Closing summary
It has gone 5pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Russia and Ukraine coverage here.
Here is a recap of today’s latest developments:
At least 14 people were killed and 61 were injured on Wednesday after three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, hitting an eight-floor apartment building. Two children were among the 61 people injured, the emergency services said in its latest toll of casualties. “Three people were rescued from the rubble. People are likely still trapped under the rubble of the partially destroyed building,” the statement said.
A 25-year-old policewoman on sick leave was among those killed in Chernihiv after suffering a severe shrapnel injury, the interior minister announced. “Many multi storey buildings were damaged,” the regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus said on state run television. “Civilian infrastructure is damaged. Dozens of vehicles have been destroyed.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed Russia for the attack on Chernihiv but also said the west should do more to help defend Ukraine’s skies. “This would not have happened if Ukraine had received sufficient air defence equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient,” he said in a social media post on X.
The Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed Zelenskiy’s comments in a separate post on social media and suggested that Ukraine should enjoy the same cover from aerial attacks as Israel. “In the Middle East, we saw what reliable protection of human lives from missiles looks like,” he added, referring to Iran’s drone and missile barrage on Israel that was intercepted by western and Israeli forces.
Kuleba also thanked Germany for agreeing to supply Ukraine with another Patriot air defence system and said he would appeal to other countries at a G7 meeting this week for more weapons.
G7 foreign ministers will discuss support for a Ukrainian air defence system at their meeting in Capri on Wednesday, a German government spokesperson said.
According to the BBC, Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine has now passed 50,000. BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022. More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat, according to the BBC’s findings, which it said Russia declined to comment on.
Kharkiv is at risk of becoming “a second Aleppo” unless US politicians vote for fresh military aid to help Ukraine obtain the air defences needed to prevent long-range Russian attacks, the city’s mayor has warned. Ihor Terekhov said Russia had switched tactics to try to destroy the city’s power supply and terrorise its 1.3 million residents by firing into residential areas, with people experiencing unscheduled power cuts for hours at a time.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Polish president Andrzej Duda on Wednesday in New York. The planned dinner meeting, confirmed by a person familiar with the matter according to the Associated Press, comes as European leaders prepare for the possibility that Trump might win the November election and return to the White House. “Today here is no more important partner for the Republic of Poland in international relations than the US, and this is exactly the context in which this meeting should be seen,” said the adviser, Małgorzata Paprocka.
Poland’s centrist prime minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Duda, was critical of the president for his willingness to meet Trump, describing the expected meeting as a form of meddling in the US election campaign. “But if Mr President actually meets with Mr Trump, we would expect him to raise the issue of clearly siding with the western world, democracy and Europe in this Ukrainian-Russian conflict,” Tusk added.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, says he has urged Xi Jinping to press Russia to end its “senseless” war in Ukraine and that the Chinese president has agreed to back a peace conference in Switzerland. Scholz said after a meeting with Xi in Beijing on Tuesday that “China’s word carries weight in Russia”.
Zelenskiy responded on X that China could help deliver a “just peace” for his country by playing an “active role” in the international conference. Xi, however, appeared to dismiss the meeting in Switzerland, saying efforts towards a peaceful resolution should be recognised by both sides and include equal participation by all parties. The peace conference in Switzerland is due to take place in June without Russia in attendance and Moscow has dismissed any such meeting as meaningless without its participation.
Russia banned entry to hundreds of Australian citizens, the Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday. It said Moscow will indefinitely close entry to 235 municipal councillors for what it called an “anti-Russian agenda”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be invited to the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-day landings in June, the French organisers have said. Some Russian representatives will be welcomed in recognition of the country’s wartime sacrifice, they added. Putin would have been unlikely to attend the Normandy event. He has rarely left Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, in part because of an international criminal court (ICC) warrant for his arrest that Moscow says it does not recognise.
The Ukrainian military says Russia has ramped up its illegal use of riot control agents on the front to try to clear trenches as it begins to make bigger advances in the east. Riot control agents such as teargas are banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia and Ukraine are signatories.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a draft law on “foreign agents” currently being debated by lawmakers in Georgia is being used by outside actors to stoke anti-Russian sentiment and should not be called Russian. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the situation was being used to “provoke anti-Russian sentiments” and that “it is unlikely that these impulses are being fed from within Georgia.”“They’re probably coming from the outside,” he told reporters, without elaborating. He said the Kremlin was closely watching developments.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it had expelled one Estonian embassy official working in Moscow in a retaliatory move. The foreign ministry said in a statement that the move was a response to what it called a baseless decision by Estonia to expel a Russian diplomat working in Tallinn.
