A summary of today's developments
Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has confirmed reports that the UK is donating long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Wallace said Ukrainians will have the “best chance to defend themselves”.
The US has serious concerns about the docking of a sanctioned Russian cargo vessel at a South African naval port in December and has raised those concerns directly with multiple South African officials, state department deputy spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters. The US envoy to South Africa said he was confident a Russian ship had picked up weapons in South Africa, in a possible breach of Pretoria’s declared neutrality in the Ukraine conflict. South Africa’s government has begun an independent inquiry into the claims.
Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, confirmed that the army was aware of a possible missile heading towards the country in December but failed to inform the government. Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, especially since two people were killed near the border last November by what Warsaw concluded was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the country needs more time to prepare for a much-anticipated spring counteroffensive, saying: “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Zelenskiy said the army had combat brigades that were ready, but were still short of promised armoured vehicles, which were slowly arriving. He stressed that Ukraine was not prepared to cede any territory for peace, saying: “Everyone will have an idea. They can’t pressure Ukraine into surrendering territories. Why should any country of the world give Putin its territory?”
Zelenskiy again denied any Ukrainian responsibility for the drone incident over the Kremlin, saying: “They constantly look for something to sound like a justification, saying: ‘You do this to us, so we do that to you’. But it didn’t work. Even for their domestic public, it didn’t work.” Russia has accused Washington and Kyiv of masterminding the attack, which it described as an assassination attempt on Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, and no injuries were caused by the drones.
A Ukrainian military commander has said that Russian forces in Bakhmut had been pushed back by up to 2km in some areas, after counteroffensives. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, made the comments in a post on Telegram. He said: “In some areas of the front, the enemy could not resist the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometres.”
Russia’s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult” but certain goals have been achieved, Tass cited the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, as saying on Wednesday. Russia has succeeded in severely damaging Ukraine’s military machine and this work will continue, he added.
A Ukrainian drone attacked an oil storage depot in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the local governor has claimed in a post on his Telegram channel on Thursday. There were no casualties after the attack on the facility near the town of Klintsy, owned by Russia’s Rosneft oil company, though one storage tank was partly damaged, the governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said.
Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, claimed that seven settlements in the Russian region have been left without electricity after Ukrainian shelling over the border.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, claimed that in the last 24 hours Russians have killed three residents of the Donetsk region, and injured two more.
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The US has serious concerns about the docking of a sanctioned Russian cargo vessel at a South African naval port in December and has raised those concerns directly with multiple South African officials, state department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters.
The US envoy to South Africa said he was confident a Russian ship had picked up weapons in South Africa, in a possible breach of Pretoria’s declared neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.
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The EU has not observed any significant smuggling of weapons into Europe from wartime Ukraine, the European Commission’s top internal affairs official said during a visit to Kyiv.
“I must say that we have not seen any industrial smuggling of firearms out of Ukraine,” European home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said in an interview with Reuters.
Johansson said some individual cases of small arms being taken out of Ukraine had been recorded.
They were mostly individuals attempting to take weapons out as trophies or for personal protection and “they’re being taken, of course, at the border by the border guards,” she said.
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Here are more details on the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, accusing the country of providing weapons to Russia on a cargo ship that docked secretly at a naval base near Cape Town for three days in December.
Brigety said the US was certain that weapons were loaded on to the vessel at the Simon’s Town naval base and then transported to Russia, according to the reports in South African news outlets.
Brigety said South Africa’s alleged arming of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine was “extremely serious” and called into question South Africa’s supposed neutral stance in the conflict.
“Among the things we [the US] noted was the docking of the cargo ship in the Simon’s Town naval base between the 6 and 8 December 2022, which we are confident uploaded weapons and ammunition on to that vessel in Simon’s Town as it made its way back to Russia,” Brigety was quoted as saying to reporters during a news conference in Pretoria.
The South African government has since criticised the ambassador’s remarks and said it has undertaken an independent inquiry to look into the allegations.
