Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022.Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press
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The foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met on Thursday, but the talks yielded no progress as the war entered its third week and the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine has now surpassed two million.
Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba said he had secured no promise from Russia’s Sergei Lavrov to halt firing so aid could reach civilians, including Kyiv’s main humanitarian priority - evacuating hundreds of thousands of people trapped in the besieged port of Mariupol.
Lavrov showed no sign of making any concessions, repeating Russian demands that Ukraine be disarmed and accept neutral status. He said Kyiv appeared to want meetings for the sake of meetings, and blamed the West for intensifying the conflict by arming its neighbor.
The city council of Mariupol said the port had come under fresh air strikes on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the world of “losing humanity” by refusing to provide a no-fly zone over his country, after a Russian air strike destroyed a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
At a press conference alongside Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a no-fly zone over Ukraine would not be helpful. “Direct conflict between NATO planes, or fighters, and Russia, would not bring about a better outcome for Ukrainians. Nor would it bring out a better outcome, especially, for the rest of the world,” he said. However, Trudeau pledged to send $50-million of “highly specialized military equipment” to Ukraine.
Live updates: Catch up on the news and stay up to date on the latest events with our guide, here.
Read more from The Globe’s reporters:
- From Lviv, Ukraine: Lviv struggling to feed, house displaced Ukrainians fleeing war-torn areas, mayor says
- From Finland: Hundreds of Russians flee their country for Finland amid sanctions’ heavy economic toll
- From Romania: Inside a frantic race to get Ukrainian corn and wheat to world markets
- From Ottawa: June NATO summit to decide if buildup in Baltics, Eastern Europe becomes permanent
- From Toronto: Russia’s economy is in chaos. These charts show how the crisis will get worse
Analysis and opinion on the war in Ukraine:
- The West is feeling pressure to act in Ukraine – but that would make things even more dangerous
- Removing Putin is the only option now
- Canada and the Russians: Fifty years of hope go up in smoke
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Almost half of prisoners held in isolation are Indigenous, panel says
Indigenous people make up half of all prisoners subjected to the harshest form of federal detention, according to an independent oversight panel. The findings indicate that problems persist under the federal government’s new model of inmate isolation.
The federal Liberals created structured intervention units in November, 2019, calling them a humane replacement for segregation, a prison practice akin to solitary confinement that courts in British Columbia and Ontario had rendered unlawful because it violated constitutional rights.
“If the policy intention was to eliminate the evils of segregation, then it doesn’t look like that intent has been achieved,” said Howard Sapers, chair of the panel.
Ontario lifting COVID-19 mask mandates in most public settings, including schools, on March 21
Ontario is joining other provinces in removing mask mandates for most public places in an attempt to shift from two years of pandemic crisis mode to long-term management of COVID-19.
Kieran Moore, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, said yesterday that masks will no longer be required in most indoor places, including schools, as of March 21, but places such as public transit, long-term care and other health settings will still have them. All remaining mask rules are to be lifted on April 27.
Although case numbers and hospital admissions are on the decline across Canada, public-health and infectious-disease experts say they are concerned removing mask mandates could lead to unnecessary illness in vulnerable people.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Jean Charest heads to Calgary for first step in Conservative leadership race: Calgary might not appear a natural home for Jean Charest, the former premier of Quebec. But the veteran of both provincial and federal politics, who will formally launch his leadership campaign in the city this week, has a surprising cadre of support in the heartland of Canadian conservatism.
- Patrick Brown to decide ‘very soon’ whether to seek Tory leadership
- Editorial: Who gets to define what a Canadian Conservative is: our history, or Fox News?
Thunder Bay police chief says she remains confident in her force: The Thunder Bay police chief says her service is capable of protecting the community amid calls to dismantle the force in the aftermath of more scathing reports detailing shortcomings in past investigations involving the deaths of Indigenous people.
Former trucker in Humboldt Broncos bus crash loses first bid to stay in Canada: The Canada Border Services Agency has rejected a request from the former truck driver who caused the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash to stay in Canada once his prison sentence has been served. The case of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu will now be handed over to the Immigration and Refugee Board to decide if he should be deported back to India.
Hong Kong grapples with COVID-19 chaos: For the first two years of the pandemic, Hong Kong logged just 13,000 cases and 213 deaths, thanks to a “COVID-zero” approach. Now, it is grappling with the world’s biggest and deadliest COVID outbreak, made worse by a breakdown in communications from the government, including conflicting advice and whiplash policy changes.
Endurance shipwreck found more than 100 years later: The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition by explorer Ernest Shackleton.
MORNING MARKETS
Rally stalls: A rally for European shares wilted on Thursday as analysts warned of further pain for stocks with no immediate end in sight to the war in Ukraine, even after planned diplomatic talks between Moscow and Kyiv had lent momentum to riskier bets. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.94 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 fell 2.12 per cent and 2.10 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei jumped 3.94 per cent. Hong Kong ended up 1.27 per cent. New York futures were lower. The Canadian dollar was trading at 77.96 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
David Parkinson: “One perk (or, perhaps, curse) of my job is that I get an enormous amount of economic research e-mailed to me every day. … It provides a great way to detect shifts in the prevailing winds of opinion. In the past week or so, they’ve shifted pretty hard. Recession is suddenly, unmistakably in the air.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Gluten-free ways to boost your fibre intake
Fibre can be a harder-to-get nutrient from a gluten-free diet. Removing gluten, though, doesn’t have to lead to a deficit of beneficial fibre. Here’s a guide to getting plenty of roughage from a gluten-free diet.
MOMENT IN TIME: MARCH 10, 2017
Richard Wagamese, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) first-time author of "The Keeper’n Me," April 6, 1994.Edward Regan/The Globe and Mail
Indigenous author Richard Wagamese dies
The Ojibwa writer Richard Wagamese published 14 books in his lifetime and two posthumously – an astonishing achievement for anyone, but in particular for Wagamese, an autodidact with a Grade 9 education, whose sudden death at 61 cut his once-troubled life short. Before he was 3, he was removed from his parents, who had been deeply scarred by residential schools. He was sent to foster homes and adopted by a non-Indigenous couple. He left home at 16, spent time in jail, and years without a home. During that time, he found shelter – and much more – at a St. Catharines, Ont., public library, beginning a lifelong love affair with books. “I read and I read and I read and by sheer volume alone, I found out what a good sentence was and how a strong paragraph is constructed,” he said in a 2015 award acceptance speech. Wagamese published his first novel, Keeper’n Me, in 1994. His 2012 breakthrough, Indian Horse, was a bestseller, won awards and was adapted for film. It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, but Wagamese did not live to see it. He died at his home in Kamloops on March 10 that year. Marsha Lederman
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