Ukraine’s need for US aid is now acute, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based thinktank. “Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defence and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale,” the ISW said in an assessment late on Tuesday.
Croatian voters are going to the polls on Wednesday in a high-stakes parliamentary election that could significantly change the country’s pro-western stance on issues including European support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia.
Updated
Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine passes 50,000, says the BBC
According to the BBC, Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine has now passed 50,000.
BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022. The BBC say its teams “combed through open-source information from official reports, newspapers and social media” and that “new graves in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers”.
More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat, according to the BBC’s findings. It said in its report:
The overall death toll – of more than 50,000 – is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgment of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022.
The actual number of Russian deaths is likely to be much higher.
Our analysis does not include the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk – in eastern Ukraine. If they were added, the death toll on the Russian side would be even higher.
Russia declined to comment, said the BBC.
Here are the latest images coming out of Chernihiv:
Death toll in Chernihiv climbs to 14
Associated Press is reporting that the death toll in Chernihiv has reached “at least 14 people”, after three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of the northern Ukrainian city.
Reuters has an in-depth report on Russia’s illegal use of tear gas in the trenches in Ukraine:
The Ukrainian infantryman, call sign “Ray”, said he quickly pulled on his gas mask after a Russian drone flying above his trench on the eastern front dropped a tear gas grenade.
He told Reuters of the attack he said he experienced in January:
It’s like pepper spray, it makes your eyes tear up. It’s not lethal, but it disturbs and knocks you out. It makes it very difficult to carry out your duties once you’ve inhaled it.
The Ukrainian military says Russia has ramped up its illegal use of riot control agents on the front to try to clear trenches as it begins to make bigger advances in the east more than two years since its full-scale invasion.
Riot control agents such as tear gas are banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia and Ukraine are signatories.
While civilians can usually escape from tear gas used to break up riots or protests in cities, soldiers stuck in trenches without gas masks must either flee under enemy fire or risk suffocating on the gas.
Colonel Serhii Pakhomov, acting head of the military’s atomic, biological and chemical defence forces, said Kyiv had recorded around 900 uses of riot control agents by Russia in the past six months out of over 1,400 since the February 2022 invasion.
Russia mainly used K-51, VOH and RH-VO hand-grenades loaded with CS, CN and other gases, he told Reuters in an interview. Ukraine’s military previously alleged that Russian forces also used chloropicrin, which was used as poison gas in World War I.
Russia’s embassy in The Netherlands, where the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is based, said on X in January that allegations about Russia’s use of grenades with CN gas use unconfirmed data. Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Moscow previously accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons, something Kyiv denies. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the use of banned chemical substances by either side.
Five hundred Ukrainian troops have required medical help after exposure to toxic substances on the battlefield and at least one soldier died after suffocating on tear gas, Pakhomov said.
In addition to demoralisation, the person loses physical capabilities – he can’t see, he can’t breathe, everything is irritated.
Yes, it is temporary, but it is the very moment the enemy can use to take over this position or another.
The Ukrainian military is distributing gas masks and conducting drills to prepare soldiers to defend their position during such attacks. At one drill near Kharkiv, instructors told Reuters that gas masks help to protect troops from almost all combat poisons but the length of exposure could impact their effectiveness.
Russian forces, which have occupied 18% of Ukrainian territory, are advancing slowly but steadily in the east, after months of deadly fighting.
Volodymyr, 37, a doctor at a medical stabilisation point in the Donetsk region, said gas attacks cases have picked up recently as he was seeing an average of two soldiers a week.
They complain about gas attacks of varying characteristics - colourless, blue or green - and with a strong chemical smell.
The symptoms, it looks like irritation ... it’s like tear gas or something like that.
Natalia Khovanets, 53, a head nurse at a Ukrainian army medical unit in a forested part of the mostly-occupied region of Luhansk, told Reuters they had treated soldiers who had been hit with tear gas grenades dropped by a Russian drone.
(The symptoms we saw were) bitterness in the patients’ mouths, dizziness... these are mild symptoms. That meant we could manage treating them on our own.
An official with the OPCW, which investigates alleged use of chemicals as weapons, told Reuters it had received no request for an investigation or technical assistance related to the alleged use of banned chemicals in the war.
