Russian strikes push Ukraine towards disaster: EU

BRUSSELS, Jan 29 (AFP): EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned Thursday that Ukraine was facing a "humanitarian catastrophe" as Russian strikes cut power in frigid winter conditions.

Kallas said that despite US-led talks to end the war in Abu Dhabi Russia was "bombing Ukrainians, trying to bomb and freeze them to surrender".

"It's a very hard winter and Ukrainians are really suffering. There is a humanitarian catastrophe coming there," she said at the start of an EU meeting in Brussels.

Russia has stepped up its strikes against Ukraine's power and heating infrastructure, plunging residents into darkness and cold as temperatures have dropped as low as -20C.

The EU is looking to step up support for Ukraine's power grid and is preparing a new round of sanctions on Moscow for the fourth anniversary of its invasion next month.

Sweden's foreign minister Maria Stenergard called for "a full services maritime ban on all Russian vessels that transport energy" to further curb Moscow's revenues.

She also urged a ban on fertiliser imports from Russia and a prohibition on exporting luxury goods from the EU to the country.

"We need to put more pressure on Russia. That is the only way to stop the killing," she said.

The EU has already imposed 19 rounds of sanctions on Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Kallas said Thursday the EU would also add Russia to the bloc's money-laundering blacklist.

In a separate initiative, Estonia's foreign minister called for EU countries to impose a coordinated Schengen visa ban on Russians who have fought in Ukraine.

Ukraine receives 1,000

bodies from Russia

Kyiv said on Thursday that it had received from Russia 1,000 remains of people that Moscow said were Ukrainian soldiers killed fighting the Kremlin's army.

The exchange of prisoners of war and the remains of killed soldiers is one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between Kyiv and Moscow, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

"Today, repatriation measures took place, under which 1,000 bodies of the deceased, which the Russian side claims belong to Ukrainian defenders, were returned to Ukraine," Kyiv's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said in a statement on social media.

Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky confirmed an exchange had taken place, writing on Telegram that the Russian side had received the remains of 38 killed Russian soldiers.