Closing summary
Here is what you might have missed:
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’
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.
BBC reporter Olga Malchevska said on Twitter:
#RussianWar has taken away one more beloved colleague. Ukrainian Journalist Oleksandr Bondarenko,our Sasha was killed on the frontline. He couldn’t see the homeland ripped apart by invaders &went to defend it as a soldier. RIP Sasha.
Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski, the former heard of the BBC’s Ukraine service said:
It was always new challenges with this extraordinary man. Including the last, heroic one, to defend his country from aggression.
#RussianWar has taken away one more beloved colleague. Ukrainian Journalist Oleksandr Bondarenko,our Sasha was killed on the frontline. He couldn’t see the homeland ripped apart by invaders &went to defend it as a soldier. RIP Sasha💔 https://t.co/AQX1dt3Ub9
— Olga Malchevska (@OlgaMalchevska) April 27, 2023
Updated
Russia needs to act quickly to counter west's 'economic aggression', says Putin
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.
Reuters reports that Putin told a meeting of Russian lawmakers:
Today, in the face of the west’s economic aggression, the parliament, the government, all regional and local authorities need to act clearly and quickly work as one cohesive team.
We are not going to leave Russia to isolate itself. On the contrary, we are going to expand pragmatic, equal, mutually beneficial, exclusively cooperative relations with friendly countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America.
Updated
These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine.
Updated
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, PA reports.
The CAMM system, made by missile firm MBDA, is designed to engage advanced air targets up to 25km away.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said:
We have played a crucial role in boosting Euro-Atlantic defences since Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, and this landmark agreement between the UK and Poland is another example of how, alongside our allies, we are committed to protecting our security for generations to come.
As well as bolstering European air defences, this £1.9 billion deal will also support highly skilled jobs in both countries, delivering on my pledge to grow the economy, and creating better paid jobs and opportunity right across the UK.
Updated
Georgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, wrapped herself in traditional British conservativism today as she sought to quash any doubts about her commitment to the western alliance and the fight to defeat Vladimir Putin, saying Ukrainian patriots have shown the love of freedom is stronger than missiles and tanks.
Quoting Winston Churchill, followed by JRR Tolkien and the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, she presented herself less as part of the neo-fascist tradition from which she hails, and more part of British conservatism. It was a skilful diplomatic move by a leader who needs to play down her past if the British are to support her efforts to become a major force in European politics.
Her remarks in a speech at the conservative thinktank Policy Exchange extolled the virtues of Ukrainian patriotism, and gave her an international platform to distance herself from the coalition partners Forza Italia and the League, both of which have shown support for Putin in different ways.
Quoting Tolkien, she said: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
“The Ukrainian people have proven that there is something stronger than missiles and tanks. It is the love of freedom and within us.”
She accused Putin of trying to turn Ukraine into a vassal state, denying the country its identity and sovereignty, but she said the strong and unified reaction of the free world showed how much we were willing to defend our founding values and achievements; values that should never be taken for granted.
The Russian aggression was not simply an act of war, she said. It was an assault on the fundamental principle of civilisation and we could allow the law of the strongest to overcome the strength of law.
She said Putin’s plan failed against the courage of those who loved their nation and were not willing to lose their identity, their sovereignty and freedom. It had also shattered against the reaction of the free world that did not hesitate to take sides.
She urged the global south to recognise that the war was not about exclusively European interests but instead about the basis of coexistence for all nations. We have to counter the risk of polarisation between north and south, between the west and the rest. she said. We need to identify new areas and models of cooperation with Africa.
The UK Conservative government, looking for allies inside the European Union, has lavished attention on Meloni, with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, spending three hours with her on Thursday.
James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, accompanying Meloni to a packed reception at the Italian embassy, welcomed her embrace of British conservatism. He praised her first six months as prime minister, saying he had been deeply impressed by the way she had combined “clear leadership with an ability to get things done”. She replied that Britain “could always count on me”.
Updated
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.
Reuters reports that the IAEA said in a statement:
The (IAEA) team observed, and following questions were subsequently informed, that a large piece of equipment being transported into the turbine hall of Unit 3 was a transformer to replace the damaged ‘Kakhovka’ node in the ZNPP open switchyard.
The Kakhovka line is one of the four 750 kV (kilovolt) lines that were operational before the military conflict. This line is linked to the currently Russian-controlled electrical grid, to the south of the ZNPP site.
