A summary of today's developments
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there was fighting in the streets but that Russia had still not taken control of Bakhmut. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is fighting in the city and there are also street fights but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces they still haven’t taken control over the city.”
A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.
Ukraine’s emergency services reported on Saturday that the death toll from a Russian missile strike on Thursday that hit a five-storey apartment block in southern Ukraine had risen to 11.
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, has urged speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine to give the Ukrainians “the tools they need to do the job”.
Russian artillery has been pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city in the east of Ukraine. Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces in Ukraine. In a statement published on Telegram, the country’s defence ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the south Donetsk direction”.
In its latest intelligence update, the Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian forces were under “severe pressure” in Bakhmut, adding that Ukrainian resupply routes out of the besieged city were becoming “increasingly limited”.
The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday. She said she was “hopeful” negotiations could begin “this year”.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s description of the Russian invasion as “the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people” was met with laughter at an event in Delhi.
The US has announced a military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, and said President Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he was confident that western countries would supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he was optimistic that the war would end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expected to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.
The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, met Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday.
Майбутнє України залежить від молоді.
— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) March 4, 2023
Разом із @ZelenskyyUa познайомилася зі студентами Львівського національного університету ім. І. Франка.
Молоді чоловіки та жінки з надією на світліше майбутнє. І бажанням відіграти важливу роль у відбудові України.
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Ukraine’s ministry of defence has tweeted its latest figures on the conflict.
"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training."
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 4, 2023
Archilochus
Total combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to March 4, 2023: pic.twitter.com/ZzvFPRwbPd
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Death toll from Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia rises to 11
The death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 11 on Saturday after a woman’s body was found in the debris, the state emergency service said.
One child was among those killed in Thursday’s early-morning strike on the five-storey residential building, the service said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Officials from the regional administration said in another post that a Russian S-300 missile had hit the building.
Updated
Updated
The time in Kyiv is just gone 6pm. Here is a summary of events so far.
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there was fighting in the streets but that Russia had still not taken control of Bakhmut. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is fighting in the city and there are also street fights but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces they still haven’t taken control over the city.”
A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.
Ukraine’s emergency services reported on Saturday that the death toll from a Russian missile strike on Thursday that hit a five-storey apartment block in southern Ukraine had risen to 10.
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, has urged speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine to give the Ukrainians “the tools they need to do the job”.
Russian artillery has been pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city in the east of Ukraine. Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces in Ukraine. In a statement published on Telegram, the country’s defence ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the south Donetsk direction”.
In its latest intelligence update, the Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian forces were under “severe pressure” in Bakhmut, adding that Ukrainian resupply routes out of the besieged city were becoming “increasingly limited”.
The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday. She said she was “hopeful” negotiations could begin “this year”.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s description of the Russian invasion as “the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people” was met with laughter at an event in Delhi.
The US has announced a military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, and said President Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he was confident that western countries would supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he was optimistic that the war would end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expected to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.
Updated
Here are some images coming to us over the wires from Vuhledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine.
Updated
A Ukrainian armed forces spokesperson has denied claims of a mass withdrawal of Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the armed forces told CNN:
The fighting in Bakhmut is more on the outskirts, with the city controlled by Ukrainian defence forces: the armed forces of Ukraine, the border guard and the national guard.”
Responded to reports of the withdrawal of some units he added:
There is also no mass withdrawal of Ukrainian troops.”
Cherevatyi said that so far on Saturday:
There were 21 enemy attacks with the use of various artillery systems and MLRS near Bakhmut alone, and nine combat engagements. One hundred and thirty-one attacks and 38 combat engagements took place on this front in total.”
More than 150 Russian soldiers were killed and 239 were wounded, and three were taken prisoner, he added.
The Guardian has not been able to independently verify these figures.
Updated
A video posted online on Saturday by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner Group, showed what he said were coffins containing bodies of Ukrainian soldiers being repatriated to territory held by Kyiv.
In the video, Prigozhin, dressed in full military gear, said:
We are sending another shipment of Ukrainian army fighters home. They fought bravely, and perished. That’s why the latest truck will take them back to their motherland.”
The footage shows men in uniform nailing wooden coffins shut and loading them onto a truck, reports Reuters.
Prigozhin, whose Wagner Group has spearheaded Russia’s months-long assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut, has repeatedly praised the Ukrainian army as a worthy and capable adversary.
Race to get children out of Bakhmut
War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are “White Angels” and “Dark Angels”, the “road of life” (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the “Invincibility Centre”.
The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly.
Their counterparts, the Dark Angels, take out the dead. The Invincibility Centre is where the few thousands of civilians who remain can find water and hot food cooked by the volunteers who have stayed in the city, even as in the past fortnight it has faced an increasing threat of finally being overrun.
