Ukraine said Monday it was conducting "offensive actions" on the front line and noted some progress in Bakhmut.

"In some sectors we are conducting offensive actions," Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar said, adding that "the Bakhmut sector remains the epicenter of the hostilities. We are advancing there on a rather wide front. We are having some success."  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday he had a meeting with British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly in Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said they discussed "Ukraine's expectations from the NATO Summit in Vilnius, promotion of the Ukrainian Peace Formula and preparation of the Global Summit on its implementation, as well as the London International Conference on the Reconstruction of Ukraine," and he also thanked the UK for its support to Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued new Russia-related sanctions on Monday, according to its website.

The sanctions target seven Russian individuals and one Russian entity.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russia said on Monday its forces had thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive at five points along the front in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk and killed hundreds of troops while Ukraine accused Moscow of spreading lies.

• Belgium will ask Ukraine for clarification on reports that rifles made in Belgium had been used by pro-Ukrainian forces to fight Russian troops inside Russia's western border, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Monday.

• Russia said on Monday it began holding naval drills in the Baltic Sea, one day after NATO member states kicked off their annual Baltic drills. On the NATO side, 6,000 personnel, 50 ships and more than 45 aircraft are taking part, with Finland participating for the first time as an alliance member, the United States Navy said.

• Two drones fell on a highway in Russia's Kaluga region that borders with the Moscow region to its north, with the local governor saying on Monday there was no detonation of explosives.

• The commander of Ukraine's ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Monday that Ukrainian forces continued "moving forward" near Bakhmut. Syrskyi said that Ukrainian forces were successful in destroying a Russian position near the city.

• Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retaken part of the settlement of Berkhivka, north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, calling it a "disgrace."

IN DEPTH

Ukraine dismisses Russian claims

Ukraine has dismissed claims by Russia that it had killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops in a large-scale offensive on Sunday. 

It was not immediately clear whether or not the attack represented the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive which Kyiv has been promising for months to drive out Russian forces after the invasion of February 2022. 

Russia's defense ministry said Ukraine had attacked on Sunday morning with six mechanized and two tank battalions in southern Donetsk, where Moscow has long suspected Ukraine would seek to drive a wedge through Russian-controlled territory. 

"On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in five sectors of the front in the South Donetsk direction," the defence ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram at 1:30 a.m. Moscow time (2230 GMT). 

"The enemy's goal was to break through our defences in the most vulnerable, in its opinion, sector of the front," it said. "The enemy did not achieve its tasks, it had no success." 

Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications did not address the Russian statement directly but said, without providing evidence, that Russia would seek to spread lies.

"To demoralize Ukrainians and mislead the community (including their own population), Russian propagandists will spread false information about the counteroffensive, its directions, and the losses of the Ukrainian army," it said.

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Russia's foreign ministry said on Monday that it saw no prospects for extending the Black Sea grain export deal, which is set to expire in mid-July, Russian news agencies reported.

TASS news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying that it was continuing consultations with the United Nations over the deal, and that ship inspections had resumed. 

Poland's agriculture minister has received a draft regulation from the European Commission extending a ban on Ukrainian grain imports until September 15, he said on Monday.

"We have received from the EC a draft of a new regulation banning the import of 4 products to the 5 countries," Robert Telus wrote on Twitter. "The effective date provided for in the draft is September 15 this year."

Russia's Baltic Fleet started naval exercises in the Baltic Sea on Monday, the Russian military's press service said.

Around 3,500 soldiers and up to 40 ships and boats will take part in the drills, which are scheduled to last until June 15, the military said.

The commander of Ukraine's ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Monday that Ukrainian forces continued "moving forward" near Bakhmut.

Syrskyi said Ukrainian forces had destroyed a Russian position near the city.

"We continue moving forward," Syrskyi said on the Telegram.

Russian forces have thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Donetsk and killed hundreds of pro-Kyiv troops, the defense ministry in Moscow said on Monday.

In a statement, the ministry said Ukraine had launched the attack on Sunday using six mechanized and two tank battalions.

"On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in five sectors of the front in the South Donetsk direction," the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

It was unclear whether the reported attack represented the start of a long-expected Ukrainian counteroffensive to recapture some of the territory taken by Russian forces after February 2022.

"The enemy's goal was to break through our defenses in the most vulnerable, in its opinion, sector of the front," the defense ministry said. "The enemy did not achieve its tasks; it had no success."

The ministry also released a video of what it said showed several Ukrainian armored vehicles in a field blowing up after being hit.

Russian forces killed 250 Ukrainian troops and destroyed 16 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armored combat vehicles, the ministry said.

Ukraine has, in recent weeks, sought to weaken Russian positions. Late last month, a senior official said preliminary operations, such as destroying supply lines or blowing up depots, had already begun.

A drone attack set an energy facility on fire in Russia's Belgorod region in the early hours of Monday, the region's governor said. The region borders Ukraine and has been shelled frequently in recent weeks.

On Sunday, Kyiv urged "silence" ahead of the long-expected counteroffensive to reclaim territory Russia took control of during the 15-month long conflict.

In an interview published a day earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to act. Zelenskyy made no mention of the assault in his regular evening video address on Sunday night.

Air raid alerts were issued throughout Ukraine on Sunday, according to local media reports.

Two civilians were killed and two others injured on Saturday in Ukraine's attack on settlements in Russia's Belgorod region, according to its Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov on Telegram.

Ukraine has so far not commented on the situation.

Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Ukrainian commander of ground forces, visited the frontline in the direction of Bakhmut, Ukrinform reported on Saturday.

TOP HEADLINES

• Two people were killed and two others injured after Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks targeted several regions in western Russia overnight, according to local governors. The deaths took place near the Ukrainian border in Russia's Belgorod when fragments of shells hit passing cars, killing two women "on the spot," the region's governor said. READ MORE BELOW

• Shelling also hit Russia's Bryansk region, drone attacks were reported in the Kursk and Smolensk regions, while the head of Russia's Kaluga region said a blast was reported in a forest. There were no reports if further casualties from the strikes outside of Belgorod. READ MORE BELOW

• China's special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, said he believes neither Ukraine nor Russia have "firmly" shut the door to talks, despite difficulties in getting negotiations going now. Li, giving a media briefing on his European tour last month, added that Moscow appreciated China's efforts to promote a peaceful settlement on the crisis, but said the risk of escalation was still high.

• Ukrainian forces said they shot down 36 Russian missiles and drones in and around Kyiv overnight, with two people injured by falling debris. Russia has launched about 20 aerial attacks on the capital since the beginning of May, a surge the Kyiv government says is aimed at derailing its preparations for a major counter-offensive.

• Ukrainian forces hit a "hospital camp" in the Russian-claimed region of Zaporizhzhia, a Moscow-backed official said on Friday, adding that information about casualties and damages were still being clarified.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed anger over the death of three people, including a nine-year-old girl, killed in a Russian strike on Kyiv after the air raid shelter they rushed to failed to open. He said that if local officials were unable to provide protection, they could be prosecuted.

• Attending a meeting of European leaders in Moldova, the Ukrainian leader also asked NATO to take a clear decision on whether to admit his country, while reiterating calls for the West to supply Kyiv with fighter jets. Zelenskyy said after the summit he had "heard powerful support from many countries" for giving his country U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets.

• One of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's close allies has publicly criticised Russia's most prominent mercenary, saying Wagner's Yevgeny Prigozhin had become a blogger who shouts all the time about his problems. "Stop shouting, yelling and screaming," Adam Delimkhanov said in a video message. 

• The U.S. said it will offer to keep to the nuclear weapons limits set in the New START treaty until its 2026 expiration if Russia does the same in order to strengthen global security, according to government officials. 

• A man visiting St. Peter's Basilica stripped off his clothes and stood naked on the church's main altar in what appeared to be a protest against the Ukraine conflict, according to the Vatican. The man reportedly had an inscription painted on his back calling for the children of Ukraine to be saved and self-inflicted cuts on his body from his fingernails.

IN DETAIL

Russia says two killed after Ukraine shelled border regions

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region said that two people were killed and two others injured on Friday after Ukraine shelled a town near the border, while officials in nearby regions reported overnight drone attacks.

Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram that shelling had struck a section of road in the town of Maslova Pristan, some 15 kilometers from Ukraine's northern Kharkiv region, and that shell fragments had struck passing cars.

"Two women were traveling in one of them. They died from their injuries on the spot," he said.

The governor of the Bryansk region, north of Belgorod, said four homes had been damaged by shelling, while the head of neighboring Kursk region said some buildings had been damaged in an overnight drone attack.

Long-range drones also hit two towns in the Smolensk region overnight, the local governor there said, while the head of Russia's Kaluga region said a blast had been reported in a forest.

Russian officials have in recent days reported increased attacks from northern Ukraine. The defense ministry said its forces repelled three cross-border attacks on Thursday by what it said were Ukrainian "terrorist formations" into the Belgorod region. Ukraine denies its military is involved in the incursions into Russian territory and says they are conducted by Russian volunteer fighters.

The Belgorod governor said on Friday at least one incident of shelling had been reported overnight in the Shebekino district, and over 2,500 people were being evacuated from the area.

Ukrainian authorities on Friday lifted air raid alerts across most of the nation, and officials in the capital Kyiv said defenses appeared to have shot down more than 30 missiles and drones fired by Russia.

Moscow has launched around 20 separate missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities since the start of May.

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Russia's Black Sea port of Taman is poised to suspend exports of highly-explosive liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) because of concerns linked to drone attacks, Reuters reported on Friday, citing three sources with knowledge of the situation.

Estonian President Alar Karis arrived in Kyiv and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Zelenskyy said on Telegram on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered audit of all defense structures in Ukraine, Reuters reported on Friday.

Two people were wounded when an unknown device detonated in Russia's city of Belgorod, the governor of the region said on Thursday.

"According to preliminary data, a drone fell on the roadway," Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

Ukraine's renovation ministry said on Thursday the Black Sea grain deal was halted again as Russia has blocked registration of ships to Ukrainian ports, local media reported.

Russia has not responded to it yet.

TOP HEADLINES

• An 11-year-old girl, her mother and another woman were killed in a Russian missile strike on Kyiv early on Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials, despite Kyiv's air force shooting down all 10 of Russia's missiles in the 18th attack on the capital since the start of May. READ MORE BELOW

• Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that law enforcement officers were investigating the circumstances of the deaths, amid claims they were unable to get into a locked shelter and were then struck by falling debris. He added that 19 people were injured in total as a result of the night shelling.

• Eight people were injured by shelling overnight and into the morning in the Russian town of Shebekino, which neighbors Ukraine's Kharkiv region, the governor of the local Belgorod region said on Thursday. That comes after Russian-installed officials said five people had been killed in Ukrainian shelling of a Russian-occupied village in the east.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated Ukraine's readiness to join NATO as he met European leaders at a summit in Moldova close to his nation's border. "We support Moldova and its people who are integrating into the EU," Zelenskyy said, standing beside Moldovan President Maia Sandu. "Our future is in the EU. Ukraine is ready to join NATO."

• The European Political Community summit of 27 EU member states and 20 other European countries in Moldova, taking place just 12km from Ukraine and close to the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, is meant to be a show of support for Kyiv ahead of its planned counter-offensive.  

• The head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, said the West was actively pushing Moldova to take part in the conflict in Ukraine, state-owned news agency TASS reported.

• NATO's door remains open for new members, but the alliance cannot be joined by a country while it is in the midst of a war, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo.

• The head of Russia's mercenary Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, celebrated his 62nd birthday on Thursday, using the event to say his men would fight on in Ukraine without having to depend on the "clowns" who ran large parts of the Russian armed forces.

• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he would soon travel to Türkiye to discuss Sweden's NATO membership, in a bid to close a process that has been delayed due to objections from Ankara and Hungary.

IN DETAIL

Investigation into Kyiv deaths

A girl, her mother and another woman were killed during a Russian missile strike on Kyiv on Thursday after the air raid shelter they were trying to hide in failed to open, witnesses said.

Ukraine's air force said air defenses shot down all 10 ballistic and Iskander cruise missiles fired by Russia, but Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said three school buildings, a kindergarten, six residential buildings and a police station were damaged. 

It was the 18th attack on the Ukrainian capital since the start of May.

The mayor did not say what the main targets of the attack were, but announced that police had opened a criminal investigation into the events near a medical clinic in the Desnyanskyi district.

"Three people, one of them a child, died near the clinic last night," Klitschko said. "A rocket fragment fell near the entrance to the clinic four minutes after the air alert was announced. And people headed for the shelter."

Local residents said people were unable to enter the shelter because it was closed.

"The air alert sounded. My wife took our daughter and they ran to the entrance here," local resident Yaroslav Ryabchuk said in the Desnyanskyi district. "The entrance was closed, there were already maybe five to 10 women with children. No one opened up for them. They knocked loudly enough," he added.

"They tried to enter the shelter, no one opened up for them. My wife died."

Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital, but Ukrainian shelling of its border areas has also increased, Moscow says, ahead of Kyiv's long-planned counterattack in Russian-controlled territory in the country's east.

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The Bank of Italy on Wednesday said the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had a sprawling impact on the economic health of Italy and Europe in general, pushing the overall median wealth and consumer confidence lower.

In its annual economic assessment of the previous year, the central bank's governor, Ignazio Visco, said the Ukraine crisis has also affected energy prices, resulting in the European Central Bank increasing interest rates, which had a far-reaching negative economic impact.

The Ukraine conflict "was a turning point in international relations that heavily affected growth, inflation and world trade. Tensions between countries have reached levels not seen since the Cold War," Visco wrote in the report. "Amid the clear and widespread increase in inflation, ... global growth slowed down in a scenario of strong economic and political uncertainty."

The report pointed out that "tensions have also affected exports of agricultural products and fertilizers, jeopardizing the food security of the poorest and most vulnerable economies."

"In many low-income countries, the worsening trade balance, combined with lower net capital inflows, has exacerbated the problems in public finance management, requiring debt restructuring negotiations to begin in several cases," it noted.

The report also said the economies of Italy and other European countries were significantly boosted by the European Union's (EU) massive coronavirus recovery package of loans and grants, with more than 150 billion euros ($160 billion) distributed to the EU member states to date.

It also said that while the disposable income of Italy's households grew by 6.2 percent last year, that was a 1.2 percent decrease in real terms due to the record-setting inflation sparked mainly by the situation in Ukraine.

(With input from Xinhua)

Russia's defense ministry on Thursday said it had thwarted three Ukrainian attacks on the Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

Over 40 European leaders gathered in Moldova's Bulboaca on Thursday for the second European Political Community Summit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is attending the summit, called for a coalition of powers to supply Patriot air defense systems and fighter jets to Ukraine. He added that Kyiv wanted to receive a "clear" decision on its future in the NATO military alliance when the bloc's leaders meet in Lithuania's Vilnius in July.

As the first leader to arrive for the summit, Zelenskyy also held meetings with his Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu and other leaders, including President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

(With input from Reuters)

Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, denounced the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, Russian media reported on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Moldova to attend the European summit, according to media reports.

Eight people were injured and no fatalities reported after Ukraine's shelling hit a town in the Russian region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine on Thursday, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

There has been no response from Ukraine yet.

The U.S. announced a new $300 million military aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday.

This security assistance package includes artillery, anti-armor capabilities and ammunition, including tens of millions of rounds of small arms ammunition, according to the U.S. Defense Department.

Three people were killed and several others injured after Russia attacked Kyiv early on Thursday morning, local Ukrainian authorities said on Telegram.

There has been no response from Russia yet.

The German government is revoking the licenses of four of the five Russian consulates in the country, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

"We have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of four of the five Russian consulates operating in Germany," the spokesperson told a regular government press conference.

The move comes in response to Moscow's decision to limit the number of German officials in Russia to 350, the spokesperson said, adding that the withdrawal is to be completed by the end of the year.

The German consulates in Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk will be closed, leaving only the German embassy in Moscow and the consulate in St. Petersburg in operation, the spokesperson added.

(With input from agencies)

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs put two former ministers of defense of Ukraine and the former head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the wanted list, TASS news agency reported on Wednesday.

There has been no response from Ukraine yet.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan would hold a meeting in the foreseeable future, although it was not yet agreed when and where the meeting would take place.

Russian Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that the last warship of the Ukrainian naval forces "Yury Olefirenko" was destroyed as a result of an attack on the parking lot of warships in Odesa on Monday.

Ukraine has not responded to the claim.

Five people were killed and 19 others were injured in a village of the Carpathians in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine when a poultry farm was shelled by Ukrainian forces, the Joint Control and Coordination Commission (JCCC) said.

The JCCC, consisting of both Russian and Ukrainian officers, was set up in September 2014 under an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to assist with the implementation of the Minsk agreements for a settlement in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the governor in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine said Wednesday that the territory was subjected to massive shelling overnight, which injured four people.

Russia's Interior Ministry has put Ukraine's top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi on a wanted list, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday.

Russian air defense worked well, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, in comments on drone attack on Moscow, adding that Moscow's air defense will be boosted.

The Russian leader also confirmed that Russian strikes hit the military intelligence headquarters in Ukraine.

The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article of a "terrorist act" after drone attack on Moscow, TASS reported on Tuesday.

Two people were injured after drones hit two residential buildings in Moscow, RIA reported on Tuesday, citing the city's mayor, Sergey Sobyanin.

Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said Kyiv had launched a "terrorist attack" by unmanned aerial vehicles on facilities in Moscow.

Kyiv has attempted to attack Moscow with eight drones, and all of them were destroyed, the ministry said.

Ukraine has not responded to the claim.

Explosions were heard in Kyiv early Tuesday as Ukrainian officials claimed that air defense forces destroyed more than 20 drones in Russia-launched overnight air attacks. 

At least one person was killed and four others injured when their apartment building was hit and caught fire, Ukrainian media reported. 

The Russian side has not immediately responded to the claim. 

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, on Monday approved a bill to impose sanctions on Russian ally Iran for 50 years.

Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and air alerts were issued in a number of regions in the country on Monday.

Ukraine said it had downed all the Russian missiles fired on the country on Monday in a second wave of attacks. 

"A total of 11 missiles were fired: 'Iskander-M' and 'Iskander-K' from a northerly direction," Ukraine's armed forces chief Valery Zaluzhny said, adding that "all the targets were destroyed by air defenses"

The air attack followed hours after overnight missile and drone strikes and was the 16th on Kyiv this month, Ukraine's defense ministry said.

(With input from AFP)

The Russian interior ministry has put U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on the country's wanted list, TASS news agency reported on Monday.

"Lindsey Olin Graham, an American citizen, born on July 9, 1955, is wanted under an article of the Russian Criminal Code," Tass reported, citing the agency's database, without specifying the article.

In a video released by the Ukrainian president's office of Graham's meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Graham was shown saying "the Russians are dying" and then saying U.S. support was the "best money we've ever spent."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed Graham's words "an embarrassment for the U.S." 

Russia's foreign ministry said Graham should publicly state if he feels his words were taken out of context by the initial Ukrainian video edit.

"If U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham considers his words were taken out of context by the Ukrainian regime and he doesn't actually think in the way presented then he can make a statement on video with his phone," Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a video posted on Telegram.

Graham said he had simply praised the spirit of Ukrainians in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict with assistance provided by Washington.

Knowing he was on the wanted list, Graham responded on Twitter that "I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine's freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory." 

A South Carolina Republican known for his hawkish foreign policy views, Graham has been an outspoken champion of increased military support for Ukraine in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

(With input from agencies)

Explosions were heard in Kyiv on Monday, the city's mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media, adding that air defense systems are in operation. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy submitted a draft resolution to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, on Saturday. The resolution proposes imposing sanctions on Iran for a period of 50 years.

Russian troops have temporarily eased attacks in and around the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to regroup and strengthen their capabilities, a senior Kyiv official said on Saturday.

Separately, senior Ukrainian officials indicated their forces were ready to launch a long-promised counteroffensive to recapture territory taken by Russia since the start of the conflict.

Russia's Wagner mercenary group began handing over positions to regular troops this week after declaring full control of Bakhmut following the longest and bloodiest battle of the conflict.

Kyiv, though, has insisted that its forces still control a small part of the city.

In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian troops were continuing to attack but that overall offensive activity had decreased.

"Yesterday and today there have not been any active battles - neither in the city nor on the flanks," she wrote, adding that Moscow's troops were instead shelling the outskirts and approaches to Bakhmut.

"(Russian) troops are being replaced and regrouped," Maliar said. "The enemy is trying to strengthen its own capabilities."

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the push could begin "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week".

Presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak, speaking to Britain's Guardian newspaper, said preliminary operations such as destroying supply lines or blowing up depots had already begun.

The governor of the southern Russian region of Belgorod said he had come under artillery fire on Saturday when trying to enter the town of Shebekino, which is only about 7 km (4.5 miles) north of the border with Ukraine.

"I couldn't even get out of the car. Shells were exploding in a neighboring street," Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram. Ukraine-based ethnic Russian fighters were reported to be behind a cross-border raid into the region in the last week.

Ukraine's top general, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, posted a sleekly produced video on Saturday showing Ukrainian troops swearing an oath and preparing for battle.

"The time has come to return what is ours," he wrote.

Russian forces intercepted two long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied to Ukraine by Britain, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

The ministry also said it had intercepted 19 HIMARS missiles, two HARM anti-radar missiles, and shot down 12 drones in the last 24 hours.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) admitted on Saturday that it implemented "certain measures" linked to the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in October 2022.