Only one of those four power lines is currently working and is the only source of external power to the plant, which it needs to keep cooling the fuel in its six reactors even though they are shut down.
Failing to cool that fuel could lead to a potentially catastrophic nuclear meltdown.
Updated
Summary
Here is what you might have missed:
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.
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.
The New York Times has reported that Amnesty International has been sitting on an independent review criticising its controversial allegation that Ukrainian forces were illegally endangering civilians. Amnesty’s accusation that Ukrainian troops were illegally putting “civilians in harm’s way” by basing themselves nearby and launching attacks from populated areas caused widespread anger when it was published last August. Russia claimed it as vindication but critics – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – said it was poorly researched, ignored wartime realities and drew a moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim.
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.
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
Updated
Emma Graham-Harrison and Artem Mazhulin report for The Guardian from Dnipro:
The Russian attack killed Veronika in her bed on Friday morning, but left her childish chalk drawings of a happy family intact on the wall of their home.
Portraits of “Mama”, “Nika” (her nickname), her uncles, grandparents and even the family cat “Kuzia” – the names written in by an adult – stretch all along the front of the house.
They end only where the plaster was stripped off by an explosion and a fire that took the lives of the three-year-old and her mother, early on Friday morning.
Hours later, Kuzia the cat looked on, bewildered and bedraggled by a steady rain, as “Uncle Seriozha” from the wall drawings tried to sort through the charred wreckage of their single-storey home. He hurled fragments of twisted metal out into the yard, sidestepping a doll thrown to the floor by the blast.
Read more: A three-year-old killed and her family ripped apart in Ukraine missile strikes
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has posted a map on its Twitter account of the current situation in Ukraine.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) April 28, 2023
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 28 April 2023.
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/7QxP8zS8Ha
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/5M65eEUSvn
Updated
Two new advisory bodies will help make Ukraine‘s defence ministry more efficient and transparent, defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday.
The Office for the Support of Changes and the Public Anti-Corruption Council were set up earlier this month following allegations that the ministry bought food for troops at inflated prices, Reuters reports.
The ministry has also received heavy weaponry from western allies as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces after 14 months of war in Ukraine.
Reznikov told an online briefing:
Today is a time for reform, even during this war.
Reznikov said the Office for the Support of Changes had been tasked with “thinking out of the box” to propose institutional changes, including on the procurement of non-lethal resources.
The Public Anti-Corruption Council contained people who were publicly elected by thousands of voters, he said. It will monitor potential corruption risks at the ministry.
A former deputy defence minister and another ministry official have been served with “notices of suspicion” over wrongdoing involving contracts for food purchases for the army, the state anti-corruption agency said last week.
Updated
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.
But it also says anyone who does not take steps to do so by 1 July 2024 will be regarded as a foreign citizen, leaving them at risk of being deported from territory Russia considers its own.
Updated
Death toll from Russian missiles strikes rises to at least 21
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.
Agence France-Presse said its reporters saw rescue workers extracting victims’ remains from destroyed buildings. “I want to see my children, they are under the rubble,” Dmitry, a 33-year-old local from Luhansk, told them.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, condemned the latest barrage and vowed to respond to “Russian terror”. Moscow said it had targeted reserve units of the Ukrainian military and that “all assigned objects were hit”.
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.
No casualties were reported in Kyiv, which was among the other cities targeted in the attack. Ukraine said it had shot down 21 of a total of 23 Russian missiles as well as two drones.
Updated
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.
The ministry demanded the “immediate” removal of the video and summoned Russia’s ambassador to Madrid on Thursday “to protest the attacks on social media against the government”, expressing its “strong rejection of this type of publication”.
Robles repeated on Friday there were “absolutely no Nato troops, no Spanish soldiers belonging to Spain’s armed forces, or the armed forces of any Nato country, in Ukraine. None.”
She accused Russia of “using all kinds of methods, including misinformation, to undermine the friendship of the nations that are part of the European Union and Nato”.
Updated
At least 17 people killed in Uman and Dnipro
Russian cruise missiles have killed at least 17 people in the central Ukrainian cities of Uman and Dnipro, days after Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, begged his allies for more air defence supplies.
The attacks were part of a wave of Russian missile and drone strikes in the early hours of Friday morning, the most intense aerial bombing of major Ukrainian cities in weeks.