“However, the use of riot control agents as weapons by Russian troops was widely debated,” at the organisation’s recent meetings, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The task of documenting each case of alleged toxic chemicals use falls to special groups within the Ukrainian military who collect evidence and contaminated ground samples for field labs before passing them to Ukraine’s security services.
Pakhomov said that the 1,400 recorded cases is likely a considerable underestimate because heavy artillery fire and fighting often prevents the groups from visiting trenches, making documentation and accountability harder to achieve.
G7 foreign ministers will discuss support for a Ukrainian air defence system at their meeting in Capri on Wednesday, a German government spokesperson has said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be invited to the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings in June, the French organisers have said.
Some Russian representatives will be welcomed in recognition of the country’s war-time sacrifice, they added.
The organisers said in a statement to Reuters:
For more than two years now, the Russian Federation has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, which France condemns in the strongest possible terms.
Given these circumstances, President Putin will not be invited to take part in the Normandy landings commemoration. Russia will nevertheless be invited to be represented, given the importance of its role and the sacrifice of the Soviet people, so that their contribution to the victory in 1945 can be honoured.
The commemorations in June mark the day when more than 150,000 Allied soldiers invaded France to drive out the forces of Nazi Germany. Millions of Soviet soldiers died in the war.
Putin would have been unlikely to attend the Normandy event. He has rarely left Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, in part because of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for his arrest that Moscow says it does not recognise.
Zelenskiy criticises lack of air defence equipment after Chernihiv attack and says west should do more
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed Russia for the attack on Chernihiv but also said the west should do more to help defend Ukraine’s skies, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received sufficient air defence equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient,” he said in a social media post on X.
“The Ukrainian determination is sufficient. There must be equally sufficient determination from our partners and, as a result, sufficient support,” added Zelenskiy.
Chernihiv. A rescue operation is underway following a Russian missile strike. There are people under the rubble. As of now, 20 people are reported to have been injured and ten killed. My condolences to their close ones.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 17, 2024
Unfortunately, the death toll may still rise. This would… pic.twitter.com/0t7QybrNk6
The Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed the comments in a separate post on social media and suggested that Ukraine should enjoy the same cover from aerial attacks as Israel.
“In the Middle East, we saw what reliable protection of human lives from missiles looks like,” he added, referring to Iran’s drone and missile barrage on Israel that was intercepted by western and Israeli forces.
Russian terrorists launched missiles into the center of Chernihiv, killing at least 11 and injuring at least 22 people as of now. The toll may still rise.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) April 17, 2024
These innocent people would not have been killed or injured if Ukraine had sufficient air defense capabilities. Three days… pic.twitter.com/5cSlzQ0BIP
Kuleba also thanked Germany for agreeing to supply Ukraine with another Patriot air defence system and said he would appeal to other countries at a G7 meeting this week for more weapons.
Their comments added to a growing chorus in Ukraine appealing to allied countries to supply more sophisticated air defence weapons to ward off the regular Russian strikes on key infrastructure.
There had been a direct hit to an infrastructure facility but it was not linked to energy production, the mayor said
Updated
At least 13 people killed and 61 injured in Russian strike on Chernihiv, say emergency services
A Russian strike on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv killed 13 people and injured 61 people on Wednesday, as Kyiv sounded the alarm over shortages in its air defence capabilities, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Earlier reports had put the death toll at 10 people (see 09:40 BST).
First responders searched for survivors in the rubble, carrying away the wounded on stretchers as pools of blood formed on the ground near the scene of the attack, reported AFP citing what official images showed.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has been urging allies to send more missiles to thwart Russian air attacks, said Ukraine had lacked sufficient air defences to intercept the three missiles that struck Chernihiv.
Two children were among the 61 people injured, the emergency services said in its latest toll of casualties. “Three people were rescued from the rubble. People are likely still trapped under the rubble of the partially destroyed building,” the statement said.
A 25-year-old policewoman on sick leave was among those killed after suffering a severe shrapnel injury, the interior minister announced separately, according to AFP.
“Many multi storey buildings were damaged,” the regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus said on state run television. “Civilian infrastructure is damaged. Dozens of vehicles have been destroyed.”
Updated
Croatian voters are going to the polls in a high-stakes parliamentary election that could significantly change the country’s pro-western stance on issues including European support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia.
You can read the full article by the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, here:
Chris Michael, Joan E Greve and Pjotr Sauer have put together an explainer on who will finance Ukraine’s defence as US funding stalls in Congress.
