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Russian President Vladimir Putin told French leader Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday that the West must stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, and accused Kyiv of not taking negotiations seriously, the Kremlin said.
Mr Putin accused Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes and claimed the EU was ignoring them.
"The West could help stop these atrocities by putting relevant pressure on the Kyiv authorities, as well as halting the supply of weapons to Ukraine," he said.
Mr Putin also said Kyiv was not being consistent or ready for "serious work" on ending the conflict.
"The Russian side is still open to dialogue," he told Mr Macron, the Kremlin said.
Mr Macron's office said that beyond repeating calls on Russia to end the assault on its neighbour with a ceasefire and peace talks, he urged Mr Putin to allow evacuations from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol to continue.
He also offered to "work with the relevant international organisations to help lift the Russian blockade on Ukrainian food exports via the Black Sea, given its consequences for global food security".
Mr Putin linked the food situation to western sanctions against Russia and "noted the importance of the unimpeded functioning of the global logistics and transport infrastructure", the Kremlin said.
Mr Macron is one of the few western leaders to speak to Mr Putin since Moscow moved troops into Ukraine on February 24. He has spent hours on calls trying to negotiate a resolution to the conflict.
The war has killed thousands of people and displaced more than 13 million, creating the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War.
Paatal Lok season two
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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