Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, said Vladimir Putin will “turn to more drastic means” to achieve his objectives in Ukraine. Haines told the Senate armed services committee that the Russian president was “preparing for prolonged conflict” in Ukraine and that his strategic goals have “probably not changed”.
Ukraine’s vital Black Sea port of Odesa came under repeated missile attack, including from some hypersonic missiles. One person was killed and five were wounded after seven Russian missiles hit a shopping centre and depot on Monday, the military said.
The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is “thousands higher” than official figures, the head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in the country said. The official UN civilian death toll in Ukraine stands at 3,381, as well as 3,680 injured.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged the international community to take immediate steps to end a Russian blockade of his country’s ports in order to allow wheat shipments and prevent a global food crisis.
At least 100 civilians remain in the Azovstal steelworks under heavy Russian fire in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an aide to the city’s mayor has said.
Ukrainian officials have said they found the bodies of 44 civilians in the rubble of a building that was destroyed weeks ago in the north-east of the country. The bodies were found in a five-storey building that collapsed in March in Izium.
Russia’s underestimation of Ukrainian resistance and its “best-case scenario” planning have led to “demonstrable operational failings, preventing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from announcing significant military success in Ukraine” at the 9 May Victory Day parade, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and her Dutch counterpart, Wopke Hoekstra, visited areas around Kyiv devastated by the war on a surprise visit. In a press conference, Baerbock said Ukraine should become a full member of the European Union at some point but that there could be no shortcut to membership.
France has said a deal on a proposed EU ban on Russian oil could be struck this week, despite opposition from the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has compared the plans to an atomic bomb. Clément Beaune, an ally of Macron and France’s Europe minister, said he thought “we could strike a deal this week”.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, spoke in a call on Tuesday. The two heads of state “reiterated their commitment to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine,” the Élysée said. Chinese state media said Xi warned Macron that confrontation between blocs resulting from the Ukraine crisis could become a bigger and more lasting threat to global peace than the crisis itself.
Russia has been blamed for a massive cyber-attack against a satellite internet network an hour before Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. The digital attack on Viasat’s KA-SAT network in late February took thousands of modems offline and helped facilitate Putin’s invasion of the country, the Council of the EU said.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, will visit Finland and Sweden on Wednesday, as the two Nordic countries consider whether to apply for Nato membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Downing Street said Johnson would have discussions on “broader security issues” during his visit to Finland followed by Sweden.
