Russia-Ukraine live updates: Zelensky offers diplomatic opening as peace talks with Russia to resume in Turkey

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Monday that it is working to defuse a mine detected off the shores of Igneada, a town in the country’s northwest near the border with Bulgaria — two days after another mine, said to have drifted from the Black Sea, forced a temporary closure of the Bosporus strait.

The ministry said “a mine was detected off the shores of Igneada,” which sits on the Black Sea, Monday morning local time, and that “the Underwater Defense (SAS) Teams in the region were swiftly transferred to the site of the incident.”

“The mine in question was secured by the SAS Teams and intervention was initiated to neutralize it,” the ministry said.

Last week, Russia warned that hundreds of mines had drifted into the Black Sea after coming loose from cables near Ukrainian ports. At the time, Ukraine dismissed the assertion as propaganda, according to Reuters.

On Saturday, Turkish authorities said they defused another mine, whose origin was unclear but which was said to have drifted from the Black Sea into the Bosporus, a key waterway for global maritime trade that runs through Istanbul — raising fears that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could threaten traffic in the strait, a choke point for global energy supplies and commerce.

Photographs purporting to show the mine depicted what appeared to be a metallic orb with spikes. Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, on Saturday described the mine as “old” and said Turkey had been in touch with the Kremlin and with Kyiv about its appearance in the Bosporus.

Kareem Fahim contributed to this report.

BERLIN — Germany is weighing the purchase of an antimissile defense system to shield itself against a potential Russian attack, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday.

In an interview with broadcaster ARD, the Social Democratic leader said antimissile defenses are “definitely one of the things we are discussing — for good reason.”

Scholz declined to elaborate on the considerations, but the comments were a blunt acknowledgment of the threat posed by Russia — not just to Ukraine and its neighbors but to Central European countries, as well. “We all have to prepare for the fact that we have a neighbor who is willing to use violence to assert his interests,” he said.

The chancellor recently discussed the matter with the inspector general of the German armed forces, according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, which reported that the government was eyeing Israel’s Arrow 3 anti-ballistic-missile system, jointly developed with the United States. The system would cost Germany 2 billion euros, or about $2.2 billion, and be operational as soon as 2025, according to Bild.

Last month, Scholz committed the government to spending 100 billion euros to strengthen its military, in addition to spending at least 2 percent of its economic output on defense.

The sale of Israeli technology to Germany, in the midst of the crisis in Ukraine, could be fraught. Israel reportedly refused to share another missile defense system, the short-range Iron Dome, which was also developed with U.S. financial support, to Ukraine last year, according to Israel’s Ynet News.

Russian forces have gained the “most ground” in the south of Ukraine, where they are attempting to take control of a strategic port city, a daily intelligence assessment from Britain’s Defense Ministry said Monday.

“Russia has gained most ground in the south in the vicinity of Mariupol where heavy fighting continues as Russia attempts to capture the port,” the assessment said.

British intelligence also said Monday morning that “there has been no significant change to Russian Forces dispositions in occupied Ukraine” in the past 24 hours, pointing to “ongoing logistical shortages” and “a continued lack of momentum and morale amongst the Russian military.”

An earlier update from British intelligence posted Sunday said the attack against a Russian landing ship at Russian-occupied Berdyansk, a port some 50 miles southwest of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, could impede the Russian navy’s ability to “conduct operations in close proximity to the coast of Ukraine in the future.”

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the attack. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Biden administration, confirmed Friday that the strike was carried out by Ukrainian forces and said the number of casualties is unknown.

H.I. Sutton, an independent defense analyst, told The Washington Post that the attack may be “a setback” for Russian forces, “but it doesn’t change the strategic picture at all.”

In the Black Sea, next to the Sea of Azov, British intelligence said Russia is “maintaining a distant blockade” of Ukraine’s maritime coast, “effectively isolating” the country from global sea-based trade. Russia’s navy continues to launch “sporadic missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine,” Britain said Sunday.

Brittany Shammas and Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.

Ukrainian officials are urging the International Committee of the Red Cross not to open an office on Russia’s border with Ukraine, saying it would amount to support for Russia’s alleged forced relocation of Ukrainian citizens. The backlash underscores the international aid group’s tricky task of trying to help civilians while working with the country that launched the invasion.

Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), traveled to Russia last week to discuss humanitarian issues. Speaking next to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a news conference, Maurer called the talks “fruitful,” while avoiding criticism of the Kremlin.