"According to our legislation, international legislation and the customs and traditions of warfare, taking into account the fact that it was a logistical route that we were obliged to cut off the enemy, certain measures were taken," Vasyl Malyuk, head of the SSU, said in a statement published on the agency's website.

Still, it is too early to make public the details of the "special operation," Malyuk said.

On October 8, 2022, a deadly blast hit the 19-kilometer Crimean Bridge, which consists of two parallel routes for automobiles and trains over the Kerch Strait.

A truck exploded on the road bridge, causing seven fuel tanks of a train heading to the Crimean Peninsula to catch fire. Three people were killed in the blast, which also led to the partial collapse of two spans of the road bridge.

(Cover: Vehicles drive on the Crimean Bridge after restoration works, February 23, 2023. /CFP)

TOP HEADLINES

• Ukraine is ready to launch its much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces, a senior Ukrainian official told the BBC. The broadcaster said that Oleksiy Danilov would not give a date but said the assault could begin "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week." READ MORE BELOW

• Chinese special envoy Li Hui and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed prospects for resolving the conflict at a meeting in Moscow on Friday. The Chinese foreign ministry quoted Li as saying that China would make concrete efforts for a political solution to the crisis, adding that Beijing had always kept an objective and fair position on Ukraine.

• The Netherlands is "seriously considering" sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine but has not taken any final decision yet, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. Earlier this week, the Netherlands said it wanted to start training Ukrainian pilots.

• Poland will close its eastern border to freight vehicles registered in Belarus and Russia until further notice, according to a draft regulation from the interior ministry. The move comes as a Belarusian court upheld a decision to sentence a journalist with Polish origins to eight years in prison.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone on Friday where he reaffirmed his willingness to establish peace talks with both sides. The leader also thanked Putin for an invitation to St. Petersburg, but had to decline as he "can't visit Russia at the moment."

• Two people were killed and 30 more were injured when a Russian missile hit a clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an attack that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a crime against humanity.

• Russia has dismissed criticism from U.S. President Joe Biden over Moscow's plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, saying Washington had for decades deployed such nuclear weapons in Europe. 

• Iran has accused President Zelenskyy of anti-Iranian propaganda after he called for Tehran to halt the supply of drones to Russia, saying the leader's comments were designed to attract more arms and financial aid from the West.

• A drone attack on Russia's Pskov region near the border with Belarus damaged an oil pipeline's administrative building, according to local Governor Mikhail Vedernikov.

• Ukraine's defense ministry has claimed that Russia is planning to simulate a major accident at the Zaporizhzhia plant controlled by pro-Moscow forces in a bid to hinder a long-planned Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake territory occupied by Russia.

IN DETAIL

Ukraine finally set for counter-offensive

Ukraine is ready to launch its long-planned counter-offensive against Russian forces, one of the country's most senior security officials told the BBC.

Oleksiy Danilov, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, did not give a specific date, but told the British broadcaster that an assault to retake territory from Russian occupying forces could begin "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week."

He added that Ukraine's government had "no right to make a mistake" on when the operation would begin because this was an "historic opportunity" that "we cannot lose."

Ukraine has been planning its counter-offensive for months, but has delayed its launch in a bid to train troops and receive as much military equipment from Western allies as possible.

Danilov said the armed forces would launch the attack when commanders calculated "we can have the best result at that point of the war."

Asked if the Ukrainian armed forces were ready, he replied: "We are always ready. The same as we were ready to defend our country at any time. And it is not a question of time.

"We have to understand that that historic opportunity that is given to us - by God - to our country we cannot lose, so we can truly become an independent, big European country."

Danilov also said he was "absolutely calm" about Russia starting to send nuclear weapons to Belarus, saying: "To us, it's not some kind of news."

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by his decree put into effect the decision of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on the application of economic and other restrictive measures to 51 Russian individuals and 220 legal entities, the official website of Ukrainian president showed on Saturday.

An attack by two drones caused damage to an oil pipeline's administrative building in Russia's Pskov region, local governor Mikhail Vedernikov said on Telegram on Saturday, following a preliminary investigation. 

TOP HEADLINES

• A Russian airstrike that hit a medical clinic in the eastern city of Dnipro killed at least one person and injured 15 more on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced, after Ukraine shot down 10 missiles and over 20 drones in overnight attacks on the capital Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions. READ MORE BELOW

• The Ukraine conflict could last for "a very long time, most likely decades," according to former Russian president and prominent Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev. He added that negotiations with Ukraine were "impossible" as long as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in power, also warning that Moscow would be willing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike if Kyiv gets nuclear weapons.

• The Kremlin said that Russia's security services knew what they were doing after a top Ukrainian intelligence official said President Vladimir Putin was number one on Kyiv's kill list.

• Moscow is moving ahead with a plan to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, whose leader said the warheads were already on the move, in the Kremlin's first deployment of such weapons outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. The U.S. denounced the plan, but said Washington saw no new signs that Russia was preparing to use the bombs.

• Japan is set to place additional sanctions on Russia after the Group of Seven (G7) summit the country hosted last week agreed to step up measures to punish Moscow, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno has announced.

• Russia's Wagner private army has started handing over its positions in Bakhmut to regular Russian troops, five days after declaring full control of the devastated strategic city.

• Ukraine said it had secured the release of 106 captured soldiers captured during fighting in the devastated eastern city in a prisoner exchange with Russia.

• A top U.S. general said Washington had long asked Ukraine not to use U.S. military equipment to carry out attacks inside Russian territory following Russian accusations that pro-Ukrainian militia used U.S. armored vehicles inside its borders.

• Russia's Foreign Ministry has summoned the ambassadors of Germany, Sweden and Denmark to protest over what it said was the "complete lack of results" in an investigation to identify who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year.

IN DETAIL

Night of Russian airstrikes 

At least one person was killed and 15 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

In an online post under video footage of a badly damaged building with smoke pouring out of it, he said rescue efforts were under way.

"Russian terrorists once again confirm their status of fighters against everything humane and honest," Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

"A rocket attack on a clinic in the city of Dnipro. As of now, one person was killed and 15 were wounded. The shelling aftermath is being eliminated and the victims are being rescued."

Ukrainian officials said earlier on Friday that air defences had shot down 10 missiles and more than 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks on the capital Kyiv, Dnipro and eastern regions.

Kyiv's air force said a total of 17 missiles and 31 drones had been launched in the attacks, which started at around 10:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Thursday and continued until 5:00 a.m. on Friday.

Several drones and several missiles hit targets in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials added.

"It was a very difficult night. It was loud – the enemy launched a mass attack on the region with missiles and drones," Serhiy Lysak, the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, said on the Telegram messaging app. "Dnipro has suffered."

Moscow has intensified missile and drone attacks on Ukraine this month, mainly attacking logistics and infrastructure facilities before an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russia did not immediately comment on the reported air strikes but said Ukraine had struck two regions in southern Russia with a rocket and a drone.

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Russia's Foreign Ministry summoned senior U.S. diplomats on Friday to protest against remarks by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, whom it accused of "effectively endorsing strikes" on Crimea.

"It is time for Washington to learn that any form of aggression against Russia will continue to be met with the strongest possible response," the ministry said.

It did not specify which comments it objected to, but when Sullivan was asked in a CNN interview on Sunday whether Ukraine should have weapons that can reach Russian targets in Crimea, he replied: "Yes. We have not placed limitations on Ukraine being able to strike on its territory within its internationally recognized borders."

At least two people were killed, 30 others were injured when a clinic in Dnipro was hit by Russian missiles on Friday, Ukrainian officials said via Telegram.

There has been no response from Russia.

Japan will freeze the assets of 17 individuals and 78 groups in Russia as part of its new sanctions, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced on Friday.

Explosions were heard in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine on Friday morning as air raid alerts were sounded across the country in response to reports of missile launches from Russian strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea targeting Ukraine.

There is no confirmation from the Russian side yet.

A total of 106 Ukrainian people, including 98 soldiers returned home from Bakhmut, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said on Thursday.

The Russian foreign ministry summoned ambassadors of Germany, Denmark and Sweden to protest over Nord Stream investigation on Thursday. 

The European Council on Thursday agreed to renew the suspension of all customs duties, quotas and trade defense measures on Ukrainian exports to the EU for another year, until June 2024.

Russia expelled five Swedish diplomats on Thursday as a "retaliatory measure," TASS news agency reported, citing the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russia will also shut down the activities of the Consulate General of Sweden in St. Petersburg and terminate the activities of its Consulate General in Gothenburg starting on September 1, it added. 

The defense ministers of Russia and Belarus on Thursday signed documents on defining the procedure of keeping Russia's non-strategic nuclear weapons in a special storage facility on the territory of Belarus, Belarussian defense ministry said on Telegram.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia's Wagner private military group said his forces have begun withdrawing from captured Bakhmut, Reuters reported.

Ukraine has not responded to the claim yet. 

Russia's Federal Security Service prevented an attack planned by the special services of Ukraine on the Leningrad and Kalinin nuclear power plants, RIA news agency reported on Thursday.

Two Ukrainians were detained after Ukrainian "saboteurs" attempted to undermine more than 30 power lines of the plants on the eve of the 78th Victory Day, the report added.

There has been no response from Ukraine yet.

Six drones were downed or blocked overnight in Crimea, Crimea's head Sergei Aksyonov said on Thursday.

"During the past night, six drones were shot down or blocked ... in different parts of Crimea," Sergei Aksyonov said on Telegram, adding "there were no victims or injured." 

Ukraine was likely behind the failed drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month, the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials.

The U.S. has based its preliminary assessment off intercepted communications with both Ukraine and Russia, the Times report said, adding that the U.S. officials have a "low" level of confidence that the Ukrainian government directly authorized the Kremlin drone attack because intelligence agencies are yet to identify which specific Ukrainian units or operatives were involved.

Russia has accused the U.S. and Ukraine of being behind the drone attack on the Kremlin, which it said attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. and Ukraine have both denied involvement. 

The U.S. Department of State has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Ukraine of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) and related equipment for an estimated cost of $285 million, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that warship Ivan Hurs was attacked by Ukrainian naval drones in the Bosphorus Strait.

British Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace visited Ukraine on Wednesday, according to UNIAN.

Ukraine received the fourth 1.5-billion-euro tranche under the European Union's 18-billion-euro macro-financial assistance, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal tweeted on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Marine Corps will be created, during his visit to frontline troops on Tuesday, according to his official website.

"We are significantly increasing the potential of the Marines and creating a Marine Corps," the President said on the Day of the Ukrainian Marines.

The European Union's foreign ministers discussed the 11th package of sanctions against Russia on Monday but failed to reach an agreement, according to an EU statement.

"We have to cut the circuits of circumventing sanctions because otherwise the sanctions are being weakened," EU High Representative Josep Borrell said after the meeting.

Ukraine's state-run nuclear energy operator Energoatom said on Monday there is power outage at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a press conference on Sunday that Russian troops are in Bakhmut but the city is "not occupied."

Russia said on Saturday that its forces had taken full control of the hotly contested city of Bakhmut, also known as Artyomovsk, while the Ukrainian side said the situation there was critical.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia's Wagner private military group, said in a video message posted on his Telegram channel that Wagner will begin to withdraw its units on May 25 for rest and retraining, and its fighters will create "the necessary lines of defense."

"As a result of the offensive actions of the Wagner assault detachments, with the support of artillery and aviation of the Southern Group of Forces, the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk was completed in the Artyomovsk tactical direction," said the Russian Defense Ministry, confirming the capture in a statement later on Saturday.

"(Russian President) Vladimir Putin congratulates the Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk," the presidential press service said.

"All those who distinguished themselves will be presented for state awards," the Kremlin added.

On the same day, Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote in a Telegram post that heavy fighting was underway in Bakhmut, noting "our troops maintain defense in the 'Litak' area."

The Ukrainian military forces were controlling certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in the area and the private sector, Malyar said.

Bakhmut, an important transport hub located some 66 kilometers north of the city of Donetsk, has been the center of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine for months.

Read more:

Live updates on Russia-Ukraine conflict

(Cover: This photo taken on April 10, 2023 shows damaged houses in Bakhmut, Ukraine. /Xinhua)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to confirm the loss of the city of Bakhmut to Russia on Sunday, when asked if it remained in Kyiv's control.

"I think no," he said ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Hiroshima, Japan. 

The Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group claimed on Saturday to have finally captured the eastern Ukrainian city in its entirety.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional $375 million in ammunition and equipment for Ukraine, as he met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the G7 summit  in Hiroshima, Japan, on Sunday. 

The leaders also discussed training Ukrainian pilots on the fourth-generation fighter aircraft, like the F-16, according to a White House statement on Sunday.

S. Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Sunday, Yonhap has reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Sunday.

U.S. President Joe Biden met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Sunday.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, on Saturday claimed full control of the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, RIA news agency reported.

He said that his forces would withdraw from Bakhmut from May 25 for rest and retraining, handing over control to the regular Russian army.

However, Ukraine's military later denied Wagner's claim and said its troops were continuing to fight there.

"This is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut," Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the "east" group of Ukrainian forces, told Reuters.

(With input from Reuters)

TOP STORIES

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Saturday to attend the Group of Seven (G7) leaders' summit, one day after leaders of some of the world's biggest economies agreed to ramp up sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

• G7 leaders announced on Friday that they had ensured Ukraine had the financial backing it needed for this year and early 2024, writing in a statement that they were taking "new steps to ensure that Russia's illegal aggression against the sovereign state of Ukraine fails."

• The U.S. has announced sanctions against more than 300 targets linked to Moscow, intensifying some of the harshest such measures so far implemented. They focus on Russia's attempts to circumvent existing sanctions, Moscow's future energy revenues and its military-industrial supply chains. 

• Russia announced plans to expel "500 Americans" from entering the country "in a response to the regularly anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the Joe Biden administration," according to a statement from Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Those banned included former United States President Barack Obama, and several U.S. senators. 

• U.S. President Joe Biden is set to announce at the summit a $375 million weapons package for Ukraine that includes artillery, ammunition and HIMARS rocket launchers. 

• Biden also told G7 leaders that Washington would support joint efforts to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets. Russia's Foreign Ministry said Western countries were running "colossal risks" if they supplied Ukraine with the jets.

• The UK has announced plans to ban imports of Russian diamonds, copper, aluminium and nickel while publishing a new wave of sanctions against Moscow, targeting companies connected to the alleged theft of Ukrainian grain.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Hiroshima summit, their first meeting since Russia launched its assault on Ukraine in February 2022.

• G7 leaders also called on participants of the Black Sea Grain deal "to continue and fully implement its smooth operation... for as long as necessary" after the agreement was extended for two more months earlier this week. Its extension came a day before Russia could have quit the pact over Western sanctions affecting its grain and fertiliser exports.

• The Air National Guardsman accused of leaking U.S. military secrets directly related to the Ukraine conflict has been ordered to remain in jail as he awaits trial on charges of violating the U.S. Espionage Act.

• Ukraine says it has repelled attacks by Russian forces trying to recapture land around the strategic city of Bakhmut, where Kyiv says it has inflicted heavy Russian casualties. The head of the Russian Wagner private army said that "heavy, bloody battles" were continuing in the city, claiming his men were close to completing the capture of Bakhmut.

IN DETAIL

Zelenskyy at the G7 summit

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy touched down in Japan on Saturday to attend the G7 summit, giving him an opportunity to build up further support from some of the world's richest nations while attempting to gain backing from "Global South" leaders with long ties to Russia.

The Ukrainian president's attendance at summit in Hiroshima, the first city to suffer a nuclear attack at the hands of the U.S., highlighted concerns over the nuclear threat posed by the Ukraine conflict. 

G7 members - the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada - are grappling with the challenges posed by their decoupling with Russia over its assault on Ukraine.

French and European officials said it was important for Zelenskyy to make his country's case in person, first at a meeting of the Arab League, which he addressed on Friday, and now at the G7.

"We have to use all the means to bind non-aligned states to the cause of the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," a French presidential official told reporters.

So far, Zelenskyy met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on the summit's sidelines.

He will hold bilateral meetings with other G7 leaders, but also the leaders of India and Brazil, two countries that have attempted to remain neutral in the conflict. 

Both Brazil and India are members of the BRICS grouping that also includes Russia.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday arrived in Japan to attend the Group of Seven (G7) summit in the western Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The United States on Friday unveiled a raft of new Russia sanctions, targeting hundreds of individuals and entities, the U.S. Treasury Department stated on its website.

Russia's interior ministry issued an arrest warrant for the International Criminal Court (ICC) Judge Karim Khan who issued a warrant for the arrest of President Vladimir Putin in March, Russia media reported Friday. 

Russia has declared environmental group Greenpeace an "undesirable organisation", Russia's Prosecutor General said on Friday. 

The U.S. on Friday added 71 entities to a trade blacklist for allegedly supporting Russia, as the Group of Seven nations announced new sanctions on Moscow over its conflict with Ukraine.

The U.S. Commerce Department action targets support for Russia's military and expands the scope of export controls on Russia and Belarus. The blacklist includes 69 Russian entities, one from Armenia and one from Kyrgyzstan.

The new export controls target oil and gas projects in Russia and Belarus, the department stated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged countries at Arab League summit on Friday to support his peace initiative to end conflicts with Russia.

Zelenskyy, who is making his first trip to Saudi Arabia, said in an address that delegates would each receive the text of the 10-point peace plan and asked them to work with Ukraine directly without intermediaries.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected headquarters of Russian forces on Zaporizhzia direction, Russian media reported Friday. 

The G7 countries on Friday announced a new round of sanctions on Russia as leaders meet at the Hiroshima Summit in Japan, AFP has reported.

Oleg Syromolotov has been dismissed as Russian deputy foreign minister for counter-terrorism by President Vladimir Putin, Russian media reported on Friday.

Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs Li Hui will visit the EU headquarters upon invitation, China's Foreign Ministry announced on Friday without specifying the date of the trip.

"China will continue to promote talks for peace and make China's contribution to promoting the political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis,"Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a daily press briefing. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend the G7 summit this weekend in person, Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people briefed on the preparations.

The UK on Friday announced a new wave of sanctions against Russia, which added 86 new designations and made three revocations (de-listings) under the Russia sanctions regime.

The designations came after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced new import bans on Russian diamonds and metals at the G7 summit in Japan on Friday.

Earlier in the day, the UK announced a ban on Russian diamonds, an industry worth $4 billion in exports in 2021, as well as imports of Russian-origin copper, aluminium and nickel.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected a combat training session of contract soldiers at the training grounds of the Western Military District, TASS reported on Thursday, citing the defense ministry.

Several explosions were reported in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine early Thursday morning.

"Several explosions in the capital. In the Darnytskyi and Dnipro districts. All services go to places," Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

"Fire in a garage cooperative due to falling debris in Darnytskyi district. In the same area, debris fell in several places. Previously, there was also an explosion in the Desnyan district," said the mayor.

Earlier, air raid alerts were declared throughout Ukraine.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, signed in Istanbul last July to resume vital food and fertilizer exports from designated Ukrainian seaports, has been extended for another 60 days, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.

TOP STORIES

• European leaders on Wednesday hailed a new "register of damage" for Ukraine they agreed to in Iceland as "historic" and a first step to making Russia pay for the conflict. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukrainian forces have taken back about 20 square kilometers of territory from Russia around the eastern city of Bakhmut in recent days, said Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister, although it was conceded Moscow's forces were pushing deeper inside the town. READ MORE BELOW

• The last grain ship has left a Ukraine port under a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain a day before Russia could quit the pact over obstacles to its grain and fertilizer exports.

• The Kremlin said it would not enter into "hypothetical discussions" on what Russia would do if the Black Sea grain deal lapses on Thursday. Moscow has said it will quit the deal, under which Russia allows Ukraine to export grain safely from Black Sea ports despite the ongoing conflict.

• Ukraine has denied a Russian hypersonic missile destroyed a U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system during an air strike on Kyiv.

• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed Ukraine's claim that it shot down six Kinzhal hypersonic missiles overnight, saying Moscow had not launched that many, reported the RIA news agency.

• The head of Russia's private Wagner mercenary group said a U.S. volunteer had died fighting alongside Ukrainian troops in the country's east.

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his government wanted pragmatic measures to prevent the circumvention of sanctions imposed on Russia.

• A joint statement said Canada and South Korea would continue to provide Ukraine with assistance and "coordinate with like-minded partners' longer-term plans" to ensure Ukraine's independence.

• UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to discuss the longer-term security arrangements needed to support Ukraine when he meets other leaders at the Council of Europe Summit in Iceland.

• Hungary did not approve the disbursement of the next tranche of military support for Ukraine provided under the EU's European Peace Facility.

• South Korea signed an agreement with Ukraine on its plan to provide a $130 million financial aid package, a day after the visiting first lady requested military assistance.

• Ukraine and Russia will face off before the UN's top court on June 6, when judges will hear Ukraine's claim that Moscow violated a U.N. treaty by supporting pro-Russian separatists identified by a Dutch court as being responsible for the 2014 downing of flight MH17.

IN DETAIL

European leaders sign war register for Ukraine

European leaders on Wednesday hailed a new "register of damage" for Ukraine they signed up to as "historic" and a first step to making Russia pay for the conflict in Ukraine.

