Fears are growing for hundreds of civilians holed up in the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol, with the last remaining, outgunned contingent of Ukrainian fighters. Russia’s defence ministry said it was ready to allow civilians to leave the steelworks if Ukrainian forces surrendered. But according to Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, Russian forces are continuing to drop bombs on the plant.
The Russian military official Rustam Minnekayev said Russia planned to take full control of Donbas and southern Ukraine as part of the second phase of its military operation. Russia intends to forge a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas, he said, adding that control of Ukraine’s south will give Russia another gateway to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria.
The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, held a call with Vladimir Putin this morning. An EU official said Michel urged the Russian leader to engage directly with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The Kremlin said Putin accused the Ukrainian side of being “inconsistent” in negotiations.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said he was planning to hold phone calls with Zelenskiy and Putin in the coming days. When asked about peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow, Erdoğan told reporters that he was “not without hope”.
Russia has been hiding evidence of its “barbaric” war crimes in Mariupol by burying the bodies of civilians killed by shelling in a new mass grave that could hold as many as 9,000 dead, local officials said. It comes after a US satellite imagery company released photos that appeared to match the site.
The UN human rights office said it had seen growing evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, describing the war as a “horror story of violations against civilians”. The UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, said “almost every resident” of the town of Bucha had a story about the death of a relative, a neighbour or even a stranger.
The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said he would visit Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear plant next week. Grossi will head an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission “to deliver vital equipment and conduct radiological and other assessments at the site”, which was held by Russian forces for five weeks, the agency said in a statement.
Boris Johnson has said he will close loopholes to ensure UK exports to India cannot end up being used in Russian weapons. Speaking in Delhi at the end of a two-day visit, the UK prime minister conceded the war in Ukraine could go on until the end of next year, and Russia could win. Johnson also announced that Britain is to reopen its Kyiv embassy.
A Ukrainian Antonov AN-26 military transport plane came down in a field near Mykhailivka, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ivan Ariefiev, the military press secretary for the region, said investigators were working to establish the cause. The Guardian’s correspondents at the scene saw one dead man among the wreckage.
Russia has opened a criminal case against a prominent opposition activist on suspicion of spreading false information about Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine, his lawyer said. Vladimir Kara-Murza was detained outside his home in Moscow on 11 April, hours after CNN aired an interview in which he criticised Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
