This blog is closed – coverage of the war in Ukraine continues here.
Yesterday Chinese state media published two interviews, with the foreign ministers of both Russia and Ukraine. It’s an interesting decision, and one they didn’t really push out on social media like they might usually with stories. China’s role in the conflict as a key “no limits” friend of Russia has been the subject of heated debate and discussion. It has put itself forward as a peacemaker but simultaneously refused to label Russia’s act as an invasion, and instead blamed the US and Nato for creating and escalating tensions.
Kuleba asked China to provide security guarantees for Kyiv, as well as from other permanent members of the UN Security Council, Xinhua reported.
“We propose that China becomes one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security, this is a sign of our respect and trust in the People’s Republic of China.”
China in 2013 pledged to provide Ukraine with “security guarantees” if it is ever invaded or threatened with nuclear attack, but appeared evasive on the same issue in the wake of Russia’s attack, according to AFP’s report which also noted:
In response to a question about the guarantee last month, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman suggested that such “security assurances have clear limitations on the content and are triggered under specific conditions”, in reference to a similar United Nations security resolution on non-nuclear states.
Since the invasion Chinese state media has amplified Russian propaganda, refused to condemn the attack or call it an invasion, and avoided attributed Ukrainian civilian casualties to Russian forces. It’s interesting then, that in publishing the interview it did not censor strong criticisms by Kuleba.
“European countries panic because they cannot guarantee Russia will not invade them tomorrow,” he said according to a translation by Politico reporter, Stuart Lau. “If Russia is not stopped now, it will lead to more crises a few years later.”
AFP notes Kuleba also accused Russia of having “compromised” Beijing’s signature Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, warning that the consequences of the global food security crisis would threaten China’s economy.
“We also believe that this war is not in China’s interests,” he was quoted as saying.
“The situation is not escalating because of Ukraine, we are exercising our right to defend ourselves,” he said, in an apparent rebuff of Chinese warnings against other states providing arms to Kyiv.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces has published an update of developments overnight. The updates were shared on Ukrainian Telegram channels. It reported Russian fire on Ukrainian troops in the Bryansk region, and air strikes and artillery fire near Slobozhansky. Russian forces were also conducting offensive operations near Izyum - Barvinkove and Izyum - Slovyansk, with about 300 weapons and pieces of equipment and about 1,000 personnel shifted in from Donetsk and Luhansk, it said.
“In the Donetsk and Tavriya directions, a group of enemy troops is taking active action along the entire section of the line of contact.”
In Donetsk and Luhansk Ukrainian forces claim to have repelled nine Russian attacks in the last 24 hours, destroying eight tanks, one artillery system, twenty-four units of armoured combat vehicles, one special vehicle and five cars (including two fuel tanks). Air defence units destroyed seven UAVs and two Su-25 aircraft, it said.
Reuters: Russia’s defence ministry said shelling by Ukraine’s forces of villages in the Kherson region has killed and injured civilians, the Russian RIA news agency reported early on Sunday.
The ministry said Ukrainian forces shelled a school, a kindergarten and a cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and Shyroka Balka. It gave no information on how many people were killed or injured, or when the shelling took place.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine to the report. Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Separately, local media earlier reported that mobile internet was down in the region.
⚡️Mobile service, internet shut down in partially occupied Kherson Oblast.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 30, 2022
Local media and authorities reported that the connection disappeared in the city of Kherson and several other districts. The reason behind the shutdown is not yet clear.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is underway, and the Ukraine conflict has already had a few mentions.
First, a tribute to the numerous deaths among members of the press working on the ground.
The White House Correspondent’s Dinner just ran a tribute to the journalists killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion two months ago https://t.co/xWoHovWHr0
— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) May 1, 2022
And a dig at Russian treatment of the press, by President Biden in his speech. (He’s addressing comedian Trevor Noah who will follow with his own speech).
President Biden: “Trevor you get to roast the President of the United States and unlike in Moscow, you won’t go to jail.”
— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) May 1, 2022
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba. The pair recently met in Kyv on 24 April.
According to a readout from the US department spokesman, Ned Price, Blinken updated Kuleba on plans for US government visits to Lviv this week, and plans to return to Kyiv, ahead of an eventual return of US diplomats to the country. Blinken “emphasised the United States’ robust support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s brutal aggression”, Price said.
The two also discussed a $33 billion request by the administration to Congress, for security, economic, and humanitarian aid to “empower Ukraine to defeat the Kremlin’s unconscionable war”.
Price did not provide any further details.
Spoke with Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba to follow up on our meetings in Kyiv. I highlighted the latest U.S. steps in supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of the Kremlin’s brutal, unprovoked war. #UnitedWithUkraine
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) April 30, 2022
Updated
More details here from Ukrainian president Zelenskiy’s earlier video address.
He said Ukrainian forces had so far destroyed about 1,000 Russian tanks, 2,500 armoured vehicles, and almost 200 aircraft. He said Russia was weakened but “the occupiers still have equipment in stock and missiles to strike our country”.
Demining work was continuing in the northern areas where Russian forces had been pushed out, he said, reporting 69% of de-occuppied settlements now had “full-fledged local self government” back.
Ukraine was in talks with partners about increasing sanctions against Russia, he said, and expected a decision on oil restrictions soon. “If any company or state helps Russia trade oil, it must also face sanctions”.
Zelenskiy also said he had recently spoken again with French president Macron about Ukraine joining the European Union, to UK prime minister Johnson about recent events, and to Swiss prime minister Cassis to thank him for the mediation role the country was serving and to discuss rebuilding.
The British Foreign Office said on Sunday Russia is using a troll factory to spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine on social media and target politicians across a number of countries including Britain and South Africa, Reuters reports.
Britain cited UK-funded expert research, which it did not publish. It said the research exposed how the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign was designed to manipulate international public opinion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, boost support for it and recruit new sympathisers.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
Russia says the Western media have provided an excessively partial narrative of the war that largely ignores Moscow’s concerns about the enlargement of NATO and what it says is the persecution of Russian speakers in Ukraine, something denied by Kyiv.