The instrument, created by the 46-nation Council of Europe, sets up an evidentiary record ahead of a possible future prosecution of Russian leaders, thus laying the groundwork for compensation.

It was a "first, necessary, urgent step" ensuring "justice that is centered on the victims" of the conflict, said council head Marija Pejcinovic Buric on arrival at the second day of the summit in Iceland.

She said that by early Wednesday 40 countries had signed onto the creation of the register, including the U.S. and all other G7 nations.

Leaders emphasised that countries outside the Council of Europe – a pan-continental rights body separate from the European Union but incorporating all 27 EU member states – could back the register. 

"There will be no reliable peace without justice," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address at the summit opening. Ukraine, a Council of Europe member, welcomed the initiative. 

Russia was removed from the council last year after the start of the conflict in Ukraine.

Bakhmut battles rage on 

Ukraine said it had pushed Russian forces from the flanks of Bakhmut, but conceded that Moscow's forces were pushing deeper inside the embattled town.

Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar said Ukraine had wrested back about 20 square kilometers of a Russian pincer movement around Bakhmut. She added: "At the same time, the enemy is advancing in some measure inside Bakhmut itself and is completely destroying the town with artillery."

Referring to the Russian paramilitary group, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said: "Wagner's men went into Bakhmut like rats into a mousetrap." 

The wave of Russian strikes overnight came just over a week after Kyiv announced it had shot down a Kinzhal nuclear-capable hypersonic missile for the first time, using U.S.-supplied Patriot systems.

Russia denied Kyiv's latest claim to have shot down six of the hypersonic missiles during the overnight barrage on Tuesday.

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Russia's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday its forces were continuing to fight to capture western parts of the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.

It also said its forces had hit a large ammunition depot in Ukraine's southeastern city of Mykolayiv overnight.

Ukraine has not responded to the claim yet.

Russia and Ukraine are closing in on a pact to extend the Black Sea grain export deal, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing Turkish officials.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Russia has frozen bank accounts of Finnish missions in Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with his Belarusian counterpart Sergei Aleinik on Wednesday.

South Korea signed an agreement with Ukraine on Wednesday on its plan to provide a $130 million financial aid package.

South Korea's finance ministry said Minister Choo Kyung-ho and Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, in Seoul to attend a conference, signed the agreement on the package, which will consist of donations and aid loans.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to receive a mission from African leaders on a potential peace plan for the conflict.

Georgia's flag-carrier Georgian Airways will resume direct flights to Russia from May 20, the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency said on Tuesday.

Russia's defense ministry said on Tuesday that it had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defense system with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile in an overnight strike on Ukraine, the Zvezda military news outlet reported.

It quoted the ministry as saying the overnight strikes had also been aimed at Ukrainian fighting units and ammunition storage sites.

Ukraine said earlier that it had shot down 18 Russian missiles overnight, including an entire volley of six Kinzhals.

Russia's State Duma adopted a law on the "denunciation" of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday.

A Chinese envoy on Monday called for the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis with the greatest sense of urgency.

The Ukraine crisis still drags on. The humanitarian situation remains extremely dire and the spillover effects of the crisis continue to manifest themselves. The international community should take positive steps to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and make joint efforts for the de-escalation of the situation and an early cessation of hostilities, said Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations.

First, every effort should be made to reduce the harm and suffering done to civilians, he told a Security Council meeting on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

Second, the red line of nuclear safety must never be crossed, he said, adding nuclear weapons must not be used and a nuclear war must not be fought.

"We call for maximum restraint and for avoiding words and deeds that could exacerbate confrontation and lead to miscalculations. China supports the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in maintaining communication with Russia and Ukraine and playing a crucial role in safeguarding the safety and security of civilian nuclear facilities."

Third, the spillover effects of the conflict response measures should be taken seriously and managed, said Zhang.

The world economy is faced with renewed risks of recession, a situation that demands coordinated actions by all countries to jointly keep global food, energy and financial markets stable. However, one round of unilateral sanctions after another and ever-expanding long-arm jurisdiction have not only led to severe humanitarian consequences, but also undermined the global industrial and supply chains, he said.

The United States and other relevant countries should seriously reflect on their behavior, immediately mend their ways and create conditions for developing countries to grow their economies and improve livelihoods. They must refrain from engaging in economic coercion on the one hand, and on the other hand cooking up narratives accusing other countries of economic coercion, he said.

Fourth, and most fundamentally, the greatest sense of urgency is needed for the political settlement of the crisis, said Zhang.

There are no simple answers to complex issues. Any comprehensive solution always begins with the first step and the resumption of dialogue and negotiations cannot be delayed indefinitely. All parties should create conditions for advancing dialogue and negotiations instead of adding fuel to the fire and escalating tensions in an attempt to profit from it, he said.

On the Ukraine issue, China has always been on the side of peace and everything it does is for the promotion of talks for peace. Li Hui, China's special representative on Eurasian affairs, has begun visits to Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany and Russia, in a bid to engage with various parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis. China stands ready to work with the international community in continued and tireless efforts toward the political settlement of the crisis, he said.

Air raid alerts were issued throughout Ukraine on Tuesday, according to local media reports.

Russia's overnight air attack on Kyiv - its eighth in May - was complex, with drones, cruise and likely ballistic missiles launched from different directions, Kyiv's officials said early on Tuesday.

"It was exceptional in its density - the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time," Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's city military administration, said in comments posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine forces shot down all 18 missiles of various types that Russia launched.

Early morning strikes in Kyiv injured three people in the Solomyanskyi district, where several cars had caught fire and a building was damaged from falling rocket debris, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

(With input from Reuters)

The United Nations Security Council convened on Monday under the chair of the Swiss ambassador to discuss peace and security in Ukraine.

Poland received its first batch of U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers on Monday, according to the country's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.

The U.S. State Department in February approved the potential sale of long-range missiles, rockets and launchers to Poland, including the 18 HIMARS launchers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday he and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had discussed Western nations providing Kyiv with fighter jets and they wanted to create a "jets coalition".

"I see that in the closest time, you will hear some, I think, very important decisions but we have to work a little bit more on it," he said following a meeting with Sunak.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Chequers, Sunak's country retreat in Buckinghamshire.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he will meet UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on Monday.  

"Today – London. The UK is a leader when it comes to expanding our capabilities on the ground and in the air. This cooperation will continue today. I will meet my friend Rishi. We will conduct substantive negotiations face-to-face and in delegations," he tweeted.

The UK government confirmed the arrival of Zelenskyy in London on Monday morning, noting that the UK government will announce more military aid to support Ukraine when the two leaders are scheduled to meet later in the day. 

"Today the Prime Minister will confirm the further UK provision of hundreds of air defense missiles and further unmanned aerial systems including hundreds of new long-range attack drones with a range of over 200km," the UK government said in a statement. 

Zelenskyy met the leaders of Germany and France as well as Italian officials over the weekend.

French President Emmanuel Macron met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Sunday. 

TOP STORIES 

• Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after securing a big boost in military aid on his first visit to the country since the conflict began. READ MORE BELOW

• During the Eurovision song contest on Saturday night in Liverpool in the UK, Russian missiles hit the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, home to the electro-pop duo Tvorchi, this year's contestants from Ukraine. READ MORE BELOW

• Two Russian fighter jets and two military helicopters were shot down on Saturday close to the Ukrainian border, Russian news outlet Kommersant has reported. 

• Ukrainian forces intercepted and destroyed three missiles and 25 drones overnight in the latest aerial attack on the country, Ukraine's air force said.

• Russian-installed officials in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk has accused Kyiv of firing missiles at an industrial complex in the region's main city, around 100 kilometers behind the frontlines.

• The Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers and the European Union will ban Russian gas imports on routes where Moscow has cut supplies, the Financial Times has reported.

• UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will push other global leaders to pledge more support for Ukraine when he attends international summits next week.

• South Africa's presidential security advisor said the country was "actively non-aligned" in the Russian and Ukraine conflict, after U.S. allegations it had supplied weapons to Moscow led to a diplomatic crisis this week.

• Zelenskyy said he spoke to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday, urging him to help implement Kyiv's peace plan to end the conflict with Russia.

• Ukrainian troops are advancing in two directions in the eastern city of Bakhmut but the situation in the city center is more complicated, according to deputy defense minister Hanna Malyar.

IN DETAIL

Zelenskyy steps up EU charm offensive in Berlin after Rome

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks Sunday with German leaders in his first visit to the country since the conflict began with Russia, as Berlin offered emphatic support in the form of a huge new military package.

"Weapons. Powerful package. Air defense. Reconstruction. EU. NATO. Security," Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.

Zelenskyy's trip comes as Kyiv is preparing a much-anticipated counter-offensive and follows a day of meetings in Rome with Italian leaders and Pope Francis.

Ukrainian forces have been training troops and stockpiling Western-supplied munitions and hardware that analysts say will be key to reclaiming territory captured by Russia. 

Once accused of reticence in supplying military gear to Ukraine, Germany has since become a major contributor of tanks, rockets and anti-missile systems.

Zelenskyy was greeted by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Bellevue Palace, where he wrote in the guestbook. It said: "In the most challenging time in the modern history of Ukraine, Germany proved to be our true friend and reliable ally.

"It stands decisively side-by-side with the Ukrainian people in the struggle to defend freedom and democratic values."

The Ukrainian leader then met Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who greeted him with military honors. Scholz said Berlin would support Ukraine "as long as needed."

Zelenskyy is also expected to head to the western German city of Aachen, which this year is awarding him and the Ukrainian people the Charlemagne prize – an honor for efforts to foster European unity.

It has been a choppy year of relations with Germany, but Ukraine heard on Saturday they would receive more firing units and launchers for the Iris-T anti-missile system, 30 additional Leopard 1 tanks, more than 100 armored combat vehicles and over 200 surveillance drones.

Cloud over Eurovision with attack on band's city  

Meanwhile, as the Eurovision song contest was under way in Liverpool, UK on Saturday night, Russian missiles hit the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, home to the electro-pop duo Tvorchi, this year's contestants from Ukraine.

Local authorities, writing on Telegram, said the strike had hit warehouses owned by commercial enterprises and a religious organization, injuring two people.

Russia has launched hundreds of rocket and missile attacks against Ukrainian targets since last October.

Melinda Simmons, Britain's ambassador to Kyiv, praised Tvorchi for their Eurovision 2023 entry.

"The staging was brilliant. And poignant as their university home town of Ternopil was targeted by Russian missiles this evening," she tweeted.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin on Sunday.

Germany will support Ukraine as long as needed, Scholz said as Zelenskyy visited Berlin for the first time since the Russia-Ukraine conflict started. 

(With input from AFP)

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin on Sunday, according to AFP.

Air raid alerts were issued in most Ukrainian regions on Sunday, local media has reported.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his arrival in Berlin for an official visit on Sunday.

Germany will supply Ukraine with military aid worth 2.7 billion euros, Der Spiegel has reported. This makes it Berlin's largest military aid package to Kyiv since the start of Ukraine crisis in February 2022.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome on Saturday.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome on Saturday.

Two helicopters crashed in Russia's Bryansk region bordering Ukraine on Saturday, TASS news agency reported, citing emergency services.

A Mi-8 helicopter crashed in Bryansk's Klintsy district, killing two crew aboard, the report said, adding that preliminary information indicated the helicopter's engine had caught fire before the crash.

The second accident came around one hour later as a Su-34 fighter jet went down in the same region.

"The fate of those on board is being established," a source from emergency services told TASS on the second crash. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the Italian capital Rome on Saturday for a visit. 

Zelenskyy landed at Rome's Ciampino Airport and was welcomed by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, according to Italian news agency ANSA.

Zelenskyy later tweeted that he would meet with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the pope during the visit, which is his first trip to the country since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in February last year. He is also expected to be the guest of a popular Italian television talk show before heading to Germany.

Meloni visited Zelenskyy in Kyiv in February to assure him of Italy's continued support for Ukraine, despite some of her allies, most notably former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, having longstanding, close ties with Moscow. The meeting with the pope is expected to be the most significant part of Zelenskyy's time in Italy.

(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (L) welcomes Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 21, 2023. /CFP)

The Ukrainian president's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak said that Germany will provide a new 2.7 billion euro ($3.0 billion) defense aid package to Kyiv.

The aid was announced by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Saturday, who pledged further support for Kyiv for as long as necessary.

Germany would "provide any help it can" as long as the conflict takes, the minister said, as he noted that the wish for a speedy end to the Ukraine conflict "is not yet foreseeable."

According to a statement issued by the ministry, the package will include 30 Leopard 1 tanks, 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, over 200 reconnaissance drones and four Iris-T anti-aircraft systems. It is Germany's biggest such package yet since the outbreak of the conflict. It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to travel to Rome on Saturday for talks with political leaders, which could be followed by a trip to Berlin.

German officials have not confirmed the visit, but Berlin police have opened an inquiry after details of a possible trip attributed to the force appeared in the media.

Ukraine's Western allies have delivered increasingly powerful weapons to Kyiv since Russia sent its forces into Ukraine in February 2022, though so far not the advanced fighter jets that Zelenskyy has requested.

Ukraine has pressed them for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition before a counteroffensive expected in coming weeks or months. Saturday's German package also included 18 howitzers.

Germany was initially reluctant to provide heavy arms to Ukraine, fearing it might escalate the conflict. But in January Berlin agreed to send Leopard tanks and said it would work with allies to send more.

Last year, German provided military support worth 2 billion euros ($2.19 billion) and had earmarked 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) for this year, though details had not yet been finalized.

(With input from agencies)

(Cover: German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius speaks to the media on the day of the Fourth Ukraine Contact Group meeting at Ramstein U.S. Air Base, Germany, April 21, 2023. /Reuters)

The Group of Seven (G7) issued a statement on Saturday declaring that it has increased its commitment of budgetary and economic support for Ukraine for 2023 and early 2024 to $44 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held telephone call with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, TASS reported on Friday.

A Mi-28 military helicopter crashed in Crimea on Friday, killing both pilots, TASS news agency has reported, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a phone conversation, Zelenskyy said on social media on Friday.

"Thanked for the significant enhancement of our capabilities with long-range Storm Shadow missiles and other irreplaceable military assistance," Zelenskyy said on Twitter.

The quadrilateral meeting in Istanbul to discuss the future of the Black Sea Grain Initiative was important and substantive, said a UN spokesman on Thursday.

The meeting was held in Istanbul on Wednesday and Thursday with the participation of senior-level officials from Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the UN.

"I would describe the meeting as important and as substantive," Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told a daily press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York.

Despite no major progress was made from the two-day meeting, Dujarric said four-way contacts will continue over the next few days and expressed conviction that a renewal of the deal will be achieved.

"It is clear that if this initiative cannot continue and its package cannot continue, it will have a negative impact on global food security, on global food prices," he said.

"We're talking about geography here. There is no plan B for the Black Sea. There is the Black Sea. We can't move the ports. We can't move the sea. We can't move the Bosporus," he added. 

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was signed separately by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul with Türkiye and the United Nations on July 22, 2022. 

The deal, initially in effect for 120 days, was extended mid-November, 2022 for another 120 days till March 18, 2023 as Russia only agreed to extend the deal for a further 60 days at that point.

After talks finished in Türkiye on Thursday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the initiative should be extended for a longer period and expanded.

A memorandum of understanding between Russia and the UN on the facilitation of exports of Russian food and fertilizer is a parallel agreement with the Black Sea Grain Initiative. While the exports of Ukrainian grain have made strides, Russia has constantly expressed displeasure with the lack of progress in the facilitation of exports of Russian food and fertilizer.

Speaking to Russian media in Istanbul on Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said that if Russia's demands remained unresolved, then the Black Sea deal would "cease its existence."

(With input from agencies) 

The UK is supplying Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace.

Putin signed a decree calling for military training of citizens in reserve, RIA reported on Wednesday.

TOP HEADLINES

• EU states will hold their first talks on proposed sanctions over the Ukraine conflict that could see Chinese and Iranian companies targeted and export curbs applied to third countries that break with existing Western trade restrictions.

• France's parliament has adopted a non-binding resolution that calls on the EU to formally label Russian mercenary force Wagner a "terrorist group." READ MORE BELOW

• The UN said inspections have resumed on vessels leaving Ukraine under an agreement allowing the safe export of the country's grain via the Black Sea, after Moscow threatened to pull out of the deal over Western restrictions on its own grain and fertilizer exports.

• An "enemy" drone flying over Russia's Kursk region bordering Ukraine was shot down, its governor said, adding that the debris damaged a house and a gas pipeline.

• Two drone attacks targeting a military facility in Russia's Voronezh region failed, its governor announced. 

• Ukraine's military said its forces had fought off 46 attacks in 24 hours along the eastern front in Donetsk region, including in the strategic city of Bakhmut. It added that eight strikes on Russian "power and personnel" were carried out as well as two strikes on an anti-aircraft missile system.

• Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video journalist for Agence France Presse in Ukraine, was killed by Grad rocket fire near the eastern city of Chasiv Yar, the French news agency announced. 

• Russia fired cruise missiles at Kyiv as its troops marched in formation across Moscow's Red Square for its annual Victory Day parade celebrating Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Less equipment was on show this year due the majority of Russia's military hardware being tied up in the Ukraine conflict.

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed Ukraine as "the beating heart of today's European values" in a symbolic visit to Kyiv that coincided with Russia's World War II Victory Day.

• The U.S. on Tuesday announced a new $1.2 billion weapons package for Ukraine to bolster its air defenses and stocks of heavy artillery ammunition ahead of Kyiv's anticipated spring offensive. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the military assistance as a "sign of solidarity" on a "symbolic day" for Ukraine, Victory Day. 

• Russia will evacuate more than 3,000 workers from the town that serves the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Ukraine's state-owned Energoatom company said would result in a "catastrophic lack" of personnel. Kyiv's planned counteroffensive is expected to involve the attempted recapture of the whole of the Zaporizhzhia region.

IN DETAIL 

'Terrorist group'

France's parliament has called on the EU to formally label Russian mercenary group Wagner as a "terrorist group." The non-binding and symbolic resolution was passed with support across the political spectrum.

"Wherever they work, Wagner members spread instability and violence," the resolution's author, ruling party MP Benjamin Haddad, told parliament. "They kill and torture. They massacre and pillage. They intimidate and manipulate with almost total impunity."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the French parliament while calling on other countries to send a similar message to EU heads of state. 

"Every manifestation of terrorism must be destroyed, and every terrorist must be convicted," he added.

Being listed as a terrorist group means EU members could freeze assets of the Wagner group and its members. However, Wagner and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin have already been repeatedly sanctioned by the the bloc, in February for alleged human rights abuses in Africa and in April for participating in Russia's assault on Ukraine.

Prigozhin had his assets in the EU frozen in 2020 and was placed on a visa blacklist over the deployment of Wagner fighters to war-torn Libya. Prigozhin is a close ally of Putin, and his fighters have been heading the long-protracted attempt to capture Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna admitted that legally the EU terrorist label would not have any "direct supplemental effect" on the group. The EU's terrorist list, which is approved by leaders of the bloc's member states, currently includes 13 people and 21 groups or entities including Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The parliaments of Lithuania and Estonia have also dubbed Wagner a "terrorist organization" while Britain was reported set to follow with similar measures.

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Talks on a UN-brokered deal that would allow the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain began on Wednesday in Istanbul, TRT Haber reported, citing Hulusi Akar, Turkish defense minister.

"The meeting of the deputy defense ministers of Türkiye, Russia, Ukraine and UN officials started today in Istanbul. We are continuing our negotiations to ensure that this business does not come to a halt and that stability is maintained," said Akar.

A total of 7.4 billion Swiss francs ($8.3 billion) of reserves and assets of the Russian central bank are being held in Switzerland, the Swiss economic affairs ministry said Wednesday.

Poland has summoned the Russian ambassador over an incident involving a Russian fighter jet approaching an aircraft of the Polish border guard, RIA news agency reported on Wednesday.

An attempt was made to carry out a terrorist act against the Druzhba oil pipeline, TASS reported on Wednesday, citing oil pipeline company Transneft.

Russia may formally "denounce" the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

The decree formally appoints Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to represent Putin during parliamentary proceedings on denouncing the treaty, which aimed to regulate the number of forces deployed by Warsaw Pact and NATO countries.

Russia announced in 2015 that it was completely halting its participation in the treaty. 

The U.S. on Tuesday announced it will provide $1.2 billion more in long-term military aid to Ukraine to further bolster its air defenses.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said a "real war" was again being waged against Russia, saying the West was trying to destroy his country.

• Putin was speaking as Moscow marked the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II with tanks and soldiers assembled in Red Square for a military parade.

• Ukrainian emergency services issued air raid alerts for Kyiv and most of central and eastern Ukraine early on Tuesday, extending from Vynnitsya in the west to all eastern regions and south to Kherson and the Odesa region on the Black Sea.

• The head of Russia's private Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin accused Moscow's top generals of trying to "deceive" Putin over the Ukraine campaign. "Why is the state not able to defend its country?" Prigozhin said.

• EU chief Ursula von der Leyen is in Kyiv to mark the Europe Day celebration of peace and unity and said "My presence in Kyiv today on May 9 is symbolic."

• The EU must speed up efforts to integrate its defense industries and the joint procurement of munitions for Kyiv, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

• UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he sees no immediate possibility of reaching a comprehensive ceasefire in the conflict in Ukraine as both sides are convinced they can win, according to an interview in Spanish newspaper El Pais.