Footage from Uman, where at least 15 people were killed including two children, showed a building in flames and partly reduced to rubble. A mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed in their home on the outskirts of Dnipro.
Fragments of a missile shot down by air defences appeared to have fallen on the house, in the rural area on the outskirts of Dnipro, police told neighbours. “It was loud enough to understand that someone was probably hurt,” said Oleksandr Kalinichenko, a neighbour who lives about 300 metres away.
Read more: Russia launches deadly wave of missile attacks on Ukraine cities
Updated
Drone footage shows the aftermath of an airstrike in Ukraine that left multiple people dead and dozens more injured.
The upper floor of a residential building in the central city of Uman, south of Kyiv, was struck as people slept early on Friday.
Smoke was seen billowing from the destroyed building as rescue teams worked on the ground.
The attack was part of a wave of Russian missile and drone strikes in the early hours of Friday morning, the most intense aerial bombing of Ukrainian cities in weeks
Updated
UN committee 'deeply concerned' about human rights violations by Russian forces in Ukraine
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.
It said in a statement:
The Committee was deeply concerned about the grave human rights violations committed during the ongoing armed conflict by the Russian Federation’s military forces and private military companies ...
There was no immediate comment from the Russian permanent mission to the UN in Geneva.
In its report, the committee listed excessive use of force, arbitrary detentions, killings and the forcible transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia among the violations committed.
Russia, which the UN committee said had refused to provide it with information on the conflict, has denied committing atrocities and deliberately attacking civilians in Ukraine.
It denies deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, saying it has evacuated them to keep them safe.
Updated
The eurozone has defied predictions that the Ukraine war would plunge it into recession after a warm winter blunted the impact of higher energy prices.
Data from Eurostat – the EU’s statistical agency – showed that growth in the 20 countries using the single currency stood at 0.1% in the first three months of 2023.
The small overall increase disguised a wide variation across member states. The eurozone’s biggest economy, Germany, stagnated in the first quarter of 2023 after contracting by 0.5% in the final three months of 2022.
Italy and Spain, the third and fourth-biggest eurozone economies, performed better than the markets had been expecting, each posting quarterly growth of 0.5%. France grew by 0.2%.
Summary
Here is what you might have missed:
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.
Russia launched a wave of missile attacks across many of Ukraine’s biggest cities before dawn on Friday, killing a mother and young child in the port city of Dnipro, and fourteen people at a high-rise apartment building in the central city of Uman.
Air raid alarms were active across Ukraine in the early hours of Friday morning, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
The New York Times has reported that Amnesty International has been sitting on an independent review criticising its controversial allegation that Ukrainian forces were illegally endangering civilians. Amnesty’s accusation that Ukrainian troops were illegally putting “civilians in harm’s way” by basing themselves nearby and launching attacks from populated areas caused widespread anger when it was published last August. Russia claimed it as vindication but critics – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – said it was poorly researched, ignored wartime realities and drew a moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim.
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.
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
Death toll in Uman rises to 14
The death toll from an overnight Russian missile strike on the city of Uman, in central Ukraine, has risen to 14.
In an update, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said:
Uman: the bodies of two more people have just been removed from the rubble. As of now, 14 people were killed in a strike on an apartment block.
The 14 people killed in Uman include two 10-year-old children. With two people killed in Dnipro, the overall death toll has risen to 16.
Rescuers are using cranes to search for survivors among the remains of the multi-storey housing block in the central city of 80,000 inhabitants.
The regional governor Igor Taburets said the city was hit by two cruise missiles, with one hitting a residential building and the other a warehouse.
Updated
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted a video of the damage from Russia’s overnight missile strikes on an apartment building in Uman.
Zelenskiy claims there are at least 13 dead from the attack, including two children.
He said:
Uman … The rubble is still being cleared. There are already 13 dead. Two of them are children that can’t be identified. The fate of their parents is unknown … The rescuers will work until they make sure that no one else is left under the rubble. We can defeat Russian terror together only – with weapons for Ukraine, the toughest sanctions against the terrorist state, and fair sentences for the killers.
Uman... The rubble is still being cleared. There are already 13 dead. Two of them are children that can’t be identified. The fate of their parents is unknown... The rescuers will work until they make sure that no one else is left under the rubble. We can defeat Russian terror… pic.twitter.com/j6jk8HZWkq
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 28, 2023
Updated
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.
