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Ukraine’s forces are concluding their preparations for a long-expected spring counteroffensive against invading Russian troops, the country’s defence minister has said, and are broadly speaking ready. 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 when the counteroffensive would start but said: “Globally speaking, we are to a high percentage ready.” Kyiv has been preparing a counterattack for several months aimed at repelling Russian forces from the east and south.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a nine-storey block of flats in Uman, central Ukraine, has risen to 19, including two 10-year-old children, the regional governor, Igor Taburets, and other local officials have said. The announcement brings the total number of people killed in the wave of pre-dawn strikes to at least 21.Russian missiles also hit a home in the central city of Dnipro, where the city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, said a young woman and a three-year-old child had been killed.
Vladimir Putin on Friday said Russia needed to act quickly and as a “cohesive team” to counter the west’s “economic aggression”, adding Moscow would expand ties with countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Russia’s economy has faced multiple challenges this year, including a weaker rouble, lower energy revenues and further isolation as western countries continue to impose an array of sanctions over its war in Ukraine.
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, issued last August, prompted widespread anger in Ukraine, leading to an apology from Amnesty and a promise of a review by external experts of what went wrong. Among those who condemned the report was Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who accused Amnesty of “shift[ing] the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”.
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 invaded the country in February 2022. He 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 from 2007 to 2011 at the BBC’s Ukrainian service, broadcasting from Kyiv. His colleagues paid tribute to the “extraordinary” and “heroic” reporter and news presenter.
The UK has signed a £1.9bn deal with Poland to provide the eastern European nation with a British-designed air defence system. Some 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 of Ukraine.
Russia has informed the UN’s nuclear watchdog that equipment spotted at Ukraine‘s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which Russia controls, will 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. A small number of International Atomic Energy Agency officials are present at the ZNPP, which is operated by Ukrainian staff working under the orders of Russian forces and the Russian nuclear company Rosatom.
A UN committee said on Friday it was deeply concerned about human rights violations by Russian forces and private military companies in Ukraine, including enforced disappearances, torture, rape and extrajudicial executions, Reuters reports. In its findings on Russia, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on the Russian authorities to investigate allegations of human rights violations committed during the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s president, 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 also means those who decline it, or do not legalise their status, potentially face deportation. Reuters reports that the decree, which covers Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the four regions Russia has claimed and partially controls, sets out ways that Ukrainian citizens living there – or those holding passports issued by Russia-backed breakaway republics – 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. Agence France-Presse cited Spanish media as saying 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.
Reports are emerging that the Russian colonel general Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol”, has been removed as deputy defence minister in charge of logistics and supplies. Reuters cites a military blogger, Alexander Sladkov, and the news website RBC as saying Mizintsev, who orchestrated the siege of the devastated city of Mariupol last year, was no longer in the role he was appointed to last September.
The Kremlin has said Russian military units that have fought in Ukraine will be represented in a parade in Moscow on 9 May to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory in the second world war, Reuters reports. The holiday is one of the most important in the Russian calendar, usually featuring a huge show of military hardware on Red Square and a speech from President Vladimir Putin.
Russia said its patience should not be tested over nuclear weapons in another repeat of hardline rhetoric. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia will do “everything to prevent the development of events according to the worst scenario … but not at the cost of infringing on our vital interests”.
The Biden administration is sanctioning Russia’s Federal Security Service for wrongfully detaining Americans. The sanctions are largely symbolic, since the organisation is already under sweeping existing sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia welcomed anything that could hasten the end of the Ukraine conflict when asked about Wednesday’s phone call between the Chinese and Ukrainian leaders. But Russia still needed to achieve the aims of its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Putin has ordered the Russian government to create museums dedicated to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, according to instructions published on the Kremlin website.
Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May. It said the measure was taken in response to Washington’s failure to process visas for “representatives from the journalistic pool” of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.
The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine. During a visit to the Vatican, he asked the pontiff for help to return children from the east of Ukraine who have been forcibly taken to Russia by Kremlin forces.
Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and received a “gush of manpower”. The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.
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, issued last August, prompted widespread anger in Ukraine, leading to an apology from Amnesty and a promise of a review by external experts of what went wrong.
Among those who condemned the report was Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who accused Amnesty of “shift[ing] the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”.
Leaked to the New York Times, that unpublished review has concluded that the report was “written in language that was ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable”, according to the newspaper.
Read more: Leaked Amnesty review finds own Ukraine report ‘legally questionable’
