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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Rebecca Ratcliffe (now), Vivian Ho , Nadeem Badshah, Tobi Thomas, Clea Skopeliti and Helen Davidson (earlier)

Peace proposals ‘verbally’ accepted by Moscow, except on Crimea, says Ukraine – as it happened

Russia Ukraine Kyiv Wang Lutong United Kingdom Irpin Volodymyr Zelenksyy Kremlin Antony Blinken Bogdan
Ukrainian servicemen climb on a military vehicle outside Kyiv on Saturday.
Ukrainian servicemen climb on a military vehicle outside Kyiv on Saturday. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP

This blog is now closed. You can follow all the developments at our new live blog.

A series of explosions were heard and smoke was seen in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa in the early hours of Sunday, witnesses said.

There was no official information about the attack.

Updated

A Ukrainian beauty blogger whom Russian officials accused of being a crisis actor when she was interviewed and photographed by The Associated Press in a bombed out Mariupol maternity hospital has emerged in new videos that are fueling fresh misinformation about the attack, AP reports.

Here is further reporting from AP:

In the new interview, conducted by Russian blogger Denis Seleznev, Marianna Vishegirskaya, says the hospital was not hit by an airstrike last month and that she told AP journalists she did not want to be filmed — assertions that are directly contradicted by AP reporting. It is not clear where Vishegirskaya is, or under what conditions the interview was filmed.

Russian officials have repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the strike in Mariupol, a key military objective for Moscow, since images were seen around the world and shed light on Russia’s attacks on civilians in Ukraine.

In the new videos, Vishegirskaya says those huddled in the basement of the hospital after the attack believed the explosions were caused by “shelling,” not an airstrike, because “no one” heard sounds that would indicate that bombs were dropped from planes.

But eyewitness accounts and video from AP journalists in Mariupol lays out evidence of an airstrike, including the sound of an airplane before the blast, a crater outside the hospital that went at least two stories deep and interviews with a police officer and a soldier at the scene who both referred to the attack as an “airstrike.”

Vishegirskaya also says in the video that she repeatedly told AP she did not want to be filmed, but recordings of AP journalists’ interactions with her contradict this.

Updated

Poland’s deputy prime minister accused France and Germany of being too close to Russia, in an interview printed on Sunday.

Reuters has published the following summary of the interview, which was given to German daily Die Welt.

“Germany, like France, has a strong bias in Moscow’s favour,” said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is also leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

“Over the years, the German government did not want to see what Russia was doing under the leadership of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and we see the result today,” Kaczynski said.

“Poland is not pleased with Germany’s role in Europe,” he added.

He rebuked Berlin for having sought to rebuild what the former 19th century chancellor Otto von Bismarck “had done... German domination but side by side with Russia”.

The Polish deputy prime minister condemned Berlin especially for failing to deliver enough weapons to Ukraine and refusing an embargo at least on the import of oil from Russia.

“It’s important to know that Russia gets four to five times more revenue from its oil sales than gas sales,” Kaczynski said.

“We cannot continue to permanently support a great power like Russia by paying it billions,” he added.

Before Russia’s invasion on February 24, Germany imported 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia, half its coal and around 35 percent of its oil.

Key points for Zelenskiy's latest address

Here are some further points from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s latest video address.

  • Russia aims to “capture both the Donbas and the south of Ukraine”. Zelenskiy said Ukrainian armed forces had regained control of areas in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. However he said that Russia has reserves to increase pressure in the east of the country. “We are strengthening our defences in the eastern direction and in Donbas… What is the goal of Russian troops? They want to capture both the Donbas and the south of Ukraine.”
  • Ukrainians cannot “cherish empty hopes” that Russian troops will simply leave. Peace will only be achieved if Ukrainians work “in hard battles, and in parallel, in negotiations”. The “global security architecture has failed”.
  • Ukraine has “not yet received enough modern western anti-missile systems”. Zelenskiy said western allies had not given sufficient modern anti-missile systems, nor given aircraft. He added: “Every Russian missile that hits our cities, and every bomb dropped on our people, on our children, only adds black paint to the history that will describe everyone on whom the decision depended.”
Ukraine’s president with ministers and officials in Kyiv on Saturday.
Ukraine’s president with ministers and officials in Kyiv on Saturday. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
  • British prime minister Boris Johnson has agreed “tangible” defence support. Zelenskiy said he had “a meaningful, pleasant conversation” with Johnson, in which they agreed on a new defensive support package for Ukraine. “We also agree on the strengthening of sanctions against Russia,” he said.
  • Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán was “virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr Putin.” The whole of Europe is trying to stop the war, to restore peace, Zelenskiy said. “Then why is Budapest opposed to the whole of Europe, to all civilised countries? For what?” Zelenskiy said he had spoken frankly about Orbán. “This is called the honesty that Mr Orban lacks. He may have lost it somewhere in his contacts with Moscow,” he said.
  • Promised justice for civilians injured while protesting against Russia. He praised the “courage and resilience” of those defending Ukraine, including “heroic Mariupol”, and residents in the town of Enerhodar, in the south, who he said were fired at by Russians after protesting against the invasion. “There will be an answer for each wounded person, and the Ukrainian character cannot be conquered by any pressure or violence,” he said.