“We cannot allow the Kremlin and its shady troll farms to invade our online spaces with their lies about Putin*s illegal war,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.
“The UK Government has alerted international partners and will continue to work closely with allies and media platforms to undermine Russian information operations.”
Energy giants BP and Shell are expected to report increased profits this week despite taking a big hit from the war in Ukraine, writes Rob Davies.
For BP and Shell, the British companies that account for two of the world’s seven oil “supermajors”, the first quarter of 2022 has been painfully fascinating.
Both were heavily enmeshed in Russia and now face having to write down a combined £24bn on the value of their businesses, after cutting ties with the Kremlin.
Shell is expected to take a hit of £3.5bn due to its decision to exit its joint venture with Gazprom, Russia’s state gas giant, including its stake in the Sakhalin-2 gas project. BP accounts for the lion’s share of the eye-watering sum, due to its 20% stake in state oil firm Rosneft.
It seems only yesterday that BP announced it was taking the stake, in exchange for the takeover of its Russian assets by Rosneft, as part of a new alliance unveiled in a conference at the oil company’s salubrious London HQ.
BP boss Bob Dudley, who had himself fled Russia during a dispute with BP’s partners in a former joint venture there, announced the deal in 2013 alongside his new pal Igor Sechin, then chair of Rosneft.
Dudley is enjoying semi-retirement, while Sechin – nicknamed Darth Vader – sits at Putin’s right hand. The result, after discussions between the government and BP, is divestment and a £20bn hit. Rosneft accounted for £1.9bn of profit last year.
Looked at one way, that’s a lot of money. Looked at another, it’s practically chicken feed for a company that absorbed £50bn of costs from its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and lived to tell the tale. Moreover, the loss might have been more painful if it weren’t for the fact that oil companies have been making out like bandits due to sky-high oil and gas prices.
Read more here:
Hello, this is Helen Davidson here to take you through the next few hours of developments.
Summary of recent developments
It’s 2am in Ukraine.
- Twenty wounded civilians were able to evacuate from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, and are likely on their way to Zaporizhzhia. This comes as satellite images released today showed that nearly all the buildings of the steel plant had been destroyed.
- Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange with Russia, with seven soldiers and seven civilians coming home. One of the soldiers was a woman who is five months pregnant.
- A Russian missile strike on Odesa airport has damaged the runway, rendering it unusable, but there were no casualties from the attack.
- Currently, Lyman, a city of about 20,000 in the Donetsk region, is on fire from a Russian attack.
- Angelina Jolie visited Lviv today to meet children and others affected by the war.
- The Russian military has killed twice as many Mariupol residents in these two months of war as Nazi Germany did in its two years occupying the city during World War II.
- Boris Johnson has promised to provide additional military aid.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said tonight that “Ukraine will be free”.
Zelensky, tonight: “ Ukraine will be free. Kherson, Nova Kakhovka, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Dniprorudne and all other temporarily occupied cities and communities in which the occupiers are now pretending to be "masters" will be liberated. The Ukrainian flag will return …”
— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 30, 2022
Zelensky, continued: “ There is still a lot of work ahead. The occupiers are still on our land and still do not recognize the apparent failure of their so-called operation. We still need to fight and direct all efforts to drive the occupiers out. And we will do it.”
— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 30, 2022
These images from around Ukraine today show varying experiences around a country still very much living under the constant threat of war. In Lviv, volunteers undergo weapons and tactical training while in the recently liberated Kyiv, some signs of normal life have returned.
In the Kharkhiv region, death and relief are clashing together as citizens wait to evacuate their recently liberated towns and authorities are taking stock of the devastation left behind.
In eastern Ukraine – places such as Lyman in the Donetsk region, which is currently on fire from a Russian attack – citizens awaited the worst.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy met today in Kyiv with Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, as Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues his efforts for an Istanbul summit between the Ukrainian leader and Vladimir Putin.
AFP reported that deputy foreign minister Sedat Onal accompanied Kalin, but no details of the meeting were immediately available.
Erdogan told Putin in a phone call on Thursday that Turkey wanted “to establish a lasting peace in the region as soon as possible by increasing the momentum gained in the Istanbul talks”. Turkey had previously hosted a meeting between Moscow and Kyiv negotiators in Istanbul and another between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Antalya in March.
Lyman, a town 150 kilometers north of Donetsk is burning, purportedly following a Russian attack that wounded nine.
Liman - a town150 km north of Donetsk - is burning pic.twitter.com/yR5Rh1Hn3c
— D.Emery (@DemeryUK) April 30, 2022
Updated
Ukraine has offered China to act as one of the security guarantors to end the war with Russia:
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine has offered China to act as one of the security guarantors to end the war with Russia.
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) April 30, 2022
Prosecutors for the Kyiv region are investigating the village killing camp in Motyzhyn where a Russian unit led by Syria veterans led a torturous murder campaign on Ukrainian civilians and soldiers alike.
Some of those killed included village leader Olga Petrivna Sukhenko and her family. She had stayed behind to coordinate aid and territorial defence.
When her body was found alongside her family’s bodies, they showed signs of being badly beaten, their arms had been twisted broken, they had been shot in the hands or knees to cause maximum pain, then shot again in the stomach before finally being killed by a bullet to the back of the head.
According to locals, this sort of sadistic torture was typical of what most victims experienced in the camp.
Read more here:
Updated
A heartbreaking story of a Ukrainian woman who learned her husband was killed by a Russian sniper the night she went into labor:
The contractions began after she learnt her husband, a Ukrainian border guard, had been killed by a Russian sniper.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
Viktoria Nazarenko gave birth to twin boys the next day.
Joy overwhelmed by grief at the loss of Bogdan Nazarenko. It had taken the couple 8 years to fall pregnant. pic.twitter.com/aqft04DsEg
“It’s all I have left from him - my babies and my memories, which will never be erased,” the young widow said, tears streaking her face.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
“He did nothing wrong. He didn’t even get to see his babies. He didn’t take them in his arms.”
