Mariupol Mayor Says At Least 10,000 Killed In Port City; India’s Modi Avoids Blaming Russia For War. Follow Our Live Updates – CNBC

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian politician and critic of President Vladimir Putin’s government, was arrested by police in Moscow near his home, according to another Russian dissident.

The charges against Kara-Murza are unknown, Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin said on Twitter. Yashin speculated that the arrest was related to “some kind of anti-war statement in the press,” according to a translation of his tweets. Kara-Murza, a survivor of two suspected poisoning attempts, condemned the Kremlin in a CNN video that aired earlier Monday.

“This regime that is in power in our country today, it’s not just corrupt, it’s not just kleptocratic, it’s not just authoritarian. It is a regime of murderers, and it is important to say it out loud,” Kara-Murza said. He called it “tragic” that “it took a large-scale war in the middle of Europe, which Vladimir Putin is now conducting against Ukraine, for most western leaders to finally open their eyes to the true nature of this regime.”

The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, an advocacy group on which Kara-Murza had served as chairman, said it considered the arrest to be “persecution of the opposition” and demanded his immediate release.

Anti-Putin activist Bill Browder tweeted that he had “begged” Kara-Murza weeks earlier not to go back to Moscow. Kara-Murza replied, “how could he ask Russians to stand up to Putin if he was afraid to return himself,” according to Browder’s tweet.

— Kevin Breuninger

Societe Generale has announced it is ending its Russian activities — making it the first big Western bank to announce it’s quitting Russia.

SocGen is also selling its entire stake in Rosbank to a company linked to a Russian oligarch, costing the French bank some 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion).

Rosbank is a heavyweight in the Russian banking sector, and Societe Generale was the majority shareholder.

“After several weeks of intensive work,” the bank said in a statement, it had signed an agreement with Russian investment fund Interros Capital to sell all of its stake in Rosbank as well as its insurance subsidiaries in Russia.

Interros is one of the largest funds in the country, which holds assets in heavy industry and metallurgy.

— Associated Press

The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol tells The Associated Press that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the southeastern city since the Russian invasion in February.

Mayor Vadym Boychenko told The Associated Press by telephone that corpses were “carpeted through the streets of our city” and that the death toll could be more than 20,000.

Boychenko also said Russian forces have brought mobile crematoria to the city to dispose of the bodies and accused Russian forces of refusing to allow humanitarian convoys into the city in an attempt to disguise the carnage.

The mayor had previously claimed 5,000 dead. He explained that these data were on March 21, but “thousands more people were lying on the streets, it was just impossible for us to collect them.”

About 120,000 civilians remain in Mariupol in dire need of food, water, warmth and communications, the mayor said.

— Associated Press

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a virtual meeting with President Joe Biden this morning. But Modi’s opening remarks suggest he is still unwilling to hold Russia accountable for the death and destruction caused by Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

“The talks today are taking place at a time when the situation in Ukraine is very worrying,” Modi said at the start of his virtual meeting with Biden.

“Recently, the news about the killings of innocent civilians in Bucha was very worrying,” he said. “We instantly condemn the killings and have called for an independent inquiry. We hope that the ongoing discussions between Russia and Ukraine will lead to peace.”

Biden tried to emphasize the positive elements of the relationship between the U.S. and India, saying the two countries “are going to continue our close consultation on how to manage the destabilizing effects of this Russian war.”

India has so far refused to impose the sanctions against Russia that Europe, Asia and North America have. The reason for this is that New Delhi relies upon Moscow for military hardware and for oil. From the Modi government’s perspective, China, not Russia, poses the greatest geopolitical threat to India.

— Christina Wilkie

Reports of rape and sexual abuse are rising in Ukraine as millions of civilians attempt to flee Russia’s military aggression, the United Nations said.

“We are increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence,” said Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, during a UN Security Council meeting on the conflict.

“The combination of mass displacement with the large presence of conscripts and mercenaries, and the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians, has raised all red flags,” Bahous said.

She also noted that women comprise 80% of all health and social care workers in Ukraine “and many of them chose not to evacuate.”