• DPRK leader Kim Jong Un said Russia "will prevail" in its fight against what he described as "imperialists," state news agency KCNA said.

• Ukrainian forces shelled the Belgorod region on Russia's border with Ukraine on Monday, injuring at least five people and damaging houses and power lines, the region's governor said.

IN DETAIL

Putin says war at 'turning point' in Victory Parade speech

President Vladimir Putin said Russians were united in a "sacred" fight with the West over Ukraine that would end in victory, and accused the U.S. and its allies of forgetting the Soviet triumph over the Nazis in World War Two.

In a fiery 10-minute speech on Red Square in front of the Kremlin walls at Moscow's Red Square Victory Day parade, Putin said: "Civilization is again at a decisive turning point. A war has been unleashed against our motherland."

With his words aimed at the hundreds of soldiers in attendance, Putin added: "There is nothing more important now than your combat effort. The security of the country rests on you today, the future of our statehood and our people depend on you."

Putin also railed against "Western globalist elites", accusing them of sowing conflicts and "coups" around the world.

"Their goal, and there is nothing new here, is to achieve the collapse and destruction of our country," he said.

A flyover of warplanes over Moscow was canceled, and parades in some other cities were scaled back or called off, amid security concerns - including drones that exploded over the Kremlin citadel itself last week - and shortages of troops and arms at the front.

While Ukraine prepares for a counter-offensive, they are still dealing with ongoing Russian missile attacks. Ukraine's air defenses shot down 23 of 25 cruise missiles fired chiefly at the capital Kyiv overnight. It was the second night in a row of major Russian air strikes and fifth so far this month.

Kyiv symbolized its break from Moscow this year by shifting its observance to May 8 in line with European allies; on May 9 it instead marked Europe Day, celebrating a declaration that led to the founding of the body that became the EU.

The capital hosted EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who tweeted "good to be back in Kyiv. Where the values we hold dear are defended everyday," calling it a "such a fitting place to celebrate the day of Europe."

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Russia's defense ministry said on Tuesday that its forces had launched missile strikes on targets across Ukraine overnight, Russian news agencies reported.

The defense ministry also said fighting is ongoing in the western part of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

The European Parliament said in a statement on Tuesday that it has given the green light to the suspension of EU import duties on Ukrainian agricultural exports for another year, in order to continue supporting the country's economy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with visiting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv on Tuesday.

A high-level four-way meeting on the Black Sea grain deal will take place in Istanbul on May 10-11, RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin as saying on Tuesday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Explosions were heard in Ukraine's Kyiv, Ukrinform reported. 

At least five people were wounded after Russian strikes on Kyiv, a city official said early on Monday, accusing Moscow of launching another large-scale attack on Ukraine.

Three people were injured in blasts in Kyiv's Solomyanskyi district and two others were wounded when drone wreckage fell onto the Sviatoshyn district, both west of the capital's center, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

Russia has not responded to the accusation yet.

(With input from Reuters)

A Ukrainian farmer has come up with a novel way to remove mines left in his fields after Russia's 'special military operation' – he's kitted out his tractor with protective panels stripped from Russian tanks and operates it by remote control.

After Russian forces were driven back from parts of eastern Ukraine by a Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, mines remained in many fields, making it perilous for farmers to sow grain for the next harvest.

Fields around the village of Hrakove are no exception. Oleksandr Kryvtsov, a general manager at his agricultural company, decided he couldn't wait for help from overworked official deminers to clear his field.

Instead, he designed a remote-controlled tractor that could withstand blasts. Using armor from damaged Russian military vehicles to protect the body of his tractor, he bought a system that would enable one of his team to operate the tractor remotely from a digger's bucket suspended in the air nearby.

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"We started doing this just because the crop-sowing time has come and we can't do anything because the rescue services are very busy," Kryvtsov said. And the distance afforded by the equipment has already proven invaluable. 

"We ran over an anti-tank mine. The protection got blown out (but) the tractor is safe," he said. "Everyone's alive and safe. The equipment was restored and repaired."

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in late April that about 30 percent of Ukrainian territory had been mined by Russians and that the government was focused on demining agricultural land as quickly as possible – a huge task.

"We have no time to demine the fields. The amount of work is enormous," said Serhii Dudak, head of the demining unit now overseeing the tractor's work. "It would take years to demine this particular field by hand and to guarantee that there are no mines here."

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TOP HEADLINES

• Prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver on Saturday and investigators said a detained suspect admitted acting on behalf of Ukraine.

• Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and Western states, particularly the United States, for the attack on writer Zakhar Prilepin, an ardent proponent of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine.

• The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Sunday he had been promised overnight as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue a months-long assault on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

• Ukrainian air defenses shot down a Russian hypersonic missile for the first time during an attack on the capital Kyiv this week, the air force claimed, in a potentially major setback for the Kremlin's campaign of long-range air strikes.

• Air raid alerts blared for several hours overnight into early Sunday over roughly two-thirds of Ukraine, with officials saying that air defense systems shot down a number of drones, including one over Kyiv's airspace.

• The head of the UN's nuclear power watchdog, Rafael Grossi, warned that the situation around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear station has become "potentially dangerous" as Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.

• The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Sunday that residents in the Russian controlled area of the Zaporizhzhia region  are being evacuated in the direction of Berdiansk and Prymorsk on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

• Ukraine launched more than 10 drones overnight on the Crimean Peninsula, including three on the port of Sevastopol, a Russian-installed official said early on Sunday, adding that air defense systems repelled all the attacks on Sevastopol.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet responded to proposals from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the Black Sea grain deal, TASS quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

IN DETAIL

Russia blames Ukraine and U.S. for car bomb that wounded writer

A prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver on Saturday and investigators said a detained suspect admitted acting on behalf of Ukraine.

The attack took place three days after the Kremlin said Ukraine attempted to hit the Kremlin with drones – Ukraine denied it had anything to do with the attack.

Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and the Western states backing it, particularly the United States, for the latest attack on the writer, an ardent proponent of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine.

Ukraine's security services, in its standard response, refused to confirm or deny involvement. A senior Ukrainian official accused Russia of staging the incident.

Russia's state Investigative Committee said Prilepin's Audi Q7 was blown up in a village in Nizny Novgorod region, about 250 miles east of Moscow, which it was treating as an act of terrorism. It said Prilepin had been taken to hospital.

The committee released a photograph showing the white vehicle lying overturned on a track next to a wood, with a deep crater beside it and pieces of metal strewn nearby.

The committee later issued a statement saying investigators were questioning a suspect identified as Alexander Permyakov.

"The suspect was detained and, in the course of questioning, he provided testimony that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services," said the statement, read by a woman in uniform.

The governor of Nizhny Novgorod region, Gleb Nikitin, said on Telegram that doctors had successfully operated on Prilepin and that he was now under sedation to help his recovery.

Russia's Foreign Ministry, in a statement on its website said: "Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with Ukrainian authorities, but also their Western patrons, the United States in the first instance..."

It said Washington's failure to denounce this and other attacks was "self-revealing" for the U.S. administration.

State news agency TASS quoted security sources as saying the suspect was a "native of Ukraine" with a past conviction for robbery with violence.

Ukraine's SBU Security Service issued its standard response of declining to confirm or deny involvement in the bombing.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believed Russian authorities had staged the attack.

"Everyone understands that this is all a staged performance," Podolyak told Ukrainian television. "This is staged and the bombings at the Kremlin are aimed at domestic audiences."

The novelist was the third prominent pro-war figure to be targeted by a bomb since the current conflict with Ukraine began in February 2022.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for the deaths of journalist Darya Dugina and war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in the two previous attacks, and Kyiv has denied involvement.

Ukrainian news site UNIAN ran an online poll asking readers who "in the pantheon of Russian scum propagandists" should be targeted next after Dugina, Tatarsky and Prilepin.

Officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. No comment was immediately available from Britain's Foreign Office.

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Forty-five Ukrainians returned home from Russian captivity, UNIAN reported on Saturday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said later that three Russian pilots were returned by Ukraine.

Traffic on the Crimean Bridge has been suspended for technical reasons and will resume in the near future, Russian media reported on Saturday, citing a Crimean official. 

Russia will respond to Kremlin drone attack with "concrete actions", Sputnik reported, citing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia's Wagner paramilitary group will exit eastern Ukraine's Bakhmut next week amid an ammunition shortage, its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on Friday in a statement. 

"I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the Defence Ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds," Prigozhin said.

"I'm pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they're doomed to perish senselessly."

(With input from Reuters)

Ukraine's anti-corruption prosecutors said on Thursday that Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov was detained.

The U.S. is behind the attack on the Kremlin and Ukraine carried it out, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, a day after Russia said that two drones aiming to kill President Vladimir Putin were shot down near the Kremlin. Russia initially blamed Ukraine for the attack – a charge which Kyiv has swiftly denied. 

"Attempts to disown this, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington," Peskov said on Thursday.

He said Putin was working in his office in the Kremlin as usual on Thursday but added that security measures in Moscow would be beefed up following the attack.

Since Wednesday, several Russian regions as well as major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have announced a ban on unauthorized use of unnamed aerial vehicles. 

On Thursday, Russia also reported a series of drone attacks on oil facilities and train derailments, blaming Ukraine for the same. 

(With input from agencies) 

The Russian Federation strongly condemned the attempts of terrorist attacks on the Kremlin on Wednesday night, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

"Kyiv's criminal actions once again confirm its lack of desire for peace and conflict resolution," the ministry said.

Kyiv has denied its involvement in the attack. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a speech at The Hague, Netherlands on Thursday, with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague during a visit to the Netherlands on Thursday.

Part of an oil refinery in southern Russia is on fire after it was hit by a drone attack, TASS news agency cited local emergency services as saying.

The U.S. announced a new $300 million military aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at Amsterdam's airport late Wednesday for an unannounced visit to the Netherlands, Dutch news agency ANP reported.

Air raid warning was heard in large part of Ukraine, including Kyiv, on Wednesday after Russia revealed a drone attack on the Kremlin, which the Ukrainian side has denied responsibility.

EU ambassadors have reached a deal to implement joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine, Swedish EU presidency said Wednesday. 

"The EU Ambassadors approved decision on assistance measure under the European Peace Facility to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces through 1 billion euros for joint procurement of ammunition and missiles," it announced. 

Earlier on Wednesday, the EU presented a proposal to boost ammunition production in Europe to replace depleted stocks as it arms Ukraine amid conflict with Russia. 

The plan, which would pour 500 million euros ($550 million) from the EU budget into increasing ammunition production, "will help supply more ammunition for Ukraine to defend its citizens and it will also strengthen our European defense capabilities," commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. 

(With input from agencies)

A senior Ukraine presidential official said Ukraine has nothing to do with the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin, which Moscow said was a Ukrainian attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin's life.

 "Ukraine has nothing to do with drone attacks on the Kremlin," presidential spokesman Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter. "Ukraine does not attack the Kremlin because, firstly, that does not solve any military aims."

He also said by doing so "Russia is clearly preparing a large-scale terrorist act" against Ukraine in the coming days.

Russia on Wednesday accused Ukraine of attempting an assassination of President Vladimir Putin, and Kyiv denied involvement.

The Kremlin said Ukraine launched an unmanned aerial vehicle strike against the Kremlin presidential residence on Wednesday, according to Russian media reports.

The strike, what the Kremlin called "a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the President of Russia" in a statement, involved two unmanned aerial vehicles that were shot down by Russian forces. Putin had not been in the Kremlin at the time, according to RIA news agency, and his work would continue as scheduled.

In response, a senior Ukrainian official said that Kyiv had "nothing to do with" any drone attack on the Kremlin.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter that the allegation could indicate Moscow was preparing for "a large-scale" attack against Ukraine in coming days.

"The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit," the Kremlin added.

Earlier on Wednesday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced a ban on the use of unauthorized civilian drones in the city from May 3.

The Victory Day military parade on Red Square slated for May 9 also remains unchanged, Russian media reported citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in wake of the drone attack.

German police confirmed that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to visit Berlin and Aachen on May 13 and 14. 

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto on Wednesday met with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Helsinki. 

At least eight people were killed and ten were injured after Russia shelled a hypermarket in Ukraine's Kherson, local media reported on Wednesday.

Russia has not responded to the report.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that talks between Russia and the United Nations on the Black Sea grain deal will be held in Moscow on May 5.

She said the UN would be represented by top trade official Rebeca Grynspan.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, for a one-day Nordic summit, according to local media reports. 

Zelenskyy will meet with his counterpart Sauli Niinisto as well as Nordic prime ministers, Finnish public broadcaster Yle and daily Helsingin Sanomat reported.

A 58-hour curfew will be in place in Kherson region of Ukraine from 8 p.m. on May 5 to 6 a.m. on May 8, local media reported on Wednesday, citing the governor of the region, Oleksandr Prokudin.

During this 58-hour curfew, it is forbidden to be on the street and move around the city, it added.

A major fire at a fuel depot in southern Russia's Krasnodar region broke out as a result of a drone falling on the facility, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported on Wednesday, citing emergency services.

Deputy defense ministers of Russia, Ukraine and Türkiye will meet in Istanbul on Friday to discuss the grain deal, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing the Turkish defense minister.

As part of a test of the Belarusian military's combat readiness, Russian and Belarusian warplanes will carry out joint patrols in the country's airspace, Belarusian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday

The Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, of Ukraine has adopted laws on the termination of agreements on trade, economic and technical cooperation and commercial shipping between Ukraine and Syria, the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency reported on Tuesday, citing parliamentary deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak.

Denmark will donate military equipment and financial support to Ukraine worth 1.7 billion Danish crowns ($250 million), the country's Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said on Tuesday.

The Polish charge d'affaires in Russia was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday over the "seizure" of a Russian school building in Warsaw, according to RIA news agency.

Ukraine's parliament decided on Tuesday to extend martial law and general mobilization for another 90 days, according to Ukrainian Independent Information Agency.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the window of opportunity for extending the Black Sea grain deal was shrinking, and that ongoing talks between the parties had yet to produce any results.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that part of the deal concerning Russia's interests was not being implemented.

There has been no immediate response from Ukraine yet.

(With input from Reuters)

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that Russia has taken measures to accelerate arms production to meet the demands of its "operation" in Ukraine, according to the RIA news agency.

The Russian Embassy in Poland sent a note of protest to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the "seizure" of the building of a Russian school in Warsaw, TASS news agency reported on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that he had a phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and discussed the program of long-term defense cooperation.  

TOP HEADLINES

• Russian forces launched a major airstrike against Ukraine in the early hours of Monday morning, with Kyiv's air defense crews shooting down 15 of 18 missiles as air raid sirens blared across the country. At least 34 people were wounded and dozens of homes damaged.

• A Russian freight train was derailed after it was hit by explosive device just over the Ukrainian border in Bryansk region, according to the regional governor. There were no victims in the attack.

• Ukrainian shelling killed four civilians in a border village in the same Russian region over the weekend, according to local officials.

• Undermining Russia's logistics is one of the key elements of preparation for Kyiv's expected Spring counter-offensive, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said, following a drone strike on a fuel storage facility in the Russian-controlled Crimean port of Sevastopol. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attack.  

• Kyiv's forces say they are holding onto parts of the strategic city of Bakhmut, while the head of Russian-backed separatist group said his troops were making progress.

• Pope Francis has said the Vatican is involved in a peace mission to try to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, stating after a three-day visit to Hungary that he was willing to do everything that has to be done.

• French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke by phone on Sunday to discuss Ukraine's military demands. 

• Ukrainian judokas will not take part in this month's world championships in Qatar after the International Judo Federation's (IJF) decided to readmit Russians and Belarusians as neutrals, the Ukrainian Judo Federation has announced.

• Russia has promised a harsh response to what it said was Poland's illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw.

IN DETAIL

Major airstrikes, heavy shelling ahead of counteroffensive

Russia fired missiles at targets across Ukraine in its second major air strike in three days, setting a huge blaze in a southeastern district where officials said 34 people were wounded.

Kyiv said 15 of 18 cruise missiles were shot down, shielding the capital Kyiv and other major cities, but there were reports of widespread damage in Pavlohrad, a railway hub behind the southern and eastern fronts.

A Russian-installed official in occupied Zaporizhzhia region confirmed Russian forces had struck military targets there.

Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council, said the attack had damaged 19 apartment blocks, 25 houses, three schools, three kindergartens and several shops.

The 34 wounded included three children, he said.

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The attacks came just three days after Russia missiles killed 23 civilians after it hit a high-rise apartment building in the city of Uman, part of its first major nationwide air strike in nearly two months.

Russia appears to have returned to its earlier tactic of countrywide air strikes ahead of Ukraine's long-planned counteroffensive to retake occupied land in the south and east.

On Saturday, an apparent Ukrainian drone hit a fuel storage depot in Sevastopol, base of the Russian navy in Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014. 

Following the attack, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said that undermining Russia's logistics is one of the key elements of preparation for Kyiv's expected Spring counter-offensive.

A separate explosion in a Russian region bordering Ukraine derailed a freight train on Monday, the local governor said.

Pictures shared on social media showed several tank carriages laying on their side and dark grey smoke billowing into the air at the site of the derailment in the Bryansk region.

Russian Railways, the country's rail operator, said the incident occurred at 10:17 Moscow time (0717 GMT), stating that the locomotive caught fire while seven freight wagons were derailed.

"An unidentified explosive device went off at the 136-kilometer mark on the Bryansk-Unecha railway line, derailing a freight train," Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a post on his Telegram channel.

Russian authorities say the region - which borders both Ukraine and Belarus - has seen multiple attacks by pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups in the last 14 months. 

Over the weekend, four civilians died after Kyiv shelled a village just across the frontier. 

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Russia temporarily halted gas supplies to Armenia on Monday for four days to conduct planned maintenance on a major gas pipeline, Gazprom Armenia said in a statement.

In a statement, Gazprom Armenia, a subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, said it temporarily suspended gas exports from 8 a.m. local time (0400 GMT) on Monday until 8 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Thursday.

At least one person was killed and dozens were injured in Ukraine after Russia fired a barrage of missiles early Monday morning, according to Ukrainian officials.

Kherson regional authorities reported one death and three injuries, while Serhiy Lysak, the head of Dnipro, reported 25 injuries.

Ukraine said it had intercepted 15 out of 18 missiles launched by Russian forces, according to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces.

Russia did not immediately comment on the attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said that he and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron talked over phone about  the situation on the frontline and prospects for its development in May and June.

The death toll rose to four after Ukrainian forces shelled the village of Suzemka in Russia's Bryansk region, said the governor Alexander Bogomaz on Sunday.

Two others were injured and hospitalized, the governor said.

There has been no immediate response from the Ukrainian side.

Russia has promised to respond harshly to what it called Poland's illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw, which it said was a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

According to Polish state media, police showed up outside the Russian embassy school in Warsaw on Saturday morning to seize the building. 

When asked about the incident, the Polish foreign ministry spokesman said that the building which houses the embassy school belonged to the Polish state. 

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Russia's foreign ministry has hit back at the Polish authorities decision to turn up to the embassy school's grounds with the aim of seizing it.

"We regard this latest hostile act by the Polish authorities as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and as an encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland," the ministry said.

"Such an insolent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilised inter-state relations, will not remain without a harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Polish interests in Russia," it added.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on Saturday that it would give "a legal assessment" of the "seizure," indicating that it will take reciprocal action against Poland.

A spokesperson for the Polish foreign ministry said Russia had a right to protest but added that Poland was acting within the law as the property belonged to the state, claiming that Russia had taken it illegally.

Moscow's ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, stated that the building was a diplomatic site which Polish authorities had no right to seize.

Relations between Poland and Russia, already fraught, have further soured since the start of the Ukraine conflict, with Warsaw becoming one of Kyiv's staunchest allies and pushing its NATO partners to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry. 

Earlier in the week, the Russian ambassador said that Polish prosecutors had seized significant amounts of money from the frozen bank accounts of the Russia's embassy and its trade mission.

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Russia on Saturday promised it would respond harshly to Poland's "seizure" of its embassy school in Warsaw, an act it called a "blatant violation" of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

Russia's RIA news agency had earlier reported that the Polish authorities, accompanied by police, broke into a school run by the Russian embassy in Warsaw and padlocked the gate.

When asked about the incident, a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Reuters the building housing the embassy school belonged to the Polish state.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Polish authorities had burst onto the embassy school's grounds with the aim of seizing it.

"Such an insolent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilised inter-state relations, will not remain without a harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Polish interests in Russia," the ministry said.

(With input from Reuters)

A fuel tank was ablaze in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol on Saturday in what appeared to be a drone strike, the local leader said.

"According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit," Mikhail Razvozhaev, Sevastopol's head, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula under the control of Russia, has come under repeated air attacks since Russia's launched "a special military operation" in Ukraine in February 2022. Russian officials have blamed the attacks on Kyiv.

The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

Razvozhaev said no one was hurt in Saturday's fire.

"The situation is under the control of our firefighters and all operative services," he wrote. "Since the volume of fuel is large, it will take time to localize the fire."

The sounds of airstrikes, anti-aircraft weaponry and artillery could be heard in Khartoum early on Saturday and dark smoke rose over parts of the city, as fighting in Sudan entered a third week.

Fighting between the army and a rival paramilitary force continued despite the announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire extension on Friday, when strikes by air, tanks and artillery rocked Khartoum and the adjacent cities of Bahri and Ombdurman.

Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have fled for their lives in a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted into violence on April 15, derailing an internationally-backed transition toward democratic elections.

The fighting has also reawakened a two-decade-old conflict in the western Darfur region where scores have died this week.

The army has been deploying jets or drones on RSF forces in neighborhoods across the capital. Many residents are pinned down by urban warfare with scant food, fuel, water and power.

At least 512 people have been killed and close to 4,200 wounded, according to the United Nations, which believes the real toll is much higher.

More than 75,000 people were internally displaced within Sudan just in the first week of the fighting, according to the UN. Only 16 percent of hospitals were operating as normal in the capital.

The latest ceasefire, brokered by foreign powers, is supposed to last until Sunday midnight.

The RSF accused the army of violating it with airstrikes on its bases in Omdurman, Khartoum's sister city at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers, and Mount Awliya.

The army blamed the RSF for violations.

The violence has sent tens of thousands of refugees across Sudan's borders and threatens to stir instability across a volatile swathe of Africa between the Sahel and the Red Sea.

In Darfur, at least 96 people had died since Monday in inter-communal violence rekindled by the army-RSF conflict, UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday it passed notes of protest to Polish and EU representatives in Ukraine over limits on Ukraine grain exports.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the Black Sea grain export deal over the phone on Friday.

"They exchanged views on how to guarantee the improvement, expansion and extension of the Black Sea Initiative," said a readout issued by the UN chief's press office.

The two also talked about the improvement of the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Russia and the Secretariat of the United Nations on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to the world markets, the readout said.

Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have agreed a deal to allow the transit of Ukrainian food exports, the European Commission said Friday, after temporary bans were imposed on the foodstuffs amid farmer protests.

"The EU Commission has reached an agreement in principle with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia regarding Ukraine agri-food products," EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis tweeted. "We have acted to address concerns of both farmers in neighboring EU countries and Ukraine."

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law toughening the penalty for treason to life.

IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi said that increased military activity continued in the region of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and confirmed the 8th rotation of the IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia was complete, according to a statement on Friday.

At least 17 people were killed and 18 injured after a barrage of Russian missile strikes in Ukraine overnight, the Emergency Service of Ukraine said on Friday. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law depriving those who discredit the armed forces and threaten national security of acquired Russian citizenship, RIA has reported.

The mayor of the Donetsk region said on Friday that seven people were killed when Ukrainian shelling hit a minibus in the city.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russia hurled missiles at cities across Ukraine as people slept early on Friday, killing at least 12 people in the first large-scale air strikes in nearly two months. READ MORE BELOW

• Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday said the real aim of the West in Ukraine is to strategically defeat Russia, to pose a threat to China, and to maintain its own monopoly position, state-owned news agency RIA reported.

•  Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he had invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine and that he had discussed Kyiv's formula for peace during talks at the Vatican. Shmyhal also told a news conference in Italy that a phone call between the leaders of China and Ukraine could prove a very positive beginning for future relations.

• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the telephone call on Thursday between China's President Xi Jinping and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

• Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that the Black Sea grain deal could only be saved by fully implementing it and that it was not "a buffet you can pick and choose from." Moscow says parts of the deal meant to allow it to export its own agricultural goods are not being honoured.

•  Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that Moscow did not intend to go down the path of nuclear escalation, but advised others not to test its patience.

• NATO allies and partners have delivered almost all their promised combat vehicles to Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. "More than 98 percent of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine have already been delivered."

IN DEPTH

Twelve killed as Ukrainian cities hit by overnight bombings

Early-morning attacks on Ukrainian cities were carried out as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive to try to retake Russian-occupied territory.

In the central city of Uman, firefighters battled a raging blaze at a residential apartment building that had been struck on an upper floor. At least 10 people were killed, including two children, and nine were taken to hospital, regional governor Ihor Taburets said.

Rescue workers clambered through a huge pile of the smouldering rubble, carrying out a body bag away on a stretcher. A grown man wearing a face mask sobbed as he watched, and a woman came to comfort him.

"At first the windows were blown out, then came the explosion," a resident of the apartment building who gave her name only as Olga said as rescue workers dug through the debris. "Everything flew out."

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. Three people were also wounded in the attack.

The Ukrainian military said it had shot down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia.

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The Bank of Russia, the country's central bank, decided on Friday to keep the key interest rate at 7.5 percent per annum.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said Friday via Telegram that he had visited the city of Artemovsk (the Russian name for Bakhmut) in eastern Ukraine.

EU ambassadors voted to extend for a year duty-free importation of goods from Ukraine, including agricultural products, the Swedish presidency of the EU Council tweeted on Friday. 

Explosions pounded areas of Kyiv and the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital early Friday, Interfax news agency reported.

It provided no details on the targets struck after midnight or of damage and casualties. The city's military administration said anti-aircraft units were in operation.

Earlier reports said cities stretching from central Ukraine to the southern Mykolaiv Region had been hit by explosions after air raid alerts were declared nationwide.

Air raid alerts were issued throughout Ukraine on Friday, according to local media reports.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held phone talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday, and addressed the Türkiye-Russia relations and regional issues, the Turkish presidency said in a brief statement.

The two leaders discussed developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Black Sea grain deal.

"President Erdogan stated that works on new initiatives can be carried out through the working group proposed to be formed," the statement said, adding that developments in Syria were also discussed during the phone call. 

The statement said Putin wished Erdogan well after the latter developed an upset stomach while conducting a live TV interview on Tuesday evening.

Earlier on Thursday, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Erdogan was in good health and would continue with his daily scheduled programs as soon as possible.

(With input from agencies) 

TOP HEADLINES

• Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymr Zelenskyy by phone, said that dialogue and negotiations were the only viable way out of the Ukraine crisis.

• Zelenskyy said the discussion was "long and meaningful" and hoped it would help boost relations with China. The Kremlin also welcomed the talks.

• The head of the Russia's Wagner mercenary group said Kyiv's preparation for its "inevitable" Spring counter-offensive included sending well-prepared units to the strategic city of Bakhmut, the focus of fighting in the country's east. READ MORE BELOW

• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that allies of the Western military alliance had delivered almost all their promised combat vehicles to Ukraine ahead of its expected counter-strike against Russian troops.

• In preparation for the attack, Russia has been digging a vast network of anti-tank ditches and trenches from western Russia through eastern Ukraine and on to Crimea.

• One person was killed and 23 people were wounded in a Russian missile strike on an apartment block and houses in the southern city of Mykolaiv, officials said.

• The Kremlin said relations with European countries were at the lowest possible level and that the expulsion of Russian diplomats was limiting the space for diplomacy. In recent days, Moldova, Sweden and Norway were among European states to expel Russian diplomats, triggering similar measures from Moscow.

• A reporter for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has been injured and his Ukrainian fixer killed during an ambush in southern Ukraine, according to the paper.

IN DETAIL 

Signs of "inevitable" counter-offensive in Bahkmut

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary force said Ukrainian troops were pouring in to the strategic city of Bakhmut ahead of Kyiv's "inevitable" counter-offensive.

The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces, in a report on Facebook, said fighting continued to grip the frontline focal point in Ukraine's industrial Donbas region, but he added that Russian troops had failed to advance to the northwest.

Separately, a spokesperson for Ukraine's eastern group of forces added that Russia had attacked 324 times using artillery and multiple rocket launchers in the last 24 hours.

"The Russians are destroying buildings in Bakhmut to prevent our soldiers from using them as fortifications," Cherevatiy said.

After nine months of fighting, Bakhmut remains Russia's primary target in Ukraine's east, with the head of the Wagner mercenary group claiming to have captured 80 percent of the city.

On Wednesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video message: "Today, well-trained enemy units are already being thrown into Bakhmut ... A counter-offensive by the Ukrainians is inevitable."

President Zelenskyy has said Ukrainian troops could pull out of Bakhmut if encircled, but if the city falls, Russia will be able to send its resources elsewhere, which could hamper Kyiv's counter offensive elsewhere. 

Ukraine's military has made no comment on a new counter-offensive to recapture Russian-occupied areas in the northeast and the south.

However, in Washington, the top U.S. general in Europe said Ukraine's military would get the weaponry it needed in time, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg echoing similar sentiments. 

"More than 98 percent of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine have already been delivered. That means over 1,550 armoured vehicles, 230 tanks, and other equipment, including vast amounts of ammunition," he said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

"In total, we have trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian armoured brigades. This will put Ukraine in the strong position to continue to retake occupied territory," he added.

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The Patriot air defense system has been deployed in Ukraine, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Wednesday.

"From April 2023, the Patriot air defense system is on combat duty in Ukraine," Oleshchuk wrote in a Telegram post.

The Ukrainian servicemen are "quickly mastering" their skills in using the air defense system, he said.

The Patriot will help Ukraine protect its skies from ballistic missiles, Oleshchuk added.

On April 19, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that Patriot systems had arrived in Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat, the Patriot missile system can destroy targets at distances up to 150 kilometers.

NATO allies and partners have provided Ukraine with 1,550 armored vehicles and 230 tanks, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced during a press conference on Thursday.

One person was killed and 23 others injured in a Russian missile strike on an apartment block and houses in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv in the early hours of Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said via Telegram on Thursday.

There was no immediate response from the Russian side.

40 Russian soldiers returned from Ukraine, RIA reported on Wednesday.

The European Commission will ban Ukrainian grain and oilseeds exports to Romania until June 5, Romanian Agriculture Minister Petre Daea said on Wednesday.

The Czech government said on Wednesday that it has decided to sanction Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday he had a phone talk with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi on the occasion of the Chernobyl tragedy's anniversary.

"I stressed that only the return of Ukraine full control over Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will protect the world from a new disaster," he tweeted. Zelenskyy also thanked the IAEA's special program on medical support of Ukrainian nuclear workers.  

44 Ukrainians returned home in an exchange of prisoners, Ukrinform reported on Wednesday.

TOP HEADLINES

• China will send a delegation to Ukraine to assess the situation and has offered to facilitate peace talks with Russia, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing confirmed. The news came in a media conference following a phone call between President Xi Jinping and Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.

• China will focus on promoting peace talks, and make efforts for a ceasefire as soon as possible, Xi told Zelenskyy, according to the report from CCTV. A foreign ministry spokesperson said the call illustrates China's 'objective and impartial position' on international affairs.

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has blamed the West for a deadlock over the future of a Black Sea grain deal. Moscow has seen "practically no results" from the pact for its grain and fertilizer exports, he said.

• Three Russian military aircraft flying without transponder signals have been intercepted in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, Germany's Luftwaffe said on Wednesday.

• Lavrov added that there would be a reaction from Russia to the letter sent to Russian President Putin by U.N. chief Guterres about the grain deal. Lavrov was addressing the United Nations Security Council as its chair, with Russia holding its presidency for one month. 

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized the Russia-Ukraine conflict while on a visit to Spain but said no one is talking about peace in what he called an "insane war." 

• Ukraine is working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and American companies to collect evidence of war crimes such as geolocation and cellphone information against Russia, senior officials said on Tuesday. 

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IN DEPTH

Zelenskyy hails "long and meaningful" phone call with Xi Jinping

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone on Wednesday, Beijing and Kyiv said.

"I had a long and meaningful phone call with President Xi Jinping," Zelenskyy said on Twitter. "I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine's ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations," he wrote.

Zelenskyy's spokesman Sergiy Nykyforov said on Facebook that the two had "an almost one hour-long telephone conversation."

Chinese broadcaster CCTV reported that during the call Xi told Zelenskyy "talks and negotiation" were the "only way out" of the conflict. "On the issue of the Ukraine crisis, China has always stood on the side of peace and its core position is to promote peace talks," CCTV reported Xi as saying.

According to a readout of the call, Xi said China "will neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the crisis to profit."

"When dealing with the nuclear issue, all parties concerned should remain calm and restrained, truly focus on the future and destiny of themselves and all mankind, and jointly manage and control the crisis," Xi said.

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Russia said on Wednesday it was expelling 10 Norwegian diplomats as a "retaliatory measure" after Norway announced it was kicking out 15 Russians. 

Norway's ambassador to Russia Robert Kvile was handed a note declaring "persona non grata" 10 representatives of the Norwegian embassy in Moscow, Russia's foreign ministry said on Wednesday. 

"The Norwegian ambassador was also told that other measures would follow in connection with Oslo's unfriendly actions, including the imposition of restrictions on the hiring of locally recruited Russian citizens by Norwegian diplomatic missions," the Russian ministry said in a statement. 

Norway announced on April 13 that it had expelled 15 Russian embassy officials that the Norwegian government said were intelligence officers operating under the cover of diplomatic positions.

(With input from agencies)

The Kremlin on Wednesday said Moscow's move to take temporary control of the assets of Finnish energy group Fortum and its former German subsidiary Uniper was in retaliation for what it called the illegal seizure of Russian assets abroad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin late on Tuesday signed a decree establishing temporary control of the Russian assets of the two European state-owned energy firms.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the decree did not concern ownership, just the power to manage the assets. He said the measure could be expanded to other assets if necessary. 

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a letter sent by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to President Vladimir Putin about the Black Sea grain deal had been passed on via diplomatic channels and was being considered.

Poland will keep in place an embargo on the import of Ukrainian grains at least until the end of the year, Development Minister Waldemar Buda said on Wednesday as the European Union works on a deal to end unilateral bans introduced by some countries. 

Moscow has seen "practically no results" from a pact with the United Nations that aimed to help Russia's grain and fertilizer exports and blamed the Western countries for creating a deadlock, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.

Russia has signaled that it will not agree to extend a related deal that allows the safe wartime export of grain from Ukraine's Black Sea ports beyond May 18 unless a list of demands is met.

Russia signed a three-year deal last July in which the United Nations agreed to help try and remove any obstacles to its grain and fertilizer exports.

Moscow could not accept the alternative of having to "each time manually take the effort and plead" with American and European ports, banks, and insurance companies for help unless Russia could export grain and fertilizer globally without hindrance, Lavrov said.

"That's not the deal we reached on 22 July last year," he said.

(Cover: Bulk carrier in the port of Odesa, southern Ukraine on August 19, 2022. /CFP)

Military expenditure in Europe has seen its sharpest year-on-year rise in at least 30 years due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, according to a report recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Total global military expenditure rose by 3.7 percent in real terms in 2022, reaching a new high of $2.24 trillion and representing its eighth consecutive year of growth, said the report, adding that by far, the sharpest rise in spending – 13 percent – was seen in Europe.

The sharpest rise was "largely accounted for by Russian and Ukrainian spending," said SIPRI. 

Ukraine's military spending reached $44 billion in 2022, which is not only a 640-percent surge, but also the highest single-year increase in a country's military expenditure ever recorded by SIPRI.

The military burden - military spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) -  shot up to 34 percent of GDP in 2022, from 3.2 percent in 2021.

Meanwhile, Russian military spending grew by an estimated 9.2-percent in 2022 to around $86.4 billion, which is equivalent to 4.1 percent of Russia's GDP in 2022, according to the think tank.

The report also highlighted that military expenditure by states in Central and Western Europe totaled $345 billion in 2022, which for the first time surpassed that of 1989, the period when the Cold War was ending. 

Besides the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the think tank also noticed others in Europe announced plans to raise spending levels over periods of up to a decade, adding that the sharpest increases were seen in European countries including Finland and Poland.

"As a result, we can reasonably expect military expenditure in Central and Western Europe to keep rising in the years ahead," said SIPRI Senior Researcher Diego Lopes da Silva.

Dr Nan Tian, another SIPRI Senior Researcher, said: "The continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world."

"States are bolstering military strength in response to a deteriorating security environment, which they do not foresee improving in the near future."

Aside from Europe, the United States remains by far the world's biggest military spender with $877 billion in 2022 - accounting for 39 percent of total global military spending, said the report.

"The increase in the U.S. military spending in 2022 was largely accounted for by the unprecedented level of financial military aid it provided to Ukraine," said Dr Nan Tian.

(With input from agencies)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said the situation related to the Black Sea grain deal had reached a deadlock, adding there were still obstacles blocking Russian exports.

Lavrov made his comments during a news conference at the United Nations.

‌The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that conflicts and climate change are driving global food insecurity. 

The organization warned of "mounting trends of chronic hunger, acute food insecurity and malnutrition" as its council kicked off a four-day meeting in Rome to discuss the issue. 

The Russia-Ukraine crisis was cited as a catalyst for volatile global food prices, while extreme weather events, such as last year's flooding in Pakistan and below rainfall in East Africa, were highlighted as climate-related events that have devastated crops. 

‌The council is FAO's "executive organ" that meets in between sessions of the conference, which includes all FAO members and is held every two years. 

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‌Breadbasket of Europe 
Russia's 'military operation' in Ukraine since February 2022 has sparked extreme volatility in global food prices ever since. According to U.N. data, exports of grain to developing nations from Ukraine are still below pre-war levels, despite a deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkiye last year. 

Under the agreement, Russia has allowed exports of grain from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. The deal is set to expire on May 18 but Moscow has previously agreed to extend it at the last minute. 

After a meeting of agriculture ministers in Japan over the weekend, the G7 nations called for the "extension, full implementation and expansion" of the agreement. 

"We are deeply concerned about the devastating impact the war is having on food security globally, not least through price spikes in grains, fuel and fertilizers, which is disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable," the ministers said in a joint statement after the meeting in Miyazaki, Japan. 
 

Legacy of COVID-19 
Even before the war in Ukraine broke out and disrupted global food supplies, officials at FAO had warned about rising hunger levels around the world. The organization estimates there were as many as 828 million undernourished people in 2021, an increase of 150 million since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

FAO defines undernourishment as not being able "to acquire enough food to meet the daily minimum dietary energy requirements, over a period of one year." 

According to FAO's projections, almost 670 million people will still be undernourished in 2030, 78 million more than if the pandemic had not occurred. 

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Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on Tuesday during an interview with SVT Nyheter, that Sweden has expelled five Russian diplomats.

A Russian missile struck a museum in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Tuesday, killing two women and wounding 10 others, the state emergency service said.

The Russian side has not responded to the claim yet.

The Ambassador of Moldova in Moscow was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry, TASS reported on Tuesday. 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and discussed the Ukraine crisis, as well as the situation in Afghanistan and Syria.

With regard to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products from Black Sea ports, Guterres expressed concerns about the recent obstacles encountered by the Joint Coordination Center in its daily operations, according to a readout of the meeting issued by the UN chief's press office.

Guterres presented Lavrov with a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, outlining a proposed way forward aimed at the improvement, extension and expansion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, taking into account positions recently expressed by the parties and the risks posed by global food insecurity, said the readout.

The UN chief took note of the concerns expressed by Russia on the implementation of the memorandum of understanding between Russia and the UN Secretariat on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to the world markets. He provided a detailed report on the progress already achieved in this regard and reiterated the United Nations' commitment to continue working to address remaining issues, said the readout.

Lavrov is at the UN headquarters in New York to chair Security Council meetings as his country holds the rotating Security Council presidency for the month of April.

Some stakeholders are "undertaking attempts to preserve the unipolar world order, by imposing the 'might is right' principle and trying to replace universal norms of international law with a 'rules-based order'," Lavrov was quoted as saying.

"We have reached a dangerous threshold," Lavrov noted, adding that "double standards need to be abandoned. Advancing the West's rules on the international arena is asphyxiating multilateralism. The key to success is concerted efforts."

The Russian mission to the United Nations pointed out that the United States denied the issuance of U.S. visas to Russian journalists who were supposed to accompany Lavrov on his official visit to New York for Security Council meetings.

This was done despite the fact that Russian media representatives complied with all relevant terms and requirements, including valid UN media accreditation, said the Russian mission in a statement on Sunday.

The United States violated again its obligations under the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, it said.

"We consider this step as another manifestation of neglect of international law by the United States. When denying access to UN events for Russian journalists, the U.S. authorities once again demonstrate their true attitude to freedom of speech and availability of information," read the statement.

(With input from Xinhua)

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged continued implementation of the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal and Russia grain and fertilizer pact.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met with visiting Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in Zhytomyr, Ukrinform reported on Monday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has discussed the situation in Ukraine with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by phone, the Turkish Habertürk newspaper reported on Monday.

The Black Sea Fleet repeled an attack by surface drones on the outer roadstead in Sevastopol, said the governor of the city, Mikhail Razvozhaev, on Monday via Telegram.

If the Group of Seven (G7) moved to ban exports to Russia, Moscow would respond by terminating the Black Sea Grain deal, said Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday.

G7 countries are mulling a near-total ban on exports to Russia, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported last week.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russia has said it will expel more than 20 German diplomats in an apparent response to reports that Germany was taking similar measures, deciding to expel a group of more than 20 Russian emissaries.

• Russia's Defense Ministry has announced the capture of three more western districts of the strategic town Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian troops have been battling for months.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he did not want to "please anyone" with his views about the Ukraine conflict, after provoking criticism in the West for saying Kyiv's allies should stop sending weapons. READ MORE BELOW

• The Western-allied G7 economic powers have demanded the "extension, full implementation and expansion" of the Black Sea grain deal, which allows Ukrainian exports to leave the country by sea. Russia, which says its own agricultural exports are being hindered by Western sanctions, has signaled that it will not allow the deal to continue beyond May 18.

• A first batch of Russian fertilizer which Latvia seized last year is being shipped to Kenya, according to Latvia's Foreign Ministry. Russia has said the seizure had been a key issue in its continued participation in the agreement. 