Updated
Associated Press reports from the scene of the badly damaged apartment building in Uman where at least 10 people died in a Russian missile strike before dawn:
All the glass flew out, everything flew out, even the chandelier fell. Everything was covered in glass,” resident Olha Turina said. “Then there was an explosion ... We barely found our things and ran out.”
Turina, whose husband is fighting on the frontlines, said one of her child’s classmates was missing.
“I don’t know where they are, I don’t know if they are alive,” she said. “I don’t know why we have to go through all this. We never bothered anyone.”
One of the people killed was a 75-year-old who was in her apartment in a neighbouring building and suffered internal bleeding from the shock wave of the blast, according to emergency personnel on the scene.
Three body bags lay next to the building as smoke continued to billow hours after the attack. One woman, crying in shock, was taken away by rescue crews for help.
Updated
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 EU, which imposed sanctions on Mizintsev last June, referred to him as the Butcher of Mariupol, saying he was responsible for the “inhuman” siege of the shattered city.
The defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters said, while the Kremlin has said it cannot say anything on the subject and referred questions on the matter to the defence ministry.
Updated
Ukraine ready for counteroffensive: defence minister
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.
Reuters reports that 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.
Nato said on Thursday its allies and partner countries had delivered more than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine, strengthening Kyiv’s capabilities.
Along with more than 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, western allies have sent “vast amounts of ammunition” and trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian brigades, Nato’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said.
Updated
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, tweeted pictures of the damage from Russia’s overnight missile strikes this morning, when the death toll still stood at seven:
Another night of Russian terror. Missiles and UAVs … Russian evil can be stopped by weapons – our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions – global sanctions must be enhanced.
At least 12 people have since been confirmed dead in the strikes, including a 31-year-old woman and a two-year-old child in Dnipro, and 10 residents of a block of flats in Uman.
Another night of 🇷🇺 terror. Missiles and UAVs. 10 residential buildings are damaged in Uman. The entire block of one of them is destroyed. As of now: 7 dead, there are wounded. 🇷🇺 evil can be stopped by weapons – our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions –… pic.twitter.com/KwWuRMj7iS
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 28, 2023
Updated
Pope Francis has arrived in Hungary at the start of a three-day trip likely to be overshadowed by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The visit is the pope’s first since he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in March. On Sunday he is due to preside at an open-air mass in front of parliament, Reuters reports.
Francis has acknowledged the visit’s content will be affected by current events, even if its main purpose is to meet Hungarian Catholics and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on Friday.
Orbán has said Hungary and the Vatican are the only two European states that can be described as “pro-peace” regarding Ukraine. Both have called for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war, and Francis has urged Ukraine to be open to dialogue with “aggressor” Russia.
Hungary, which supports a sovereign Ukraine but still has strong economic ties to Russia, has refused to send weapons to Ukraine. The pope has said sending arms to Ukraine is morally acceptable if they are used only for self-defence.
Updated
Agence France-Presse confirms in its latest report that at least 12 people have died in missile and drone strikes that hit Ukraine as its forces prepare an expected counteroffensive.
“Missile strikes killing innocent Ukrainians in their sleep, including a 2-year-old child, is Russia’s response to all peace initiatives,” the country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted.
Large-scale missile strikes had tailed off in recent months and Kyiv, which was among the cities targeted – without injury – on Friday, had not been hit by missiles for more than 50 days.
Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said strikes on the town of Uman, south of the capital, led to “a total of 10 victims”, while the mayor of the central city of Dnipro, Borys Filatov, said two people – including a two-year-old child – had been killed there.
Ukraine said it had downed 21 of 23 Russian missiles and two attack drones overnight. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the latest barrage and vowed a response to “Russian terror”.
In Uman, a central city of 80,000 inhabitants, a video broadcast by Ukrainian media showed a gutted apartment building, with rubble strewn around it.
According to the regional governor Igor Taburets, Uman was hit by two cruise missiles, with one hitting a residential building and the other a warehouse.
Updated
At least 12 people confirmed dead in Russian strikes
Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, has just said the death toll from a Russian missile strike in the city of Uman, south of Kyiv, has risen to at least 10, with 17 wounded.