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A 60-year-old Russian woman was given a two-year suspended sentence on Thursday for leaving a note with an “insulting inscription” on the grave of President Vladimir Putin’s parents, independent news sites reported.
Prosecutors had sought a three-year suspended sentence for Irina Tsybaneva, who in October was charged with desecrating the grave in St Petersburg with a note referring to Putin’s mother and father as “the parents of a maniac”.
“Death to Putin, you raised a freak and a murderer,” the note said, urging the deceased parents to “take him with you”.
According to the Sota news site, Tsybaneva does not plan to appeal against the verdict.
She said she wrote the note after she watched the news about the war in Ukraine and “understood that everything is very scary, everything is very sad, and there are many dead”, according to another news outlet, Mediazona.
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A Russian tycoon is suing the UK government over the seizure of his £38m superyacht in London shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Sergei Georgievich Naumenko, a property developer who is not on the UK’s Russia sanctions list, has filed a high court claim against the Department for Transport (DfT) demanding it free his 58.5-metre (192ft) long superyacht Phi and pay damages.
The seizure of the vessel in March 2022 was announced by the then transport secretary Grant Shapps who said impounding it had “turned an icon of Russia’s power and wealth into a clear and stark warning to [Vladimir] Putin and his cronies”.
“Detaining the Phi proves, yet again, that we can and will take the strongest possible action against those seeking to benefit from connections to Putin’s regime,” Shapps added.
Officers from the National Crime Agency boarded the vessel in March 2022 in Canary Wharf, where it has remained detained ever since.
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Polish minister says army failed to inform government about missile
Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, has confirmed that the army was aware of a possible missile heading towards the country in December but failed to inform the government.
Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, especially since two people were killed near the border last November by what Warsaw concluded was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.
Polish media have reported in recent days that a military object found in a forest in northern Poland in April was a Russian KH-55 missile, and that Polish services had seen an object entering the country’s airspace in December but then lost track of it, Reuters reported.
Blaszczak said an inspection he requested showed that Armed Forces Operational Command had received information from Ukraine about the object, but failed to take appropriate action.
“It was established that on 16 December, the air operations centre subordinate to the operational commander received information from the Ukrainian side about an object approaching Polish space, which may be a missile,” Blaszczak said.
“According to the findings of the inspection, the operational commander failed to perform his duties of informing me … and other services provided for in the procedures about the object that appeared in Polish airspace.”
Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, reiterated earlier on Thursday that he heard about the existence of the military object found in a Polish forest for the first time in April.
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Officials from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations on Thursday discussed recent UN proposals on a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain, which Moscow has threatened to quit on 18 May over obstacles to its own grain and fertiliser exports.
“The meeting discussed the recent proposals by the United Nations, namely the resumption of the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline, the longer extension of the deal, improvements at the Joint Coordination Centre for stable operations and exports, as well as other issues raised by the parties,” the UN said.
“The parties presented their views and agreed to engage with those elements going forward,” the UN said in a statement.
Ramaphosa government looking into reports South Africa sent arms to Russia
South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said that his government was looking into news reports that South Africa provided weapons to Russia, when asked about the matter by an opposition leader in parliament.
US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told South African media at a briefing on Thursday that Washington believed a Russian vessel had uploaded weapons and ammunition from South Africa in December.
“The matter is being looked into and in time we will be able to speak about it,” Ramaphosa told lawmakers.
Brigety said US officials had concerns about South Africa’s professed neutrality regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Among the things we noted were the docking of the Russian cargo ship Lady R in Simon’s Town between 6 December and 8 December 2022, which we are confident uploaded weapons, ammunitions … as it made its way back to Russia,” Brigety said in the briefing, according to a recording reviewed by Reuters.
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Here are some images of the destruction caused by shelling which took place last night in Malokaterynivka, part of the Zaporizhzhia region in the south-east of Ukraine.
Eight people sustained injuries from cluster shells, including three ambulance crew members who arrived at the scene of the attack.
The Times of London has a little more detail on the confirmation that the UK is to send longer range cruise missiles to Ukraine. It writes:
Storm Shadow cruise missiles have a typical range of around 155 miles, enabling Ukraine to strike deep behind the frontlines and disrupt Russian supply lines before a spring counter-offensive.