• Several Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and its surrounding areas late on Saturday night, according to local officials.

• More than 3,000 people in the Russian city of Belgorod are returning to their homes after being evacuated in response to a Russian warplane accidentally dropping a bomb on the city. 

• Russia's foreign ministry is advising citizens to avoid travel to Canada in response to reports of numerous cases of discrimination against Russians there, including physical violence.

• Russia's richest people have allegedly added $152 billion to their wealth over the past year, helped by high prices for natural resources and a rebound from losses incurred at the start of the conflict, Forbes Russia said.

• The son of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson has said in an interview that he had served in Ukraine under an assumed name as part of the Wagner mercenary force. If Nikolai Peskov, the 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, had served in Ukraine, it would be a rare, public example of a child of a senior Russian official fighting in the conflict. 

IN DETAIL

Lula calls for 'third alternative' to conflict

Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said he did not want to "please anyone" with his views about the Ukraine conflict, after provoking Western criticism for suggesting Kyiv shared responsibility for triggering Moscow's assault. 

Speaking in Lisbon during his first visit to Europe since being elected president, Lula said he wanted to "build a way to bring both of them (Russia and Ukraine) to the table."

"While my government condemns the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity, we support a negotiated political solution to the conflict," he told journalists.

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"I want to find a third alternative (to solve the conflict), which is the construction of peace." 

Last week he said the U.S. and European allies should stop supplying arms to Ukraine, arguing that they were drawing out the fighting. 

"If you are not making peace, you are contributing to war," said Lula, who has maintained that neutrality in the conflict was the only way to end the fighting. 

The White House in turn accused Lula of echoing Russian propaganda.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who was with Lula at the news conference, said their countries' stances on the conflict were different.

Portugal, a founding member of NATO and the former colonial power over Brazil, has sent military equipment to Ukraine, with Rebelo de Sousa stating that Ukraine had the right to defend itself.

Lula arrived in Portugal on Friday for a five-day visit in a bid to try to improve foreign ties following the tenure of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, whose four years in office saw a break down in relations with many European countries. 

"I wanted to tell you how happy I am," Lula, standing next to Costa, told a room packed with government officials and reporters. "Brazil spent almost six years, especially the last four, isolated from the world.

"Brazil is back, to improve our relationship."

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Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Saturday that Russia will continue to accept more payments for energy exports in its ruble currency and China's yuan, as Moscow works to abandon U.S. dollars and euros.

"The yuan and ruble are in high demand, so that vector will continue. China already pays in yuan for gas and partially for oil, for which there are settlements in rubles as well," Novak told Russian state TV.

TOP HEADLINES

• The U.S. will conduct a 10-week training program to train hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers how to use its innovative advanced M1A2 Abrams tanks. READ MORE BELOW

• U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that while the decision to provide Ukraine with these tanks will make a difference, it's no silver bullet.

• Germany will also establish a repair hub in Poland to mend damaged tanks and return them to the battlefield.

• Six German-made Leopard 2A4 tanks destined for Ukraine left Spain by ship, according to a naval monitoring website.

• Ukraine pressed allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition as the U.S. hosted a meeting at the Ramstein air base in Germany on Friday to discuss stepping up support to repel the Russian attack.

• Russia's Defense Ministry said assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv's forces.

• Ukraine said Russian forces had made some advances in their fight for Bakhmut but the situation was under control.

* NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said NATO allies agreed Ukraine would eventually become a member and that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy had been invited to attend the Western military alliance's summit in July.

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IN DEPTH

Allies bolster Ukrainian tank forces

The United States said it will soon start training Ukrainian troops to use its Abrams tank and Germany announced a deal to establish a Polish hub to repair tanks, as the U.S. hosted a meeting of allies on Friday.

The meeting at Ramstein Air Base, the latest in a series of arms-pledging conferences since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, made no major announcements on weapons but said its focus was air defense and ammunition.

It also reassured Ukraine of unwavering support and backed its aspirations to join NATO at some point but officials stressed the immediate focus was the battlefield.

Ukraine has pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition before a counteroffensive expected in the coming weeks or months.

"The M1 tank, when it is delivered, will make a difference," said U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff.

The Abrams tanks will arrive in Germany in the coming weeks for Ukrainian troops to begin training, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added the training would last about 10 weeks and involve hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.

In January, Washington pledged to supply Kyiv with 31 advanced M1A2 Abrams tanks.

NATO member states and their allies have provided Ukraine with weapons and armor, but Kyiv has repeatedly asked for more powerful weapons and quicker supplies.

Asked about the demands for advanced jets, Milley said what Ukraine needed first was ground-based air defence.

"The Russians are cautious to come into Ukraine because of the effective use of the Ukrainian air defence system. That is the most critical thing right now," Milley said.

Also at Friday's meeting, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced a deal to establish a hub in Poland to repair the German-made Leopard tanks being deployed in Ukraine.

All parties agreed on how to finance such a hub, which costs around 150-200 million euros ($384 million) a year and could begin operations at the end of May, Pistorius told reporters.

He also said Ukrainian troops would begin to receive training on using the Leopard tanks and said Berlin's pledge to deliver around 80 of them by mid-2023 was progressing swiftly.

"What does all this show? It shows our determination that we want to persevere," he said.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday signed a decree on sanctions against 40 individuals and 382 legal entities.

Germany has decided on another mass expulsion of Russian diplomats, to which Russia will respond in kind, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

In an interview with the Zvezda TV channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova revealed that more than 20 German diplomats are being expelled from Russia.

There has been no response from Germany yet.

Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the arms race, including in the missile sphere, is becoming uncontrollable, and there is a need for Russia to build up its tactical missile capabilities including in Kaliningrad, RIA news agency reported.

The remark came as the fourth Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting was held at Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany, in which Western allies discussed further support, including military aid for Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a meeting with President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Odile Renaud-Basso and discussed the implementation of projects for the recovery and development of Ukraine, Ukrinform reported on Friday.

A Moscow court on Friday issued a warrant for the arrest of the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, accusing him of organizing "terrorist attacks" inside Russia, news agency RIA reported.

RIA cited the court as saying that Budanov was accused of offenses related to terrorism and arms smuggling. The move against him was announced "in absentia."

The British government on Friday announced new sanctions against Russia, targeting five individuals including two agents from the Russian Federal Security Service.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday that recent actions and rhetoric from Ukraine show that Russia needs to continue what it calls the "special military operation" in Ukraine.

The operation will continue until its stated aims of "denazification and demilitarisation" are complete, and threats to Russian security are eliminated, the ministry said.

There has been no response from Ukraine yet.

Canada on Friday announced fresh military aid for Ukraine that will include 40 sniper rifles, 16 radio sets and a donation to a NATO fund, according to Defense Minister Anita Anand.

(With input from Reuters)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that all NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will eventually become a member state but the main focus now is to ensure the country prevails against Russia.

Stoltenberg made the remarks to reporters ahead of a meeting with the Ukraine defense contact group at the Ramstein air base in Germany.

He noted that Kyiv must have "the deterrence to prevent new attacks" once the conflict ends.

Russia said on Thursday that preventing Ukraine from joining the transatlantic alliance remains one of the main goals of its "special military operation."

"Otherwise it would pose a serious, significant threat to the security of our country," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

(Cover: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Kyiv on April 20, 2023 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. /CFP)

(With input from Reuters)

Some of Ukraine's key allies including the U.S. are considering moving closer to an outright ban on most exports to Russia, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Kyiv on Thursday. 

Addressing a joint news conference with Stoltenberg, Zelenskyy said it was time for NATO to take the political decision to invite Ukraine to join the military alliance, and that Kyiv wanted to know when it would become a member.

The Ukrainian leader added that a NATO summit in Vilnius in July could become "historic," and that he had been invited to attend.

Ukraine's future lies in NATO, Stoltenberg said during his first visit to Ukraine.

Stoltenberg pledged continued military support for Ukraine, saying that, so far, NATO allies had trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and provided 65 billion euros ($71.31 billion) of military aid alone.

"NATO stands with you today, tomorrow and for as long as it takes," Stoltenberg stated, before inviting Zelenskyy to the NATO summit in Vilnius in July.

(With input from Reuters)

The Danish energy agency has declared that areas of the Nord Stream leaks are now safe for vessels to traverse, and has recommended to the Danish Maritime Authority to lift restrictions on sailing ships in the affected areas.

The Swiss Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research added Wagner group and news agency RIA FAN to list of sanctions against Russia on Thursday.

Hungary has banned the import of certain meat products and honey in addition to grains from Ukraine until June 30, Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Gergely Gulyas said on Thursday.

The ban on imports of major cereals and agricultural products "includes a total of 25 products, the most important of which are cereals rapeseed and sunflower seeds, flour, oil, honey and certain meat products," Gulyas told a news conference.

The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has arrived in Kyiv, Ukraine's UNIAN news agency reported Thursday. 

Denmark and the Netherlands have agreed to donate 14 Leopard-2 tanks to Ukraine, local media reported Thursday. They will be ready by the beginning of 2024.

TOP HEADLINES

• Inspections of ships are resuming under a U.N.-brokered agreement on the safe export of grain from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.

• However, Russia has accused Ukraine of sabotaging the Black Sea grain deal by demanding bribes from ship owners to register new vessels and carry out inspections under the cover of a deal the United Nations hopes could ease a global food crisis.

• Russian drones struck Ukraine's southern Odesa region overnight and caused a fire at an infrastructure facility, the head of the military command of the Odesa region, Yuri Kruk, said.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemned the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity by Russia and again called for mediation to end the conflict, a peace initiative criticized by the Ukrainian government.

• South Korea might extend its support for Ukraine beyond humanitarian and economic aid if it comes under a large-scale civilian attack, President Yoon Suk Yeol said, signalling a shift in his stance against arming Ukraine for the first time.

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IN DEPTH

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said inspections of ships are resuming as part of a United Nations agreement to maintain the safe export of grain via the country's Black Sea ports. 

He wrote on Facebook that "ship inspections are being resumed, despite the RF's (Russian Federation's) attempts to disrupt the agreement."

The Russian news agency RIA said inspections had already resumed after two days of talks, citing the U.N. coordinator's press office.

Kubrakov is in Türkiye to discuss the status of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which was agreed by Russia and Ukraine last July to help alleviate a global food crisis.

Moscow says it agreed to extend the deal only until May 18. Kyiv and the United Nations say the deal has another 60 days to run after then, and is seeking an agreement to ensure it continues.

Kyiv says Russian inspectors stopped letting through vessels supposed to ship grain from Ukraine.

Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky said Moscow was increasing difficulties for Ukraine at a time when three eastern European countries have banned imports of Ukrainian grain and food products.

"Obviously, the Russians could not fail to take advantage of these nuances on the western (Ukrainian) border," Solsky said.

RIA quoted the Russian foreign ministry by saying Ukraine and the United Nations were causing difficulties with the ship inspections.

Ukraine and Poland reached an agreement on Tuesday to unblock transit of Ukrainian grain from Friday, but the import bans remain in place in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently visited Ukraine's border with Belarus and Poland, he said via Telegram.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected strategic missile systems in Kaluga region, news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

Ukrainian defense minister confirmed Patriot air defense systems had arrived in Ukraine, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Bulgaria banned the import of Ukrainian grain temporarily, local media reported on Wednesday.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine, retreating from Bakhmut two days ago, blew up 4 high-rise buildings, killing at least 20 civilians, including children, TASS news agency reported, citing Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) law enforcement agencies.

Ukraine has not responded to it.

Moldova summoned the Russian ambassador on Wednesday to declare a member of the Russian embassy staff persona non grata, a government spokesperson said.

Government press secretary Daniel Vode told reporters the decision was connected to the actions of embassy staff towards Moldovan border guards who denied entry to a regional Russian politician at Chisinau airport this week.

The embassy staffer was not named.

Inspections of ships under the Black Sea grain deal resumed after two days of negotiations, Russian news agency, RIA reported on Wednesday, citing the UN coordinator.

South Korea might extend its support for Ukraine beyond humanitarian and economic aid if it comes under a large-scale civilian attack, President Yoon Suk-yeol said, signalling a shift in his stance against arming Ukraine for the first time.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry recalled its ambassador to Belarus on Tuesday after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with the head of the Donetsk region Denis Pushilin in Minsk.

Russia's foreign minister came to Brazil on Monday to hold talks with high government officials about the conflict with Ukraine.

Brazil has been working to be an active part in any negotiations seeking the end of hostilities.

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Poland and Ukraine on Tuesday struck a deal to allow Ukrainian grain to transit through Poland after Warsaw banned imports in response to protests from farmers.

"We have managed to set up mechanisms that will mean that not even a tonne of grain remains in Poland. The goods will transit through Poland," Agriculture Minister Robert Telus said following talks in Warsaw with Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops in Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, presidential office said on Tuesday.

Russian court rejected WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich's appeal against pre-trial detention, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday, adding that the decision on his arrest was recognized as legal.

U.S., British and Canadian ambassadors were summoned to Russian Foreign Ministry "in connection with gross interference in the internal affairs of Russia", Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the Kherson and Luhansk regions, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Putin attended a military command meeting at the headquarters of the "Dnieper" army group in the Kherson region, and visited Russian national guard headquarters in the Luhansk region.

In Kherson, Putin heard reports from commanders of the airborne forces and the "Dnieper" group as well as other senior officers who briefed him on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the Kremlin added.

(With input from Reuters)

Russia must withdraw all forces and equipment from Ukraine immediately and unconditionally, G7 foreign ministers said Tuesday.

In a joint communique issued after a three-day meeting in Japan, G7 foreign ministers warned that any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences. 

There's no comment from Russian side yet.

Slovakia will temporarily halt imports of grains and other selected products from Ukraine, a government spokesman said on Monday.

The British government said Monday it had summoned the Russian ambassador to make clear its condemnation of the "politically motivated" conviction and sentencing of outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British dual national.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Monday delivered a report to President Vladimir Putin on drills conducted by the country's Pacific Fleet.

In footage broadcast on state television, Putin responded by saying snap checks had shown the Pacific Fleet to be at a high level of readiness and that Russia's priority was Ukraine.

Poland and Hungary have decided to ban imports of grain and other food from neighboring Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector, the two governments said on Saturday, after a flood of supply depressed prices across the region.

Ukraine expressed regret about the Polish decision, saying that "resolving various issues by unilateral drastic actions will not accelerate a positive resolution of the situation".

After Russia's military operation blocked some Black Sea ports, large quantities of Ukrainian grain, which is cheaper than that produced in the European Union (EU), ended up staying in Central European states due to logistical bottlenecks, hitting prices and sales for local farmers.

In a letter to the European Commission last month, the prime ministers of five eastern European countries said the scale of the increase in products like grains, oilseeds, eggs, poultry and sugar had been "unprecedented", and said tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural imports should potentially be considered.

"Today, the government has decided on a regulation that prohibits the entry, importation of grain into Poland, but also dozens of other types of food (from Ukraine)," PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said during a party convention.

Polish government announced that the ban on imports would last until June 30. The regulation also includes a prohibition on imports of sugar, eggs, meat, milk and other dairy products and fruits and vegetables.

Ukraine's ministry of agrarian policy and food said the Polish ban contradicted existing bilateral agreements on exports, and called for talks to settle the issue.

"We understand that Polish farmers are in a difficult situation, but we emphasize that Ukrainian farmers are in the most difficult situation right now," it said in a statement.

Later on Saturday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government joined the ban, saying the status quo would cause severe damage to local farmers.

Hungary did not give details on when its ban on grain and other food imports would go into effect, but said it will expire at the end of June.

Poland's Kaczynski said: "We are and remain unchanged friends and allies of Ukraine. We will support her and we support her. ... But it is the duty of every state, every authority, good authority in any case, to protect the interests of its citizens."

Kaczynski said Poland was ready to start talks with Ukraine to settle the grain issue.

Hungary's government said it hoped for changes in regulation at the EU level, including a re-thinking of the elimination of import duties on Ukrainian produce.

(With input from agencies)

(Cover: Bulk carrier ARGO I is docked at the grain terminal of the port of Odessa, Ukraine, April 10, 2023. /CFP)

The Russian defense ministry said Wagner fighters had captured two blocks in north-western and south-eastern Bakhmut, the RIA has reported.

Ukraine has not responded to the statement yet.

One hundred and thirty Ukrainian prisoners have been released and returned home in a "great Easter exchange", a senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted on Saturday that he had a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"I praised France's intention to further strengthen support for Ukraine on the battlefield. We also discussed the preparations for the NATO Vilnius summit and its expected results, in particular regarding Ukraine's obtaining effective security guarantees even before joining the Alliance," Zelenskyy said.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, killing nine people, authorities said, including a two-year-old boy who was rescued from the rubble but died on his way to hospital. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia said it was pushing to take the western districts of the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut, as sources told AFP Ukraine was still sending in fresh troops. The Russian defense ministry said mercenaries from the Wagner paramilitary outfit were advancing further into the city, supported by Moscow's air force.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill to create a digital draft system, greatly facilitating mobilizing Russians into the army. The law creates a digital conscription notice system that could bar men from leaving the country and make dodging the draft nearly impossible. 

• Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the U.S. should stop "encouraging war" in Ukraine, as he wrapped up a state visit to China in which he has strengthened economic ties with his country's main trading partner.

• Eight Leopard 2 tanks that Canada promised to Ukraine to help the war-torn country fight Russian troops have arrived in neighboring Poland, Defense Minister Anita Anand said.

• Finland's border guard unveiled the first section of a 200-kilometer border fence with Russia. Finland joined NATO just a week ago and its 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border has also doubled the frontier between the U.S.-led military alliance and Russia. Three meters (10 feet) tall and topped with barbed wire, it will cost around €380 million ($417 million) and is due to be completed by 2026.

• Ukraine has been promised $5 billion in additional funding to support its ongoing fight against Russia amid "fruitful meetings'' in Washington this week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters. Shmyhal met with representatives of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank as well as top U.S. officials, on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

IN DETAIL

Russian shelling of block of flats kills nine

Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, killing nine people, authorities said, including a two-year-old boy who was rescued from the rubble but died on his way to hospital. Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. 

According to Kyiv, it was struck by seven missiles which hit five buildings, five homes, a school and an administrative building.

Vadim Lyakh, the head of Sloviansk's military administration, said that nine people died - including a woman whose body was recovered from the rubble overnight - and 21 were wounded. Five people were still under the rubble and their identities were established, he said.

Rescue workers were seen digging for survivors on the top floor of the typical Soviet-era housing block, and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.

"A child died in an ambulance after being pulled out from the rubble," Ukrainian police said on Twitter.

Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska sent her condolences to the child's family during this "indescribable grief." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier denounced Russia for "brutally shelling" residential buildings and "killing people in broad daylight."

Ukraine imposed new sanctions on Russia, targeting 692 individuals and entities, according to two presidential decrees published on Saturday.

The Polish government has decided to ban imports of grain and other food from Ukraine to protect the Polish agricultural sector, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said on Saturday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted on Friday that he had met with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi and discussed the situation in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP).

The Belarusian defense ministry said on Friday that its pilots have finished training in Russia, and that the training program in Russia included usage of "special ammunition."

The bodies of another 82 dead soldiers have been returned to Ukraine, Ukraine's Reintegration Ministry said on Friday via Telegram.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the start of a sudden inspection of the Pacific Fleet, which was alerted in full force and began to be brought to the highest degree of combat readiness, RIA news agency reported on Friday.

Ukraine denied its forces are blocked in Bakhmut, AFP news agency reported Thursday citing an army official, hours after Russia claimed its forces were blocking Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of the frontline hotspot.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he was not aware of there being anything contemporaneous in recently leaked intelligence documents, Reuters has reported.

"I'm not concerned about the leak, I'm concerned that it happened but there is nothing contemporaneous that I'm aware of," Biden said.

The European Council on Thursday adopted an assistance measure worth 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) under the European Peace Facility to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Moscow said on Thursday that Russian forces were "blocking" Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut, AFP has reported.

Ukraine has not responded to it yet.

Russia's General Prosecutor's office said on Thursday that it had opened an investigation into a video showing the alleged beheading of a Ukrainian captive by Russian soldiers.

"In order to assess the credibility of these materials and make an appropriate decision, they have been forwarded to the investigative authorities for verification," it said.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday the video, which has circulated on social media, was "awful" and that its authenticity needed to be checked.

The Norwegian foreign ministry on Thursday declared 15 Russian embassy officials as unwanted in Norway.

Ukraine's Energoatom says a Russian mine exploded near generator room of reactor at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, local media reported on Thursday.

There has been no response from Russia yet.

The UK Treasury announced via Twitter on Thursday that it has pledged $1 billion of guaranteed World Bank loans for Ukraine in 2023, in order to secure the country's economy.

Air raid warning was heard in Kyiv on Thursday. 

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Wednesday he discussed military support for his country with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

"We discussed in detail the urgent needs of Ukraine for the successful conduct of another counteroffensive operation to liberate Ukrainian lands," Shmyhal, who is on a visit to the United States, wrote in a Telegram post.

TOP HEADLINES

The Kremlin has called a video appearing to show the beheading of a captured Ukrainian solider "awful" but says its authenticity still needs to be checked. Ukraine has asked for the International Criminal Court to investigate.