The risk of human trafficking is also on the rise, as 90% of refugees from Ukraine are women and children, according to U.S. ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

“When men like President Putin start wars, women and children get displaced, women and children get hurt, women and children get raped and abused, and women and children die,” Thomas-Greenfield told the UNSC.

— Kevin Breuninger

After weeks of a Kremlin-ordered blackout on news about Russia’s combat losses in Ukraine, new images are emerging of Russian troops burying a soldier killed in action in Ukraine.

In the photo above and the one below, soldiers carry the coffin of 20-year-old Russian serviceman Nikita Avrov during his funeral on Monday. Avrov was killed in Ukraine on March 27, according to Getty Images and Agence France-Presse, which released the four photos in this story.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials said that 18,600 Russian troops have been killed during the Kremlin’s six-week long invasion.

NATO’s most recent estimate is that Russia has lost between 7,000 and 15,000 soldiers in battle. But that figure is now almost three weeks old.

A spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on March 26 that 1,351 troops had died so far in the botched assault on Ukraine. Moscow has so far failed to capture Kyiv or any major northern cities.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following post contains photos of dead civilians exhumed from graves in Andriivka, Ukraine.

The wife of a civilian identifies his body as it was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home in the village of Andriivka.

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have left at least 148 children dead and 233 injured since late February, according to the United Nations.

Those figures are nearly double what the UN human rights office, or OHCHR, reported less than three weeks earlier. The true child casualty tolls are “likely much higher” than the figures verified by the UN, UNICEF director of emergencies Manuel Fontaine added during a UN Security Council meeting.

Many of the reported deaths and injuries among children were “caused by crossfire, or the use of explosive weapons in populated areas,” Fontaine said.

The threat to children in Ukraine extends far beyond death and injury, Fontaine noted. Nearly half of the estimated 3.2 million kids who remained in their homes during the Russian invasion “may be at risk of not having enough food,” he said.

“A whole generation of children have already seen their lives and educations abandoned during the past eight years of conflict,” he said.

— Kevin Breuninger

The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. ET in New York City to discuss the war and the “maintenance of peace and security” in Ukraine, according to the organization’s schedule.

Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer held “direct, open and tough” talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, in a visit that drew mixed European reactions including surprise, skepticism and condemnation.

Nehammer is the first European Union leader to meet Putin since he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24.

While Austria generally maintains closer ties to Moscow than much of the European Union, that has not been the case recently.

Nehammer has expressed solidarity with Ukraine over the Russian invasion and denounced apparent Russian war crimes there, while his government has joined other EU countries in expelling Russian diplomats, albeit only a fraction of the large Russian diplomatic presence there.

In a statement after the meeting, Nehammer said the discussion with Putin was “very direct, open and tough.” He added that his most important message to Putin was that the war in Ukraine must end because “in a war there are only losers on both sides.”

A spokesman for Nehammer said on Monday afternoon that the meeting went ahead at Putin’s official Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.

— Reuters

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following post contains photos of wounded civilians.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in cooperation with the Ukrainian railways and the Ministry of Health, has just completed a new medical train referral of 48 patients, coming from hospitals close to the frontline in the war-affected east of the country. They include some elderly patients from long-term care facilities, but also a majority of wounded patients. 

Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the Kremlin will not pause its military operation in Ukraine before the next round of peace talks, Reuters reported.

His comments come on day 47 of Russia’s unprovoked onslaught in Ukraine.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported 4,232 civilian casualties in Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. That figure, updated as of April 10, includes 1,793 deaths and 2,439 injuries.

— Sam Meredith

Russia said on Monday that it had used cruise missiles to destroy S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems which had been supplied to Ukraine by an unidentified European country.

Russia launched Kalibr cruise missiles on Sunday against four S-300 launchers which were concealed in a hangar on the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the defence ministry said.

Russia said 25 Ukrainian troops were hit in the attack.

— Reuters

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says nine humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from besieged eastern areas of the country have been agreed for Monday.

The planned corridors include five in the Luhansk region, three in the Zaporizhzhia region and one in the Donetsk region, Vereshchuk said.