Russian troops want to capture the Donbas and the south of Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his nightly video address.

Zelenskiy said Ukrainian armed forces had regained control of areas in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. “There are more and more Ukrainian national flags in areas that have been temporarily occupied,” he said.

He added that Ukraine was now strengthening its defences in the eastern direction and in Donbas. “We are aware that the enemy has reserves to increase pressure in the east. What is the goal of Russian troops? They want to capture both the Donbas and the south of Ukraine.

“What is our goal? Protect [ourselves], our freedom, our land, our people.”

Zelenskiy praised the “courage and resilience” of those defending Ukraine’s cities, but said the country has not yet received enough modern anti-missile systems from Western allies.

Zelenskiy also criticised Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, stating he was “virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr Putin.” Zelenskiy said he had spoken frankly about Orban, adding that he did not try to mask his meaning. “This is called the honesty that Mr Orban lacks. He may have lost it somewhere in his contacts with Moscow,” he said.

Updated

The UK Ministry of Defence has released the following update on the situation in Ukraine:

Over the last week, there has been a concentration of Russian air activity towards south eastern Ukraine, likely a result of Russia focusing its military operations in this area.

Despite ongoing Russian efforts to diminish Ukrainian air defence capability, Ukraine continues to provide a significant challenge to Russian Air and Missile operations. As a result, Russian aircraft are still vulnerable to short and medium range air defence systems.

Russia’s inability to find and destroy air defence systems has seriously hampered their efforts to gain broad control of the air, which in turn has significantly affected their ability to support the advance of their ground forces on a number of fronts.

Ukraine’s top negotiator said that Moscow had “verbally” agreed to key Ukrainian proposals, reports AFP.

Here is some further detail from AFP:

Negotiator David Arakhamia told Ukrainian television channels that any meeting between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would “with a high probability” take place in Turkey.

“The Russian Federation has given an official answer to all positions, which is that they accept the (Ukrainian) position, except for the issue of Crimea (annexed by Russia in 2014),” Arakhamia said.

He said that while there was “no official confirmation in writing”, the Russian side said so “verbally”.

Arakhamia said Moscow had agreed in talks that a referendum on the neutral status of Ukraine “will be the only way out of this situation.”

Asked what would happen if Ukrainians voted against a neutral status for the country, Arakhamia said “we will either return to a state of war, perhaps, or return to new negotiations.”

The Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine adopt a neutral status.

The date of any possible talks is not confirmed.

Here is a look at tomorrow’s front pages in the UK:

Horrifying witness accounts from the newly liberated town of Bucha feature on the front page of tomorrow’s Observer.

The Independent leads with a report on the besieged city of Mariupol.

The Sunday Times reports on the horrors left behind as Russian troops retreat from areas outside Kyiv.

Rebecca Ratcliffe here, taking over from my colleague Vivian Ho.

Summary

It is now 2am in Ukraine.

  • Ukrainian troops retook the entire Kyiv region, and were met with shocking devastation upon their return into the area: bodies in the streets, evidence of execution-style killings of civilians, mass graves and slain children.
  • Among the dead were reportedly Olha Sukhenko, the head of the village Motyzhin, and her entire family, all of whom were taken by Russian troops on 25 March.
  • Maksim Levin, a Ukrainian photographer whose worked appeared in reports from the BBC and Reuters, was also found dead near Kyiv. The defence ministry said he had been shot twice by Russian soldiers.
  • The United Kingdom said authorities were working to collect evidence in the Kyiv region of Russian war crimes.
  • The Baltic states have halted all Russian oil imports, and are encouraging the rest of the European Union to follow suit.
  • Interfax Ukraine is reporting that Turkey is likely to be the place where Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet for peace negotiations.

