A huge fire was burning in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol on Saturday after what was reported to be a Ukrainian drone strike on fuel tanks at a Russian navy depot. Video footage posted on social media showed a large waterside area on fire, with a column of black smoke rising from the burning fuel. Other images showed a huge pall of smoke hanging over the area. The fire was later extinguished on the same day, according to Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev.
The death toll from Russia’s aerial attacks on cities across Ukraine early on Friday has risen to at least 25, including five children. Firefighters tackled a blaze at a residential apartment hit by a Russian missile in the central town of Uman and rescue workers clambered through a huge pile of smouldering rubble searching for survivors.
South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has said it is necessary to ensure Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not succeed and that Seoul is considering its options when it comes to providing lethal aid to Kyiv. Yoon said the Russian invasion was a violation of international law and the rights of Ukrainians.
There is a realistic possibility the Russian missile strike that struck Ukraine on Friday was an attempt to intercept Ukrainian reserve units and military supplies that were recently given to the country, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Saturday. In its intelligence update on the conflict, the MoD said Moscow launched “the first major wave of cruise missile strikes against Ukraine since early March 2023.” The bombardment killed at least 25 people, and were a departure from Russia’s use of long-range strikes that targeted energy infrastructure over winter, the MoD said.
Russia says it will lodge an official diplomatic protest over what it says is the illegal seizure by the Polish authorities of its embassy school in Warsaw. Moscow’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, told Russian state news agencies on Saturday that the move was illegal, but Poland said it was within its rights to take back the building.
Ukraine’s president said on Friday that he had asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to help bring back Ukrainian children deported by Russia. More than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the invasion, according to Kyiv.
Russian occupying authorities in southern Ukraine said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were subjecting the city of Novaya Kakhovka to “intense artillery fire” that had cut off electricity. The city’s authorities said on Telegram: “Novaya Kakhovka and settlements around the district are under very intense artillery fire from the armed forces of Ukraine.” Novaya Kakhovka is in the part of the southern Kherson region that Russia controls.
A Moscow court has fined a Russian baker who decorated her cakes with pro-Ukraine and peace slogans. Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, authorities have banned all public criticism of the offensive. On Friday, the Izmailovo district court in Moscow ordered the baker Anastasia Chernysheva to pay a fine of 35,000 rubles (around £350) for “discrediting” the Russian army.
Russia’s embassy in Ireland has warned of possible “ensuing consequences” over tributes paid to an Irishman killed while fighting in Ukraine. Finbar Cafferkey, from Achill Island in Co Mayo, is reported to have been killed while serving as a military volunteer in eastern Ukraine, PA Media reports. In the wake of his death, the Irish deputy premier, Micheál Martin, expressed his sympathies to Cafferkey’s family and said he had obviously been “a young man of clear principles”. In response, the Russian embassy issued a stark warning against encouraging Irish citizens to take part in the conflict in Ukraine.
Five EU countries have agreed on a deal to allow the transit of Ukrainian food exports, the European Commission said, after temporary bans were imposed on the foodstuffs amid protests by farmers. The agreement with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia comes as limits on Ukraine grain’s export channel via the Black Sea necessitate export overland via the country’s neighbours.
A leaked internal review commissioned by Amnesty International is said to have concluded there were significant shortcomings in a controversial report prepared by the rights group that accused Ukraine of illegally endangering citizens by placing armed forces in civilian areas. The report last August prompted widespread anger in Ukraine, leading to an apology from Amnesty and a promise of a review by external experts.
Ukraine’s forces are concluding preparations for a long-expected spring counteroffensive againstRussian troops and are broadly ready, the country’s defence minister has said. Oleksii Reznikov told an online briefing on Friday: “As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it.” He gave no date for the start of the counteroffensive, intended to repel Russian forces from the east and south, but said: “Globally speaking, we are to a high percentage ready.”
Vladimir Putin has said Russia needs to act quickly and as a “cohesive team” to counter the west’s “economic aggression”, adding that Moscow would expand ties with countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America.
A Ukrainian journalist who formerly worked for the BBC has been killed fighting on the frontline. Oleksandr Bondarenko volunteered for Ukraine’s territorial defence after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and later became part of the military. Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known, BBC News reports. Bondarenko, known as Sasha or Sashko, worked at the BBC’s Ukrainian service from 2007 to 2011, broadcasting from Kyiv. His colleagues paid tribute to the “extraordinary” reporter and news presenter.
A Russian navy vessel specialising in submarine operations was photographed near the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines just days before the mysterious blasts last September, according to the Danish daily newspaper Information. The prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation into the sabotage of the pipelines linking Russia to Germany confirmed the existence of the previously publicly unknown photographs.
The UK has signed a £1.9bn ($2.4bn) deal with Poland to provide the country with a British-designed air defence system. About 22 Polish air defence batteries will be equipped with common anti-air modular missiles (Camms) and launchers as part of the arrangement. It expands on pre-existing defence ties with Poland, where Camms are already deployed with the British army following Russia’s invasion.
Russia informed the UN’s nuclear watchdog that equipment spotted at Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant would be used to fix a power transmission line that leads to Russian-held territory, the watchdog said on Friday. The planned restoration of the downed power line could heighten Ukrainian fears that Russia is preparing to connect Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, to the power grid of territory that it controls.
Vladimir Putin has signed a decree giving people living in parts of Ukraine that are under Moscow’s control a route to Russian citizenship – but it also means that those who decline it, or do not legalise their status, potentially face deportation. The decree – which covers Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – sets out ways that Ukrainian citizens living there can start the process of becoming Russian citizens or legalise their status.
Spain’s foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador over a video shared on the embassy’s social media accounts that falsely portrayed Spanish troops fighting in Ukraine. Spanish media said the video, which has now been taken down, showed what the embassy claimed were Spanish soldiers on the battlefield, set against a clip of Spain’s defence minister, Margarita Robles, saying Spanish troops would never fight in Ukraine.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
