Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says he “informed” the leaders of France and Germany of the “real situation” in Ukraine in a three-way telephone call on Saturday, alleging various “gross violations of the international humanitarian law” by Ukraine. President Putin, according to the Kremlin’s official readout of the conversation, accused “the Ukrainian army and police [of] extrajudicial killings of dissenters, hostage taking and the use of civilians as human shields, deployment of heavy weaponry in residential areas, in proximity to hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and so on” as the three leader discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin described more prosaically...