Updated

Some more information on the mines that Russian forces left behind in the Kyiv region when the Ukrainians retook it:

Crosses to honour civilians killed mark a mass grave in the forest of Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Crosses to honour civilians killed mark a mass grave in the forest of Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP
Anti-tank mines are spread out on a bridge in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv on 2 April.
Anti-tank mines are spread out on a bridge in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv on 2 April. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

Updated

Speaking of oil:

Baltic states halt Russian gas imports

The head of Latvia’s natural gas storage operator said on Latvian radio today that the Baltic states were no longer importing Russian natural gas.

AFP is reporting that Uldis Bariss, CEO of Conexus Baltic Grid, said: “Since 1 April, Russian natural gas is no longer flowing to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.”

This interview came after Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda called on the rest of the Europe to follow the example of the Baltic states.

Updated

UK working to collect evidence of Russian war crimes in Bucha

Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, tweeted that with the new information coming out of the Kyiv region, the United Kingdom is working with others to collect evidence of Russian war crimes.

Prime minister Boris Johnson also committed to stepping up “military, economic and diplomatic support”.

Ukrainian photographer killed near Kyiv

Maksim Levin, a Ukrainian photographer whose work appeared in reports from the BBC and Reuters, was found dead near Kyiv. The Ukraine defence ministry said he had been shot twice by Russian soldiers. He was 40.

More here:

Updated

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a number of other authorities have accused Russian troops of leaving behind mines and other explosives in their retreat of the Kyiv region. In Irpin, crews have found 643 explosive objects:

Bucha residents told Reuters about the month they lived in constant fear under Russian occupation.

“We were sitting in the cellar for two weeks. There was food but no light, no heating to warm up,” said one man identified only as Vasily. “We put the water on candles to warm it ... We slept in felt boots.”

Residents had been ordered to wear white cloth armbands, said 74-year-old Mariya Zhelezova, whose poor health prevented her from leaving before the Russians arrived. Zhelezova said she had a number of brushes with death.

“The first time, I went out of the room and a bullet broke the glass, the window, and got stuck in the dresser,” she said. “The second time, shattered glass almost got into my leg.

“The third time, I was walking and didn*t know he was standing with a rifle and the bullets went right past me. When I got home, I couldn’t speak.”

“We don’t want them to come back,” Zhelezova said. “I had a dream today - that they left, and didn’t come back.”

Leader of Motyzhin, missing for almost 10 days, purportedly found dead alongside family

Now that Ukrainian forces have retaken the entire Kyiv region, more information is able to come out about what happened to the communities during the invasion. The head of the village Motyzhin, Olha Sukhenko who was taken by Russian troops along with her family on 25 March, is believed to have been found dead. Preliminary reports are that her family was found dead with her too.

Updated

In addition to a mass grave with nearly 300 people, bodies left in the street and civilians killed seemingly execution-style, the Ukrainian defence ministry has found evidence that Russian troops attempted to incinerate the bodies of some dead civilians as well.

Updated

The US is expected to help facilitate the transfer of Soviet-era tanks from Nato allies to Ukraine:

Evidence found of execution of civilians

Journalists have captured disturbing images out of Bucha, one of the cities in the Kyiv region retaken by Ukrainian forces. Here, the image confirm reports that some civilians who were found dead in the streets of Bucha were killed execution-style, with their hands tied and bags over their heads.

Updated

Here are some images out of Bucha, one of the cities retaken by Ukrainian forces in the Kyiv region. Warning: some images may be graphic.

Women cry outside their houses in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv.
Women cry outside their houses in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, where the town’s mayor said 280 people had been buried in a mass grave and that the town is littered with corpses. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images
A Ukrainian soldier sits on a tank in Bucha.
A Ukrainian soldier sits on a tank in Bucha. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
An elderly woman embraces a Ukranian soldier in Bucha.
An elderly woman embraces a Ukranian soldier in Bucha. Ukraine has regained control of ‘the whole Kyiv region’ the country’s deputy defence minister said today. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images
The body of a civilian, who according to residents was killed by Russian army soldiers, lies on the street in Bucha.
The body of a civilian, who according to residents was killed by Russian army soldiers, lies on the street in Bucha. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Updated

Devastating reports have been coming out of the cities in the Kyiv region that were retaken by Ukrainian forces: bodies in the streets. Destruction. Reports of Russian troops using children as shields.