Bogdan was shot dead on 14 March while on a boarder guard mission in the northern Chernihiv region as Russia’s war raged.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
Family and friends tried to shield Viktoria from the news, understandably concerned about the impact it might have on her, while heavily pregnant.
It meant she only found out nearly three weeks later.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
By that point her husband had already been buried.
“I learnt the news on 3 April and gave birth on the 4 April - at night the contractions started,” Viktoria said. She had been 35 weeks pregnant at the time.
Matviy was born first, weighing 6.2lbs, followed by Zakhariy, who weighed 5.7lbs.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
Viktoria was speaking on Friday, sitting on a bed in her parent's home, next to a cot, where her tiny babies were sleeping. They were not yet four weeks old.
"My babies, my little fish. Mummy’s here, my lovely boys," Viktoria whispered as she bent over the cot to tuck a blanket around her two sleeping bundles
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 30, 2022
Incredible courage - the hidden strength in this war
With @camera_sam & @SophieAlex1
Please watch⬇️https://t.co/53lEjYKH0l
Boris Johnson has promised to provide additional military aid to Ukraine as president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told him what was needed to defend his country against Russian forces.
In a call on Saturday afternoon, the prime minister offered Zelenskiy the UK’s “continued economic and humanitarian support”, a Downing Street spokesperson said.
Johnson is said to have told the Ukrainian leader that he is “more committed than ever to reinforcing Ukraine and ensuring Putin fails”.
Britain is one of the largest suppliers in Europe of arms to Ukraine, having already sent more than 5,000 anti-tank missiles, 1,360 anti-structure munitions, five air defence systems with more than 100 missiles, and 4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives, according to the ministry of defence.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “President Zelenskiy updated on the fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine and ongoing siege of Mariupol. He set out the equipment needed for the defence of Ukraine.
“The prime minister reiterated that he is more committed than ever to reinforcing Ukraine and ensuring Putin fails, noting how hard the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom.
“He confirmed that the UK will continue to provide additional military aid to give the Ukrainians the equipment they needed to defend themselves.
“The leaders also discussed progress of the UN-led effort to evacuate Mariupol and concern for the injured there. The prime minister offered the UK’s continued economic and humanitarian support.”
Russian military killed twice as many Mariupol residents as Nazi Germany
Vadym Boychenko, mayor of Mariupol, said that Russian forces have killed twice as many of the city’s residents in the two months of the war as Nazi Germany did in its two years of occupation.
During World War II, the Nazis killed 10,000 civilians during the two years they occupied Mariupol. Russians have doubled that number, Boychenko said.
⚡️Mariupol mayor: Russian military killed twice as many residents as Nazi Germany.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 30, 2022
Vadym Boychenko said that in 2 years of Mariupol’s occupation during World War II, the Nazis killed 10,000 people. Russians have doubled the number of victims in 2 months of the Mariupol siege.
“This is one of the worst genocides of civilians in modern history,” Mariupol mayor said.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 30, 2022
A Russian reconnaissance plane briefly violated Sweden’s airspace on Friday, AFP is reporting.
Swedish defense officials announced the breach as the country considers joining the Nato alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“A Russian AN-30 propeller plane violated Swedish airspace on Friday evening,” the Swedish defense ministry said in a statement.
Defense authorities had followed the incident and photographed it, tracking the plane as it flew east of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic, before it headed towards Swedish territory.
“It is totally unacceptable to violate Swedish airspace,” defense minister Peter Hultqvist said on public television SVT.
“This action is unprofessional and given the general security situation very inappropriate. Swedish sovereignty must always be respected.”
New satellite imagery released today of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol shows that nearly every building has been destroyed.
Twenty wounded civilians evacuated from Azovstal steel plant
Twenty wounded civilians were able to evacuate from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
⚡️⚡️⚡️ Twenty wounded civilians were able to evacuate from the territory of #Azovstal steel plant in #Mariupol. Women and children. They are probably on the way to Zaporizhzhia, said Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment. pic.twitter.com/gim0BI69au
— Alexander Khrebet/Олександр Хребет (@AlexKhrebet) April 30, 2022
Azov spokesmen Sviatoslav “Kalyna” Palamar confirms that the two sides at Azovstal have been observing ceasefire to evacuate civilians from the besieged plant. Only 20 people have been evacuated. Others, he claims, are being salvaged from under the rubble after bombings.
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) April 30, 2022
Palamar reiterated Azov’s plea to evacuate 600 wounded soldiers to Ukraine-controlled territory alongside the civilians.
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) April 30, 2022
The Russians want the wounded in their hospitals as POWs. They accuse Azov of preventing civilians from leaving the plant as it bargains for the wounded.
Russia’s defense ministry is saying that its armed forces hit 17 Ukrainian military facilities with high-precision missiles today, destroying a command post and a warehouse used to store rockets and artillery, Reuters is reporting.
These strikes killed more than 200 Ukrainian troops and destroyed 23 armored vehicles, the defense ministry said in an online post.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military is claiming that its forces have regained control over four settlements in the Kharkhiv region.
A village near Kyiv has been flooded for weeks after a Russian missile struck a nearby dam, AFP is reporting.
Dozens of homes in Demydiv village have been sitting in water since the missile attack at the end of February sent a deluge of water coursing from Kyiv’s reservoir into parts of the village. Knee-deep water still remained in some places.
We’ve been struggling so much,” said 82-year-old resident Maria Didovets.
Ukraine’s army had blown up a bridge near the village to block the Russian advance on Kyiv, and opened the dam, which raised the river level by about 30 centimeters (one foot).
These actions made it impossible for the Russians to cross the river using a portable pontoon bridge, but combined with the missile attack on the dam, the water near the village overflowed.
Demydiv’s levee protected the village from much of the flooding, but the water seeped up from the ground. Efforts to pump out the water out of the about 60 of the village’s 750 households affected are still underway.