Rishi Sunak promised the missiles during a visit by President Zelenskiy to the UK in February. He reiterated his pledge at the Munich security conference later that month, saying that Kyiv needed protection from “Russian bombs and Iranian drones”.
The missiles cost about £2.2m and can be fired at targets as far as 350 miles away, but modified versions for export have a shorter range of about 155 miles. Usually fitted to Typhoon fighter jets, they have been used to strike targets in Libya and Syria.
It is not clear which Ukrainian aircraft the air-to-surface missiles will be attached to or how many will be included in the latest package of lethal aid, but experts have previously suggested that they could be strapped to MiG-29s operated by the Ukrainian air force without much difficulty.
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People at the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency have held a minute’s silence at their offices in Paris for video journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed by a Russian rocket.
Soldin, 32, died in Ukraine after a Russian Grad missile hit near the eastern city of Bakhmut on 9 May 2023. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers and reporting with colleagues from the town of Chasiv Yar when the rocket struck. The rest of the team were uninjured.
Photograph: Reuters
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is looking forward to welcoming President Lula to Ukraine after meeting Brazil’s special adviser on foreign policy, Celso Amorim.
In a tweet, Ukraine’s president said:
Met with special adviser on foreign policy to the president of Brazil, Celso Amorim. Emphasised that the only plan capable of stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine is the Ukrainian Peace Formula.
We discussed the possibility of holding the Ukraine-Latin America summit. I look forward to continuing dialogue with President Lula and welcoming him to Ukraine.
Met with Special Advisor on Foreign Policy to the President of Brazil Celso Amorim. Emphasized that the only plan capable of stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine is the Ukrainian Peace Formula. We discussed the possibility of holding the Ukraine-Latin America Summit. I look…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) May 11, 2023
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The agriculture ministers of five eastern EU states called on the bloc to correct regulations restricting the import of Ukrainian agricultural products, the Polish news agency PAP reported, citing sources.
According to a letter signed by the agriculture ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, the import ban introduced on 2 May does not apply to goods imported under contracts concluded before that date, creating a risk that undated contracts could be cleared by customs, PAP reports.
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The UK has pledged to donate Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, announced in parliament today.
Progress was made in talks on the Black Sea grain deal held in Istanbul by the deputy defence ministers of Turkey, Russia and Ukraine as well as UN officials, Turkey’s defence ministry said.
The parties agreed to continue four-way technical meetings on the deal, which will expire on 18 May, the ministry said in a statement.
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Germany led calls urging caution against targeting China under new EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, during a discussion among the bloc’s 27 countries on proposed new restrictions, five diplomatic sources said.
Italy backed Germany’s proposal to target foreign companies, rather than countries, over any circumvention of existing sanctions, according to the sources familiar with the closed-door discussion on Wednesday. The diplomats spoke under condition of anonymity.
Germany’s diplomatic mission to the EU declined to comment, Reuters said.
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Norway took over as chair of the Arctic Council from Russia on Thursday, despite a freeze in cooperation between the western Arctic states and Moscow on the regional polar body due to the invasion of Ukraine.
Norway offered to organise a meeting of the Arctic Council in 2025, the statement said, a significant move because all members participate in meetings, meaning Russia would also be invited, Reuters reported.
“Acknowledging the conclusion of the Russian Federation’s second chairmanship … and accepting Norway’s offer to chair the council in 2023-2025, and its offer to host the 14th meeting in 2025,” the members of the council said in the statement, datelined from Salekhard, Siberia.
The Arctic Council was created in 1996 to discuss issues affecting the polar region, ranging from pollution to local economic development to search-and-rescue missions.
It comprises the eight Arctic states of Russia, the United States, Canada, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.
