Civilians are being evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, where about 1,000 people are thought to be sheltering. The first group of 100 was being led away by late afternoon on Sunday, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The effort was being led by the Red Cross, and coordinated with Ukraine and Russia.
Two groups of nearly 60 people have already been evacuated to the village of Bezimenne in Donetsk, with Reuters witnessing buses arriving on Saturday and Sunday.
The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has become the highest-ranking US official to visit Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, where she met president Zelenskiy. In a press conference afterwards, Pelosi said the US would not be bullied. “If they are making threats, you cannot back down,” she said.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has rejected criticism of Germany’s reluctance to send heavy weapons to Ukraine, as an opinion poll by the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag found that a majority of Germans disagreed with his approach.
The governor of the north-eastern city of Kharkiv has urged people not to leave shelters on Sunday, because of intense shelling.
Pope Francis has described the war in Ukraine as a “macabre regression of humanity” that makes him “suffer and cry”, in a Sunday address in St Peter’s Square.
Russia’s defence ministry has confirmed an attack on an airfield near Odesa on Saturday. It said its forces had destroyed a runway and hangar at an airfield that contained weapons supplied by the US and EU.
One person has been injured in a fire at a Russian defence facility in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine.
Zelenskiy has said Ukrainian forces have destroyed about 1,000 Russian tanks, 2,500 armoured vehicles, and almost 200 aircraft. In an address on Saturday night, he said Ukraine would be free. “All … temporarily occupied cities and communities in which the occupiers are now pretending to be masters will be liberated.”
Ukraine has carried out a prisoner exchange with Russia, with seven soldiers and seven civilians going home. One of the soldiers was a woman five months pregnant.
The Russian military has killed twice as many Mariupol residents in two months of war as Nazi Germany did in its two years occupying the city during the second world war.
The Hollywood actor and UN humanitarian envoy Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, the regional governor has said on Telegram. Jolie, who has been a UNHCR special envoy for refugees since 2011, came to speak to displaced people who found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April. “She was very moved by [the children’s] stories,” Maksym Kozytskiy wrote.
The UK Foreign Office is investigating reports that a British national has been detained by Russia after a video emerged showing a man in camouflage clothes being questioned. In the unverified video, reportedly shown on Russian television, the man appeared to give his name as Andrew Hill. He spoke with an English accent, had his arm in a sling, a bandage around his head, and a bloodied hand.
Ukrainian police found the bodies of three civilian men in the Bucha district, north of Kyiv, tied up and in some cases gagged, the regional police chief has said. He said the bodies were found to have several gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
Russian troops were forced to merge and redeploy units from their “failed advances” in Ukraine’s north-east, the UK Ministry of Defence has said, as both Kyiv and Moscow dealt with serious losses in the Donbas region. “Russia hopes to rectify issues that have previously constrained its invasion by geographically concentrating combat power, shortening supply lines and simplifying command and control.”
Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tonnes” of grain in the areas of Ukraine they occupy, according to Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister.
Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, as part of its renewed push in the east of the country, while claiming that the “draft of a possible treaty” between the two countries was being discussed on a daily basis.
