More than 20,000 Russian troops have died and another 80,000 were wounded in five months of fighting in eastern Ukraine, particularly in Bakhmut, a White House official said Monday. The announcement came as overnight Russian missile attacks on the eastern city of Pavlohrad killed two people and injured 40, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Read our live blog to see how all the day's events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
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04:05am: Ukrainian defenders oust Russian forces from some positions in Bakhmut, says Ukraine general
Ukrainian units have ousted Russian forces from some positions in Bakhmut amid fierce battles, a top Ukrainian general said on Monday, as the White House believes that more than 20,000 Russian fighters have been killed in Ukraine since December.
"The situation (in Bakhmut) is quite difficult," Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Ukrainian commander of ground forces, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
"At the same time, in certain parts of the city, the enemy was counterattacked by our units and left some positions" in recent days, he said.
The 10-month-long battle for the eastern Ukrainian city has taken on a symbolic importance for both sides. It has become the fulcrum of a war that has seen little shift in front lines since late 2022, leaving both sides looking for a breakthrough.
9:36pm: Pavlohrad missile strikes killed two 'very young men', says Zelensky
Overnight Russian missile attacks on the eastern city of Pavlohrad killed two people and injured 40, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.
"The terrorists' missiles took the lives of two people, very young men," Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Forty other people – women, children, men, were treated for wounds and injuries."
The attack on Pavlohrad, a railway hub, came during the second wave of nationwide missile strikes in three days.
Zelensky also said a 14-year-boy was killed close to his school when it was hit by a bomb in Chernihiv region, close to the Russian border.
8:50pm: Ukraine shoots down 15 missiles over Kyiv
Ukraine's air defence systems successfully shot down 15 out of the 18 Russian missiles over Kyiv, according to the country's armed forces. But outside the capital, Russian missiles hammered the city of Pavlohrad, injuring dozens of people including children. While Ukraine recently received Patriot missile defence systems from the US, it is unclear if they were used to repel the onslaught.
7:42pm: Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties in five months, according to US estimates
The White House estimated on Monday that Russia's military has suffered 100,000 casualties in the last five months in fighting against Ukraine in the Bakhmut region.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters the figure, based on US intelligence estimates, included more than 20,000 dead, half of them from the Wagner Group.
Russia's Bakhmut offensive has stalled and failed, he said.
5:26pm: Wagner chief calls for more ammunition to seize Bakhmut
The head of the Wagner private militia on Monday renewed his appeal to Russia's defence ministry to increase ammunition shipments to his fighters trying to seize the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has frequently clashed with Moscow's defence establishment over the conduct of Russia's campaign in Ukraine and what he says is insufficient support being provided to his Wagner soldiers.
In a video posted on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said he needs at least 300 tonnes of artillery shells a day for the assault.
"Three hundred tonnes a day is 10 cargo containers – not a lot at all ... But we are being given no more than a third of that," Prigozhin said as he inspected boxes of rifles in a warehouse he said was in the town of Soledar, to the northeast of Bakhmut. Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of over 70,000, has been levelled by months of artillery shelling and urban combat between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. Prigozhin claimed on April 11 his forces, which are leading the assault, controlled more than 80% of the city.
5:17pm: Ukraine gathering men, equipment for major counteroffensive
Having secured promises for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of heavy weaponry from Western powers, Ukraine is now turning its eyes on reclaiming lost territory – including its official objective of Crimea, annexed in 2014. FRANCE 24’s Douglas Herbert breaks down some of the obstacles still standing in the way of Ukraine’s coming counteroffensive.
4:05pm: Ukraine withdraws from judo tournament over Russian 'servicemen' participation
Ukraine on Monday pulled its team from the World Judo Championships in Qatar over the presence of Russian athletes it argued were active soldiers.
The International Judo Federation (IJF) gave judokas from Russia and Belarus the green light to compete at the May 7-14 championships in Doha on the condition that they compete as individual neutral athletes.
But the Ukrainian judo federation said in a statement that "the majority of the (Russian) team are athletes who are active servicemen of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, part of the army that attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022".
A Russian army, the federation said, that "is still waging a brutal full-scale war on our territory, shelling Ukrainian cities, civilian homes every day, killing civilians and children".
"Instead, more than 250 Ukrainian athletes have given their lives defending the country. Among them are representatives of judo."
The federation added: "We do not see here neutrality, equal conditions and a 'bridge to peace' as stated in the IJF Resolution on the participation of Russian and Belarusian teams in the World Championships in Doha.