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Gerhard Schröder, former German chancellor, was guest of honour at Russian embassy Victory Day event
It has emerged that Gerhard Schröder, the former German leader discredited over his failure to denounce his friendship to and business ties with Vladimir Putin, was the guest of honour at a reception hosted by the Russian embassy in Berlin on Tuesday evening to mark Victory Day, or the role of the Soviet Red Army in conquering Nazi Germany in 1945.
Schröder and his wife, So-yeon Schröder-Kim, reportedly rubbed shoulders with Egon Krenz, 86, the last communist leader of East Germany (GDR). Krenz was forced to resign when the Berlin Wall fell, and was later sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his role in the crimes of the communist regime, in particular the fatal shootings of people trying to escape the GDR.
Other guests included the leadership of the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) and high-ranking members of the far-left party Die Linke. Guests were served champagne and caviar according to reports.
Schröder, who was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 was a strong advocate for the Nord Stream gas pipeline during his time in office. He has since had roles in the companies Rosneft and Gazprom which he has now officially renounced.
After his resignation from the board of Rosneft over EU sanction concerns, he was spotted in Moscow a year ago by a German reporter, to whom he said:
I’m having a few days holiday in Moscow – it’s a beautiful city.
Pictures of the Schröders, and other guests at the embassy, were leaked to the tabloid Bild.
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Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces have continued to advance in the western part of Bakhmut and paratroops were providing support around the Ukrainian city’s flanks, Russian news agencies reported.
The head of the Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said one unit of Russia’s army had abandoned its supporting position and that Ukrainian forces had made gains towards the city as part of a long-awaited counteroffensive by Kyiv.
Reuters could not independently verify either of the assertions, which came amid an escalating dispute between Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian defence ministry over the conduct of the invasion, now in its 15th month.
Prigozhin said that Ukrainian operations were proving to be “unfortunately, partially successful”, in an audio message posted on his Telegram channel.
He said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was “being deceptive” when he said Ukraine’s counteroffensive had been delayed as it waited for more aid from foreign countries. Prigozhin said the counteroffensive was actually going ahead at full speed around Bakhmut.
Russian forces, spearheaded by Wagner, have been waging a bloody assault on the city, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, since last summer. Prigozhin last week claimed his forces controlled about 95%, but threatened to pull out if Moscow did not deliver more ammunition to his fighters.
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UK says it is sending long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine
The UK’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has confirmed reports that the UK is donating long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine.
He told MPs in the House of Commons:
Today I can confirm that the UK is donating Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine.
Storm Shadow is a long-range, conventional-only, precision strike capability.
The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality, especially the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which is against international law.
Ukraine has a right to be able to defend itself against this.
CNN first reported the decision, citing multiple senior western officials.
It said Britain had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia.
Wallace said he would not give further details about the capabilities but added that “while these weapons will give Ukraine new capability, members should recognise that these systems are not even in the same league as the Russian AS-24 killjoy hypersonic missile” or “even the Kalibr cruise missile with a range of over 2,000km, roughly seven times that of a Storm Shadow missile”.
He added:
We will simply not stand by as Russia kills civilians.
Russia must recognise that its actions alone have led to such systems being provided to Ukraine.
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The UK’s commitment to be the first country to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles still stands, Downing Street has said amid reports Britain has already supplied the nation with the weaponry.
Asked about the reports before a statement by the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, in the Commons today, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
The prime minister announced … [the UK] would be the first country to provide long-range weapons to Ukraine. That has not changed.
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The Kremlin has criticised a decision by the United States to transfer to Ukraine the confiscated assets of the conservative Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, saying it was illegal and would backfire on Washington.
On Wednesday, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, authorised millions of dollars-worth of Malofeyev’s confiscated assets to be sent for use in Ukraine, the first such instance of confiscated Russian money being used in such a way, Reuters reported.
Asked about the case, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the US had “stolen” the money, and such decisions would “hit it like a boomerang”.
“This undermines the confidence of investors and owners of assets that are somehow connected with America, and this certainly cannot remain without consequences for the United States,” he said.
Peskov said such steps demanded a response but did not say what action Russia would take. He said there was no possibility of contesting it via a lawsuit in the US because “we do not have the opportunity to defend our rights in court”.
