Closing summary
Aid money for Ukraine has become a bargaining chip for US congressional Republicans, as lawmakers negotiate on a bill to extend government funding beyond the end of the month and avoid a government shutdown. The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, said that he would not support the part of the bill that addresses funding for Ukraine if there also wasn’t something included that would address the immigration crisis at the Mexican border.
Some mercenaries of the Russian Wagner Group have left Belarus and returned to the front in Donetsk oblast, a Ukrainian military spokesperson told RBC-Ukraine. “We confirm that the ‘Wagners’ are present on the territory of the Eastern Group of Forces,” Illia Yevlash, spokesperson of the Eastern Group of Forces, said. “These are servicemen of the ‘Wagner’ PMK who were on the territory of Belarus. Now their camps are being disbanded there. There were about 8,000 of them there. Now some of these militants have gone to Africa, and someone have renegotiated contracts with the ministry of defence of the Russian Federation and returned here, to eastern Ukraine, to take part in hostilities - both as instructors and as military personnel.”
Russian forces launched 44 air strikes and 27 multiple launch rocket system attacks today, and engaged Ukrainian troops in 17 combat engagements, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in their evening briefing. “Unfortunately, the Russian terrorist attacks have killed and wounded civilians,” the general staff said in its update. “Residential buildings, a hospital and other civilian infrastructure were destroyed or damaged.”
Russia’s ministry of defence has issued updated figures for the amount of equipment it claims to have destroyed during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. On its Telegram channel, it claimed: 479 airplanes, 250 helicopters, 7,191 unmanned aerial vehicles, 438 air defence missile systems, 12,170 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,155 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 6,557 field artillery cannon and mortars, as well as 13,449 special military motor vehicles have been destroyed during the special military operation. The claims have not been independently verified.
The Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny will be transferred to a single-cell type facility in an EPKT – “the most severe possible punishment” – for 12 months for supposed “incorrigibility”, Navalny said today on Telegram.
At least three pro-war Russian journalists were sent severed pigs’ heads over the past week, the Moscow Times is reporting. The journalists who received the pigs’ heads include state media columnist Timofey Sergeitsev – who last year published an article calling for the murder of Ukrainian civilians – military expert Konstantin Sivkov and Tass news agency photojournalist Mikhail Tereshchenko. All three had previously reported receiving death threats.
Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for the Russian president, said the US and the UK were “one way or another” involved in last year’s attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, Tass news agency is reporting. Responding to a question about a report published by the US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in February that claimed the attack was a US operation, Peskov said: “What’s important here is that de facto such a terrorist act against critical energy infrastructure, one belonging to an international joint venture, was, of course, organised one way or another by the United States of America and Great Britain. And they are one way or another involved in this terrorist act.”
Peskov also spoke at length on the incident of the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a Ukrainian man who had fought for the German SS during the second world war. Anthony Rota, the speaker in Canada’s parliament, stepped down yesterday after growing cross-party calls for his resignation. On Friday, after a speech by Zelenskiy, Rota singled out 98-year-old Hunka, whom he had invited to sit in the gallery, describing the man as a “Canadian hero”. Zelenskiy had raised his fist in acknowledgment as Hunka saluted from the gallery. “The addiction to the Nazi ideology of the Kyiv regime is not news, this is something we have been talking about for a long time,” Peskov said. “The fact that Zelenskiy also applauded the fascist standing up confirms this once again.”
Russia has accused Ukraine’s western allies of helping to plan and carry out last week’s missile strike on the Black Sea fleet’s headquarters in Crimea, the Associated Press is reporting. “There is no doubt that the attack had been planned in advance using western intelligence means, Nato satellite assets and reconnaissance planes and was implemented upon the advice of American and British security agencies and in close coordination with them,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
Russia’s military news outlet Zvezda on Wednesday published an interview with Black Sea fleet commander Viktor Sokolov – despite Ukraine claiming to have killed him in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol. This report comes after Russia’s defence ministry released footage showing Sokolov attending a defence board meeting via video call.
Updated
Air raid alert issued for Sevastopol
Less than a week after a Ukrainian missile stuck Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, the port city has issued another air raid alert, Russian-installed regional governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.
Traffic on the Crimea bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean peninsula has been temporarily suspended.
