Here are the key events so far on Thursday, April 7.
Get the latest updates here.
Fighting
- The eastern regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk are seeing the worst of the fighting after Russian forces withdrew from around the capital, Kyiv.
- Ukraine’s government has told residents in the country’s east to evacuate “now” or “risk death” ahead of a feared Russian onslaught on the Donbas region.
- Ukrainian authorities cannot help people evacuate from the eastern front-line town of Izyum or send humanitarian aid because it is completely under Russian control, the Kharkiv regional governor has said.
- An International Committee of the Red Cross team has led a convoy of buses and private cars carrying more than 1,000 people to Zaporizhzhia after they fled the besieged southern port of Mariupol on their own.
- NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says there is no sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped “his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine”.
Bucha deaths
- Nearly all the Ukrainian civilians killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha were deliberately shot, the town’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, has said.
- These killings were “very probably war crimes”, French President Macron said in an interview.
- Putin accuses Ukrainian authorities of being behind “crude and cynical provocations”.
- Germany says that satellite images from last month provided a strong rebuttal of Russian denials of involvement in civilian deaths.
- Separately, a video posted online and verified by the New York Times appears to show troops fighting under a Ukrainian banner shooting what is believed to be a captured Russian soldier outside a village west of Kyiv.
Diplomacy
- The United Nations General Assembly will vote on Thursday on suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
- The US wants Russia expelled from the group of 20 major economies (G20) forum and will boycott a number of meetings at the G20 in Indonesia if Russian officials show up.
- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of Putin’s allies in Europe, says he has urged the Russian leader to declare an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken directly to Russian citizens saying now is the time for them to decide whether they are for war or peace. “Everyone in Russia who will not demand an end to this shameful war and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine has no future,” he said in an address.
Sanctions
- The US government has announced new measures against Russia, including sanctions on Putin’s two adult daughters and Russia’s Sberbank, and a ban on Americans investing in Russia.
- European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen says there are more EU sanctions to come. The bloc was looking into oil and revenues Russia gets from fossil fuels, she added.
- Separately, the UK has slapped new sanctions, targeting two banks and eliminating all Russian oil and coal imports by the end of the year.
- Meanwhile, Russia says it had made payments on dollar-denominated foreign debt in roubles, adding to fears the country is headed for a sovereign default.
