TOP HEADLINES

• A Ukrainian court has sentenced a Russian soldier to life in prison on Monday for killing an unarmed civilian in the first war crimes trial of the conflict. Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old tank commander, pleaded guilty to killing the 62-year-old man in northeastern Ukrainian after being ordered to shoot him from a car.

• Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for 'maximum sanctions' against Russia in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Saying that Russia would not have launched its offensive in Ukraine if sanctions had been more extreme after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Zelenskyy proposed a full oil embargo, Russian banks to be barred from global systems, and a complete block on trade with Moscow. 

• Coffee chain Starbucks has said it is going to leave the Russian market altogether after nearly 15 years there. 

• Poland's president Andrzej Duda has pledged his full support for Ukraine's EU membership bid from Kyiv, saying those who "shed their blood" for Europe must be respected, "even if the situation is complicated, even if there are doubts." However, a spokesperson for the French president Emmanuel Macron said the bid could take between 15 and 20 years to come to fruition and raised a looser political alliance as an alternative.

• Kyiv has revealed its worst military losses from a single attack, saying 87 people were killed last week when Russian forces struck a barracks housing troops at a training base in the north.

• Ukrainian forces are coming under intense pressure in the eastern Donbas region and on Ukraine's southern coast as Moscow steps up its offensive closer to its border. Between 50 and 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying there each day, Zelenskyy said.

• A Russian diplomat is leaving his post because of his disagreement with Moscow's actions in Ukraine, a rare political resignation over the conflict. Boris Bondarev, a counsellor at Russia's permanent mission to the UN in Geneva, said "the scale of this disaster drove me to do it."

• Ukraine says gas supplies to its eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have been suspended after Russian forces shelled the main gas pipeline to the region. 

• Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia and Estonia will call for the confiscation of Russian assets frozen by the EU to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine. "A substantial part of costs of rebuilding Ukraine, including compensation for victims of the Russian military aggression, must be covered by Russia," said the letter.

• Ukraine says it is investigating about 13,000 cases of alleged Russian war crimes. 

• Russia's lead negotiator in peace talks with Ukraine says Russia is willing to resume negotiations but the initiative to continue them is with Kyiv. "For our part, we are ready to continue the dialogue," said Kremlin adviser Vladimir Medinsk. "The freezing of the talks was entirely an initiative of Ukraine," he added, believing that the "ball was in their court."

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the West had triggered a global food crisis by imposing the severest sanctions in modern history on Russia over the Ukraine conflict. "Russia has always been a rather reliable grain exporter," he said. "We are not the source of the problem."

• A Ukrainian MP has told CGTN that the only way the fighting can stop is with a Ukrainian victory. Yevheniia Kravchuk said weapons were the best aid that countries could offer Kyiv because without a Ukrainian victory the threat from Russia would continue.

IN DETAIL

Zelenskyy tells Davos world facing 'turning point'

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday told a meeting of global business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the world faced a turning point and had to step up sanctions against Russia as a warning to other countries considering using force.

"History is at a turning point... This is really the moment when it is decided whether brute force will rule the world," Zelenskyy said in an address to the conference.

He went on to demand more weapons for Ukraine and "maximum" sanctions against Moscow.

"I believe there are still no such sanctions against Russia, and there should be," Zelenskyy said by videolink, calling for an oil embargo on Russia, sanctions on all its banks and an end to all trade with the country.

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He then turned to the business leaders, urging those who have not yet quit Russia to leave, saying they would be welcome in Ukraine. 

It was necessary to set a precedent, he said, for full withdrawal of all foreign countries from Russia, so they aren't used for the "bloody interests" of Russia.

"We offer the world the chance to set a precedent for what happens if you try to destroy a neighbor," he said, saying that their business would help reconstruct Ukraine post-conflict. "I invite you to take part in this rebuilding."

Ukraine is top of the agenda for the four-day meeting of global business leaders, which kicked off in earnest on Monday. Russian politicians, executives and academics are entirely absent from the conference this year.

First Russian soldier sentenced for war crimes

A Ukrainian court has sentenced a Russian soldier to life in prison for killing an unarmed civilian in the first war crimes trial since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. 

Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old tank commander, had pleaded guilty to killing 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov in the northeastern Ukrainian village of Chupakhivka on February 28 after being ordered to shoot him.

The judge said that by carrying out a "criminal order" given by a soldier of higher rank, Shishimarin had fired several shots at the victim's head from an automatic weapon. 

"The court has decided Shishimarin Vadim Evgenyevich ... is found guilty ... and sentenced him to life imprisonment," said judge Serhiy Agafonov

"Given that the crime committed is a crime against peace, security, humanity and the international legal order ... the court does not see the possibility of imposing a (shorter) sentence of imprisonment on Shishimarin for a certain period."

Shishimarin, wearing a blue and grey hooded sweatshirt, watched proceedings silently from a glass box in the courtroom, showing no emotion as the verdict was read out.

The trial has symbolic significance for Ukraine, which has accused Russia of atrocities against civilians, saying it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes, which Russia denies. 

The Kremlin has not yet commented on the verdict, but has previously said that it has no information about the trial and that the absence of a diplomatic mission in Ukraine had limited its ability to provide assistance.

Cover picture: A man walks past a closed Starbucks cafe in central Saint Petersburg on Monday. /Anton Vaganov/Reuters