Updated
Here’s a bit more from Angelina Jolie and her visit to Lviv today to meet children and others affected by the war:
Angelina Jolie popped into Lviv today and spent some time at the railway station meeting displaced people. pic.twitter.com/734EKQrijG
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) April 30, 2022
There were no casualties from the earlier Russian missile strike on the Odesa airport that rendered the runway unusable.
Russia strikes Odesa airport from occupied Crimea: fortunately, no casualties
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) April 30, 2022
Russia launched a missile strike from Crimea to Odesa, which has completely destroyed Odesa airport
— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) April 30, 2022
No casualties but a continuation of Russia's policy of destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure
Updated
Angelina Jolie has reportedly been spotted in Ukraine on a visit to the city of Lviv.
In a video shared on Facebook, the actor can be seen smiling and waving at fans as she ordered a coffee.
Jolie has worked as a special envoy for the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency for many years, but the specifics of her trip to Ukraine are unclear.
The video, which shows Jolie signing a piece of paper and waving to the camera, was posted on Facebook by Ukrainian Maya Pidhorodetska and has since had more than 19,000 shares.
Pidhorodetska wrote a post with the video in Ukrainian which, translated by Google, said: “Nothing special. Just Lviv. I just went to have coffee. Just Angelina Jolie.
“Ukraine is simply supported by the whole world.”
Updated
Ukraine’s military said Russian planes had continued to launch strikes on the besieged city of Mariupol, focusing on the Azovstal steelworks where troops and civilians are sheltering, Reuters reports.
In a Facebook post, the general staff of the armed forces also said the Ukrainian military had regained control over four settlements in the Kharkiv region.
Updated
Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia is part of peace talks with Ukraine, but senior Ukrainian negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied that this was the case.
“At present, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are actually discussing on a daily basis via video-conferencing a draft of a possible treaty,” Lavrov said in comments to China’s official Xinhua news agency published on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.
“The talks’ agenda ... includes, among other things, the issues of denazification, the recognition of new geopolitical realities, the lifting of sanctions, the status of the Russian language,” Lavrov said.
But Podolyak was dismissive, saying Lavrov had not attended a single negotiating round, and that Ukraine did not need lessons in “denazification” or use of the Russian language from those who had attacked and occupied Ukrainian towns and cities, Reuters reports.
Updated
A Russian missile strike on Odesa airport has damaged the runway and it can no longer be used, the Ukrainian military said, Reuters reports.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has tweeted after it emerged the UK’s 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 video, reportedly shown on Russian television, the man appears to give his name as Andrew Hill.
Zelensky tweeted: “I keep in touch with Boris Johnson. Spoke about the situation on the battlefield and in the blocked Mariupol. “Discussed defensive support for Ukraine and the necessary diplomatic efforts to achieve peace.”
Updated
Ukraine carries out further prisoner swap with Russia
Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange with Russia on Saturday, with seven soldiers and seven civilians coming home, Ukraine deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said in a online posting.
One of the soldiers was a woman who is five months pregnant, she added.
She did not say how many Russians had been transferred, Reuters reports.
On Thursday, Ukraine said Russia had handed over 33 soldiers.
Updated
The governor of Russia’s western Kursk region said several shells were fired on Saturday at a checkpoint near its border from the direction of Ukraine.
Speaking in a video posted on his Telegram channel, governor Roman Starovoit said that there were no casualties or damage, Reuters reports. It comes as Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Saturday but failed to capture three target areas, Ukraine’s military said. The Russians were trying to capture the areas of Lyman in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said.
Updated
Updated
Updated
Summary of recent developments
- 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 said. He said the bodies were found to have several gunshot wounds, suggesting they had been tortured.
- Russia believes the risks of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum and that any armed conflict between nuclear powers should be prevented, the Tass news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as saying.
- 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.
- Russia and the west are nearer to nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev warned.
- Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tonnes” of grain in the areas of Ukraine they occupy, Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister said.
- Nato is interfering with political settlement in Ukraine, Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed. He accused the United States and Nato countries of using Ukraine as “one of the tools to contain Russia”.
I’m signing off – my colleague Nadeem Badshah will be here shortly to bring you the latest updates.
Updated
Three bodies of civilians showing signs of torture found in Bucha, Kyiv police say
Ukrainian police found the bodies of three civilian men in the Bucha district north of Kyiv, tied up and in some cases gagged, a regional police chief has said. He said the bodies had several gunshot wounds, suggesting they had been tortured.
More than 1,000 bodies have been found in or around Bucha, Kyiv said, where it alleges Russian occupying forces carries out systematic abuse. Moscow rejects the allegation.
In a video posted on YouTube, the Kyiv regional police chief, Andriy Nebytov, said bullet wounds in the men’s extremities showed they had been tortured, adding: “Finally, each of the men was shot in the ear.” The men’s clothes showed they were civilians. They could not be identified as their faces had been disfigured by torture.
Nebytov said the men were found in shallow graves in woods near the village of Myrotske, near to former Russian military positions. His account has not been independently verified.
It comes after Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, named 10 Russian soldiers allegedly involved in human rights abuses during the month-long occupation of Bucha.
Venediktova also said Ukrainian investigators had pinpointed “more than 8,000 cases” of suspected war crimes since Russia’s invasion, which included accusations of “killing civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture” and “sexual crimes”.
Updated
Moscow believes risk of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum, Russian foreign minister says
Reuters has more detail on an earlier line from a Russian foreign ministry official who said that Moscow believes the risks of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum.
The Tass state news agency cites Vladimir Yermakov, the foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation, as saying all nuclear powers had a duty to stick to the logic enshrined in joint official documents aimed at avoiding nuclear war. It quotes him as saying:
The risks of nuclear war, which should never be unleashed, must be kept to a minimum, in particular through preventing any armed conflict between nuclear powers. Russia clearly follows this understanding.”