In a town to the west of the city, the Observer meets Oleksandra Havrylko, a 30-year-old police major who has recently spent time in Bakhmut and the surrounding villages with the White Angels, trying to persuade those caring for the last few dozen children to let them be evacuated.
It is a search that has led to rumours that police are taking children from parents who refuse to leave, which has prompted some families to hide their sons and daughters, inexplicable as that might seem.
“Unfortunately, it’s true,” she says sadly. “There have been cases of people hiding children because they’ve heard rumours that the police will take their children by force.
“But it’s not correct. The law says we can only take children with permission of the parents. If the children don’t have parents but have a guardian, we can get permission from social services to take them out.”
Instead, she says, they are required to persuade families to leave. Last week that meant a visit to a village just outside Bakhmut.
“We were looking for children. We had an address where we were told some children might be living. How we approach individuals depends on the situation.”
Read the full report here.
Updated
Death toll from Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia rises to 10
Ukraine’s emergency services reported on Saturday that the death toll from a Russian missile strike on Thursday that hit a five-storey apartment block in southern Ukraine has risen to 10.
The Main Directorate of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said in an online statement that rescuers overnight had pulled three more bodies from the wreckage, about 36 hours after a Russian missile tore through four floors of the building in the riverside city of Zaporizhzhia.
It said that a child was among those killed and that the rescue effort was ongoing, the Associated Press reported.
Updated
Woman killed and two men injured fleeing Bakhmut, say Ukrainian troops
A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.
A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told the Associated Press (AP) that it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave the city by vehicle, and that people had to flee on foot instead.
An AP team near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the city’s few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later, they saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove.
Bakhmut resident Hennadiy Mazepa and his wife Natalia Ishkova both chose to remain in Bakhmut, even as fierce battles reduced much of the city to rubble.
Speaking on Saturday, Ishkova said that they suffered from a lack of food and basic utilities.
Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas,” she said.
I pray to God that all who remain here will survive.”
Updated
The chief of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner has said his fighters had ‘practically encircled’ Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city the Kremlin has been trying to seize for months.
Only one road into the city remains under Ukrainian control, Yevgeny Prigozhin added in a video posted online in which he called on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to abandon the city.
While the claims by the head of the mercenary group could not be confirmed, the situation in the embattled city appeared to be extremely precarious, amid evidence Ukraine was preparing extensive defensive positions, including around the nearby city of Kramatorsk.
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Russian foreign minister's claims at conference met with laughter
Sergei Lavrov’s description of Russian invasion as “the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people” was met with laughter at an event in Delhi.
The foreign minister said Moscow would be looking for alternative energy partners, adding: “India and China are certainly among them”.
Updated
Ukraine EU membership talks could begin 'this year' – European parliament president
The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday.
Metsola, who was in the western city of Lviv, said:
I am hopeful that accession negotiations can begin already this year.
Ukraine’s future is in the European Union.
Brussels granted Kyiv formal candidate status in June last year, four months after Russia launched an all-out invasion, but the process of joining the European Union usually takes several years, Agence France-Presse reports.
A final decision will depend on EU member state governments, some of which are sceptical that Ukraine can recover from war and enact the necessary democratic and anti-corruption reforms to qualify for membership any time soon.
But Metsola, who met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, is among those in Brussels who are optimistic that both the membership bid and reforms can be fast-tracked.
She said:
The pace with which the Verkhovna Rada and the government is making progress on the EU application impresses me.
In a message on social media after the meeting, Zelenskiy thanked Metsola for her role in securing the European parliament’s support for the membership application.
He said:
Ukraine aims to complete the implementation of the recommendations of the European Commission as soon as possible and to start negotiations on joining the EU already this year.
Once formal negotiations begin, the European Commission will have to judge whether Kyiv has met the EU membership criteria in terms of good governance, democratic freedoms and the rule of law and then issue its opinion.
Then, the leaders of the 27 current EU memberships will decide if and when to admit Ukraine.
The process has often taken more than five years and for some candidates such as Turkey and the countries of the western Balkans it has all but ground to a halt.
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The Associated Press reports on the steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine where instead of its usual job of repairing mining equipment some workers are busy making metal bunkers for front-line troops.
The report adds that Ukrainian mining and metals company Metinvest launched the project, and the plant workers say they are happy to contribute to the resistance to Russia’s invasion.
They have already shipped 123 of the structures to areas that include eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces.
Each shelter requires nearly two tons of steel. The bunkers can accommodate up to six soldiers and need to be buried 1.5 metres (about 5 ft) underground,” the Associated Press adds.
