The U.S. does not believe that the recent escalation observed in Kremlin’s statements will lead to the usage of nuclear weapons.
According to Kremlin’s state media, Russia will quit the International Space Station over sanctions imposed on it after the Ukraine invasion. Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin said that the partners will be informed about the end of Russia’s work onboard the ISS with a one year notice.
Russia said on Friday that its forces had destroyed the production facilities of a space-rocket plant in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with high precision long-range missiles.
Russia struck targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building and wounded 10 people, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
The U.S. House gave final passage Thursday to legislation that would streamline a World War II-era military lend-lease program to more quickly provide Ukraine and other Eastern European countries with American equipment to fight the Russian invasion.
Here are the latest updates:
Russia seizing large quantities of grain in territories they hold, says Ukraine
“There are confirmed facts that several hundred thousand tonnes of grain in total were taken out of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Ukraine’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky was quoted as saying to a television channel.
Ukraine is one of the largest producers of grain in the world. Russian invasion of the country has limited exports and caused a spike in costs of grain around the world. — AP
Russia says a decision to quit the International Space Station (ISS) has been taken
According to Kremlin’s state media, Russia will quit the International Space Station over sanctions imposed on it after the Ukraine invasion. Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin said that the partners will be informed about the end of Russia’s work onboard the ISS with a one year notice.
The space station was a rare collaborative operation between the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Russia until the invasion of Ukraine despite turbulent relations between these countries. A slew of sanctions on Russia had earlier prompted threats to quit the ISS from Kremlin. — Bloomberg
France promises to increase military, humanitarian aid to Ukraine
In a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron said France would increase military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.
Mr. Macron also reiterated his “strong concern” over Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian cities and the “unbearable situation” in the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. - Reuters
3 bodies with hands tied found near Bucha, say Ukrainian Police
The bodies of three men with their hands tied were found in a pit near Bucha, a town close to Kyiv, the Ukraine police said Saturday.
“On April 29, a pit with the bodies of three men was found in the Bucha district... The victims’ hands were tied, cloths were covering their eyes and some were gagged. There are traces of torture on the corpses, as well as gunshot wounds to various parts of the body,” a statement from the police said. - AFP
Russia says strategic stability talks with U.S. ‘frozen’
The dialogue between Russia and the U.S. on strategic stability is formally “frozen”, a Russian foreign ministry official as told news agency TASS on Saturday.
Vladimir Yermakov, the foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation, said those talks could be resumed once Russia completes what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Further, Mr. Yermakov also said that Moscow believed the U.S. intended to finalise projects to deploy medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, a claim for which he provided no evidence. “The emergence of such weapons in those regions will further worsen the situation and fuel the arms race,” he was quoted as saying. - Reuters
Lavrov: 1 million evacuated from Ukraine
Russia's foreign minister says Moscow has evacuated over 1 million people from Ukraine since the war there began.
The comments Saturday by Sergey Lavrov in an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua come as Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcefully sending Ukrainians out of the country. Mr. Lavrov said that figure included more than 300 Chinese civilians.
Mr. Lavrov offered no evidence to support his claim in the interview. - PTI
Wives of Mariupol defenders appeal for soldiers' evacuation
Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol are calling for any evacuation of civilians to also include soldiers, saying they fear the troops will be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by Russian forces.
“The lives of soldiers matter too. We can't only talk about civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol.
“We are hoping that we can rescue soldiers too, not only dead, not only injured, but all of them.” She and Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys Prokopenko is the Azov commander, made their appeal in Rome on Friday for international assistance to evacuate the Azovstal plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic and now bombed-out port city. - PTI
UK: Russian forces have ''weakened morale''
The British military believes Russian forces in Ukraine are likely suffering from “weakened morale.” The British Defense Ministry made that assessment in a tweet Saturday as part of a daily report it provides on Russia's war on Kyiv.
It says Russia “still faces considerable challenges” in fighting. The British military believes Russian forces have “been forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from the failed advances in northeast Ukraine.” It offered no information on how it arrived at this assessment. However, analysts believe Russian forces that failed to take Kyiv at the start of the war have been redeployed without the time needed to properly rearm and restaff. - PTI
'Our roots are there': Ukrainians cross front line for home
A tiny, Soviet-made car is bed tonight for the older couple waiting to risk their lives by crossing the war's front line in Ukraine. But they’re not fleeing — they’re going back in.
“Everything is there. Our roots are there,” says the man, 75. “Even people from Mariupol want to go back.”
They don’t want to share their names out of fears for their safety as they attempt to make the long drive back to the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting. - AP
Ukraine fights to hold off Russian advances in south, east
Ukrainian forces fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the country’s industrial Donbas region, and a senior U.S. defense official said Moscow's offensive is going much slower than planned.
While artillery fire, sirens and explosions were heard Friday in some cities, the United Nations sought to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, where the mayor said the situation inside the steel plant that has become the southern port city’s last stronghold is dire. - PTI
War has shown Zelenskyy’s true qualities to all, says wife Olena
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, says the war with Russia has not changed her husband but only revealed to the world his determination to prevail and the fact that he is a man you can rely on.
Ms Zelenska, in an interview published Friday in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, also said she has not seen her husband, 44-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy, since Russia invaded Ukraine. - AP
Russia ‘strikes’ Kyiv during UN chief’s visit
Russia confirmed on Friday it carried out an air strike on Kyiv during a visit by the UN chief, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks and one that killed a journalist.
Vera Gyrych, a producer for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, died when a Russian missile slammed into the house where she lived in Kyiv, the media group said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had deployed “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” that it added “have destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes, which immediately followed his talks with Antonio Guterres, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything that the organisation represents”. - AFP
Nationalism returning to Europe, warns EU’s longest serving foreign minister
Mr. Asselborn is surprised by the turn of events in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. “I never expected this from Russia. There was a certain amount of trust in Russia in a lot of European countries,” he said during an exclusive interview with The Hindu.