The official documents Yermakov refers to are a joint statement published in January by Russia, China, Britain, the US and France, in which the five countries – which are the permanent members of the UN security council – agreed that the further spread of nuclear arms and a nuclear war should be avoided.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Monday that the danger of nuclear war was “serious”, though the US then said it did not believe there was a threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite an escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric.
Updated
Russian troops have had to merge and redeploy units from their “failed advances” in Ukraine’s north-east, the UK Ministry of Defence has said, while both Kyiv and Moscow suffer serious losses in Donbas.
- Moscow’s artillery units had hit 389 Ukrainian targets overnight, according to Russian media.
- Kyiv claimed to have inflicted “colossal” Russian losses in the Donbas.
- The Ukraine military estimated that 23,200 Russian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the invasion.
- While Kharkiv is still under Ukrainian control, it faces daily attacks from Russian forces.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said they had recorded more than 8,000 war crimes by Russian troops and were investigating 10 Russian soldiers for suspected atrocities in Bucha near Kyiv.
Lorenzo Tondo wraps up recent developments in the war in Ukraine here:
Updated
When Lillia Fomina, 29, decided she needed to flee from Zaporizhzhia, she wanted to go to the UK. But after waiting for nearly a month in western Ukraine for her visa to come through, she changed her mind and made the 32-hour journey to Berlin.
Within 12 hours of arriving in the German capital, she had obtained a provisional residence permit, got hold of a free sim card for her phone, opened a bank account and found a free place at a church-run nursery for her five-year-old son.
Philip Oltermann reports on why Ukrainians are overwhelmingly seeking refuge in Germany rather than the UK:
Updated
Reuters has more on the Ukrainian reports that Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tonnes” of grain from the area they occupy.
The agriculture minister, Mykola Solskyi, said grain theft had ramped up in the last two weeks. The minister said:
I personally hear this from many silo owners in the occupied territory. This is outright robbery. And this is happening everywhere in occupied territory.”
He said the situation could also lead to food shortages in areas that were not under Russian occupation. Solskyi added:
There will soon be a wheat harvest in the south. But farmers in this situation may well say: ‘Here are the keys to the tractor – go collect it yourself, if you want.’”
The agriculture ministry said on Friday that six of Ukraine’s 24 regions had completed their early spring grain sowing despite the Russian invasion. There are no plans to sow in Luhansk due to the fighting.
The Kremlin denied the allegations.
Updated
Russia believes the risks of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum and that any armed conflict between nuclear powers should be prevented, the Tass news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as saying on Saturday.
Vladimir Yermakov, the foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation, said all nuclear powers must stick to the logic laid out in official documents aimed at preventing nuclear war.
“Russia clearly follows this understanding,” Yermakov was quoted as saying.
- That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for today. My colleague Clea Skopeliti will be back shortly to bring you all the latest news from Ukraine.
Updated
President Emmanuel Macron said France would step up military and humanitarian support to Ukraine during a phone call on Saturday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Paris said.
Macron reiterated his “strong concern” over Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian cities and the “unbearable situation” in the south-eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, the French presidency added in its statement.
Russia denies targeting civilians in its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Saturday but failed to capture three target areas, while Moscow said western sanctions on Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine were impeding peace negotiations.
Updated
UK foreign investigating reports Briton has been detained by Russia
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 video, reportedly shown on Russian television, the man appears to give his name as Andrew Hill. He speaks with an English accent, has his arm in a sling, a bandage around his head, and blood can be seen on his hand.
The video, which has not been verified, has been shared online, PA Media reported.
Two other British men, said to be working as humanitarian aid volunteers, are also believed to have been detained in Ukraine by Russian forces.
The Presidium Network, a non-profit company, said Paul Urey and Dylan Healey were captured early on Monday morning at a checkpoint south of the city of Zaporizhzhia in south-eastern Ukraine.
They were not working for the Presidium Network, which helps to get aid into Kyiv. The organisation said the pair were driving to help a woman and two children evacuate when they went missing.
Presidium Network said it was concerned Russian forces may think the two men are British spies. The Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking more information following reports of British nationals being detained in Ukraine.
I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be with you for the next hour.
Updated
Dialogue between Moscow and Washington on strategic stability is formally “frozen”, Russian state media has reported, citing a Russian foreign ministry official.
Vladimir Yermakov, the foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation, said those contacts could be restarted after Russia completes what it terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to the Tass news agency. Moscow uses this term to describe its invasion of Ukraine.
Yermakov claimed Moscow believed the US planned to finalise projects to deploy medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. He did not provide evidence to support the claim.
The emergence of such weapons in those regions will further worsen the situation and fuel the arms race,” Tass quotes him as saying.
Updated
Residents of Ruska Lozova have spoken about living in “terrible fear” under Russian occupation after Ukraine’s military recaptured the village.
Ukrainian forces said they had recaptured the “strategically important” village near Kharkiv and evacuated hundreds of civilians.
Arriving in Kharkiv after the village was liberated by Ukrainian forces, Tatiana Efimovna, 69, told AFP:
On the sixth day, the electricity and the water were cut off ... We went back to our apartment after a week and there was an armoured personnel carrier under our window. We were very scared.
There was a boy riding a bicycle, they (the Russian soldiers) stopped him, put a bag over his head and tied his arms. Someone asked what they were going to do to him ... It was humiliation above all. Their soldiers inspected houses and apartments.”
The village was recaptured after heavy shelling. Svitlana Perepilitsa, 23, described the fighting in recent days:
We had two nights which were scary as hell ... the night before last we thought the sky was burning, the whole village was burning.”
As soon as the Ukrainians arrived, resident Natalia, 28, said she left the village:
We left everything there. We just took animals and everything we could put in the car. [It was] two months of terrible fear, nothing else, a terrible fear.”
Updated
From Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent:
“We want this theoretical state to no longer exist, and no longer be next to us ruining our lives, and we want to cure all the people there who have been zombified by satanic totalitarian ideology” says the latter guest. https://t.co/Ic0s0yovvb
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) April 30, 2022
Khrushchev's great-granddaughter says world closer to nuclear war than during Cuban missile crisis
Russia and the west are nearer to nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev has warned.
