End of day summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from today:
- The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a deal to ease Russia’s naval blockade has reached Turkey. The Sierra Leone-registered ship, Razoni, set sail from Odesa port for Lebanon on Monday under an accord brokered by Turkey and the United Nations. The ship has been inspected by members of the Joint Coordination Centre, and is now expected to move through the Bosporus Strait “shortly”.
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The Ukrainian president has dismissed the importance of the first grain export shipment from his country since Russia invaded, saying it was carrying a fraction of the crop Kyiv must sell to help salvage its shattered economy. In downbeat comments, Volodymr Zelenskiy’s, via video to students in Australia on Wednesday said more time was needed to see whether other grain shipments would follow.
- The UN has said that there have been over 10m border crossings into and out of Ukraine since Russia launched its latest invasion of the country on 24 February. Data gathered by the UNHCR states that 6,180,345 individual refugees from Ukraine are now recorded across Europe. Ukraine’s neighbours have taken the largest individual numbers. Poland has 1.25 million refugees.
- In its latest operation briefing, Russia’s ministry of defence has claimed that its strike on Radekhov in the Lviv region “destroyed a storage base with foreign-made weapons and ammunition delivered to the Kyiv regime from Poland”. Earlier today, Lviv’s governor acknowledged the strike, and said “one building was damaged. Fortunately, no one was hurt.”
- The UK’s ministry of defence says there is likely to be an increase in civilians attempting to flee Kherson and the surrounding area as hostilities continue and food shortages worsen, putting pressure on transport routes. They have also said that a Ukrainian strike against a Russian ammunition train in Kherson oblast, southern Ukraine, means it is “highly unlikely” the rail link between Kherson and Crimea is operational.
- Mykola Tochytskyi, deputy minister of foreign affairs, has repeated Ukraine’s request for the skies over nuclear installations to be closed to prevent a potential accident and their misuse. He said “For the first time in history, civil nuclear facilities have been turned into military targets and springboards for the Russian army in breach of the non-proliferation provisions on peaceful use of nuclear energy. The world witnesses how nuclear terrorism, sponsored by the nuclear-weapon state, is arising in reality. The robust joint actions are needed to prevent nuclear disaster at global scale. We ask to close the sky over the nuclear power plants in Ukraine.”
- The US embassy in Kyiv has criticised what it says is a decision by Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s media agency, to block a US government website – share.america.gov.
- Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said the US has not offered Russia to resume talks on the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty.
- The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, has spoken to the Australian National University, thanking Australia for its support against the Russian invasion.
- The former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder has come under fire for a private meeting held with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, after he travelled on holiday to Moscow to meet him. Schröder told German media in a lengthy interview he had nothing to apologise for over his friendship with Putin, whom he met last week during a visit to the Russian capital.
- German chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that Russia had no reason to hold up the return of a gas turbine for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. The turbine is stranded in Germany, following servicing in Canada, in an escalating standoff that has seen has flows to Europe fall to a trickle, just 20% of capacity.
- Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has been accused of glorifying war after she retweeted a Ukrainian tweet listing Russia’s war dead – described in an embedded graphic as “eliminated personnel”, before she quickly deleted it. The original tweet from the Ukrainian defence ministry quoted a Robert Burns poem saying “tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty’s in every blow! Let us do or die!”
- Ukrainian refugees are likely to become victims of rising tensions and disinformation campaigns in their host countries, a report has warned. False reports exaggerating how much aid refugees receive compared with local people, as well as linking refugees with violent crime and political extremism, could cause a breakdown in relations with local communities, the charity World Vision said.
- UK lawmaker, the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, who is chair of the Commons defence committee in the British parliament in London, has repeated his appeals that Ukraine needs more weapons. Ellwood told viewers of the GB News channel in the UK that the country was “getting better supporting Ukraine, but it’s coming very, very late in the day.”
- Russia has started creating a military strike force aimed at Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih and warned that Moscow could be preparing new offensive operations in southern Ukraine, Ukraine said on Wednesday. Russia holds swathes of Ukraine’s south that it captured in the early phases of its invasion, but Kyiv has said it will mount a counter-offensive. It said on Tuesday it had already recaptured 53 villages in occupied Kherson region, Reuters reports.
We are closing this liveblog now. Thanks so much for joining us.