You can read the explainer here:
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a draft law on “foreign agents” currently being debated by lawmakers in Georgia is being used by outside actors to stoke anti-Russian sentiment and should not be called Russian, reports Reuters.
Georgians have staged protests outside the parliament in Tbilisi this week against what they call “the Russian law”, which they say will align Georgia more closely with Russia and draw it away from the EU.
The news agency reports that the draft legislation would require organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence, and has been compared by critics to a similar Russian law used to crack down on dissent.
A coalition of opposition groups, civil society, celebrities, and the country’s figurehead president have rallied against the ruling party to oppose the move, according to Reuters.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the situation was being used to “provoke anti-Russian sentiments” and that “it is unlikely that these impulses are being fed from within Georgia.”
“They’re probably coming from the outside,” he told reporters, without elaborating. He said the Kremlin was closely watching developments.
Peskov said it was the US, not Russia, which had pioneered such legislation, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938.
“Now this is a normal practice of a large number of governments that are doing everything to protect themselves from outside influence,” he said.
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:
Russia says it has expelled an Estonian diplomat in retaliatory move
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it had expelled one Estonian embassy official working in Moscow in a retaliatory move, reports Reuters.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that the move was a response to what it called a baseless decision by Estonia to expel a Russian diplomat working in Tallinn.
“It has been brought to the attention of the Estonian side that its hostile activities will always receive a proper response,” the statement said.
Ukraine’s need for US aid is now acute, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based thinktank.
“The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore manoeuvre to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of US military assistance to Ukraine,” the ISW said in an assessment late on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press (AP).
“Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defence and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale,” it said.
A crucial element for Ukraine is the holdup in Washington of approval for an aid package that includes roughly $60b (£48.1bn/€56.4bn) for Ukraine. House speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he would try to move the package forward this week.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Polish president Andrzej Duda on Wednesday in New York, reports the Associated Press (AP).
The planned dinner meeting, confirmed by a person familiar with the matter according to the AP, comes as European leaders prepare for the possibility that Trump might win the November election and return to the White House.
Leaders of Nato countries are especially concerned given Trump’s long history of critical comments about the key western alliance, even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The person was not authorised to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, says the AP.
According to the news agency, Duda himself told reporters before he departed Warsaw for New York on Tuesday that he hoped to meet with Trump “socially” if arrangements worked out, and one of his advisers defended the encounter which was viewed as controversial in Poland.
“Today here is no more important partner for the Republic of Poland in international relations than the US, and this is exactly the context in which this meeting should be seen,” said the adviser, Małgorzata Paprocka.
Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine, is a Nato member. Duda, a right wing populist whose term ends in 2025, has encouraged the US to send additional funding to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression.
Republicans in Washington, meanwhile, are fighting among themselves over a massive foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other allies.
Poland’s centrist prime minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Duda, was critical of the president for his willingness to meet Trump, describing the expected meeting as a form of meddling in the US election campaign, reports the AP.
Tusk said that “a possible victory of president Trump would probably not be beneficial” for the security of Europe or Nato, noting that “almost every speech of president Trump very clearly shows his anti-Ukrainian sentiment and a pro-Russian attitude.”
“But if Mr President actually meets with Mr Trump, we would expect him to raise the issue of clearly siding with the western world, democracy and Europe in this Ukrainian-Russian conflict,” Tusk added.
Updated
Here are a couple of images coming in from Chernihiv this morning via the newswires:
As the crisis in the Middle East shifts resources away from the Russian invasion, Volodymyr Zelenskiy is calling for more money, weapons and attention, writes the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter today.
Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, has long feared that the crisis in the Middle East centred on Israel’s war in Gaza would shift focus and, crucially, resources away from Ukraine. Two years since Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is struggling with munitions shortages, as a $60bn aid package has been held up for months in the US House of Representatives.
To understand how Ukraine’s position in the war has changed in recent months Nimo Omer spoke with Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, who is in Kharkiv.
You can read the briefing here:
Russia bans entry to 235 Australian citizens
Russia banned entry to hundreds of Australian citizens, the Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
It said Moscow will indefinitely close entry to 235 municipal councillors for what it called an “anti-Russian agenda”.
Deaths in Chernihiv after Russian strike
The Reuters news agency are reporting that the death toll in the Russian strike on Chernihiv now stands at 10 people.
According to Reuters, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for sufficient determination and support from western partners after the Russian missile strike on Wednesday morning.