Nina Khrushcheva, an academic whose great-grandfather was leader of the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, warned the war in Ukraine appears to be more dangerous as neither side seems willing to “back off”.
Khrushcheva said that both US president John F Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to de-escalate as soon as nuclear war became a real threat.
Speaking on the Today programme, Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, said of the 1962 crisis:
What really saved the world at the time was that both Khrushchev and Kennedy, whatever they thought of each other’s ideology and disagreed with it, and didn’t want to give in and blink first, yet when the threat appeared of a potential conflict of any kind they immediately backed off.
We are closer to more issues, nuclear, than any other way, because I don’t see today any side, particularly the Russian side, backing off, and that’s what really scares me the most.”
Khrushcheva also claimed that Russia’s war in Ukraine was “a proxy war” between the west and Russia in which Ukraine is “to some degree a pawn”.
While former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger seconded her concerns about the threat of nuclear war, he rejected her view of the conflict as a “proxy war”. He said:
The idea that this is a broader war, that we’re in a broader conflict with Russia, simply plays to the Russian narrative as they come under pressure because they’ll be able to tell their people that this is a defensive war.”
Updated
The US underestimated the level of “violence and cruelty” that Russian forces would undertake, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby has said, describing it as “brutality of the coldest and most depraved sort”.
Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol have called for international assistance to evacuate soldiers alongside civilians.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov regiment in Mariupol, said:
The lives of soldiers matter too. We can’t only talk about civilians. We are hoping that we can rescue soldiers too, not only dead, not only injured, but all of them.”
Alongside Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys Prokopenko is the Azov commander, Fedusiuk called for international assistance to evacuate the plant.
It is estimated that 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 1,000 civilians remain in the plant’s underground bunkers – the last Ukrainian holdout in the besieged southern city. Conditions are increasingly bleak as food, water and medicine run out.
Last week, footage emerged from an Azovstal bunker showing women and children pleading to be evacuated to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Prokopenko, 27, called for a Dunkirk-style operation to evacuate troops alongside civilians.
We can do this extraction operation ... which will save our soldiers, our civilians, our kids,” she said. “We need to do this right now, because people — every hour, every second — are dying.”
They said around 600 of the soldiers are injured, including some suffering from gangrene. The women showed AP videos and photos sent by their husbands of men with injuries including amputated limbs and bullet wounds.
Fedusiuk told the news agency that Ukrainian troops would not surrender to the Russian army, and would face torture.
We don’t know any Azov soldier who came (back) alive from Russian soldiers, from 2014, so they will be tortured and killed. We know that definitely, so it is not an option for them.”
Updated
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that its artillery units had hit 389 Ukrainian targets overnight.
The figure, reported by Russian news agency Interfax, includes 35 control points, 15 arms and ammunition depots, and several areas where Ukrainian troops and equipment were concentrated, it said.
The statement added that Russian missiles also struck four ammunition and fuel depots.
The report has not yet been independently verified.
Meanwhile, English language newspaper Kyiv Independent has posted this graphic, translating a tally of Russia’s combat losses by Ukraine’s Armed Forces:
These are the indicative estimates of Russia’s combat losses as of April 30, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/ran792ghJ8
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 30, 2022
Updated
Parts of an oil terminal and adjacent territory in Russia’s Bryansk region have been hit by shells on Saturday, according to reports in Russian state media, which cited the region’s governor.
The incident happened after Moscow’s air defences prevented a Ukrainian aircraft from entering the region, according to RIA news agency. Bryansk is less than 100 miles from the border with Ukraine.
“There are no victims,” RIA reported, citing the governor, Alexander Bogomaz, as saying. He added that a logistics building at the terminal was damaged.
Earlier this week, large fires broke out at two oil depots in the city of Bryansk, which serves as a logistics base for Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Military analyst Rob Lee said that the fire was “probably” a result of Ukrainian sabotage, according to the footage.
Updated
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said his country will soon eradicate fuel shortages, despite Russian attacks on oil depots.
This week, Russia hit Ukraine’s main fuel producer, the Kremenchuk oil refinery, alongside others. In his nightly video, Zelenskiy said:
Queues and rising prices at gas stations are seen in many regions of our country. The occupiers are deliberately destroying the infrastructure for the production, supply and storage of fuel.
Russia has also blocked our ports, so there are no immediate solutions to replenish the deficit.”
But he said that government officials promise that “within a week, maximum two” a system will be in place to prevent fuel shortages.
I’m Clea Skopeliti and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments from the war in Ukraine for the next few hours. The time in Ukraine is 10:15am.
Updated
Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tonnes” of grain in the areas of Ukraine they occupy, Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister said on Saturday.
Speaking to Ukrainian national TV, Reuters reports Taras Vysotskiy expressed concern that most of what he said was 1.5m tonnes of grain stored in occupied territory could also be stolen by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry earlier accused Russia on Thursday of stealing grain in territory it has occupied, an act it said increased the threat to global food security.
Nato interfering with political settlement in Ukraine, Russia claims
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has had some stern words to say about the west’s involvement in Ukraine, in a rare interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency.
The transcript from the interview was published on the Russian foreign ministry’s website early Saturday morning.
Among a string of assertions, the foreign minister accused the United States and Nato countries of using Ukraine as “one of the tools to contain Russia” while maintaining that prior to Russia’s invasion on 24 February they were “forcing Kyiv to make an artificial, false choice: either with the west or with Moscow”.
Over the past years, the United States and its allies have done nothing to stop the intra-Ukrainian conflict ... they ‘pumped up’ the Kyiv regime with weapons, trained and armed the Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions, and generally carried out the military-political development of the territory of Ukraine. They encouraged the aggressive anti-Russian course pursued by the Kyiv authorities.”
It was these conditions that gave Russia “no other choice” but to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics and launch a “special military operation” to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, Lavrov continued.
In fact, Nato countries are “doing everything to prevent” a negotiated ceasefire with Ukraine, Lavrov claimed.
