Ukraine asks for pope’s help in getting children back from Russia
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal attends a news conference, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 3, 2023.
Stringer | Reuters
Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he asked Pope Francis to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia, the Associated Press reported.
Shmyhal briefed reporters on his half-hour, private Vatican audience and said he also invited Francis to come to Ukraine. A Vatican statement did not detail the particular points of the talk, and noted that Shmyhal also met with the Holy See’s secretary of state and foreign minister, the AP reported.
Francis has repeatedly decried the war in Ukraine and has expressed a desire to visit both Ukraine and Russia to improve the prospects for peace. Shmyhal said that in his talks at the Vatican, he also discussed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s multi-point proposal for peace “and the steps the Vatican could take” in helping that plan become reality, according to the AP report.
— Melodie Warner
Putin meets with Russian fertilizer chief as the Kremlin mulls whether to drop UN agricultural agreements
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Russian Fertilizer Producers Association President Andrey Guryev at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia April 27, 2023.
Mikhail Klimentyev | Sputnik | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Andrey Guryev, the president of the Russian Fertilizer Producers Association, at the Kremlin.
The meeting comes as Moscow renews threats of abandoning the U.N.-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that allows the safe wartime export of agricultural products from besieged Ukrainian ports.
Since the deal was signed in July, more than 900 ships carrying nearly 29 million metric tons of agricultural products have departed from Ukraine’s war-weary ports.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at the U.N. that the agreement…
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