Anatoly Fedoruk, mayor of Bucha, told AFP that the city has already buried 280 people in a mass grave. Corpses littered the streets, he said, some as young as 14 years old. “All these people were shot, killed, in the back of the head,” Fedoruk said.

Many of the bodies had white bandages on them “to show that they were unarmed,” he said.

In the village of Novyi Bykiv, about 100 miles north of Kyiv, coaches of children were said to have been placed in front of tanks. “Cases of using children as cover are recorded in Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia oblasts [regions],” said Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.

Read more here:

Report: Meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy likely to be in Turkey

Interfax Ukraine is reporting that Turkey is likely to be the place where Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet for peace negotiations.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan had called Putin and Zelenskiy on Friday “and seemed to confirm from his side that they are ready to arrange a meeting in the near future”, negotiator David Arakhamia said.

Negotiations over the past few days have been difficult, Reuters is reporting, with the Kremlin saying that one of the goals of its “military operation” in Ukraine is to restore the statehoods of Donetsk and Luhansk within the borders negotiated in 2014.

Updated

The Verkhovna Rada - Ukraine’s parliament - has tweeted that since the start of the Russian invasion, 274 medical centres have been damaged, 70 ambulances destroyed, nine medical workers killed and 30 more injured:

Updated

Ukrainian troops retake control of the entire territory of Kyiv region

Ukrainian forces have retaken control of the entire territory of the Kyiv region, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar posted on Facebook tonight.

“Irpin, Bucha, Gostomel and the whole Kyiv region - is liberated from the invader,” she wrote.

Ukrainian refugees, fleeing their homeland, are among the hundreds of thousands seeking asylum in the United States at the Mexican border, living in dangerous conditions and sleeping in tents as they wait to start their immigration process.

Reuters reported last month that a growing number of both Russians and Ukrainians were travelling to Mexico and taking their chances at the border. A major misconception is that those seeking entry at the border are coming only from Central American countries - with the border as a major point of entry into the US, those especially desperate to escape persecution (and with limited options) must hedge their bets. An increasing number of Black immigrants from African and Caribbean countries have been attempting to seek asylum at the border in recent years.

Ukrainians, seeking asylum in the US, camp on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico.
Ukrainians, seeking asylum in the US, camp on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian refugees heading for the US arrive at the improvised camp in Tijuana, Mexico.
Ukrainian refugees heading for the US arrive at the improvised camp in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainians inside a bus station on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port as they seek asylum in the US.
Ukrainians inside a bus station on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port as they seek asylum in the US. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian refugees sit near the improvised camp in Tijuana, Mexico.
Ukrainian refugees sit near the improvised camp in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian refugees inside a bus station on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port.
Ukrainian refugees inside a bus station on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Here’s some footage from Borodyanka, one of the towns retaken by Ukrainians from Russian forces. The charred buildings and rubble captured on the video shows the destruction left behind by the Russians.

Updated

Over 4,200 people evacuated on Saturday from Ukraine

A total of 4,217 people were evacuated on Saturday from areas in Ukraine on the front line of its war with Russia, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on national television.

Updated

A convoy of The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is heading to Mariupol to attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged port as Russian forces look to be regrouping for new attacks in the southeast.

An ICRC spokesperson said: “The ICRC team departed Zaporizhzhia this morning. They are spending the night en route to Mariupol and are yet to reach the city.”

Updated

A Ukrainian official has accused Russian forces of opening fire on peaceful demonstrators, injuring four with “severe burns”, in the southern city of Enerhodar occupied by Moscow’s forces, AFP reports.

Russian troops took control of Enerhodar, the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in early March.

“Today in Enerhodar, city residents gathered again for a rally in support of Ukraine, singing the anthem,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova said on Telegram.

“The occupiers used light and noise grenades and opened mortar fire on the residents, four people were injured and severely burned,” she said.

Updated

Chernihiv governor Viacheslav Chaus has also accused Russian troops of planting mines as they drew back from positions around the regional capital.

“There are a lot of mines. They (the villages) are strewn with them,” he said on national television.

