Closing summary
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russian forces advancing in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were creating a “buffer zone” to protect Russian border regions, but said capturing the city of Kharkiv was not part of Russia’s current plan. Putin, who made the comments at a news conference during a state visit to China, said Russia’s recent thrust into the Kharkiv region was a response to Ukrainian shelling of Russian border regions such as Belgorod, Reuters reported.
Russian guided bombs killed at least two people and injured 13 others in the northeastern Ukraine‘s city of Kharkiv on Friday, local officials said. It was not immediately clear what they had been targeting but the regional governor said those injured were civilians, Reuters reported.
A massive Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea early on Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol and set a refinery ablaze in southern Russia, Russian authorities said. The drone raids marked Kyiv’s attempt to strike back during Moscow’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine, which has added to the pressure on outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces who are waiting for delayed deliveries of crucial weapons and ammunition from Western partners.
A drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk early on Friday hit the Importpischeprom oil products terminal and Sheskharis oil harbour, sources said and video shared on social media showed. The port was shut soon after attack but later resumed oil loadings from Sheskharis oil harbour and fuel oil terminal, according to industry sources and LSEG data, Reuters reported.
Russian forces have advanced 10 km into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in one area but the situation has “stabilised” as of Friday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said as cited by RBC-Ukraine media outlet. “Today, our defence forces have stabilised the Russians where they are now. The deepest point of their advance is 10 km,” Zelenskiy told journalists.
Russia’s foreign ministry warned the west that it was playing by fire by allowing Ukraine to use Western missiles and weapons to strike Russia and that Moscow would not leave such action unanswered, Reuters reported. The foreign ministry said in a statement that it saw the hand of the United States and Britain behind a recent spate of attacks and blamed Washington and London for escalating the conflict by authorising Ukraine to use long-range rockets and heavy weapons they had supplied against Russian targets.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its “North” military grouping had taken control of 12 settlements in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in the last week. President Vladimir Putin said earlier on Friday that Russian forces advancing in Kharkiv region were creating a “buffer zone” to protect Russian border regions, but said capturing the city of Kharkiv itself was not part of Russia’s current plan.
Russia’s ambassador to Britain has described the UK government as a de facto participant in the Ukraine war because of the weapons it was supplying to Kyiv – and said it was also sharing real-time intelligence too. Andrei Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, made the comments to Russia’s Rossiya-24 state TV channel, Reuters has reported.
Ukrainian forces shot down all 20 drones Russia dispatched in an overnight attack, the Ukrainian military said on Friday. The drones were shotdown over the regions of Kharkiv, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odesa and Mykolaiv, Reuters reported. Russian forces have increasingly targeted Kharkiv region this spring, intensifying the aerial attacks and mounting a new offensive in the border areas forcing Kyiv’s outnumbered troops to try to hold the line on a new front.
Russian forces expanded the area of active combat by almost 70 km by launching their offensive in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday. Syrskyi said Russia launched the offensive to force Ukraine to throw additional reserve brigades into fighting. He added that he expected fighting to intensify as Kyiv troops are also preparing to defend in northern region of Sumy.
The Ukrainian artillery on the Kharkiv frontline is facing a bigger threat than ever from Russia’s fleet of Lancet kamikaze drones, according to a howitzer crew fighting there. “One comes, then a second one comes, 10 minutes later a third one comes,” said call sign Artist, the fresh-faced 21-year-old commander of an artillery battery of the 42nd Brigade which has been firing non-stop to repel Russia’s new offensive in the region over the past week. The soldiers requested that they only be referred to by their military call signs to protect their identities, Reuters reported.
A long-range Ukrainian strike on the Moscow-controlled Belbek airbase in occupied Crimea destroyed three Russian warplanes and a fuel facility near its main runway this week, US commercial satellite company Maxar said. The company cited satellite imagery taken on Thursday as showing that two MiG-31 fighter jets and an Su-27 fighter jet had been destroyed. It said one MiG-29 fighter aircraft also appeared to have been damaged.
A plan for Ukraine to be given an invitation to join Nato by the summer of 2028 will be rejected when the alliance meets for its annual summit in Washington this summer, one of the key promoters of the idea admitted on Thursday. Kurt Volker, a former US Ambassador to Nato, warned the US and Germany will veto the plan, sending a signal to Vladimir Putin to keep going, adding: “it means the war is likely to last at least another year.”
Ukraine needs more long-range weapons to fight off Russian advances in the northern Kharkiv region where the situation around the country’s second-largest city remains “highly dramatic”, Germany’s foreign minister said on Friday. Russian forces have made inroads of at least several kilometres in the region in recent days, forcing Kyiv’s out-manned troops to try to hold the line on a new front as Moscow mounts more pressure on the front in the east.
Putin queried the political legitimacy of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday when asked about the absence of plans to hold a presidential election in Ukraine at the moment, Reuters reported. Martial law imposed after Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 means Zelenskiy will not face an election when his term technically expires later this month, something he and Ukraine’s allies deem to be the right decision to take at a time of war.
Vladimir Putin is seeking to weaponise the threat of mass migration to divide and weaken Europe as supporters of Ukraine struggle to maintain unity to defeat Russia, Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister said on Friday. “What our adversaries know is migration is our vulnerability,” she said. “The aim is to make life really impossible in Ukraine so that there would be migration pressure to Europe, and this is what they are doing.”
Russia with respond in kind to any ambiguous nuclear behaviour from the West, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, was reported as saying by the TASS news agency. According to Ryabkov, the West has adopted a stance of strategic uncertainty and ambiguity towards Russia, trying to make it difficult for Moscow to predict how Nato will react in various situations, including with nuclear weapons.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
You can continue to get all the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine here.
Putin is seeking to weaponise threat of mass migration, says Estonian PM
Vladimir Putin is seeking to weaponise the threat of mass migration to divide and weaken Europe as supporters of Ukraine struggle to maintain unity to defeat Russia, Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister said on Friday.
“What our adversaries know is migration is our vulnerability,” she said. “The aim is to make life really impossible in Ukraine so that there would be migration pressure to Europe, and this is what they are doing.”
She said Russia had already created the migration pressure through disruption in Syria and in Africa via the Wagner group.
“I think we have to understand that Russia is weaponising migration. Our adversaries are weaponising migration.
“They push the migrants over the border, and they create problems for the Europeans because they weaponise this since with human rights, you have to accept those people. And that is, of course, water to the mill of the far right.”