The missile struck a nine-storey block of flats before dawn, while residents were still sleeping.
In the south-eastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
At least 12 people are now confirmed dead in the first large-scale Russian missile attack to hit Ukraine in nearly two months.
Updated
Here are some agency pictures of the damage in Uman, about 215km (134 miles) south of Kyiv, as rescue workers tackle the aftermath of a pre-dawn Russian missile strile that hit a nine-storey residential building killing at least seven people.
Death toll from Russian missile strikes rises to nine
The death toll from a wave of pre-dawn Russian missile strikes, the first such large-scale attack to hit Ukraine in nearly two months, has risen to at least nine, Reuters reports.
“This Russian terror must face a fair response from Ukraine and the world,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote in a Telegram post alongside images of the wreckage. “And it will.”
A least seven people were killed and 17 wounded in the central city of Uman when a missile hit a nine-storey apartment building, Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko,
Reporters at the scene described rescuers clambering through a huge pile of smouldering rubble and carrying a body bag away on a stretcher.
In the south-eastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said. Three people were also wounded in that attack.
Ukraine’s military command said it had shot down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia.
The capital Kyiv was also rocked by explosions, with officials reporting that air defence units had destroyed 11 missiles and two drones. Two more people were wounded in the town of Ukrayinka just south of Kyiv, officials said.
Updated
New York Times: Amnesty International sitting on critical review
The New York Times has reported that Amnesty International has been sitting on an independent review criticising its controversial allegation that Ukrainian forces were illegally endangering civilians.
Amnesty’s accusation that Ukrainian troops were illegally putting “civilians in harm’s way” by basing themselves nearby and launching attacks from populated areas caused widespread anger when it was published last August.
“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said.
Russia claimed it as vindication but critics – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – said it was poorly researched, ignored wartime realities and drew a moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim.
The New York Times has obtained a copy of an 18-page report by five international humanitarian law experts commissioned by Amnesty to review its August statement.
The panel absolved the human rights group on some gounds, the paper said, saying it was right to consider whether a defender, not just an aggressor, was obeying the laws of war.
But it concluded Amnesty’s statement was “ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable”, and that the key conclusion – that Ukraine violated international law – was “not sufficiently substantiated” by the evidence.
The NYT cited a person familiar with the matter as saying an earlier version of the independent review was even tougher, but Amnesty succeeded in softening some of the terms used – including changing “not substantiated” to “not sufficiently substantiated”.
The paper said the final version of the experts’ review was submitted in February but Amnesty International’s board decided not to release it, instead using it for an internal “lessons learned” exercise.
Updated
Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has tweeted video and pictures of the scale of the damage in Uman, where at least six people were killed by pre-dawn Russian missile strikes.
This is Ukraine tonight. Russian war criminals launched over 20 missiles. Massive residential building destruction in Uman city and brutally killing civil people throughout Ukraine, while they were peacefully sleeping.
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) April 28, 2023
Should terrorist state even be in UN Security Council? pic.twitter.com/Q8QCHEHEoI
At least eight killed in Russian strikes
The death toll from Russia’s pre-dawn missile strikes across Ukraine has risen to at least eight, Associated Press reports.
The agency cited Ukrainian national police as saying at least six people were killed and 17 wounded in Uman, about 215km (134 miles) south of Kyiv, where two cruise missiles hit a nine-storey residential building. Three children were rescued from the rubble.
Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine early on Friday. Air raid sirens sounded around the capital in the first attack against the city since early March.
Ukraine’s air force intercepted 11 cruise missiles and two unmanned aerial vehicles over Kyiv, Kyiv city hall said, but there were no immediate reports of any missiles hitting targets in the capital and no casualties were reported.
A 31-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter were also killed in the eastern city of Dnipro in another attack, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Four people were also wounded.
Ukraine’s armed forces commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said the missiles were fired from aircraft operating in the Caspian Sea region. Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine intercepted 21 of 23 Kh-101 and Kh-555 type cruise missiles.
Updated
After Russian missile strikes killed at least five people across Ukraine, Russia’s defence minister has said western allies’ real aim in Ukraine is to “strategically defeat” his country.
The state-owned news agency RIA reported Sergei Shoigu as saying the west also aimed to pose a threat to China and maintain its own monopoly position.
“Almost all” Nato member countries had now deployed their military capabilities against Russia, Shoigu said.
