illegally launched an unprovoked invasion of his neighbour with missiles and tanks last Thursday.
‘We can line them up with North Korea and others and they should be treated accordingly,’ Mr Morrison told Perth’s Radio 6PR from Sydney where he’s isolating with Covid-19.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes part in an event to plant trees on Wednesday
North Korea is an isolated and nuclear-armed totalitarian dictatorship ruled by Kim Jong-Un. It has very few allies and its economy is crippled by sanctions imposed by the United Nations.
The Prime Minister said international financial sanctions on Russia in response to the invasion were hurting the nation’s economy.
‘They are paying a high price… this is having a very damaging impact on their economy, the targeted sanctions on individuals, it’s having an impact on their oligarchs, and the whole support system to President Putin,’ he said.
Mr Morrison said Russia’s economic pain warned China not to invade Taiwan, a self-governing island which Beijing claims.
‘This all sends a very clear message to any other autocratic regime, and we know about a few of those in our own region,’ Mr Morrison said without naming China.
‘It should be a clear message to not take the wrong lesson out of this… there will be a heavy transactional cost in reputation and in economic terms and potentially militarily.’
Scott Morrison has said Russia should be treated as an international outcast like North Korea after invading Ukraine. Pictured: Putin on Thursday
While the West has condemned Russia’s invasion, India and China are sitting on the fence.
But the Prime Minister said he didn’t blame quad ally India for not condemning Moscow.
India and Russia signed a defence co-operation pact last year and Russia is supplying long-range S-400 surface-to-air missile defense systems to New Delhi.
‘I think we’ve got to work patiently with our partners who have the same objectives as we do in the Indo Pacific,’ Mr Morrison said.
‘I don’t draw an equivalence between India and China whatsoever, and I do know from discussions we had last need that India is seeking to ensure that this violence ends.
‘They have some very real concerns right now… there are 16,000 Indian students in the Ukraine we’re trying to get out safely. So they have a lot of issues… we will work closely with them.’
On Thursday night Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Putin to sit down with him at the negotiating table in person during another impassioned television appearance.
Zelensky’s comments came as Putin’s forces continued their brutal assault on several of Ukraine’s cities, and on the same day negotiations between the two sides made little progress in deescalating the deadly war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 3, 2022. He made a plea to Russian President Valdimir Putin to sit down with him in person for negotiations
In an appeal to his Russian counterpart, Zelensky said: ‘Get off our land. You don’t want to leave now? Then sit down with me at the negotiation table. I’m available. Sit. Just not 30 metres away like with Macron or Scholz etc. I am your neighbour. You don’t need to keep me 30 metres away.
‘I don’t bite. I’m a normal bloke. Sit down with me and talk. What are you afraid of? We aren’t threatening anyone, we’re not terrorists, we aren’t seizing banks and seizing foreign land.’
Earlier, Putin branded Ukrainians ‘extreme gangsters’, claimed their army is using civilians as ‘human shields’, hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and said his invasion is going exactly to plan and schedule in a stunning act of hypocrisy and outright denial.
The Russian leader, who eight days ago declared all-out war against Ukraine in a bid to topple its elected government and reunify it with Russia by force, denied that his troops are deliberately targeting civilians – despite reams of evidence to the contrary – and instead blamed ‘neo-Nazis’ holding citizens hostage.
Kherson, a city of 300,000 on the Black Sea, appears to have fallen under Russian control after the mayor said ‘armed visitors’ had taken over a council meeting and imposed curfews. If Putin’s men are in full control then it opens up the city of Odessa, home to Ukraine’s main naval port, to attack – with amphibious assault ships seen forming up near Crimea on Thursday
Referring to the invasion as a ‘special operation’ aimed only at protecting the eastern Donbass region, he acknowledged that some Russian forces including a senior commander had died in the fighting – but claimed the officer had blown himself up in a heroic act of sacrifice while taking out several Ukrainian soldiers.
The address, one of the first Putin has made in public since announcing the start of his ‘special operation’ eight days ago – will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.
But it also hints that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted. All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.
Zelensky’s subsequent comments came in during a press conference in Kyiv and in response to a reporter’s question on what ‘guarantees’ Ukraine can offer.
‘Guarantees for what?’ Zelensky fired back at the interviewer in Russian. ‘We aren’t attacking Russia and we have no intention of doing so. Guarantee what? We aren’t in NATO. We don’t have nuclear weapons. What am I supposed to say, what am I supposed to give, and to whom?
‘You must understand – this is also a huge thing that everybody is talking about – what am I supposed to give? Jesus, what do you want from us?!’
Ukraine’s president, who has become an inspirational figure both at home and abroad for his defiance in the face of Russian aggression, also called on the West to supply planes to help his military control the skies. It came after NATO members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of igniting World War Three.
Putin (pictured on Thursday) branded Ukrainians ‘extreme gangsters’, claimed their army is using civilians as ‘human shields’
‘If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!’ Zelensky told a news conference. ‘If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,’ he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were ‘the only way to stop this war’.
Zelensky – who just weeks ago sought to calm Ukrainians over US allegations that Russia was planning to invade his country – said: ‘Nobody thought that in the modern world a man can behave like a beast.’
