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President Zelensky’s adviser Mihailo Podolyak says he is en route to the next round of negotiations with the Russians.
However, the prospects of an immediate diplomatic solution to the conflict are dim.
And that’s where we will end Thursday’s live coverage. But join us at Friday’s blog here where we will continue our rolling coverage: Australia news LIVE: Russian forces encircle two Ukrainian port cities as one million refugees flee Ukraine; flood rescues continue in northern NSW, Brisbane
Swedish homewares giant IKEA is pausing its operations in Russia and Belarus.
In a statement, the company said that the war had had a “human impact already” and was also resulting in “serious disruptions to supply chain and trading conditions.”
“For all of these reasons, the company groups have decided to temporarily pause IKEA operations in Russia,” the statement said.
IKEA said all imports and exports in and out of Russia and Belarus would be paused, as well as production operations in Russia.
But it said it’s Mega shopping centre in Russia would remain open to ensure that the Russian people continue to have access to food, groceries and medicines.
The floor at Sydney’s historic Enmore Theatre appears has collapsed just three songs in of Genesis Owusu’s gig on Thursday night.
Owusu’s manager Andrew Klippel told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the show was stopped immediately.
“It was hard to believe and we moved swiftly to stop the show, for obvious reasons,” he said.
“There was amazing energy in the crowd and we will be rescheduling the show hopefully sometime next week once engineers have fixed the floor,” he said.
Vivenne Goodes, a reporter with student newspaper Honi Soit, said the mosh pit caved in.
Q&A host Stan Grant took the extraordinary step of expelling a member of the audience from the studio on Thursday night after the young man, named Sasha, expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The young man, identified only as Sasha, said he was “someone who comes from the Russian community here in Australia” as he began his question for the panel.
He said he had been “pretty outraged by the narrative created by our media depicting Ukraine as ‘the good guy’ and Russia as ‘the bad guy’. Believe it or not, there are a lot of Russians here and around the world that support what Putin is doing in Ukraine, myself included.”
Sasha then went on to claim that Ukrainians had been responsible for the deaths of 13,000 ethnic Russians living in the country since 2014. “Where was your outpouring, or even concern, for those thousands of mostly Russians,” he asked.
Reports are coming in of fresh explosions in the capital Kyiv.
Kyiv was hit by missile strikes overnight. Now the bombardment appears to have resumed.
China has denounced a report that said it asked Russia to delay invading Ukraine until after the Beijing Winter Olympics as “fake news” and a “very despicable” attempt to divert attention and shift blame over the conflict.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin also repeated China’s accusations that Washington provoked the war by not ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine.
“We hope the culprit of the crisis would reflect on their role in the Ukraine crisis, take up their responsibilities, and take practical actions to ease the situation and solve the problem instead of blaming others,” Wang told reporters at a daily briefing.
“The New York Times report is purely fake news, and such behaviours of diverting attentions and shifting blames are very despicable.”
The Kremlin on Thursday praised Russian troops fighting in Ukraine as heroes who would go down in history and described the deaths of soldiers there as a tragedy.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said President Vladimir Putin would convene Russia’s Security Council later on Thursday, local time, but did not say what the group of top state officials and heads of defence and security agencies would discuss.
In a briefing with reporters, Peskov dismissed speculation that Russian authorities planned to introduce martial law following its invasion of Ukraine or that they would prevent men leaving Russia.
Russia called its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” and said it was not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.
Peskov said Russian casualties in the fighting in Ukraine - which the defence ministry put at 498 soldiers in a statement on Wednesday - were a source of grief.
“Of course, this is a great tragedy for all of us. At the same time, we all admire the heroism of our military,” he said.
The Czech government has declared a state of emergency in anticipation of a massive wave of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war-torn country, according to CNN.
“We are implementing it purely for technical reasons, so we can handle the influx of refugees,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday during a press briefing.
“In no way this will affect Czech citizens.”
The state of emergency is set to last 30 days, but the government could extend it if necessary.
Iranian refugee Mehdi Ali has been freed from detention eight years after he arrived in Christmas Island by boat.
He will leave Australia for the United States this evening, in search of a fresh start.
Ali arrived in Australia at just 15. A few years after arriving, Mr Ali, an Ahwazi Arab, was classified as a refugee. He celebrated his 24th birthday in January, after spending years moving from Christmas Island to Nauru to various onshore detention facilities.
Media attention turned to their plight in January this year when world No 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic spent several nights at the motel after the federal government cancelled his visa for failing to meet its entry requirement that all non-citizens be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
A factional contest is brewing inside Victorian Labor over who will replace federal veteran MP Anthony Byrne in the outer south eastern Melbourne seat of Holt, after he revealed his plans to retire at the federal election following facing months of backroom pressure to quit.
Mr Byrne, who helped expose a branch stacking racket allegedly run by disgraced Victorian MP Adem Somyurek, announced his resignation as the member for Holt to the party on Thursday after more than 20 years in the Federal Parliament. Mr Byrne also admitted to a Victorian anti-corruption hearing that he had also been involved in branch stacking.
Read the full report by Lisa Visentin and Nick McKenzie here.