Hello, this is Jon Henley taking over from Helen Sullivan. I’ll be bringing you further developments in Ukraine as they happen for the rest of the European morning.
Summary
Russia launched a wave of missile attacks across many of Ukraine’s biggest cities before dawn on Friday, killing a mother and young child in the port city of Dnipro, and four people at a high-rise apartment building in the central city of Uman.
Air raid alarms were active across Ukraine in the early hours of Friday morning, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
Authorities in Uman said the attack killed four and injured 17. Footage from the central city of Uman, which has a large Jewish population and was a major pilgrimage destination before the war, showed a building in flames, and partially reduced to rubble. Emergency services are still working at the site.
A woman and three-year-old child were killed in the attack on Dnipro, the mayor said.
I’m handing over to my colleague Jon Henley who will take you through the rest of this Friday’s difficult news.
Updated
Uman death toll rises to four
The death toll from a Russian strike on an apartment block in Uman has risen to four, the National Police of Ukraine has posted on Telegram, citing the minister of internal affairs of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko. Rescue operations are ongoing, Klymenko said.
Seventeen people were injured in the strike, including three children.
The rise in the death toll brings the total confirmed deaths from this morning’s attacks to six people, including a three-year-old child.
Updated
Here is our full story on this morning’s attacks.
Russia has launched a wave of missile attacks across many of Ukraine’s biggest cities, killing a mother and young child in the port city of Dnipro, and three people at a high-rise apartment building in the central city of Uman.
Air raid alarms were active across the country in the early hours of Friday morning, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
The attack came less than 24 hours after four cruise missiles, apparently launched from the sea, hit civilian buildings in the city, killing at least one person and abruptly ending nearly four months of relative calm there:
Here are some photographs from the strike on an apartment building in Uman:
Updated
A Cambridge engineering student, Harry Blakiston Houston, came up with an ingenious and cheap way to help Ukraine citizens who have had their windows broken during the war:
In other news from the war, new satellite images offer a window into the aftermath of prolonged Russian shelling of Mariupol.
For more than 80 days, Mariupol endured a brutal and unrelenting bombardment, as Russian forces determined to take the port city reduced much of it to rubble.
In March 2022, a few days after the war began, Russian forces cut off electricity, water and gas supplies, forcing residents to melt snow for water and cook outside over open flames. Mariupol was encircled and the relentless bombing of the city began.
After a maternity ward was shelled and images of bloodied, heavily pregnant women were broadcast across the world, the siege of Mariupol became emblematic of the brutality of the Russian invasion.
Updated satellite imagery from Google Maps has reveals the scale of the destruction across large sections of the Ukrainian city – and the Russian efforts to erase any evidence of the atrocities that took place there.
Five people, including a child, killed in pre-dawn attacks across Ukraine
If you’re just joining us, Russia fired more than a dozen cruise missiles at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine early Friday, killing at least five people and striking a residential building in central Ukraine, officials said.
Air raid sirens sounded around the capital in the first attack against the city in nearly two months and Ukraine’s air force intercepted 11 cruise missiles and two unmanned aerial vehicles over Kyiv, according to the Kyiv City Administration.
There were no immediate reports of any successful strikes in Kyiv but fragments from intercepted missiles or drones damaged power lines and a road in one neighbourhood. No casualties were reported.
But a young woman and her three-year-old child were killed in the eastern city of Dnipro in another attack, according to the city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, in a Facebook post. He said more details would be provided later.
And three people were killed in a cruise missile strike on a high-rise residential building in the city of Uman, in central Cherkasy region, the governor Ihor Taburets said on Telegram.
Updated
Three dead in Russian strike on Uman
Three people were killed in this morning’s strike on an apartment block in Uman, in Ukraine’s Cherkasy region, the governor Ihor Taburets has just said on Telegram.
“According to information at the moment, Russian rockets took the lives of 3 people. Another 8 are injured,” Taburets wrote.
While Russia regularly bombed Ukrainian cities and infrastructure last winter, massive strikes had become less common in recent months.
Most of the fighting is now in the east for control of the industrial Donbass region, in particular the city of Bakhmut, which has been almost completely destroyed.
The air raid alert has also stopped in Kherson, according to the Kherson Regional State Administration on Telegram.