— Sam Meredith

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has addressed South Korean lawmakers, telling the country’s Parliament that tens of thousands of people have likely been killed in Russia’s offensive on the besieged port city of Mariupol.

“Even despite that the Russians haven’t stopped the attack, they want to do so that Mariupol will be an example,” Zelenskyy said, according to a translation.

He accused Russia of targeting and destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure, including nearly 300 hospitals, and warned tens of thousands of Russian forces are being readied for the next offensive.

“There is no hope that Russian rational thinking will prevail and Russia will stop. Russia can only be forced to do this,” Zelenskyy said.

— Sam Meredith

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says there are “massive indications” of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, adding it is essential to secure all evidence, according to Reuters.

“We have massive indications of war crimes,” Baerbock said ahead of a meeting with European ministers in Luxembourg, Reuters reported. “In the end, the courts will have to decide, but for us, it is central to secure all evidence.”

“As the German federal government, we have already made it clear that there will be a complete phase-out of fossil fuels, starting with coal, then oil and gas, and so that this can be implemented jointly in the European Union, we need a joint, coordinated plan to completely phase out fossil fuels to be able to withdraw as a European Union,” Baerbock said.

— Sam Meredith

The head of the Kharkiv regional administration, Oleh Sinegubov, said Russian forces had launched approximately 66 strikes in the northeastern city and nearby points within 24 hours.

Sinegubov said 11 civilians were killed in the attacks, including a 7-year-old, while 14 people were wounded. The affected areas include Saltivka, Pyatihatky, Kholodna Hora, Pisochyn, Zolochiv, Balakliya and Derhachi.

CNBC has not been able to independently verify this report.

“We are seeing the activity of enemy reconnaissance aircraft in the region,” Sinegubov said via Telegram, according to a translation.

— Sam Meredith

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has warned Western lawmakers about the prospect of a “massive” Russian disinformation campaign over the imposition of sanctions and the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

“Russia knows arms supplies are essential for Ukraine and mobilizes all efforts to undermine them,” Kuleba said via Twitter.

“Moscow prepared a massive info campaign targeting foreign media and politicians. Their troll factory may spam emails and flood comments with [disinformation] on Ukraine. Don’t fall for it,” Kuleba said.

— Sam Meredith

French bank Societe Generale has agreed to sell its stake in Rosbank and the Russian lender’s insurance subsidiaries to Interros Capital, an investment firm founded by Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin.

The bank’s exit from Russia comes after mounting pressure to follow in the footsteps of other Western companies in the wake of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

SocGen said in a statement that it would have a 2 billion euro ($2.1 billion) write-off of the net book value of the divested activities and an exceptional non-cash item with no impact on the Group’s capital ratio of 1.1 billion euros.

Shares of SocGen rose nearly 5% during early morning trade in London.

— Sam Meredith

The U.K. Defense Ministry says Russian shelling continues in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with Ukrainian forces seen “repulsing several assaults resulting in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery equipment.”

The ministry warned Russian forces that prior use of phosphorus munitions in the Donetsk Oblast “raises the possibility of their future employment in Mariupol as fighting for the city intensifies.”

It also said Russia’s “continued reliance on unguided bombs decreases their ability to discriminate when targeting and conducting strikes while greatly increasing the risk of further civilian casualties.”

— Sam Meredith

Ukraine’s economic output will likely contract by a staggering 45.1% this year as Russia’s invasion has shuttered businesses, slashed exports and destroyed productive capacity, the World Bank said on Sunday in a new assessment of the war’s economic impacts.

The World Bank also forecast Russia’s 2022 GDP output to fall 11.2% due to punishing financial sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies on Russia’s banks, state-owned enterprises and other institutions.

The World Bank’s Eastern Europe region, comprising Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, is forecast to show a GDP contraction of 30.7% this year, due to shocks from the war and disruption of trade.

For Ukraine, the World Bank report estimates that over half of the country’s businesses are closed, while others still open are operating at well under normal capacity. The closure of Black Sea shipping from Ukraine has cut off some 90% of the country’s grain exports and half of its total exports.

— Reuters