Soon after Putin’s address, Ukraine announced that it has agreed with Russia to create safe corridors – backed by ceasefires – to evacuate civilians and deliver aid to areas under attack by Russian forces. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky also said the agreement had been made during talks, describing it as ‘substantial progress’.
The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work.
Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia said afterwards that a third round of talks on the war will be held shortly.
So far, more than one million people have fled Ukraine as Putin’s armies have laid waste to key cities.
Meanwhile the Russian economy is tanking with the ruble at record lows, the stock market unable to open because it faces near-total collapse, and European countries seizing assets from billionaire oligarchs. Protests have also sprung up in Russia, coupled with high-profile political figures and celebrities calling for the war to end.
Just hours before the TV address, Putin had phoned Emmanuel Macron to tell the French President that he has no intention of pulling back from Ukraine or watering down his security demands, will achieve his aims ‘whatever happens’ and will continue fighting until ‘the end’.
Macron’s aides said after the call that they believe Putin intends to take the whole country, and that the ‘worst is yet to come’ as the Russian attacks step up, and that ‘there was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us.’
Mr Macron is said to have told Putin he is making a ‘major mistake’ and ‘lying to himself’. Macron said Russia would end up poor, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.
‘There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,’ Macron’s aide said, before adding that Putin ‘wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine’.
Putin’s two statements on Thursady – the first he has made in public since announcing the start of his ‘special operation’ eight days ago – will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia could be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.
News that the convoy has been at least partially damaged or destroyed will come as a huge boon to the people of Kyiv, as it was feared the vehicles would be used to surround and bomb the city into submission. The Ukrainian capital is still under attack by Russian rockets and missiles, but has largely escaped the intense fire being rained down on other locations.
Perhaps the hardest-hit has been the city of Mariupol, on Ukraine’s eastern Black Sea coast, which came under bombardment by Russian forces surrounding it yesterday – with the fire kept up near-continuously. Local officials say the city is without water, heat, or electricity, and cannot clear the dead from the streets.
Units of Russian Armed Forces enter Kyiv region, Ukraine, in this screengrab obtained from a video by Reuters on Thursday
Harrowing pictures revealed at least part of the civilian death toll, with a father seen weeping over the body of his son who was killed when a Russian shell destroyed his legs. Two elderly women were also pictured being evacuated from their homes and covered in blood after Russian attacks.
Despite the vicious shelling, the city still remains in the hands of Ukrainian forces – as a defiant Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will be rebuilt with Russian money as he praised his troops’ ‘heroic’ defence.
Kharkiv, in the east, and Chernihiv, in the north west, also remained under Ukrainian control despite coming under heavy rocket fire. Nine people died in Chernihiv after Russian rockets hit a school and nearby apartments. There were also fears the Russians were about to launch a major amphibious assault against the port city of Odessa after a large fleet of ships was spotted near Crimea in the early hours.
The Ukrainian president said that ‘all lines of defence are holding’ with the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mykolaiv all resisting Russian attacks. He even claimed the city of Kherson remains in Ukrainian hands, despite the mayor seeming to confirm overnight that it had been taken by Russian forces.
‘They wanted to destroy us. They failed. We’ve been through so much. And if anyone thinks that, having overcome all this, Ukrainians will be frightened, broken or surrender, they know nothing about Ukraine,’ Zelensky said, adding: ‘We will restore every house, every street, every city and we say to Russia: learn the word ‘reparations’.
‘You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.’
Separately, one of his presidential advisers said the Ukrainian army is now getting ready to launch counter-attacks on Russian forces after their initial assault on the country stalled – amid reported of fuel and food shortages, heavy casualties, and mismanagement of the operation.
‘Help to us is increasing every minute and the strength of the enemy is decreasing every minute. We’re not only defending but also counter-attacking,’ the adviser said in a televised briefing.
President Zelensky’s office said a second round of negotiations had concluded. A first round of talks on Monday ended without an agreement.
KYIV: A firefighter works to extinguish fire at a warehouse that caught flames, according to local authorities, after shelling, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Chaiky in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022
Pictured: A map showing the Kyiv region and the area occupied by Russian troops as they close in on Ukraine’s capital
Ahead of the invasion, Washington had warned that Russia’s superior forces would be able to quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s 200,000-strong army – taking out air defences, achieving superiority in the skies, and then raining death down on those below.
But none of that has come to pass. Ukraine’s skies remain contested, US intelligence says, while attacks have been piecemeal with troops under-supplied and not fighting in a coordinated fashion, leading to large numbers of dead along with some abandoning their vehicles which have then been captured.
‘This is a colossal intelligence failure that vastly underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and military execution has been terrible,’ Michael Vickers, former US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
‘[Putin’s] main attack has been underweighted. It’s been piecemeal. His reconnaissance elements have been captured, columns have been destroyed,’ he said. ‘It’s just a disaster, through and through.’
But many caution that Russia’s initial failures could simply pre-sage a secondary phase of the fighting in which it uses superior numbers and force of arms to surround and bomb Ukrainian troops into submission, causing large civilian casualties.