Interfax News Agency reports that Russia says its forces have struck Ukrainian army reserves as they try to break through to the besieged city of Bahkmut.

Ukraine's military says a Russian claim that it has captured more than 80 percent of the city of Bakhmut is untrue. Kyiv says its forces control considerably more than 20 percent of the small city in eastern Donetsk which has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict.

Ukraine's defense minister says the alleged leak of U.S. defence documents contains a mixture of true and false information about Kyiv's military. He also dismissed as "not true" suggestions in the Pentagon leaks that NATO special forces were operating inside Ukraine.

Russia has suggested that the U.S. intelligence documents posted online in recent weeks might be a deliberate attempt to mislead Moscow. The documents have not been verified but are said to include what looks like U.S. assessments of the conflict in Ukraine. 

The Kremlin says the outlook for the U.N. brokered Black Sea grain deal is 'not great.' The agreement was first signed in July 2022 and has twice been extended and Moscow says the latest agreement is due to expire on May 18.

IN DETAIL

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov says he believes the alleged Pentagon leaks are a psychological information operation to benefit Russia and its allies.

Papers that are allegedly highly classified U.S. military documents have appeared online and include what appears to be details on Ukraine's air defences.

Kyiv says they contain a mixture of true and false information and that any true information is no longer relevant. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says the documents might be fake and a deliberate attempt to mislead Moscow.

Reuters also reported that the documents claim Serbia – which has professed neutrality in the conflict and refused to sanction Russia - agreed to supply arms to Kyiv or has sent them already. Serbia's Defence Minister says the assertions are "untrue."

Some national security experts say they suspect that the leaker could be American, but there is also speculation the leaker could be pro-Russian.

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U.S. on Wednesday issued new Russia-related sanctions.

Russia said on Wednesday it was imposing entry bans on 333 Canadian nationals.

The Netherlands is working to end all LNG imports from Russia, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing an interview with Dutch energy minister Rob Jetten.

Ukraine's defense minister said on Wednesday that the alleged Pentagon document leaks contain a mixture of true and false information, and that the information which was true was no longer relevant.

Speaking in Madrid, Oleksii Reznikov said he believed the leaks were "a psychological information operation which would benefit Russia and its allies."

Britain added 11 new designations to its Russia-related sanctions list, an update to the government website showed on Wednesday.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russian forces pounded frontline cities in eastern Ukraine with air strikes and artillery attacks. The Russians pressed on with their offensive in the eastern Donetsk region where several cities and towns came under heavy bombardment, Ukraine's general staff said. Ukrainian forces repelled several attacks, it said, as the Russian military kept up its effort to take control of Bakhmut.

• Ukrainian officials played down a report that Kyiv is amending some plans for a counter-offensive because of a leak of classified U.S. documents.

• The leak of highly sensitive U.S. documents - many of them related to the Ukraine conflict - presents a "very serious" risk to U.S. national security, the Pentagon said.

• Ukraine and Russia said they had returned around 100 soldiers each in the latest prisoner exchange between the two warring countries. READ MORE BELOW

• The U.S. officially determined that Russia had wrongfully detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and called for his immediate release, stepping up pressure on his behalf. The Kremlin said the reporter had "violated Russian law."

• Ukraine has resumed electricity exports to Europe, its energy minister said, after they were suspended in October when Russia began launching regular missile and drone attacks at critical energy infrastructure.

• Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza said he stood by all of his political statements, including against the Ukraine offensive, that led him to face 25 years in jail. "I subscribe to every word that I have said, that I am incriminated for today," Kara-Murza said, citing his fight against the Ukraine offensive and President Vladimir Putin. 

• A Russian court sentenced two former officials to 19 years in prison for throwing Molotov cocktails at a town hall in protest against military mobilization, Russian news agencies reported. The sentence is the heaviest punishment handed out so far for this type of attack, of which there have been dozens since Russia began its military campaign in Ukraine.

•  Russia will soon draft men into the army by sending them electronic call-up papers via an online portal in addition to traditional letters, according to draft legislation due to be debated on Tuesday that aims to facilitate mobilization. 

IN DETAIL

Moscow and Kyiv return 100 soldiers each in 'difficult' prisoner exchange

Ukraine and Russia said they had returned around 100 soldiers each in the latest prisoner exchange between the two countries. Kyiv and Moscow have periodically carried out prisoner swaps since Russia launched its offensive in Ukraine more than a year ago.

"We are returning 100 of our people," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Telegram. "They are military people, sailors, border guards, national guardsmen." 

Yermak said the exchange included troops who held out in Mariupol - the devastated port city captured by Russia last spring - and that some were "seriously injured." 

He called the exchange "difficult" and thanked officials for "doing what may often seem impossible."

Yermak posted a video of women in uniform being greeted with flowers. Moscow said it had returned 106 of its servicemen in the exchange.

"As a result of negotiations, 106 Russian soldiers were returned from territories under Kyiv control," the Russian defense ministry said. It said they will be taken by plane to Moscow for treatment and rehabilitation. 

"All those that were freed will be given the necessary medical and psychological help," the ministry added. 

The previous Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange was last month. Authorities announced on March 7 that 130 Ukrainians were swapped for 90 Russian servicemen.

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Russia's Wagner group leader said more than 80 percent of Bakhmut was brought under its control.

Russia's lower house of parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously to introduce electronic military draft papers for the first time in the country's history.

Currently, conscription papers in Russia have to be delivered in person by the local military enlistment office or via an employer, but the proposed changes to legislation would see conscription papers being sent via recorded mail online.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied that they are planning a "second wave" of mobilization.

With the new military summons rules being implemented, Russia was not currently planning another mobilization wave, said chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov.

(With input from Reuters)

Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved the parliamentary commission's report on the probe into the activities of U.S. biological laboratories in Ukraine, TASS reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. and Ukraine have yet to comment.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, the press service of the Kyrgyz president reported.

The two heads of state discussed the Kyrgyz-Russian strategic partnership and alliance, and the interaction of the two countries within the framework of international and regional organizations as well as integration associations, the report said.

They also exchanged views on the schedule of upcoming events in bilateral and multilateral formats, and confirmed their intention to further strengthen bilateral relations.

Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday.

The EU has announced that the airspace of Russia and Ukraine will be closed to flights to Europe until 2029, as reported by TASS on Tuesday, citing the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). 

Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto arrived in Moscow, Russia, RIA reported on Tuesday.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has arrived in Canada for an official visit, Ukrinform reported on Tuesday.

Shmyhal will have a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Toronto, the report added.

A senior South Korean security official said on Tuesday that information contained in purportedly leaked U.S. confidential documents that appeared to be based on internal discussions among top South Korean officials is "untrue" and "altered."

Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo spoke as he departed for Washington ahead of President Yoon Suk-yeol's state visit to the U.S. on April 26.

"The two countries have a same assessment that much of the information disclosed is altered," Kim told reporters, adding that the report on South Korea is "untrue."

South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held a phone call on media reports of a leaked American military intelligence document, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. 

The Kremlin has criticized what it called a "general tendency" to blame Russia for things when asked about initial accusations that Moscow was behind a major leak of U.S. intelligence documents.

U.S. national security officials have been trying to deal with fallout from the release of dozens of secret documents, including the impact of sensitive information from other U.S.-allied governments including Ukraine going public. 

The classified documents detail information ranging from Ukraine's air defenses to Israel's Mossad spy agency, with some U.S. experts saying it could be an American that leaked the intelligence. 

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"The focus now is on this being a U.S. leak, as many of the documents were only in U.S. hands," Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters.

However, a former CIA officer said it was highly likely that Moscow organized the leak in order to spread confusion and potential divisions between Washington and its allies.

When asked about the allegations, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "I cannot comment on this in any way. You and I know that there is in fact a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease."

Asked about whether Washington had spied on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Peskov, who called the leaks "quite interesting", said that could not be ruled out.

"But the fact that the U.S. has been spying on various heads of state, especially in European capitals, for a long time now, has come up repeatedly, causing various scandalous situations," he said.

Ukraine said its president and top security officials had met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent such leaks.

U.S. intel on Israel, South Korea

U.S. officials said the investigation, which is in its early stages, comes after one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables were published on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.

Some of the documents were posted online weeks ago, but their existence was first reported on Friday by the New York Times. Some of the documents allegedly give battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine that appeared to have been altered to minimize Russian losses.

The Pentagon said on Sunday it was reviewing the validity of the documents that "appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material."

One document, marked "Top Secret" and from a CIA Intel update from March 1, says Israel's Mossad intelligence agency was encouraging protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to tighten controls on the Supreme Court.

The document said the U.S. discovered the alleged information through signals intelligence, suggesting the U.S. had been spying on one of its most important allies in the Middle East. In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu's office described the assertion as "mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever."

Another document reported on internal discussions among senior South Korean officials about U.S. pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine.

Two U.S. officials told Reuters under anonymity that Washington's military and intelligence agencies were looking at how widely some of their intelligence was being shared internally.

One of the officials added that investigators were looking at four or five theories why a U.S. citizen might have leaked the documents, from an angry employee to an insider who purposefully wanted to hurt U.S. national security.

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The head of the Moscow-controlled part of Donetsk region Denis Pushilin said on Monday that Russian forces controlled 75% of the embattled city of Bakhmut, Reuters has reported.

106 Russian servicemen released by Ukraine in prisoner exchange, Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Ukraine has been forced to amend some of its military plans due to a leak of classified U.S. documents, CNN reported on Monday citing a source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Minsk, Belarus, Belta reported on Monday.

Russia has destroyed a depot containing 70,000 tonnes of fuel near the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday.

It also said Russian forces had destroyed Ukraine army warehouses storing missiles, ammunition and other artillery weapons in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

Earlier on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said a 50-year-old man and his 11-year-old daughter were killed after Russian forces struck a residential building in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

TOP HEADLINES

• More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war. READ MORE BELOW

• A 50-year-old man and his 11-year-old daughter were killed after Russian forces struck a residential building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia early on Sunday, authorities said.

• A missile fired from Ukrainian-held territory was shot down over the Black Sea town of Feodosia in Russian-controlled Crimea, the head of Crimea's administration said.

• Russia's Gazprom said it would ship 36.8 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Sunday.

• The US Department of Justice said it has begun an investigation into a trove of leaked U.S. documents, many related to Ukraine, that have spread to the internet.

• Hundreds of mourners, including the leader of Russia's Wagner private militia group, attended the funeral of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed on April 2 in a cafe bomb blast that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine.

• Russia threatened to bypass a UN-brokered grain deal unless obstacles to its agricultural exports were removed, while talks in Türkiye agreed removing barriers was needed to extend the agreement beyond next month.

• Ukrainians in the eastern city of Kramatorsk laid flowers at a small memorial at the central train station one year after Russian missiles hit the transport hub, killing dozens.

IN DETAIL

Ukrainian families welcome back 31 children taken by Russians

Thirty-one children have been brought back to Ukraine after being taken to Russia from territories occupied by Moscow, a charity said Saturday.

"Today we are welcoming home 31 more children who have been illegally taken by Russians from occupied territories," Mykola Kuleba, head of the Save Ukraine charity, wrote on social media. 

The children had been taken from the country's northeastern region of Kharkiv and the southern region of Kherson, said Save Ukraine, which fights what it says are illegal deportations of Ukrainian children.

On Friday, the charity said the children and their relatives had crossed the border into Kyiv-controlled territory. According to footage released Friday, the children, who carried suitcases and bags, crossed the border on foot and later boarded a bus to continue their journey.

Kuleba praised the "heroic mothers" who had traveled to retrieve their children in what he called the "most difficult" of the charity's rescue missions to date. One elderly woman who was supposed to bring home two grandchildren had died from "stress," Kuleba added.

Writing on Facebook, he said the Ukrainian relatives had been subjected to a "13-hour interrogation" by Russia's FSB security service.

More than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the conflict began on February 24, 2022, according to Kyiv, with many allegedly placed in institutions and foster homes. Russia denies the allegations, saying instead it has saved Ukrainian children from the horrors of the war.

Last month, the International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing him of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children. The Hague-based court also issued a warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's presidential commissioner for children's rights, on similar charges.

Russia is not a signatory of the Rome Statute that outlines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Moscow has said it does not recognize its authority. 

TOP HEADLINES

• Russia has charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage which the newspaper says is "categorically false."

• Ukraine's leaders discussed ways to prevent leaks of military information after secret documents detailing U.S. and NATO efforts to help the country plan a counter-offensive against Russia reportedly appeared on social media. 

• A Ukrainian official said there was a "very large amount of fictitious information" in the alleged leaked documents and the posts looked like a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about the offensive, which requires advanced Western weapons.

• Three civilians were killed and 17 wounded over the past 24 hours in Russian artillery, missile and aerial attacks on 114 settlements in nine regions, the Ukrainian defense ministry said.

• Alexei Moskalyov, a Russian man charged with discrediting the country's army after his daughter drew an anti-war picture, is being held in Belarus, TASS reported, citing the Russian embassy in the country.

• Russian legislators have proposed tougher sentences for those convicted of terrorism, high treason and sabotage, domestic news agencies reported.

• Ukraine's First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova is due to visit India on Monday and will seek humanitarian aid and equipment to repair energy infrastructure damaged during the conflict with Russia, the Hindu newspaper reported.

• Türkiye has agreed to stop the transit of sanctioned Western goods to Russia after pressure from the G7, a U.S. official said, cautioning that Washington will monitor Ankara's trade data with Moscow.

• Ukraine can resume exporting  electricity after a six-month gap, given the success of repairs carried out after repeated Russian attacks, Energy Minister said.

• Russia's Gazprom said it would ship 37.2 million cubic meters of gas to Europe via Ukraine.

IN DETAIL

Wall Street journal says reporter's espionage charges are 'categorically false'

Moscow has formally charged U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich with espionage with the accusations rejected both by the reporter and his employer.

The charges against Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich are the first of their kind in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, prompting an outcry from media outlets, rights groups and foreign governments.

Investigators from the FSB, the state security service that succeeded the KGB, "charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of his country," state-run agency TASS said, citing a law enforcement source. 

"He categorically denied all accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia," TASS added.

The Wall Street Journal, one of the leading U.S. newspapers, said it heard of the charges through the media reports and rejected them.

"As we've said from the beginning, these charges are categorically false and unjustified, and we continue to demand Evan's immediate release," the newspaper said in a statement.

It has previously called Gershkovich a "trusted and dedicated reporter." The case has been classified as secret, limiting the amount of information available. 

Washington has long accused Moscow of arbitrarily arresting Americans in order to secure the release of detained Russians.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Gershkovich's release. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier described the allegation of espionage as "ridiculous."

The arrest led the State Department to summon the Russian ambassador and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed the case in a phone call to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, only their third one-on-one interaction since the Ukraine conflict began in February 2022.

The case has drawn bipartisan alarm in politically divided Washington, where the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate issued a rare joint statement Friday to seek Gershkovich's freedom.

"We strongly condemn the wrongful detention of US citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and demand the immediate release of this internationally known and respected independent journalist," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican leader Mitch McConnell said.

"Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a crime," the Senate leaders wrote. "We demand the baseless, fabricated charges against Mr Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately released." 

Russian officials insist Gershkovich was "caught red-handed" when he was detained in Yekaterinburg, some 1,100 miles east of Moscow.

A missile launched from Ukraine was shot down over Feodosia on the eastern coast of Crimea, the head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said on his Telegram channel.

Russian investigators have charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage, the Interfax news agency reported. 

Imports of Ukrainian grain to Poland will be temporarily halted to mitigate impact on prices, but transit will still be allowed, Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus said on Friday.

Telus took office on Thursday after his predecessor resigned amid farmers' protests over falling prices of produce.

"We agreed to limit and for now halt exports to Poland," Telus told reporters after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart.

"Transit will be allowed but will be closely monitored in both countries, so that Ukraine grain doesn't stay in Poland."

Large quantities of Ukrainian grains, which are cheaper than those produced in the European Union, have ended up staying in Central European states amid logistical bottlenecks, hitting prices and sales for local farmers.

TOP HEADLINES

• Russian forces have likely taken control of the center of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, threatening a key supply route for Ukrainian forces, according to British intelligence. READ MORE BELOW

• The news comes days after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would withdraw if at risk of encirclement. A Ukrainian spokesperson said the situation was difficult in the fiercely contested strategic town, but added that Russian troops were not having "strategic success". 

• Fighting continued to rage further south of Bakhmut around Avdiivka, a town near the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk.

• Officials in Russian-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine said a total of seven civilians were killed in two separate Ukrainian artillery strikes.

• The Kremlin said it was following the "important talks" between China's President Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron, and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.

• An adviser to Russian President Putin said there was little chance of peace talks starting this year, while a top Ukrainian official ruled out negotiations until it withdraws all troops, briefing against a colleague who suggested the idea of negotiations to resolve the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula.

• An EU plan to send 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine has been delayed as member states argue over its funding.

• Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said during a news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara that Moscow could work outside the Black Sea grain deal if Western countries maintained what he called "obstacles."

IN DETAIL 

British intelligence has reported that Russian forces have very likely seized the center of Bakhmut and are threatening a major supply route for Ukrainian forces to the west. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said earlier this week his troops would retreat from the town, the main focus of Russia's assault on Ukraine for months, if they came under risk of encirclement.

"Russia has made further gains and has now highly likely advanced into the town center, and has seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River. Ukraine's key 0506 supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened," the UK report said.

In contrast, Eastern Military Command spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi said Ukraine still controlled the situation in Bakhmut and understood Russian intentions.

"The situation is difficult, the enemy is concentrating maximum efforts to capture Bakhmut. However it is suffering serious losses and not reaching strategic success," Cherevatyi said by telephone.

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The battle for Bakhmut, one of the last urban centers in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province yet to fall to Russian forces, has experienced some of the bloodiest fighting in the conflict. Donetsk is one of four provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia has legally moved to integrate into its own territory, despite vast swathes of the regions still being controlled by Kyiv's troops. 

Ukraine has said it is fighting on in Bakhmut to wear down Russian forces before a coming counter-offensive bolstered by advanced Western-supplied weapons. A regional transport and logistics hub, Bakhmut would give Russia a platform from which to advance on two bigger cities in Donetsk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Zelenskyy told CNN last month that he feared Russian forces would have "an open road" to the two cities if they took the town, adding that his order to hold it was a tactical decision.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking alongside his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Ankara, said he was concerned about the potential intensification of the conflict in the spring.

Lavrov, in turn, reiterated that Russia's security concerns had been ignored by the West and said its interests must be taken into account. Asked if he would meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at UN headquarters, Lavrov stressed Moscow would never refuse serious proposals for dialogue.

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The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started in Ankara, TASS reported on Friday.

Russia and Türkiye agreed during talks in Ankara on Friday that obstacles must be lifted to ensure freer Russian fertilizer and grain exports, and enable a UN-brokered deal ensuring Black Sea shipments of Ukrainian grain to be extended beyond next month.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he and Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu discussed "a failure" to implement the terms of the Black Sea grain deal.

Lavrov said that Russian grain and fertilizer exports were affected by a lack of access to insurance and to the SWIFT financial messaging system.

He also said Russia could work outside it if Western countries maintain what he said were obstacles to agricultural exports, which he said were getting tougher.

On July 22, 2022, Russia and Ukraine separately signed the deal in Istanbul with Türkiye and the United Nations on grain and fertilizer exports from Ukraine and Russia to ensure supplies to global markets amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The deal, initially in effect for 120 days, was extended in mid-November 2022 for another 120 days to March 18.

Alongside Lavrov, Cavusoglu told a news conference that Türkiye was committed to extending the deal beyond mid-May.

"We attach importance to the continuation of the agreement not only for Russia and Ukraine's grain and fertilizer exports, but also for stopping the world food crisis," Cavusoglu said.

"We also agree that the obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer should be removed. Issues need to be addressed for the grain deal to be extended further," he said.

Lavrov said the two top diplomats discussed the grain deal, a potential gas hub in Türkiye, the conflict in Syria, and Ukraine.

(With input from agencies)

Türkiye is ready to provide support towards ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict in accordance with international law, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Ankara on Friday. 

Turkish Foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov met in Ankara on Thursday, local media reported, citing the Turkish foreign ministry. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko held a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Russia and Belarus in Moscow on Thursday.

President of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko arrived in Moscow Wednesday, kicking off a two-day visit to Russia.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw on Wednesday, according to his Twitter.

Putin said on Wednesday that the Russia-U.S. relations are in a "deep crisis." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday received the credentials of 17 foreign ambassadors to Russia, including those from the U.S., the European Union, Syria and Iraq.

Putin said that Russia is open to dialogue with all countries and is not going to isolate itself.

The president said he hopes that Denmark will support Russia's proposal to establish a commission to clarify the circumstances of the emergency at Nord Stream, RIA Novosti reported.

Putin also said the Russia-U.S. relations are in "deep crisis," according to Russian media.

TOP HEADLINES

• The U.S. has announced a new package of weapons for Ukraine worth $2.6 billion, including three air surveillance radars and anti-tank rockets. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in neighboring Poland for an official visit. Warsaw has been one of Kyiv's most vocal supporters during the conflict, pushing hard for increased Western military and political assistance. READ MORE BELOW

• EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron are arriving in China on a mission to "reset" ties with the bloc's biggest trading partner, with the conflict also high on the list of topics for discussion.