No casualties in Kyiv – Kyiv City Military Administration
The Kyiv City Military Administration (KMBA) says that there were no casualties in Kyiv during this morning’s attacks. The air raid alarms have ceased in Kyiv.
The KMBA posted on Twitter:
After a pause lasting 51 days, the enemy launched another missile attack on Kyiv. (The last missile attack on the capital was on March 9, 2023)
According to the information being clarified, the shelling was carried out from strategic aviation planes. According to preliminary data, 11 cruise missiles were destroyed in the airspace of Kyiv. In addition to the missiles, 2 more UAVs were shot down (the type of drones is being established).
Previously, as a result of falling debris, a local power line was cut off and the road surface was damaged in the Obolon district of the capital.
There were no casualties among the civilian population and no destruction of residential facilities or infrastructure. The information is checked and clarified.
Five injured in Uman strike
Five people have been confirmed injured in the Russian cruise missile strike on a high-rise residential building in the city of Uman, in central Cherkasy region, the governor Ihor Taburets has just said on Telegram.
“So far, as a result of the rocket attack on Uman, we have 5 injurues. They are in the hospital,” said Taburets.
Updated
In a shocking video made by a resident of the high-rise building struck by a Russian missile early this morning in Uman, Ukraine, she says, her face and hands flecked with blood, “A rocket hit our home. We’re all covered in blood. Children slept here, thank God we’re all alive. All our windows are gone. We’re all covered in blood. I was so scared.”
The woman is visibly upset and films the damage caused to her apartment, with windows blown from their hinges and glass everywhere.
Updated
This morning’s wave of attacks by Russia acrosss Ukraine come a day after the Kremlin said it would welcome anything that could bring the end of the conflict closer, referring to a telephone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday.
It was the first time the leaders had spoken since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year.
But the Kremlin also said still needed to achieve the aims of what it calls a “special military operation”.
Woman and child killed in Dnipro
An attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro early on Friday killed a woman and a three-year-old child, the city’s mayor said.
“A young woman and a three-year-old child have been killed,” Borys Filatov said on Telegram. Filatov gave no further details of the attack or of other damage and casualties.
Russian attacks struck Ukrainian cities after midnight in a wide arc extending from the capital Kyiv through central Ukraine and the southern region of Mykolaiv, Reuters reports.
Updated
Here is the Reuters report on the strike on Uman:
Pictures on social media showed an apartment building ablaze early on Friday in the central Ukrainian town of Uman, and police in the region said emergency services were operating.
The pictures, posted on various news and other websites, showed flames shooting out from a heavily damaged building in the town. Parts of the building had collapsed.
Zoya Vovk, a police spokesperson in the surrounding region, said emergency teams were operating. There were no details of casualties.
Emergency services at site of Uman residential building
We now have official confirmation of the strike on a high-rise building in Uman, in the Cherkasy region.
Ihor Taburets, Head of the Cherkasy oblast Military Administration has posted on Telegram saying that a cruise missile hit the building, and that emergency services are at the site. Taburets said: “This morning, the occupiers attacked Cherkasy. We have two cruise missile hits in Uman: a residential building and warehouse buildings. We are finding out the consequences. All services are available on site. The air alert continues.”
There are distressing videos emerging on social media of the aftermath of the strike on the residential building. We don’t have word yet of casualties or injuries.
Updated
The Kyiv Independent is now reporting that the air defence systems are at work in Kyiv and that people should remain in shelters.
⚡️Air defense active in Kyiv Oblast.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 28, 2023
Air defense is at work in Kyiv Oblast in the early hours of April 28, according to Kyiv Oblast Military Administration. The administration urges residents to remain in shelters due to the threat of missile attacks.
A missile has reportedly hit a high-rise building in Uman, in the Cherkasy region on central Ukraine. Euromaidan, Kyiv Operativ and Faytuks news have posted videos of the reported attack, which shows a large part of a residential building totally blown apart. It is unknown at this stage how many people were inside.
The Guardian has, however, not independently verified this report or the video below, though several local media organisations have shared it online:
Uman now. Russian bastard cruise missile hit a high rise residential building. https://t.co/pcMnxHic1M
— Ukraine Front Lines (@EuromaidanPR) April 28, 2023
русня-хуйня, горіти вам у пеклі.
