The UK’s Ministry of Defence has claimed in its daily intelligence briefing that Ukrainian troops have been forced to make ‘orderly withdrawals’ from positions they previously held in the highly contested town of Bakhmut, and that the last two days have seen an intense artillery bombardment from Russian forces.
The FBI on Thursday arrested a 21-year-old air national guardsman in Massachusetts suspected of being responsible for the leak of US classified defence documents that laid bare military secrets in Ukraine and upset Washingon’s relations with key allies. Jack Teixeira could be facing charges under the Espionage Act. Each charge under the act can carry an up to 10-year prison term, and prosecutors could treat each leaked document as a separate count in his indictment.
China’s foreign minister on Friday said the country would not sell weapons to parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine and would regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use. Qin Gang was speaking at a news conference with his visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, and he reiterated China’s willingness to help facilitate negotiations to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict and said all parties should remain “objective and calm”. Baerbock urged China to step up to exert its influence on Russia over Ukraine during a trip to Beijing. She said Germany wanted “China to influence Russia to stop its aggression”.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has “discussed efforts to accelerate military support to Ukraine” and called for those responsible for “the abhorrent beheading of a Ukrainian soldier” to be held to account during a phone conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
A Russian Su-35 aircraft carried out airstrikes on the settlement of Orihiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office said on Friday. In a post on Telegram, Andriy Yermak said private houses and the building of the DYSSH were damaged.
Ukraine will “test and use” any non-banned weapons to liberate its territory, including Russian-occupied Crimea, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council has said.
Ukraine’s security service has issued a warning to the millions of people in the country celebrating Orthodox Easter this weekend. Ukrainians are asked to “limit the attendance of mass events” and avoid lingering “unnecessarily” in temples during the traditional blessing of the Easter basket.
Ukraine has retrieved the bodies of 82 of its soldiers from Russian-controlled territory on Friday, a government ministry said. The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories gave no details about how it retrieved the bodies, Reuters reports, but said it was carried out “in accordance with the norms of the Geneva Convention”.
Russia has put its Pacific naval fleet on high alert as part of a surprise inspection aimed at building its defensive capabilities. Defence minister Sergei Shoigu saying “The main objective of this inspection is to increase the ability of the armed forces to repel the aggression of a probable enemy from the direction of ocean and sea.”
Finland’s embassy in Moscow has contacted the Russian foreign ministry after it received a letter containing powder.
Ukraine will receive 19 French-made Caesar howitzer artillery systems from Denmark within the coming weeks, the Danish defence ministry said in a statement on Friday
China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, will visit Russia from 16 to 19 April, and meet Russian military officials.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that “we are living on borrowed time” following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe’s largest atomic power station.
Fragmentation of the global economy into rival trading blocs runs the risk of prompting a new cold war, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said a combination of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and shortcomings with globalisation had led to a potentially dangerous splintering.
Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vučić has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already. Vučić said he was “quite certain” that Serbian ammunition would appear “on one side or the other in the battlefield” in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.