The US justice department charged Malofeyev last year with violating sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, saying he had provided financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea.
Garland said the case marked the first US transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine but it would not be the last.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine needs “more time” before it can launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, adding that some armoured vehicles promised by the west had yet to arrive.
The president said newly formed brigades were ready to attack: “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Zelenskiy’s comments in an interview with several media outlets including the BBC are the clearest sign yet that a big Ukrainian military push is unlikely to take place in the next few weeks.
Ukrainian commanders say Kyiv still lacks vital weapons needed for a successful large-scale campaign. They include long-range artillery systems with a range of 300km, capable of hitting Russian ammunition stores and command centres.
They are increasingly concerned that if the counteroffensive makes only modest territorial gains, Ukraine’s western partners will put pressure on Kyiv to accept an unfavourable peace deal with Moscow.
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The founder of Russia’s Wagner group mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Thursday that Ukrainian units had begun their counterattack and were approaching Bakhmut from the flanks.
In a comment his press service published on Telegram in response to a Russian media request about Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive, Prigozhin said Ukrainian operations were “unfortunately, partially successful”.
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Morning summary
The time in Kyiv is 1pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s news so far:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the country needs more time to prepare for a much-anticipated spring counter-offensive, saying, “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Zelenskiy said the army had combat brigades that were ready, but were still short of promised armoured vehicles, which were slowly arriving. He stressed that Ukraine was not prepared to cede any territory for peace, saying: “Everyone will have an idea. They can’t pressure Ukraine into surrendering territories. Why should any country of the world give Putin its territory?”
Zelenskiy again denied any Ukrainian responsibility for the drone incident over the Kremlin, saying: “They constantly look for something to sound like a justification, saying: ‘You do this to us, so we do that to you.’ But it didn’t work. Even for their domestic public, it didn’t work”. Russia has accused Washington and Kyiv of masterminding the attack, which it described as an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, and no injuries were caused by the drones.
Britain has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, CNN reported, citing multiple senior western officials. The Ministry of Defence declined to comment, Reuters reported. CNN first reported the decision, citing multiple senior western officials. It said Britain had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia.
A Ukrainian military commander has said that Russian forces in Bakhmut had been pushed back by up to 2km in some areas, after counter-offensives. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, made the comments in a post on Telegram. He said: “In some areas of the front, the enemy could not resist the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers.”
Russia’s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult” but certain goals have been achieved, Tass cited the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, as saying on Wednesday. Russia has succeeded in severely damaging Ukraine’s military machine and this work will continue, he added.
A Ukrainian drone attacked an oil storage depot in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the local governor has claimed in a post on his Telegram channel on Thursday. There were no casualties after the attack on the facility near the town of Klintsy, owned by Russia’s Rosneft oil company, though one storage tank was partially damaged, the governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, reiterated on Thursday that he heard about the existence of a military object found in a Polish forest for the first time in April. On Wednesday two Polish media outlets reported that the object found in the forest was a Russian KH-55 missile which could have fallen there in December, Reuters reported.
Belgorod’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has claimed that seven settlements in the Russian region have been left without electricity after Ukrainian shelling over the border.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, has claimed that in the last 24 hours Russians have killed three residents of Donetsk region, and wounded two more.
Sweden’s national prosecutor said on Thursday a 50-year-old man had been charged with illegally spreading classified information about a large number of defence installations. Sweden is hoping to be ratified as a member Nato later this year.
Russia’s oil pipeline operator Transneft said on Wednesday that a filling point on the Europe-bound Druzhba pipeline in a border area between Russia and Ukraine had been targeted in a “terrorist” attack, according to the Tass news agency. Transneft said nobody was injured in the incident, which it called a “terrorist attack”, according to Reuters.
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Britain has supplied Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles – CNN
Britain has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, CNN reported, citing multiple senior western officials.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment, Reuters reported. CNN first reported the decision, citing multiple senior western officials. It said Britain had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia.