— Київ Оперативний (@KyivOperativ) April 28, 2023
Умань… pic.twitter.com/t1OPstUTr2
Euromaidan reports that eight cruise missiles have been launched at Ukraine – we’re seeing reports of missiles launched from the Caspian Sea, south-east of Ukraine.
The Guardian could not verify these reports.
As of 05:10 a.m.
— Ukraine Front Lines (@EuromaidanPR) April 28, 2023
Four Tu-95ms strategic bombers launch 8 cruise missiles each.
Air defence work continues where missiles detected.
There were no launches from the sea, as well as repeated launches from the air.
Updated
Explosions heard in Kyiv - report
A bit more detail now from Reuters: Explosions sounded in Kyiv and the region surrounding the capital early on Friday, Interfax Ukraine and local telegram channels reported.
There were no details on which targets had been struck after midnight or of damage and casualties. The city’s military administration said anti-aircraft units were in operation.
Earlier reports said cities stretching from central Ukraine to southern Mykolaiv Region had been hit by explosions after air raid alerts were declared throughout the country.
Updated
Explosions in Kyiv - reports
Reuters is now reporting explosions in Kyiv, citing Interfax Ukraine and local telegram channels.
The British Ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, who appears to be in Kyiv at the moment, wrote that she heard “bangs”:
Given up trying to sleep. Headed to windowless room with a book after hearing a bang outside. The joys of dawn air raids by 🇷🇺 on 🇺🇦.
— Dame Melinda Simmons (@MelSimmonsFCDO) April 28, 2023
“Given up trying to sleep. Headed to windowless room with a book after hearing a bang outside,” she said.
Several people and accounts on Twitter are reporting that explosions have been heard in Kyiv, though the Guardian and news agencies have not yet been able to verify this.
Euan MacDonald, an editor at New Voices of Ukraine, wrote on Twitter, “4:42 something passing over Kyiv, then bangs – two”. Flash news said that subscribers had heard explosions in Kyiv.
4:42 something passing over Kyiv, then bangs - two. Then a big bang, far off. Then another one. No air alert.
— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) April 28, 2023
Iuliia Mendel, a former spokesperson to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has just posted on Twitter saying that in Kyiv it is, “Very loud outside. Noises of missiles flying, explosions.”
Very loud outside. Noises of missiles flying, explosions. Kyiv or the region
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) April 28, 2023
Updated
Air raid sirens sound in Kyiv and across Ukraine
In the early hours of Friday morning, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine, including in Kyiv, as people headed to shelters. Interfax Ukraine news agency reported explosions in cities in widely separated regions, quoting local sources.
Air raid alert in all oblasts of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/pMInAWFNqO
— Ukraine Front Lines (@EuromaidanPR) April 28, 2023
Interfax said explosions were reported after midnight in Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Poltava in central Ukraine and in Mykolaiv in the south and another online source reported an explosion in Kyiv region. Interfax quoted regional Telegram accounts as saying unidentified airborne objects were headed for the west of the country.
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. In the early hours of Friday morning, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv and across Ukraine, with explosions reportedly heard in Dnipro and in the Potava region – the Guardian has not been able to verify the explosions yet.
We’ll have more on this shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide.
At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraine’s presidential office said, including one person killed and 23 wounded when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv.
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.
The Kremlin said relations with European countries were at their “lowest possible level” amid more expulsions of diplomats.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, welcomed the discussion between China’s President Xi and Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy and repeated the possibility of the war ending at the “negotiating table”.
Stoltenberg said 98% of promised combat vehicles had been delivered to Ukraine, comprising 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks. This equates to nine new Ukrainian brigades.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces had taken four blocks in north-western, western and south-western Bakhmut, Russia state-owned news agency RIA reported.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Thursday he had been joking when he said his men would suspend artillery fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.
Putin has ordered the Russian government to create museums dedicated to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, according to instructions published on the Kremlin website.
A Moscow court on Thursday ordered the dissolution of a prominent research centre specialising in racism and xenophobia in Russia, in the latest move against critical voices since the start of the Ukraine conflict.
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.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that the Black Sea grain deal could only be saved by fully implementing it and that it was not “a buffet you can pick and choose from”. Moscow says parts of the deal meant to allow it to export its own agricultural goods are not being honoured.
Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s former ambassador to Berlin, has said Germany is still failing to provide the support it should. “The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should,” he told Die Zeit.
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.
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