A spokesperson for the ICRC, Anita Dullard, confirmed Sunday that the group is “at a discussion stage on opening this office” in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, “which would be part of our regional scale-up of humanitarian assistance for the Ukraine crisis.”

The Ukrainian parliament’s committee on human rights said in a statement earlier Sunday that such an office would legitimize evacuation routes into Russia — which Ukraine opposes. It also reiterated allegations that Moscow is moving thousands of Ukrainians into Russia against their will and suggested the proposed Red Cross office would “become a kind of support” for its actions. Russia has said it is helping an eastern influx of refugees.

As commenters filled its Facebook page with outraged messages, the ICRC said this weekend that recent “false information” about the group “could put our Red Cross staff, volunteers, and the people we seek to help at risk.”

“We never help organize or carry out forced evacuations,” the group said. “This is true in Ukraine. … We would not support any operation that goes against people’s will.”

Some 30,000 refugees from Ukraine — 80 percent of them women and children — have arrived in France, and about half have been placed in temporary homes, French Housing Minister Emmanuelle Wargon said Sunday.

That number has not changed much in recent days; French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Thursday that “nearly 30,000” Ukrainian refugees had arrived in France. The country has pledged to create housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainians, as French President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for reelection in April, has sought to take an active mediation role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

About 15,000 of the Ukrainians who have arrived in France have been placed in temporary accommodation, Wargon told the television network Franceinfo. Some of the refugees are travelling through France to other countries, such as Spain and Portugal, she said. In an unprecedented move earlier this month, the European Union activated a mechanism to allow Ukrainians to live, study and work in any member state for at least a year.

Darmanin said last week that it is difficult to know the exact number of Ukrainians who have arrived because many are coming by car or train through the borders of the Schengen Area, where there are no internal immigration checks. There could be “many more” than the official count in France, he said.

President Biden’s declaration that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” threatens to push deeply strained U.S.-Russia relations closer to collapse, former officials and analysts said, with potentially serious implications for Washington’s ability to help steer the war in Ukraine to an end and avoid a wider conflict.

The remark — an off-the-cuff coda to an address in Poland this weekend — injects a stark new element of personal animus into the standoff between the world’s biggest nuclear powers. It capped earlier statements in which Biden has gone well beyond official formulations — calling Putin a “killer,” “butcher” and “war criminal.”

Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at Rand Corp., said the administration’s attempts to walk back the suggestion of a U.S. goal of regime change would do little to alter views in Moscow because Putin has long believed the United States is out to replace him and presidential statements have traditionally been seen as official policy.

“It exacerbates existing threat perceptions regarding U.S. intentions,” he said. “They might just be much more inclined to do hostile things in response even more than they already are. That is the challenge.”

BERLIN — European leaders took steps to distance themselves from President Biden’s off-the-cuff comments about Vladimir Putin, delivered Saturday night in Warsaw, in which he said the Russian president “cannot remain in power.”

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, on Sunday evening told the public broadcaster ARD that regime change was “not the objective of NATO, nor that of the U.S. president.” He said that he had discussed these matters with Biden during a recent visit to the White House, and that the two leaders “agree completely.”

The Biden administration also sought to clarify over the weekend that it had not reversed its strategy and was not seeking Putin’s removal. “We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after meeting with Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, in Jerusalem.

Scholz said Western powers “want democracy, freedom and the rule of law to have a future everywhere.” But he said it was the “business of the peoples and nations themselves to fight for this freedom.”

Earlier Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron was more direct in criticizing Biden’s unscripted comments, saying in a television interview that he “wouldn’t use this kind of words.” If the aim remains a cease-fire in Ukraine and the removal of Russian troops, he said, “we must not escalate, neither with words nor with actions.”

Satellite images and videos verified by The Washington Post show that in recent weeks, Russian-backed forces began building a camp just east of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine.

Within two days, a line of cars was leaving Mariupol and stopping near the camp by the M14 highway in Russian-controlled territory. The apparent exodus came amid allegations from the Mariupol City Council that Russian forces were forcibly taking residents to “filtration camps.”

A British news outlet, I, reported on the camp on Sunday, citing satellite imagery released by Planet Labs. The images of Bezimenne, a town under Russian control less than an hour’s drive from Mariupol, were taken Tuesday and were provided to The Post by Maxar Technologies.

Leaders of a breakaway area in the Donetsk region announced through their Telegram channel on Wednesday that together with Russian authorities, they had set up a “tent city of 30 tents” for Mariupol residents, with the capacity to hold up to 450 people.