Last week, a British-led group of European countries asked companies for expressions of interest to supply Ukraine with missiles with a range of up to 190 miles, but Britain said on Tuesday that no final decision on supplying the weapons had been taken.
Britain and other western countries have scaled up their pledges of military aid for Ukraine this year.
Britain said in January it would send 14 of its main Challenger 2 battle tanks to Ukraine that helped prompt other nations including the US and Germany to also supply tanks.
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Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, reiterated on Thursday that he heard about the existence of a military object found in a Polish forest for the first time in April.
On Wednesday two Polish media outlets reported that the object found in the forest was a Russian KH-55 missile which could have fallen there in December, Reuters reported.
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Belgorod’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has claimed that seven settlements in the Russian region have been left without electricity after Ukrainian shelling over the border.
Tass, Russia’s state-owned news agency, reports a power line was damaged by shells in the village of Cheremoshnoe. Gladkov said there were no casualties.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, one of the occupied regions of the Donbas which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed, has posted a situational update about attacks on civilians to Telegram. He writes:
Yesterday, the Russians shelled Oleksandrivka, relatively remote from the front, wounding two people and damaging a farm building.
In the Donetsk direction, the Kurakhove community came under fire five times: There was no information about casualties and damage.
In Kostyantynivka, one person was injured, a cinema, an infrastructure object and a private house were damaged. Seven houses were damaged in Chasiv Yar, another seven in Toretsk. Eight houses were damaged in Zvanivka.
In just one day, the Russians killed three residents of Donetsk region and wounded two more.
The claims have not been independently verified. The Russian Federation has repeatedly denied targeting civilians and civilian infrastruture during what it calls its “special military operation”. Since February 2022 the UN has recorded 18,280 casualties (6,596 killed and 11,684 injured) in territories controlled by Kyiv’s government.
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A Ukrainian drone attacked an oil storage depot in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the local governor has claimed in a post on his Telegram channel on Thursday.
There were no casualties after the attack on the facility near the town of Klintsy, owned by Russia’s Rosneft oil company, though one storage tank was partially damaged, Reuters reports the governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
The claims have not been independently verified.
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Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires.
Zelenskiy: we 'need more time' for counter-offensive
In an interview with several media outlets, including the BBC, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the country needs more time to prepare for a much-anticipated spring counter-offensive. He told viewers:
We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.
He said that the army had combat brigades that were ready, but were still short of promised armoured vehicles, which were slowly arriving.
Zelenskiy stressed that Ukraine was not prepared to cede any territory for peace, saying: “Everyone will have an idea. They can’t pressure Ukraine into surrendering territories. Why should any country of the world give Putin its territory?”
With regard to the drone incident over the Kremlin, Zelenskiy again denied any Ukrainian responsibility, saying:
They constantly look for something to sound like a justification, saying: ‘You do this to us, so we do that to you.’ But it didn’t work. Even for their domestic public, it didn’t work. Even their own propagandists didn’t believe that. Because it looked very, very artificial.
He also said that Ukrainians were beginning to experience the effect of Russian armament shortages on the battlefield, observing: “They still have a lot in their warehouses, but we already see that they’ve reduced shelling per day in some areas.”
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Sweden’s national prosecutor said on Thursday a 50-year-old man had been charged with illegally spreading classified information about a large number of defence installations.
Sweden is hoping to be ratified as a member Nato later this year.
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The all clear is sounding across Ukraine.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that overnight in the Sumy region four separate communities have been shelled by Russian forces. Citing the regional authority, on its official Telegram channel it states that “40 explosions were recorded. There is damage and destruction.”
The claims have not been independently verified.
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An air raid warning has been declared across multiple regions of Ukraine including Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. This has been a frequent occurrence, multiple times a day, for some 15 months now since Russia staged its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Yan Gagin, an assistant to the Russian-imposed head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, has claimed that Ukraine is increasingly using fléchettes shells when attacking targets within the occupied Donetsk region. It quotes him saying:
We are increasingly recording the use by the enemy of artillery shells filled with fléchettes. They have been used especially actively lately.