“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received sufficient air defence equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror had been sufficient,” Zelenskiy said via the Telegram messaging app.
Updated
An update on the newswires by the Associated Press (AP) says that at least eight people have been killed and 18 injured in the Russian strike on the northern Ukraine region of Chernihiv (see 08:35 BST).
Citing local officals, the AP report that at least eight people were killed when three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of Chernihiv on Wednesday, hitting an eight-floor apartment building.
At least 18 people were injured in the morning attack, the city’s acting mayor Oleksandr Lomako said.
Updated
German chancellor urges Xi Jinping to press Russia to end Ukraine war
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, says he has urged Xi Jinping to press Russia to end its “senseless” war in Ukraine and that the Chinese president has agreed to back a peace conference in Switzerland.
Scholz said after a meeting with Xi in Beijing on Tuesday that “China’s word carries weight in Russia”.
“I have therefore asked President Xi to influence Russia so that Putin finally calls off his senseless campaign, withdraw his troops and ends this terrible war,” he said on social media platform X.
Scholz said Xi had agreed to back a peace conference in Switzerland, which is due to take place in June without Russia in attendance.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, responded on X that China could help deliver a “just peace” for his country by playing an “active role” in the international conference.
Xi, however, appeared to dismiss the meeting in Switzerland, saying efforts towards a peaceful resolution should be recognised by both sides and include equal participation by all parties.
Russia has dismissed any such meeting as meaningless without Moscow’s participation.
You can read more on this story here:
Kharkiv at risk of becoming ‘second Aleppo’ without US aid, mayor says
Dan Sabbagh is the Guardian’s defence and security editor.
Kharkiv is at risk of becoming “a second Aleppo” unless US politicians vote for fresh military aid to help Ukraine obtain the air defences needed to prevent long-range Russian attacks, the city’s mayor has warned.
Ihor Terekhov said Russia had switched tactics to try to destroy the city’s power supply and terrorise its 1.3 million residents by firing into residential areas, with people experiencing unscheduled power cuts for hours at a time.
The mayor of Ukraine’s second city said the $60bn US military aid package, currently stalled in Congress, was of “critical importance for us” and urged the west to refocus on the two-year-old war.
“We need that support to prevent Kharkiv being a second Aleppo,” Terekhov said, referring to the Syrian city heavily bombed by Russian and Syrian government forces at the height of the country’s civil war a decade ago.
On 22 March, Russian attacks destroyed a power station on the eastern edge of the city as well all its substations; a week later officials acknowledged a second plant, 30 miles south-east of the city, had been eliminated in the same attack.
Power in the city, about 30 miles from the Russian border, was interrupted after another bombing raid this week, causing the metro to be halted briefly. Residents said there was usually a few hours’ supply a day in the city centre, although in the outskirts the situation was said to be better.
Children are educated either online or in underground schools, for their own safety. The water supply remains on, but Terekhov said there were concerns the Russian military may switch to targeting gas distribution, after storage facilities in the west were attacked last week.
You can read more of Dan Sabbagh’s report from Kharkiv here:
Several killed and injured in Russian strike on Ukraine’s Chernihiv, says local official
A Russian strike on the northern Ukraine region of Chernihiv has left several people dead or injured, a local official said on Wednesday, in Moscow’s latest aerial assault on Ukraine.
The region, which borders Belarus to the north, was occupied at the beginning of Russia’s invasion but has been spared fierce fighting for around two years since Moscow’s army withdrew.
“The enemy launched three missile strikes almost in the centre of the city. There are civilians who have been killed and many wounded. Rescuers are working now,” governor Vyacheslav Chaus said in a statement on social media, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The region’s administrative centre, also called Chernihiv, lies about 145 kilometres (90 miles) north of the capital Kyiv and had a prewar population of about 285,000 people.
It was badly damaged when Russian tanks swept into Ukraine from Belarusian territory in February 2022.
Updated
Opening summary
It has gone 10am in Kyiv and in Moscow. This is our latest Guardian blog covering all the latest developments over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A Russian strike on the northern Ukraine region of Chernigiv has left several people dead or injured, a local official said on Wednesday, in Moscow’s latest aerial assault on Ukraine.
The region, which borders Belarus to the north, was occupied at the beginning of Russia’s invasion but has been spared fierce fighting for around two years since Moscow’s army withdrew.
Meanwhile, Kharkiv is at risk of becoming “a second Aleppo” unless US politicians vote for fresh military aid to help Ukraine obtain the air defences needed to prevent long-range Russian attacks, the city’s mayor has warned.
