With the Russian occupation of Ukraine now entering its 12th day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
On Monday, Trudeau announced that Canada will be imposing new sanctions on 10 individuals because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Those individuals include former and current senior government officials, oligarchs, and supporters of the Russian leadership.
“The name of these individuals come from a list compiled by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny,” announced Trudeau during a press conference in London.
At least 360 people have died in the conflict so far, CNN is reporting, more than 1.7 million of people have had to flee their homes.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine delegation arrived in Belarus for the third round of talks with Russian officials after two failed attempts, the BBC reports. The purpose of the talks is to ensure a safe passage for civilians while Russian military operations continue.
Two rounds of talks have already taken place and have failed as a previous attempt to establish safe passage for civilians collapsed when the ceasefire failed to hold.
The current proposal has been called unacceptable by Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Irene Vereshchuk, as Russia offered safe passage to Russia’s ally Belarus while those in the city of Kharkiv would have had a passage leading only to Russia itself, BBC reported.
Also on Monday, the port city of Mariupol has been encircled by Russian forces leaving people with no power, no communication lines, and with food rapidly running out. A small number of people have managed to escape from Mariupol, BBC reports.
Even with the continued Russian shelling, about 2,000 people have been able to flee from Ukraine’s capital Kyiv via a makeshift bridge.
The western Ukrainian city of Lviv has reached its limit to help refugees displaced by the Russian invasion.
Lviv’s central railway station has become a connection point for Ukrainian citizens fleeing from the cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv, and Kyiv, BBC reports.
The United Nations has reported that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War with more than a million fleeing Ukraine, Aljazeera reports.
“We have passed the terrible mark of 1.5 million refugees and this is in 10 days, essentially from Ukraine into five neighboring countries,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in an interview with CBS News on Sunday
“If I think of past decades, I cannot think in Europe of a faster exodus of people, not since the end of the Second World War,” said Grandi.
Also on Monday, the Kremlin has put forward its demands to stop the violence in Ukraine, the BBC reported.
Under the proposal, Ukraine would have to give up its claims to the Russian-annexed Crimea region, and Ukraine would have to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.
In addition to those demands, Ukraine would also have to amend its constitution and not join any blocs like NATO.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted that Russia is not planning to make any further territorial claims on Ukraine.
In Washington, the New York Times was reporting that lawmakers had “reached an agreement on legislation that, if passed, would bar imports of Russian energy and suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus.”