Russia-Ukraine war: Belarus 'fully' supports Beijing's peace plan

A Ukrainian government source said that the nation has sent an appeal to the UN and Turkey to start negotiations on extending a grain export deal, but there has been no response. 

But Russia said it would only agree to extend the Black Sea grain deal, which allows grain to be safely exported from Ukrainian ports, if the interests of its own agricultural producers are taken into account. 

Zelensky said on Tuesday after meeting with the ICC's top prosecutor that the International Criminal Court has a "historic" role to play in bringing justice for crimes committed in the war in Ukraine and ensuring long-term security. 

 Democratic countries worldwide should make Russia pay war reparations to Ukraine and cut all financial and economic ties with Moscow, Polish Climate Minister Anna Moskwa said on Wednesday.

"We need to get Ukraine compensated from Russian Federation as much as possible," Moskwa said at an energy conference in Croatia's capital of Zagreb.

"It should be decent compensation for everything, for energy, for energy infrastructure, for every single human being, for environment, for whatever what was destroyed and affected," she added.

Ukrainian forces are keeping all sections of the front under control, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Wednesday (March 1).

He said, “We are keeping each sector of the front under control. There were reports on the situation during the day [from the military units of] "Khortytsia", "Tavriia", "Odesa" [and] "North". In addition to the directions of the front, attention is also paid to the frontline territories, to those cities and districts that are under Russia's shelling every day and night, under deliberate terror."

"Nikopol and other communities of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and the [Kherson] region, the frontline part of Donbas, Kharkiv and the [Kharkiv] region, Sumy region, Chernihiv region,” he added. 

Russia will have to push the threat off its borders to a distance depending on weapons the West will supply to Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Sunday.

"It will depend on weapons it will receive," he said in an interview with the Moscow.Kremlin.Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

In his state of the nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia will be forced to push the threat further off its border in case the Kiev regime is supplied with long-range systems by the West.

Washington was confident that the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in India would condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a senior official accompanying US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Wednesday.

The official said aboard Blinken's plane while en route to New Delhi: "I think we will expect to see language in there reflecting the majority if not overwhelming majority of the G20 continuing to stand against Russia's war." 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on that it is up to Russia to make a move towards peace in Ukraine and Moscow must withdraw its troops. 

Scholz also told reporters that if attacked, NATO would defend "every single square centimetre” (inch) of its territory. 

“I mean it, just the way I’m saying it. That message is also very important to me in regard to our friends in the Baltics and in Poland," he said. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will not meet his Russian or Chinese counterparts at this week's G20 meeting in New Delhi.

He said, "We all know the simple truth. The war could end tomorrow, it could end today if President Putin so decided." 

He accused Moscow of not being serious about ending the war in Ukraine.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said during a visit to China Wednesday that his country fully supports an initiative put forward by Beijing to achieve peace in Ukraine.

"Today's meeting is taking place at a very difficult time, which calls for new, unorthodox approaches and responsible political decisions," Lukashenko told China's President Xi Jinping.

"They should be aimed at first and foremost preventing a slide into a global confrontation that will see no winners," he said.

"That is why Belarus is actively coming up with peace proposals, and fully supports the initiative on international security you have put forward," Lukashenko told Xi in remarks released by his aides.