• French President Emmanuel Macron said shortly after his arrival in Beijing that China could play an important role in the Ukraine conflict, adding that dialogue was essential. 

• Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal Security Council meeting on Ukraine that Russia's commissioner for children's rights – whom the International Criminal Court wants to arrest on war crimes charges – was due to speak at.

• Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk will step down from his position amid growing anger among farmers over the impact of Ukrainian grain imports on prices.

• Ukraine is training 40,000 troops as part of eight new storm brigades for its Spring counter-offensive.

• German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said NATO needed to strengthen its relations with global like-minded partners during an alliance summit that saw Finland join the Western military bloc. 

• A Ukrainian drone crashed near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant just as the chief of the world's nuclear watchdog was set to arrive in Russia for talks on the plant's security.

• Russian investigators have charged 26-year-old Darya Trepova with terrorist offences over the killing of pro-Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a bomb attack.

• Spain's six Leopard 2A4 tanks, important additions to Kyiv's coming Spring counter offensive, will leave for Ukraine in the second half of April, according to the defense ministry.

IN DETAIL

U.S. weapons, Zelenskyy visits Poland

The U.S. has announced a new package of weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine worth more than $2.6 billion, including three air surveillance radars, anti-tank rockets and fuel trucks.

The latest instalment means Washington has now provided more than $35 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the conflict escalated last year. 

In response, Moscow's embassy in Washington accused the U.S. of wanting to drag out the conflict as long as possible.

The U.S. weapons arrive as Ukrainian forces ready to launch a Spring counteroffensive in the east against Russian forces, although when the operation will begin in earnest is yet to be announced. 

The battlefield focus still remains on the besieged town of Bakhmut, a strategic transport hub on the edge of an area of Donetsk province largely under Russian control. Both sides have suffered huge casualties there, with much of the city reduced to ruins after months of street fighting and bombardments. 

Russian forces said at the weekend that it had captured the city center, but Kyiv dismissed the claims. 

In Warsaw, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was due to meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in an official state visit. 

Poland, one of Kyiv's most vocal supporters, has played an important role in pushing other Western powers to supply battle tanks and other weaponry to Ukraine.

"It will not be a surprise to anyone that the Ukrainian side will ask Poland and other foreign partners for more support... but we must be aware that we as Poland have already really done a lot," Polish presidential aide Marcin Przydacz said.

Przydacz said earlier that a first shipment of MiG fighter jets had already been delivered to Ukraine.

"MiGs from Poland will significantly strengthen our defence, allow us to make our skies safer, save the lives of our citizens and also reduce the destruction caused by Russian attacks," Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Telegram.

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Polish President Andrzej Duda held a meeting with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.

Duda said Warsaw will seek additional security guarantees for Kyiv at a NATO summit in July as he hosted Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

"Today we are trying to get for Ukraine... additional guarantees, security guarantees, which will strengthen Ukraine's military potential," Duda told reporters following talks with Zelenskyy, adding that Poland supports full NATO membership for Ukraine. 

Zelenskyy called their meeting "a meeting of neighbors, a meeting of allies, a meeting of partners, a meeting of friends." 

In their joint news conference, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday the situation in the Ukrainian eastern city of Bakhmut was really difficult and that the "corresponding decisions" would be taken if Kyiv's troops there risk being encircled by Russian forces.

(With input from agencies)

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has arrived in Kaliningrad, Russia, on Wednesday.

Grossi said via his Twitter account that he has met high-level officials from several Russian agencies in Kaliningrad, and he will continue his efforts to protect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant(ZNPP).

The IAEA chief had visited the power plant last month, where he warned of "increasing" military activity around the plant.

Alexey Likhachev, head of Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, held a meeting with Grossi in Kaliningrad, saying Russia is ready to work on the implementation of IAEA initiatives to ensure the safety of the ZNPP.

Polish President Andrzej Duda met with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Poland, the Polish Press Agency reported on Wednesday, citing Marcin Przydacz, head of the Polish president's International Policy Bureau.

Japan's Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has promised his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba continued support for Ukraine as they met in Belgium on Tuesday, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Hayashi vowed to steadily proceed with the delivery of assistance worth $7.6 billion Japan has pledged that includes money to help Ukraine acquire non-lethal equipment through NATO trust funds, the report said.

The two are in Belgium for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers slated for Wednesday.

A Ukrainian strike unmanned aerial vehicle made in Poland fell in the immediate vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, RIA reported Wednesday. 

Six people were killed, seven more were injured after Russian shelling on residential buildings in Donetsk region, Ukrinform reported on Wednesday.

Russia has not responded yet.

The U.S. unveiled $2.6 billion worth of military assistance that includes three air surveillance radars, anti-tank rockets and fuel trucks, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday, as Ukraine prepares a spring offensive against Russian forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday told the U.S. National Governors Association that the United States could protect its values by helping Ukraine.

"Our cooperation will allow for the new enhancement of your security, for our economy and yours, for jobs in both our countries," Zelenskyy said by video link.

"The main thing is not to lose time, not to lose the chance we have. Act now, help now. Ukrainians act so that Americans don't have to fight - and together we gain new strength for our countries," he continued.

The Russian embassy in Washington reacted to the announcement by accusing the United States of wanting to drag out the conflict as long as possible, Russian news agency TASS said.

"The decision to supply weapons to Kyiv is a step towards escalating the Ukrainian crisis and increasing the number of civilian casualties," it cited an embassy statement as saying.

The weapons aid package comprised $2.1 billion from Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funding which allows President Joe Biden's administration to buy weapons from industry rather than from U.S. weapons stocks.

The USAI package included additional munitions for NASAMS air defenses that the U.S. and allies have given to Kyiv, precision aerial munitions, Soviet-era GRAD rockets, anti-tank rockets, armored bridging systems used in assaults, and 105 fuel trailers, along with funding for training and maintenance.

The remaining $500 million came from Presidential Drawdown Authority funds, which allows the president to take from current U.S. stocks in an emergency.

That segment of the package included a half a dozen types of munitions, including munitions for Patriot air defense systems, tank munitions, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Last month, Leopard 2 battle tanks pledged by Germany and Portugal reached Ukraine. The package announced on Tuesday includes 61 heavy fuel tankers and recovery vehicles to help disabled heavy equipment like tanks.

The U.S. has now pledged more than $35.2 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine since February last year. On Monday, Ambassador Julianne Smith, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, said that Washington expects Ukraine "to put forward or begin some sort of their own spring offensive in the weeks ahead."

(Cover: A U.S. M142 HIMARS fires salvoes during the "African Lion" military exercise in the Grier Labouihi region of southeastern Morocco, June 21, 2022. /CFP)

Finland officially joined the NATO military alliance on April 4, in a major realignment of Europe’s security scene post-Cold War. The move marks the abandonment by the Nordic country of its decades-long military neutrality, triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.  

Finland becomes the 31^st member of NATO, doubling Russia’s border with nations belonging to the Western military alliance.  According to Finnish leaders, the move was prompted by Russia’s conflict in Ukraine. 

“A year ago, he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) started the Ukrainian operation in order to prevent NATO from expanding further to the East. Well, now he has received 1,200 kilometers of border with NATO,” Dmitry Oreshkin, professor at Free University in Riga told the Associated Press. 

Finland and Sweden applied at the same time to join NATO last May, motivated by similar reasons.  However, Sweden’s membership is still pending ratification by NATO members Hungary and Turkiye.  

The Russian Foreign Ministry described Finland’s move as a historic mistake.  A Kremlin spokesperson warned that Russia would take necessary countermeasures.  

Russian officials say those actions will depend on what weapons NATO allies might place near Russia’s border with Finland.

Russia, however, downplayed the political impact of Finland’s accession to NATO.  

“The situation with Finland is fundamentally different from the situation in Ukraine. Why? Well, Finland hasn’t become an ‘anti-Russia’ and we haven’t had any disputes with Finland,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

NATO has repeatedly emphasized that it is a defensive alliance and doesn’t aim to threaten Russia.  

Russia however cited NATO’s armament of Ukraine as proof of the contrary.  

Where do the Finnish people stand?  

"It does bring some kind of sense of security of course, so that is quite good,” Timber worker who lives in Miehikkala, Aki Mentula told Reuters. 

Financial Assistant, Henri Laukkanen has a different view "I feel maybe a little conflicted about joining NATO because I'm not the biggest fan of NATO, but at the same time even less a fan of Russia." 

The Finnish parliament, meanwhile, said its website was hit Tuesday by a cyber-attack, preventing many pages from loading.  

A pro-Russia hacking group claimed responsibility for the attack.  The group called “NoName057 (16)”said the attack was in response to Finland joining NATO.  

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A flag-raising ceremony was held at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday to mark Finland's accession to NATO. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto held a joint press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.

Finland on Tuesday became the 31st member of NATO, wrapping up its historic strategic shift with the deposit of its accession documents to the alliance. 

"With receipt of this instrument of accession, we can now declare that Finland is the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the official keeper of the treaty.

Finnish President Saul Niinisto said Finland's most significant contribution to NATO's common deterrence and defense would be to defend its own territory. There is still significant work to be done to coordinate this with NATO, he said.

"It is a great day for Finland and I want to say that it is an important day for NATO," Niinisto said at a news conference.

Along with Sweden, Finland handed in its official letter of application on May 18, 2022. Sweden's application has yet to be ratified by Türkiye and Hungary.

(With input from agencies)

Russia will "be forced to take retaliatory measures, both of a military-technical and other nature," in order to stop the "threats to Russia's national security that arise in connection with Finland's entry into NATO," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

TOP HEADLINES

• Finland is becoming a member of NATO on Tuesday, finalizing its dramatic security policy shift in response to the Ukraine conflict after decades of non-alignment. Its neighbor Sweden is still waiting for approval amid ongoing disagreements with other member states. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the West of trying to drive a wedge between Russia and China by talking about Moscow's dependence on Beijing. 

• Lavrov added that the EU had "lost" Russia and that Moscow may get tough with Europe if necessary.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. and the European Union are currently exploring ways to further reduce Europe's dependence on Russian energy.

• U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested on espionage charges in Russia last week, has appealed against his pre-trial detention as Washington continues to "push hard" to facilitate his release.

• Russia's commissioner for children's rights, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges for unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children, has rejected the allegations against her as false and unclear. She added that among the 730,000 refugee children Moscow had accepted from Ukraine's Donbas region, she was not aware of a single case of a child being separated from their blood relatives.

• Russia attacked Ukraine with 17 drones overnight, Ukraine's air force command said early on Tuesday, 14 of which its air-defense systems destroyed.

• Ukraine's eastern military command said Russian forces were "very far" from capturing Bakhmut, despite claims from the Russian mercenary group Wagner that it had taken control of the strategic Donetsk city "in legal terms." 

• Russia's parliament speaker has accused Western leaders of having blood on their hands for supporting Ukraine's Zelenskyy, claiming it had led to the creation of a "terrorist state" in Europe.

• Lithuania has banned Russian nationals from purchasing real estate in the Baltic country, citing risks to national security.

IN DETAIL

Finland becomes NATO member

Finland, which shares a 1,300-km border with Russia, will later on Tuesday join NATO, just over a year after Russia launched its assault on Ukraine, partly in response to what Russia has called the U.S.-led alliance's aggressive eastward expansion.

After decades on non-alignment, Finland will become NATO's 31st member in a flag-raising ceremony at its headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels.

"It will be a good day for Finland's security, for Nordic security and for NATO as a whole," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday.

The Ukraine conflict helped convince many Finns that the only way to protect themselves against Russian attack was by seeking security under NATO's collective defense pact, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Russia has said it would boost its military capacity in its western and northwestern regions in response to Finland's accession. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu said Helsinki's accession had increased the risks of a significant expansion of the conflict. 

The event marks the end of an era of military neutrality that began after Nazi-aligned Finland repelled an invasion attempt by the Soviet Union during World War II, later opting to try to maintain friendly relations with neighboring Russia.

Russia's actions in Ukraine also triggered Sweden to apply to NATO alongside Finland, but Stockholm's application has been held up by member states Türkiye and Hungary.

Türkiye says Stockholm is harboring members of what Ankara considers terrorist groups - a charge Sweden denies - and has demanded their extradition before it ratifies Swedish membership.

Hungary is also pushing back against Sweden's admission, citing grievances over criticism of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's democratic record.

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The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday that it has decided to temporarily close its Petrozavodsk Office, which operates under the Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Finland will become the 31st member of NATO on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

The accession ceremony will be held later in the afternoon.

The United States and European Union are exploring ways to further reduce European dependence on Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Tuesday.

"We will focus on how we can further reduce European dependence on Russian energy and boost the Euro-Atlantic region's clean energy production," Blinken told reporters after a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Brussels.

Russia's National Anti-terrorism Committee on Monday accused Ukrainian intelligence services of being behind the killing of Vladlen Tatarsky, a blogger killed in St Petersburg on Sunday, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

Ukraine has not responded to the claim yet.

Bakhmut is still under the control of Ukraine, and news of it falling to Russian forces is "not even close to the reality," Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said on Monday.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay arrived in Kyiv for a visit, Ukraine's First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar said on Twitter on Monday.

"The visit is a huge sign of support for our efforts to protect and restore spheres of culture, education, science, youth, sport and media in Ukriane," Dzheppar said.

Finland will become a member of the NATO military alliance on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference on Monday.

The Finnish President's office also said on Monday that the country will officially join the military alliance on Tuesday.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said that Moscow would respond to Finland becoming NATO's member by bolstering its defenses if needed.

"We will strengthen our military potential in the west and in the northwest," Grushko said in remarks carried by the state RIA Novosti news agency. "In case of deployment of forces of other NATO members on the territory of Finland, we will take addition steps to ensure Russia's military security."

All 30 allies signed Finland's and Sweden's accession protocols. Turkey and Hungary delayed the process for months but have relented on Finland. Turkey has sought guarantees and assurances from the two, notably on tackling extremism. Hungary's demands have never been explicit. 

NATO must agree unanimously for new members to join.  

(With input from AP)

(Cover: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, April 3, 2023. /AP))

German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has arrived in Kyiv "for political talks," dpa news agency reported on Monday.

The head of Russia's Wagner private military company on Monday claimed the capture of the east Ukraine town of Bakhmut "in a legal sense", saying his units had taken the main city administration building.

"In a legal sense, Bakhmut has been captured. The enemy is concentrated in western areas," Yevgeny Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel in a post.

A woman has been detained in the murder of a well-known Russian military blogger who was killed by a bomb blast at a cafe in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The high-profile writer Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, died in the explosion while attending a public event at the cafe on Sunday. At least 30 others were injured in the attack, several of whom were hospitalized in critical condition. 

Russia's Investigative Committee announced on Sunday that the suspect, Darya Trepova, had been taken into custody on suspicion of involvement in what it described as a "high-profile murder." Trepova, a 26-year-old Russian citizen, had previously been detained for protesting against the war in Ukraine, the state news agency TASS said.

TASS also suggested Trepova may have approached Tatarsky at Sunday's cafe event and given him a statue as a gift which was packed with the explosives that killed him.

Despite Trepova's arrest, it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the killing, in what appears to be the second assassination of a figure closely associated with the conflict on Russian soil.

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Sunday he would "not blame the Kyiv regime" for it, but other leading Russian officials and political figures have suggested – without providing evidence – that Ukraine was involved in the attack. 

"He was killed vilely. Terrorists cannot do otherwise," said Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed leader of the part of Ukraine's Donetsk province controlled by Russia. "The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there's no other way to stop it."

Russia's National Anti-terrorism Committee on Monday accused Ukrainian intelligence services of being behind Tatarsky's death.

The Kremlin described the killing as a "terrorist act", citing the Committee's report of evidence linking Ukraine to the assassination.

Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack, with Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak saying the killing showed "domestic terrorism" was breaking out in Russia.

"The spiders are eating each other in a jar," he wrote on Twitter.

Russia's foreign ministry said the absence of reaction in Washington, London and Paris "speaks for itself, given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression."

READ MORE

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Tatarsky, who was born in Ukraine's Donetsk region, was one of Russia's most prominent military bloggers to support Moscow's war effort.

With more than 560,000 followers on Telegram, he was known for fighting in both the Ukraine conflict of 2014 and its recent escalation, as well as for his open criticism of Russia's top army officials. 

The blogger gained particular notoriety after posting a video last September from inside the Kremlin where he said: "We'll defeat everyone, we'll kill everyone, we'll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it." 

He was at a ceremony where President Vladimir Putin claimed four partly occupied regions of Ukraine as Russian territory – a move rejected as illegal by most countries.

On Sunday, Tatarsky had been a guest speaker at an event organized by an ultra-nationalist group called "Cyber Z Front" at Saint Petersburg's Street Food Bar No 1 along the Neva river. 

The cafe was previously owned by the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who Tatarsky had direct links with. 

According to official sources quoted by Russian state media, Tatarsky was presented with a helmeted statue in a box, which had a bomb hidden inside. Video circulating on Telegram after the blast showed him being handed the statue and making jokes about it.

Tatarsky's death followed the killing last August of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist, in a car-bomb attack near Moscow. Russia's Federal Security Service at the time accused Ukraine's secret services of carrying out that attack, which Putin called "evil." Ukraine denied involvement.

Tatarsky was one of Russia's many war bloggers, a collection of correspondents and commentators with military backgrounds who have enjoyed broad freedom to publish hard-hitting views on the war including heavy criticism of Russian army officials.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Interfax reported on Sunday.

At least three civilians were killed and six wounded in Russian shelling of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine on Sunday morning, Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff, said on the Telegram messaging app.

There is no response from the Russian side yet.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Saturday that he has signed two decrees that sanction more than 650 individuals and entities, including Russian Defense Ministry officials, in relation to Russia's operation in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted on Saturday that he had a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"I briefed in detail on the situation at the front. We dwelled on further steps to implement the Peace Formula, coordinated actions for the upcoming international events," Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine on Saturday imposed sanctions against 33 citizens and 225 companies of Russia, according to a presidential decree.

TOP HEADLINES

• The UN Security Council was divided on Friday as Western nations expressed concern about Moscow's announcement it will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, but permanent Council member Russia remained defiant.

• Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia faced "existential threats" to its security and development from "unfriendly states" as he presented President Vladimir Putin with an updated foreign policy doctrine.

• A senior Ukrainian official ruled out any ceasefire in the conflict with Russia that would involve Russian forces remaining on territory they now occupy in Ukraine.

• Russia said if the U.S. threatened Moscow over its arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, it would reap a "whirlwind", the state-owned news agency RIA reported.

• A $2.6 billion U.S. military aid package that could include air surveillance radars, anti-tank rockets and fuel trucks for Ukraine's fight against Russia could be announced as soon as Monday.

• The United Nations Human Rights chief Volker Turk deplored how grave human rights violations were "shockingly routine" in the Ukraine conflict and said the number of civilian casualties was far higher than official figures.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for Bucha to become a "symbol of justice" on the one-year anniversary of Russia's withdrawal from the town synonymous with war crimes allegations.

• The International Monetary Fund said a four-year $15.6 billion loan program had been approved for Ukraine, part of a global $115 billion package to support the country's economy.

• The International Olympic Committee criticized Ukraine's decision not to allow Ukrainian athletes to take part in qualifying events for the 2024 Paris Olympics if they have to compete against Russians, saying it would hurt only Ukrainian sport and its athletes.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will push back on Russia's attempts to "weaponize energy" and rally support for a Ukrainian counter-offensive when he meets NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next week.

• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Russia, which has decided to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, could if necessary put intercontinental nuclear missiles there too.

• Ukraine's foreign minister said Wimbledon's decision to let Russian and Belarusian players compete as neutrals was "immoral" and urged the UK to deny them visas.

IN DETAIL

Concerns raised over Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus 

The UN Security Council was divided on Friday as Western nations expressed concern about Moscow's announcement it will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, but permanent Council member Russia remained defiant.

China and Brazil condemned nuclear proliferation in general as the Council met to discuss the recent announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"This is a further blow to the arms control architecture, to strategic stability in Europe, and to international peace and security," French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said at the meeting requested by Ukraine.

"Let us be clear: No other country has raised the prospect of nuclear use in this conflict," said Deputy British Ambassador James Kariuki.

"No one is threatening Russia's sovereignty," he added, condemning Putin's statement as "his latest attempt to intimidate and coerce."

"This has not worked and will not work. We will continue to support Ukraine's efforts to defend itself." 

Russia, however, stuck to its position that there was no difference between what it plans to do in Belarus, and NATO's deployment of American nuclear weapons in Europe. Western allies have called the analogy "misleading."

China and Brazil warned of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. "Two wrongs do not make a right," said Brazilian Ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho. 

"Reacting to a nuclear sharing arrangement or to any other perceived nuclear threat by the placement of weapons in a non-nuclear weapon state also constitutes a breach of NPT [non-proliferation treaty] obligations. This is a race to the bottom that makes nobody safe, regardless of who made the first move."

The UN's high representative for disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, called for all states to "avoid taking any actions that could lead to escalation, mistake or miscalculation."

Russia will start training crews on April 3 and plans to finish the construction of a special storage facility in Belarus for tactical nuclear weapons by July 1. Ex-Soviet state Belarus said on Friday that it was also ready to host strategic weapons. 

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday its executive board approved a four-year $15.6 billion loan program for Ukraine, part of a global $115 billion package to support the country's economy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Moldovan President Maia Sandu in Kyiv on Friday.