The executive Board of the International Monetary Fund has approved USD 1.4 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine. The disbursement will help meet urgent balance of payment needs arising from the impacts of the ongoing war. According to Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF, the Russian military invasion in Ukraine will cause a deep recession in Ukraine this year.

War in Ukraine continues for the 15 consecutive day. Fighting near the capital city Kyiv has intensified. Shortly after midnight, it was reported that residential areas and a gas pipeline were hit in the city of Okhtyrka, Sumy region. 

A maternity and children’s hospital in the city of Mariupol has been damaged by a Russian air strike. At least 17 people were reported injured. The United Nations, the USA, humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, have condemned the attack. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the attack “horrific”. “This senseless violence must stop”, Antonio Guterres wrote on Twitter. 

"A genocide of Ukrainians is taking place”, President Volodymyr Zelensky said and called on the West to impose even tougher sanctions on Russia. 

Today, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba are to meet in Antalya (Turkey) in the first high level talks since the beginning of war in Ukraine.