By publicly expressing support for the Kyiv regime, Nato countries are doing everything to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements.
Various weapons are sent to Ukraine through Poland and other Nato countries in an endless stream.
All this is done under the pretext of ‘fighting the invasion’, but, in fact, the US and the EU intend to fight Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’, and they are absolutely indifferent to the fate of Ukraine as an independent subject of international relations.”
If the US and Nato are really interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, then, firstly, they should change their minds and stop supplying arms and ammunition to Kyiv, Lavrov said, adding that Russia is “in favour” of continuing the negotiations, although “they are not going well”.
These are militant rhetoric and inflammatory actions of Kyiv’s western backers. They actually encourage him to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’, pumping up the country with weapons and sending mercenaries there. I note that the Ukrainian special services, with the help of westerners, staged a crude bloody provocation in Bucha, including to complicate the negotiation process.”
Lavrov said it would only be possible to reach agreements when Kyiv begins to be guided by the interests of the Ukrainian people, and not “advisers from afar”.
The “special military operation” launched on 24 February is “developing strictly according to plan” and all its goals “will be surely achieved, despite the opposition of our opponents,” the foreign minister concluded.
Updated
More than 1 million people have been “evacuated from Ukraine” into Russia since 24 February, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed in remarks published by the ministry early on Saturday.
Lavrov claimed the hotline of Russia’s interdepartmental coordination headquarters for humanitarian response received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, of which 16,000 were foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions.
“In total, 1.02 million people were evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and the LPR, of which over 120,000 citizens of third countries,” the foreign minister said in comments made to China’s Xinhua news agency.
Ukraine has said that Moscow has forcefully deported thousands of people to Russia with humanitarian corridors repeatedly breaking down.
According to data from the United Nations, more than 5.4 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the invasion.
Updated
Russia's Kyiv attack 'deliberate and brutal humiliation' of UN without powerful response, Zelenskiy says
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has described Russian missile attacks on Kyiv during UN secretary general António Guterres’ visit as a “deliberate and brutal humiliation” that was “left without a powerful response”.
The dismantlement of debris in Kyiv, where Russian missiles hit on Thursday, continues, he said in his latest national address late on Friday.
Unfortunately, such a deliberate and brutal humiliation of the United Nations by Russia was left without a powerful response.”
Zelenskiy continued to provide an operational update as to Russia’s advances, describing the city of Mariupol as a “Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins”.
The city, which was one of the most developed in the region, is simply a Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins. And the order of the occupiers in that part of Mariupol which they unfortunately still control differs insignificantly from what the Nazis did in the occupied territory of eastern Europe.
But the Russian troops manage to be even more cynical than the Nazis 80 years ago. At that time, the invaders did not say that it was the Mariupol residents and the defenders of the city who shelled and killed themselves.”
The situation in the Kharkiv region is tough. But our military, our intelligence, have important tactical success.”
In Donbas, the occupiers are doing everything to destroy any life in this area. Constant brutal bombings, constant Russian strikes at infrastructure and residential areas show that Russia wants to make this area uninhabited. “
Describing the situation in the temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region, Zelenskiy said Russian forces are allegedly preparing for the transition to the “ruble zone”.
“Any attempt to transfer our territory to Russia’s administrative, monetary, or any other system will mean only one thing: Russia itself will suffer from that,” he said. “Our responses, sanctions and other reactions of the free world to Russia’s aggressive actions will not be delayed.”
Updated
US condemns Putin’s ‘cruelty and depravity’
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby earlier condemned the Russian president’s “cruelty and depravity” in Ukraine, calling his actions “unconscionable” and his justifications for the invasion “BS”.
It’s hard to square his … BS that this is about nazism in Ukraine, and it’s about protecting Russians in Ukraine, and it’s about defending Russian national interests, when none of them, none of them were threatened by Ukraine,” Kirby said.
It’s brutality of the coldest and the most depraved sort.
Kirby called Putin’s justifications for the invasion – that he is protecting Russians and that Ukraine was a font of nazism – “BS”, in an emotional press briefing.
“It’s hard to square that rhetoric by what he’s actually doing inside Ukraine to innocent people, shot in the back of the head, hands tied behind their backs, pregnant women being killed, hospitals being bombed,” Kirby said.
“I mean, it’s just unconscionable and I don’t have the mental capacity to understand how you connect those two things.”
Before the war, Kirby said: “I don’t think we fully appreciated the degree to which [Putin] would visit that kind of violence and cruelty and depravity on innocent people, on non-combatants, on civilians, with such utter disregard for the lives he was taking.”
He then apologised for the rare show of emotion.
“I don’t want to make this about me. But I’ve been around the military a long, long time, and I’ve known friends who didn’t make it back. It’s just hard,” Kirby said.
Kirby lashed out at Putin’s “depravity” in Ukraine, questioning how any moral person could defend bombing hospitals and summary executions of innocent people.
“It’s hard to look at what he’s doing in Ukraine, what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and think that any ethical, moral individual could justify that.
I can’t talk to his psychology. But I think we can all speak to his depravity.”
Kirby also hit back at Putin’s justifications for war.
“It’s hard to square his ... BS that this is about nazism in Ukraine, and it’s about protecting Russians in Ukraine, and it’s about defending Russian national interests, when none of them, none of them were threatened by Ukraine.
It’s brutality of the coldest and the most depraved sort.”
Updated
Russia forced to merge and redeploy units from north-east, UK MoD says
Russia has been forced to merge and redeploy units from failed advances in Ukraine’s north-east, the UK’s ministry of defence has said.
The British military intelligence report, released early this morning, reads:
Russia hopes to rectify issues that have previously constrained its invasion by geographically concentrating combat power, shortening supply lines and simplifying command and control.
Russia still faces considerable challenges. It has been forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from the failed advances in north-east Ukraine. Many of these units are likely suffering from weakened morale.
Shortcomings in Russian tactical co-ordination remain. A lack of unit-level skills and inconsistent air support have left Russia unable to fully leverage its combat mass, despite localised improvements.”