"Moreover, we see here a decision that contradicts the latest recommendations of the International Olympic Committee of March 28, 2023, where the IOC says that the status of neutral athletes can only be granted to those athletes who are not military personnel."
3:15pm: Russian missiles leave over 30 injured in Pavlohrad
Russia launched its second large salvo of missiles at Ukraine in recent days early Monday, damaging buildings and wounding at least 34 people in the eastern city of Pavlohrad but failing to hit Kyiv, officials said.
Air raid sirens began blaring across the capital at about 3:45am, followed by the sounds of explosions as missiles were intercepted by Ukrainian defense systems.
Ukrainian air defence crews destroyed 15 out of 18 missiles launched by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday morning, said Ukraine's Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
Please click on the video player below to watch the report:
2:15pm: Russian forces conduct overnight strikes, says Kremlin
Russia's defence ministry said on Monday its forces had carried out missile strikes against Ukrainian military targets overnight, Russian state news agencies reported.
The defence ministry said all its designated targets – including weapons depots and ammunition factories – had been hit.
It also said Russian forces continued their advance in the city of Bakhmu
12:02pm: Ukrainian 'despair about the Pope's naivety'
After Pope Francis said on Sunday that the Vatican is involved in a secret peace "mission" relating to the war in Ukraine, FRANCE 24's Gulliver Cragg reported on the reaction on the ground in Kyiv.
"The reaction generally among Ukrainians is one of anger and to some degree despair about the Pope's naivety," Cragg said. "He met there in Budapest with Metropolitan Hilarion from the Russian Orthodox Church, who is a close associate of Patriarch Kirill, who openly supports the war in Ukraine, is close to Putin, and is himself a former agent of the Russian security services. These people are regarded by Ukrainians as absolutely their enemy; as representatives of the Russian authorities and not people who should be seen in any way actually as representatives of any religion worthy of that name."
11:16am: Explosion derails freight train in Russian border region, governor says
An explosion in a Russian region bordering Ukraine derailed a freight train on Monday, the local governor said in a social media post, adding there were no casualties.
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). It said the locomotive and seven freight wagons were derailed and the locomotive caught fire.
"An unidentified explosive device went off at the 136-kilometre mark on the Bryansk-Unecha railway line, derailing a freight train," Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a post on his Telegram channel.
7:56am: Russian strikes kill one in Ukraine's Kherson
Russian strikes killed one person and wounded three others in the Ukrainian region of Kherson, a regional official said Monday.
Moscow also launched a hail of missiles across Ukraine early on Monday, with Kyiv reporting it had shot down most of the projectiles.
"Over the past day, the enemy carried out 39 shellings, firing 163 shells from heavy artillery, Grads, UAVs and aviation. The enemy shelled the city of Kherson 8 times," said Oleksandr Prokudin, of the military administration for Kherson, in Ukraine's south. "As a result of Russian aggression, one person died and three others, including a child, were injured."
Russia still controls part of the Kherson region, having withdrawn from the eponymous regional capital last November.
6:40am: Ukrainian air defences shoot down 15 out of 18 Russian missiles
Ukrainian air defence crews destroyed 15 out of 18 missiles launched by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday morning, the military said, as air raid sirens blared across the country for more than three hours.
"Around 2:30am (11:30 GMT), the Russian invaders attacked Ukraine from strategic aviation planes," a post on the Telegram channel of Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in chief of Ukraine's armed forces, read. It added that 15 out of the 18 missiles launched had been destroyed.
Kyiv's city officials wrote on the Telegram messaging app that all missiles directed at the capital were destroyed.
6:27am: Oil fire part of Ukraine's preparation for counter-offensive, military says
Undermining Russia's logistics is one of the elements of preparation for the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, a Ukrainian military spokeswoman said on Sunday, after a fire destroyed a large Russian fuel depot in Crimea.
While not directly admitting to striking the fuel storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Ukraine's military command said that "a fire" destroyed 10 oil tanks with a capacity of about 40,000 tonnes.
The city's Moscow-installed governor blamed Ukraine and later said the fire had been put out before a disaster occurred.
Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine's southern command, said the fire has caused a great deal of "anxiety" in the Russian military.
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Key developments from Sunday, April 30
Pope Francis on Sunday said that a secret peace “mission” in Russia's war in Ukraine was under way, though he gave no details, and said the Vatican is willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war. “I’m available to do anything,” Francis said during an airborne press conference en route home from Hungary. “There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it.”
French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by phone on Sunday and discussed Ukraine's military needs, both sides said.
Zelensky said he had a long and meaningful talk with Macron during which the two men co-ordinated their positions on the war, and on how to end the conflict.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
