TOP HEADLINES

· As G20 finance leaders' meet in India to thrash out a collective response to the Ukraine conflict, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a joint communique condemning Russia's actions was "absolutely necessary." That's despite hopes fading that the group would be able to produce a joint statement, in part, due to the use of the term "war". READ MORE BELOW

· Coinciding with the conflict's one year anniversary, China has called for a comprehensive ceasefire and gradual de-escalation in a 12-point position paper. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed some elements of the proposal, but said Ukraine could be the only initiator of a peace plan.

· Russia also embraced the proposal, saying it was open to achieving its goals in Ukraine through political and diplomatic means. 

· "This is how it began on February 24, 2022," the Zelenskyy said in his anniversary address. "The longest day of our lives. The most difficult day in our recent history. We woke up early and haven't slept since." In Moscow, there were no major public events to mark the date.

· Washington has announced a $2 billion package of weapons for Ukraine alongside additional sanctions and tariffs against Russia, including an effective ban on Russian aluminium imports, visa restrictions on Russian military members, and freezing assets of allies of President Vladimir Putin.

· Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., said the sanctions would have no impact.

· The UK and Canada unveiled similar measures, while the 27-nation EU also announced its tenth package of sanctions against Moscow after fraught last minute negotiations.

· Russia said its forces had continued its intensified operations in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region on Friday, killing up to 240 Ukrainian soldiers within 24 hours.

· Ukraine's military said Russia had doubled the number of its ships in the Black Sea,  predicting this could be a sign of more missile strikes.

· Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he held a long conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the one-year anniversary of the conflict. He did not give any details about the talks. 

· The UK government will give 3,000 Eurovision Song Contest tickets to displaced Ukrainians after their country was unable to host the competition last year due to the conflict.

IN DETAIL

G20 struggle to reach consensus on Ukraine

Finance leaders of the world's biggest economies, the Group of 20 (G20), were attempting to thrash out a joint communique on the Ukraine crisis in India on Saturday amid widely diverging opinions on how to describe the conflict. 

Delegates said the meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the G20 was likely to end without a collective response because there was no consensus on how to represent the crisis.

The U.S. and its allies in the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers have demanded the communique condemns Russia for its actions, which has been opposed by Russia's delegation.

"I think there has to be a statement in the communique condemning Russia's war," U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on the sidelines of the meeting. "It's something that I think is absolutely necessary.

"And I think the G7 is certainly united on that, so it's something that I would expect and I think is necessary and appropriate," she said.

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Russia, a member of the G20 but not the G7, calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation", and avoids calling it a war. India, which has kept a largely neutral stance on the conflict, is pressing the meeting to avoid using the word "war" in any communique, G20 officials said. 

A senior G20 source said negotiations over the communique were difficult, with Russia and China opposing proposals by Western countries. India and China were among the nations that abstained on Thursday when the UN voted to demand Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine and stop fighting.

A Reuters source and several other officials said unless there was a last-minute surprise, a consensus on the communique was unlikely and that the meeting would probably end with only a statement from the host country India summarizing the discussions.

"In the absence of a consensus, the option for India would be to issue a chair statement," one official said.