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 30 April 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) April 30, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/TU1DzgHpEu
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/mfMgJGMqAL
On Friday, Ukraine claimed Russia had suffered “colossal” losses in the eastern fighting, but admitted it too had lost a significant number of troops.
Updated
Summary and welcome
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments until my colleague in London takes the reins a little later in the day.
It is nearing 9am in Ukraine. Here’s everything you might have missed:
-
Lifting sanctions imposed on Russia is part of peace negotiations between Moscow and Ukraine, which are “not going well” but continue via videoconferencing on a daily basis, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov Lavrov said in an interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency. “The agenda of the talks also includes issues of denazification, recognition of new geopolitical realities, the lifting of sanctions, the status of the Russian language, and others,” he said. “We are in favour of continuing the negotiations, although they are not going well,” Lavrov added.
-
Any foreign weapons shipment to Ukraine is a “legitimate target” for Russia, its foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said in an interview with Al Arabiya television channel, as cited by RIA Novosti. “Because those weapons are to be handed to the regime that is waging a war against its own population, against civilians in the country’s east,” Lavrov said.
- The sooner the west comes to terms with “new geopolitical realities” the better it will be for itself and the international community, Lavrov warned. “Our special military operation in Ukraine also contributes to the process of freeing the world from the neo-colonial oppression of the west, heavily mixed with racism and an exclusiveness complex,” he said.
- Russia has claimed Nato is trying to interfere with reaching political settlement to end the crisis in Ukraine. “By publicly expressing support for the Kyiv regime, Nato countries are doing everything to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements,” Lavrov told Xinhua news agency. “If the US and Nato are really interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, then, firstly, they should change their minds and stop supplying arms and ammunition to Kyiv.”
- Ukraine has claimed “colossal” Russian losses have taken place in the effort to fully capture the eastern Donbas region. While acknowledging its own heavy losses from Russia’s attacks in the east, Kyiv said casualties in the invading army were worse. “We have serious losses, but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger … They have colossal losses,” said a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych.
- The Pentagon press secretary, John Kirby, has spoken of Vladimir Putin’s “cruelty and depravity” in Ukraine, calling his actions “unconscionable” and his justifications for the invasion “BS”. “It’s hard to square his … BS that this is about nazism in Ukraine, and it’s about protecting Russians in Ukraine, and it’s about defending Russian national interests, when none of them, none of them were threatened by Ukraine,” Kirby said. “It’s brutality of the coldest and the most depraved sort.”
- European Union countries are likely to approve a phased embargo on Russian oil as early as next week, according to EU officials. European ambassadors are reportedly expected to agree to a finalised proposal by the end of next week after meeting on Wednesday, according to several EU officials and diplomats involved in the process.
- The US did not believe the threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite a recent escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric, a senior US defence official said. Russia was days behind its schedule on its military operations in Ukraine’s Donbas region, a US defence official said, and Russia’s fighting with Ukraine in the Donbas region would be a potential “knife fight”.
- Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described a Russian airstrike on Kyiv during a visit by the UN secretary general, António Guterres as a “deliberate and brutal humiliation” that was “left without a powerful response”.
- The situation inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol was “beyond a humanitarian catastrophe”, a Ukrainian commander inside the facility said. Serhiy Volyna, from the 36th separate marine brigade, said there were hundreds of people in the steelworks, including 60 young people, the youngest of them four months old. Ukraine hoped to evacuate civilians holed up in the steel plant with the last fighters defending the southern city, Zelenskiy’s office said. The president described the besieged city as a “Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins”.
- Two British aid workers who were reportedly captured by Russian forces in Ukraine have been named. Presidium Network, a UK-based NGO that says it carries out evacuations of families and individuals from war zones, identified Paul Urey and Dylan Healy as the captured men. The UK Foreign Office said it was seeking further information about the claims of their capture.
- A former US marine has been killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, the first US citizen known to have died in combat in the war with Russia. Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed on Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother told CNN. The US defence department warned US citizens that they should not go to Ukraine to fight.
-
More than 1 million people have been “evacuated from Ukraine” into Russia since 24 February, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed in remarks published by the ministry early on Saturday. Ukraine has said that Moscow has forcefully deported thousands of people to Russia with humanitarian corridors repeatedly breaking down.
- The US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said it would vote to pass Joe Biden’s $33bn request for aid for Ukraine “as soon as possible”. Speaking at her weekly press briefing on Friday morning, the House speaker framed the administration’s request as one of a number of “emergencies” Congress needed to address urgently.
-
Shipments of new US military aid are en route to Ukraine with 155mm shells, fuses and helmets bound for Ukraine loaded on aircraft pallets on a C-17 cargo aircraft on Friday at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.
- Britain will send investigators to Ukraine to help gather evidence of war crimes, including sexual violence, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said. Ukrainian prosecutors and the international criminal court have been investigating potential war crimes in Ukraine since Russia’s 24 February invasion.
- The US has begun training Ukrainian armed forces at sites located outside Ukraine. A Pentagon spokesperson said it was happening at three sites outside the US, including one in Germany.
- Putin could announce the mass mobilisation of Russians on 9 May, Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, has said. Wallace said that Putin could declare that “we are now at war with the world’s nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people”.
- Zelenskiy has said that since Russia’s withdrawal from Kyiv, 900 bodies had been uncovered in mass graves. The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo confirmed with the deputy head prosecutor of Kyiv’s region that 900 bodies had been found so far, buried in several mass graves around the region.
- In his latest address, Zelenskiy thanked the US for its support via a revived second world war-era lend-lease programme. He also thanked countries that have resumed diplomatic operations in Kyiv, saying: “Such gestures, together with strong defensive, financial and political support from the free world, mean that the need to end the war is becoming more and more obvious to Russia.”
-
The United States has rejected the possibility of “business as usual” with Putin, after after Indonesia invited him to the upcoming Group of 20 summit in November.