Tass reports, “according to Gagin, the intensification of the use of ammunition with damaging elements is observed not only in the combat zone, but also in the frontline regions, including in the west of Donetsk.”
It states that in the Soviet years, fléchettes were used mainly in aircraft shells.
The claims have not been independently verified.
As the Guardian observed when Russia was found to be using fléchettes earlier in the war, the munitions themselves are not prohibited under international law, despite human rights groups long seeking a ban. However, the use of imprecise lethal weapons in densely populated civilian areas is a violation of humanitarian law.
In April 2022, Volodymyr Fito, a spokesperson for Ukrainian land forces command, told the Washington Post that the Ukrainian military does not use shells with fléchettes.
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US approves transfer of seized Russian assets for use in Ukraine
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has authorised the first transfer of forfeited Russian assets for use in Ukraine, he said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports the Justice Department last year charged the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev with violating sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, saying he provided financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea.
At that time, Garland said, he also announced “the seizure of millions of dollars from an account at a US financial institution traceable to Malofeyev’s sanctions violations”.
In February, Garland said he authorised the transfer of that money for use in Ukraine.
“While this represents the United States’ first transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine,” Garland said, “it will not be the last,” he said in a statement.
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Here is our full report on the record rise in the number of displaced people worldwide:
Kremlin calls Poland’s decision to rename Kaliningrad a ‘hostile act’
The Kremlin has described Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents as a “hostile act”, as ties continue to fray over the Ukraine war.
Kaliningrad, which sits in an exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic coast, was known by the German name of Königsberg until after the second world war, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to honour politician Mikhail Kalinin.
On Wednesday, Poland’s development minister, Waldemar Buda, said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Królewiec, its name when it was ruled by the Kingdom of Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries.
“We do not want Russification in Poland and that is why we have decided to change the name in our native language of Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region,” Buda said.
Warsaw says Kalinin’s connection to the 1940 Katyn massacre – when thousands of Polish officers were executed by Soviet forces – had negative connotations.
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More now on what has been happening in Zaporizhzhia: The Moscow-installed governor of the region ordered civilian evacuations from the area last Saturday, including from the nearby city of Enerhodar where most plant workers live. The full scope of the evacuation order was not clear.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant days after Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian occupiers left the Ukrainian staff in place to keep the plant running but the exact number of workers currently at the plant is not known.
Fighting near the plant has fuelled fears of a potential catastrophic incident like the one at Chornobyl, in northern Ukraine, where a reactor exploded in 1986 and contaminated a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Zaporizhzhia is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world. While its six reactors have been shut down for months, it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.
Number of internally displaced people reaches record worldwide
The number of internally displaced people reached a record 71.1 million worldwide last year due to conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and climate calamities like the monsoon floods in Pakistan, according to data published on Thursday and reported by Reuters.
The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said that figure represented a 20% increase since 2021. The IDMC said that nearly three-quarters of the world’s displaced people live in 10 countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine and Sudan, due to conflicts that prompted significant displacement in 2022.
The war in Ukraine triggered nearly 17 million displacements last year, it said.
“Conflict and violence triggered 28.3 million internal displacements worldwide, a figure three times higher than the annual average over the past decade,” it said.
But the bulk of displaced people last year – 32.6 million – was due to disasters including floods, droughts and landslides.
“The war in Ukraine also fuelled a global food security crisis that hit the internally displaced hardest. This perfect storm has undermined years of progress made in reducing global hunger and malnutrition,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
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Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant facing ‘catastrophic’ staff shortage
Russia plans to relocate about 2,700 Ukrainian staff from Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Ukraine’s atomic energy company has claimed, warning of a potential “catastrophic lack of qualified personnel” at the Zaporizhzhia facility in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.
Workers who signed employment contracts with Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom following Moscow’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia plant early in the war are set to be taken to Russia along with their families, Energoatom said in a Telegram post on Wednesday.
The company did not specify whether the employees would be forcibly moved out of the plant, nor was it immediately possible to verify Energoatom’s claims about Moscow’s plan.