“This is so they can rest, sit out the attacks,” said Petro Zhuk, who manages the 40-person team building the shelters.
The structures take 165 man-hours to produce including the prefabrication, his team can build one a day, Zhuk said.
Vitalii Yevzhenko, 54, a plant worker involved in assembling the bunkers, said he believes what he and his colleagues are doing is very important.
This is for the victory of Ukraine. The sooner the war ends, the better it will be.”
Germany is making slow progress in enforcing sanctions against Russian oligarchs and institutions, according to government numbers seen by Reuters on Saturday.
Germany has frozen around €5.25bn ($5.57bn) in assets belonging to sanctioned oligarchs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the German finance ministry.
The figure was €4.28bn six months ago.
The ministry shared the information in reply to a request from Christian Goerke, a member of the German parliament.
Goerke said:
Since December, only €200m in oligarch assets have been frozen, and for half a year, just one billion.
Not a single oligarch has reported his assets since December.”
Under Germany’s sanctions law, targets of European Union sanctions must declare their assets immediately, under penalty of a fine or up to a year in prison.
Eight oligarchs have reported 31 asset positions to the Bundesbank so far, according to government figures. The value equals about €577m. It is distributed among account balances, company holdings and securities.
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The Kyiv Independent reports that the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is in talks with the Ukrainian officials about building a tank plant in Ukraine, citing a report in the magazine Der Spiegel.
According to the company’s boss, Armin Papperger, a plant could be set up in Ukraine for around €200m and could produce up to 400 Panther-type main battle tanks annually.
Papperger described the talks with the Ukrainian government as “promising”, adding that he hoped for a decision “within the next two months”.
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More from BBC Radio 4’s Today.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, told the programme that some countries view the conflict in Ukraine as a “European war”.
He said:
There are many countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where the battle of the narrative has not been won, and that’s something that I think the West absolutely need to focus on.
I think there needs to be a recognition that many of the impacts of the war are hitting particularly African countries and other parts of the world very hard and that support needs to be given… and avoid the perception this is very much seen as a European war.”
On Bakhmut he said:
The Ukrainians have arguably achieved a strategic success thusfar in forcing the Russians to expend vast amounts of manpower and equipment in what is likely to be, if they take it, a Pyrrhic victory…”
He also urged for speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine.
What we’ve seen from the West and Nato countries is a sort of incremental supply … it’s dribbled in rather that coming in in a concentrated way. If they’d had the stuff that they need months ago, we probably wouldn’t be where we are now. So this places a real imperative on speeding up the supply, the integration, the logistics support, the training and all the other stuff that needs to be done to give the Ukrainians the tools they need to do the job.”
Russia has not taken control of Bakhmut, says deputy mayor
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets.
Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There is fighting in the city and there are also street fights but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces they still haven’t taken control over the city.
He said of the Russian attack:
Their only goal is killing people and the genocide of the Ukrainian people…the tactic that the Russians are using is the tactic of parched land.
They want to destroy Bakhmut, they want to destroy the city…and I honestly can’t understand why they’re doing this.”
He said they believed there were approximately “4,000 or 4,500” Ukrainian civilians in the city adding that “they did not know for sure” the exact number.
Those who are in Bakhmut are living in the shelters “there’s no water or gas or electricity”, he said, but they have been given heaters.
He added:
The city is almost destroyed and there’s not a single building that has remained untouched in this war.
There are completely detroyed, districts, buildings and apartment blocks.”
Updated
Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, giving added voice to a grassroots revolt in the party that threatens bipartisan support for the war against Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The Georgia congresswoman is a notorious provocateur who has made racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements and promoted bizarre conspiracy theories.
Yet she has emerged as a prominent voice in the House of Representatives after forging a bond with the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who vowed that Republicans will not write a “blank cheque” for Ukraine.
Greene told the Guardian that Joe Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”, a view widely held at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), America’s biggest annual gathering of conservatives.
“I think the US should be pushing for peace in Ukraine instead of funding and continuing a war that seems to be escalating and putting the entire world at risk of world war three,” Greene said during CPAC at the National Harbor in Maryland on Friday.
Greene called for US funding to cease immediately, insisting that, while she voted for a resolution to support the Ukrainian people and condemning Russia’s invasion, “we are actually accelerating a war there”.
She added: “We should be promoting peace. Europe should have peace and the United States should do their part. Ukraine is not a Nato member nation and Joe Biden said in the beginning he would not defend Ukraine because they’re not a Nato member nation. It doesn’t make sense and the American people do not support it.”
You can read the full report here:
Updated
Ukraine’s top prosecutor has said the country is moving towards opening an office of the international criminal court as Kyiv seeks to establish a special tribunal to prosecute the leadership in Moscow.