Ihor Terekhov said Russia had switched tactics to try to destroy the city’s power supply and terrorise its 1.3 million residents by firing into residential areas, with people experiencing unscheduled power cuts for hours at a time.
More on that in a moment, but first, here are the other latest developments:
Large explosions and fires have been reported in Russian-occupied Crimea, at or near the Dzhankoi airbase of the Russian navy. The Russian-run independent Telegram channel Astra said: “Residents of Dzhankoy report new explosions, a fire in the area of the military airfield continues, there is no official information.” Videos online showed fires and flashes in succession that might indicate stored ammunition catching fire and exploding. The Guardian has not been able to independently verify these reports.
White House officials have said they are taking a wait-and-see approach until the House speaker, Mike Johnson, releases details of his plan to pass aid for Ukraine. “It does appear at first blush, that the speaker’s proposal will, in fact, help us get aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel and needed resources to the Indo-Pacific for a wide range of contingencies there,” said John Kirby, Joe Biden’s national security spokesperson. “But we’re waiting to get a little bit more detail before we say one way or the other.”
The speaker is considering a complicated approach that would break apart the already Senate-approved $95bn aid package and send it to separate votes, then either stitch it back together or send the components to the Senate for final passage, and potentially to the White House for the president’s signature. It would require the speaker to cobble together bipartisan majorities with different factions of House Republicans and Democrats on each measure.
Johnson is preparing a fourth measure that would include various Republican-preferred national security priorities, such as a plan to seize some Russian assets in US banks to help fund Ukraine, and another to turn the economic aid for Ukraine into loans. The New York Post has meanwhile published Republican-aligned polling that shows a majority of Republican voters in electorates crucial to the November election back US assistance for Ukraine’s fight back against the Russian invasion.
Russian forces are exploiting the delays to US aid to switch from fighting for individual positions and instead manoeuvre on the battlefield again, the Institute for the Study of War has warned. “Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defence and artillery, that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale. Lack of air defence has exposed Ukrainian frontline units to Russian aircraft that are now dropping thousands of bombs on Ukrainian defensive positions for the first time in this war. Ukrainian artillery shortages are letting the Russians use armoured columns without suffering prohibitive losses for the first time since 2022.”
The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, said 20 countries had pledged enough to buy 500,000 artillery shells for Ukraine outside Europe within the so-called Czech initiative. The Czechs said in March they were able to collect about 800,000 shells in total for Ukraine outside the continent. Fiala said there was no reason why the donors could not “deliver one million more in the next 12 months … I want to highlight that this initiative is not a one-time project. Our goal is to create a long-term system of ammunition supplies for heavy weapons. This will directly help to change the situation on the frontline.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has signed a mobilisation bill into law with the aim of boosting troop numbers. The parliament’s website said the bill had been “returned with the signature of the president” on Tuesday, after receiving final approval from lawmakers last week. The new law toughens penalties on draft dodgers, incentivises conscription and obliges men to keep their military registration details with the authorities up to date.
On PBS NewsHour, Zelenskiy said a lack of air defence missiles prevented Ukraine from thwarting a Russian missile attack last week that destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant. His comments gave fresh urgency to Kyiv’s pleas to be sent more military weapons from its allies as the war appears to have turned in the Kremlin’s favour over recent months.
German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall is to build an ammunition plant in Lithuania. Germany’s largest military equipment maker and the Lithuanian government signed a letter of intent to set up a factory to make 155mm artillery shells in the EU and Nato member country.
Ukraine said it had identified almost 37,000 people, including military personnel, who are unaccounted for since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Xi Jinping has agreed to back a Ukraine peace conference in Switzerland, Germany’s chancellor said after meeting the Chinese president. “China’s word carries weight in Russia,” said Olaf Scholz. “I have therefore asked President Xi to influence Russia so that Putin finally calls off his senseless campaign, withdraw his troops and ends this terrible war.” Zelenskiy welcomed the development.
Beijing has called for a “political settlement” to the war, which western countries said could enable Russia to hold much of the territory it has seized in Ukraine. China has also deepened its ties with Russia and, according to a US assessment cited by the Associated Press, is surging the supply of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Russia in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine. Chinese and Russian entities have also been working to jointly produce unmanned aerial vehicles inside Russia, and Chinese companies are likely providing Russia with nitrocellulose used in the manufacture of ammunition, US officials said.