Removing staff would “exacerbate the already extremely urgent issue” of staff shortages, Energoatom said.
Russian forces ‘constrained’ in Bakhmut, says ISW
Moscow’s forces in Bakhmut are constrained by “pervasive issues with Russian combat capability”, the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, has warned. “Continued attritional assaults” by Ukraine are futher limiting Russia’s progress in the city, the ISW said.
On Wednesday a Ukrainian military unit said it had routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to corroborate an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner group that the Russian forces had fled.
Later on Wednesday, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details.
Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city, but Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.
The ISW said in its daily update late on Wednesday:
Pervasive issues with Russian combat capability, exacerbated by continued attritional assaults in the Bakhmut area, are likely considerably constraining the ability of Russian forces in this area to defend against localized Ukrainian counterattacks. […] Issues with the ad hoc commitment of various depleted force groupings to the Bakhmut axis, alongside apparent command and control failures, are likely preventing Russian forces in the area from conducting sound defensive operations.
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Ukraine ‘operation’ is ‘difficult’ says Kremlin spokesperson
Russia’s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult” but will continue, Tass news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as telling a Bosnian television station on Wednesday.
Russia has succeeded in severely damaging the Ukrainian military machine and this work will continue, he added, in a long interview during which he repeated many of Moscow’s talking points about the conflict.
“The special military operation continues. This is a very difficult operation, and, of course, certain goals have been achieved in a year,” Tass quoted Peskov as saying.
Ukraine continues to shell eastern parts of the country occupied by Russia and Peskov said this demonstrated the need to continue the conflict and push pro-Kyiv forces back, Reuters reports.
“We managed to beat up the Ukrainian military machine quite a bit,” said Peskov, noting Russia had launched countless missile strikes against what he said were military targets across Ukraine.
“This work will continue,” he said. Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting mainly civilian targets, a charge Moscow denies.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.
Our top stories this morning: Russia’s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult” but certain goals have been achieved, Tass news agency cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying on Wednesday.
Russia has succeeded in severely damaging Ukraine’s military machine and this work will continue, he added.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, says Russian forces appear to be “constrained” in Bakhmut because of what it called ‘pervasive issues with Russian combat capability”.
We’ll have more detail for you shortly. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments in the war:
A Ukrainian military commander has said that Russian forces in Bakhmut had been pushed back by up to 2km in some areas, after counter offensives. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, made the comments in a post on Telegram. He said: “In some areas of the front, the enemy could not resist the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers.”
Russia’s oil pipeline operator Transneft said that a filling point on the Europe-bound Druzhba pipeline in a border area between Russia and Ukraine had been targeted in a “terrorist” attack, according to the Tass news agency. Transneft said nobody was injured in the incident, which it called a “terrorist attack”, according to Reuters.
It comes as Ukraine’s military said its forces have seriously damaged Russia’s 72nd independent motorised rifle brigade near Bakhmut, made up of thousands of troops. Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukrainian troops in the east, said the situation remained “difficult” in Bakhmut but Moscow was increasingly forced to use regular army units because of heavy losses among the Wagner private army group.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecution office on Wednesday announced it had opened an investigation for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity after an AFP video journalist was killed on Tuesday by Grad rocket fire near Chasiv Yar, in eastern Ukraine.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday he thought the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal could be extended for at least two more months, as officials held the first day of talks on an extension in Istanbul. Russia has said it would not extend the pact beyond 18 May unless a list of demands is met to remove obstacles to its own grain and fertiliser exports. Cavusoglu was speaking to reporters on his return from a trip to Moscow.
Russian forces are planning to “evacuate” more than 3,000 workers from the town that serves the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, resulting in a “catastrophic lack” of personnel, Ukraine’s state-owned Energoatom company claimed on Wednesday.
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been criticised again for his links to Russia after attending a Victory Day party at the Russian embassy in Berlin. Schröder was seen at the reception on Tuesday marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, along with senior figures from the far-right Alternative for Germany party and the far-left Linke party.
Russia may formally “denounce” the treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe that it pulled out of in 2015, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
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