The ICC is currently investigating possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian troops during the war on Ukraine but it has no mandate to pursue the broader crime of aggression.
“Today, the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine approved a memorandum between the Ukraine government and the international criminal court, which will allow the opening of the office of the prosecutor of the international criminal court in Ukraine in the near future,” Andriy Kostin said.
Kostin told a justice conference in Lviv it will “allow the ICC prosecutor to more fully investigate international crimes committed in Ukraine”.
“However, there are currently no legal mechanisms that would allow the ICC to bring to justice for the crime of aggression those who planned and launched this brutal and unprovoked war,” Kostin said.
“This requires the establishment of a special international tribunal,” he added.
Speaking at the conference, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukraine “will further strengthen our relationship with the ICC”.
“Russian president Vladimir Putin and all his accomplices must receive lawful and fair sentences,” Zelenskiy said, adding that “over 70,000 Russian war crimes” have been registered in Ukraine.
Russian defence minister visits troops in Ukraine
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
In a statement published on Telegram, the country’s defence ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the South Donetsk direction”.
In video published by the ministry, Shoigu is seen awarding medals to Russian military personnel and touring a ruined town with the district’s commander, Col Gen Rustam Muradov.
Russia’s top military chiefs have visited the frontline in Ukraine only sparingly since Russia invaded the country a year ago.
Shoigu, who has served as defence minister since 2012, has come under harsh criticism of his performance during the war from pro-war advocates, with Wagner Group mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last month accusing him and others of “treason”.
Except, he wasn’t joking …
Speaking in India, whose government has been sympathetic to Putin’s claims on Ukraine and helped Moscow mitigate the effect of western sanctions, Lavrov says “the war we are trying to stop was launched against us.”
— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 3, 2023
The audience laughs at him.
pic.twitter.com/7ia9YVZGP6
Ukrainian forces under 'severe pressure' in Bakhmut, UK says
Ukrainian resupply routes out of the besieged city of Bakhmut are becoming “increasingly limited”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
In its latest intelligence update, the MoD tweeted that Kyiv is “reinforcing the area with elite units” and destroying key bridges, but Russian forces are making further advances.
“The Ukrainian defence of the Donbas town of Bakhmut is under increasingly severe pressure, with intense fighting taking place in and around the city,” the MoD said.
“Regular Russian Army and Wagner Group forces have made further advances into the northern suburbs of the city, which is now a Ukrainian-held salient, vulnerable to Russian attacks on three sides.
“Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, and within the last 36 hours two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed, including a vital bridge connecting the city to the last main supply route from Bakhmut to the city of Chasiv Yar.
“Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the town are increasingly limited.”
Updated
“It’s really frightening, especially at night,” Tetiana, 52, tells the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont. “Before we could tell who was firing, whether it was our guys or the Russians. Now it’s too loud to tell.”
Read Peter’s account from Kupiansk, a city liberated by the Ukrainian military in September but now once again under threat of Russian occupation.
Updated
Last routes out of Bakhmut under intense Russian shelling
Russian artillery is pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city in the east of Ukraine.
Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.
A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was damaged by Russian tank shelling.
Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline in a sign that Ukraine was not yet ready to give up the city.
To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited Bakhmut on Friday for briefings with local commanders on how to boost the defence capacity of frontline forces.
Denys Yaroslavskyi, a commander of a Ukrainian army unit in Bakhmut, told Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to rotate to more secured positions, describing the situation on Friday as “a slaughterhouse on both sides”.
The head of Russia’s Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had earlier said the city was almost completely surrounded with only one road still open for Ukraine’s troops.
Updated
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Our top story this morning:
There have been reports of intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, in an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the besieged city.
A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was also damaged by Russian tank shelling.
But in a sign that Kyiv was not yet ready to give up Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline. To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.
More on this story soon. Here are the other key recent developments:
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, met at the White House on Friday, where both leaders praised each other’s country’s support towards Ukraine. “As Nato allies, we’re making the alliance stronger and more capable,” Biden said. Scholz told Biden that it was important that the US and Germany organised in “lockstep” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, made an unannounced trip to Ukraine on Friday, according to Department of Justice officials. Garland had traveled to the western city of Lviv on an invitation from the Ukrainian prosecutor general, USA Today reported officials saying.
Serbia has denied that it has supplied weapons to Ukraine, its foreign minister said. Following Moscow’s demand on Thursday to know whether Serbia provided thousands of rockets to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Ivica Dačić said that zero weapons have been exported from the country to any parties involved in the “conflict”.
The US has announced a new military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said he is confident that western countries will supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he is optimistic that the war will end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expects to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.
Updated