Russia’s defence ministry has yet to comment on the allegations, Reuters reports.

Updated

Wladimir Klitschko, a Ukrainian former boxing champion whose brother is the mayor of Kyiv, has praised Germany for its help after meeting officials in Berlin in an effort to drum up more support for his country.

Klitschko and his brother Vitali, also a former boxing champion, have strong ties to Germany, having spent most of their professional careers there.

But they have previously accused Berlin of failing to do enough to help Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, Reuters reports.

In a video filmed outside the Bundestag and posted on his Twitter feed, Wladimir Klitschko said he had been able to see for himself during his two-day visit that the two nations were “truly brothers and sisters figuratively now” and he would never forget Germany’s support.

During the visit by Wladimir Klitschko, who enlisted in the Ukrainian reserve army shortly before war broke out, German media showed pictures of him meeting with chancellor Olaf Scholz and the foreign, finance and economy ministers.

“Klitschko and his delegation brought the Ukrainian fighting spirit that reaches us in countless images every day into the foreign ministry,” foreign minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on Instagram. “For the government and me it is clear: we will continue to support Ukraine with all our force.”

Updated

Local villagers welcome soldiers of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force after it retook the village of Nova Basan, east of Kyiv, from the Russian army.
Local villagers welcome soldiers of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force after it retook the village of Nova Basan, east of Kyiv, from the Russian army. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Updated

The bodies of at least 20 men in civilian clothes were found lying in a street on Saturday after Ukrainian forces retook the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, from Russian troops, according to the AFP news agency.

It reported that the hands of one of the bodies were tied, and that the corpses were strewn over several hundred metres of the residential road in the suburban town north-west of the capital.

The causes of death were not immediately clear, although at least one person had what appeared to be a large head wound.

Updated

Ukraine says its troops have retaken control of more than 30 towns and villages in the Kyiv region since Russia announced this week it would scale down its operations around the capital to focus on battles in the east, Reuters reports.
The emergencies service told people in the Kyiv region’s newly liberated zones to be vigilant, saying more than 1,500 explosives had been found in one day during a search of the village of Dmytrivka, west of the capital.

Earlier today, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused Russian soldiers of deliberately mining areas in northern Ukraine as they withdraw or are pushed out by Ukrainian forces.

Updated

Video footage shared on messaging platform Telegram purports to show stun grenades landing in a square of the town of Enerhodar, in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region.

Pope Francis said on Saturday he was considering a trip to Kyiv, Reuters reports.

Asked by a reporter on the flight to Malta for a two-day visit if he was considering an invitation to visit the Ukrainian capital, the pope answered: “Yes, it is on the table.” He gave no further details.

Updated

Summary

  • A Red Cross convoy heading to Mariupol will try again to evacuate civilians from the besieged port as Russian forces appeared to be regrouping for new attacks in the south-east. A spokesperson for the Red Cross said: “Our team is on the move this morning from Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol. I’m not able to give further information at this stage.”
  • Pope Francis has come the closest he has yet to implicitly criticising Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by saying a “potentate” was fomenting conflicts for nationalist interests.
  • Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has called for the international criminal court to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, AFP reports. “Putin is a war criminal,” Del Ponte, 75, who investigated war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said in an interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
  • Local authorities in the occupied Ukrainian town of Enerhodar said Russian forces violently dispersed a pro-Ukrainian rally on Saturday and detained some participants.
  • Heavy battles lie ahead in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions and for the besieged city of Mariupol in particular, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said. Speaking on national television, Arestovych said Ukrainian troops around Kyiv had retaken more than 30 towns or villages in the region and were holding the frontline against Russian forces in the east.
  • Maksim Levin, a photographer and videographer who was working for a Ukrainian news website and was a longtime contributor to Reuters, has been killed while covering the war. According to Reuters, his body was found in a village north of Kyiv on 1 April, the news website LB.ua, where he worked, said on Saturday.
  • The death toll after a strike on a government building in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv has risen to at least 35, according to the governor, Vitaliy Kim.

Updated

Ellen Knickmeyer at the Associated Press has written some analysis regarding the implications Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had on policymakers’ views on nuclear weapons.

You can read the analysis below:

Russia’s assault on Ukraine and its veiled threats of using nuclear arms have policymakers, past and present, thinking the unthinkable: How should the West respond to a Russian battlefield explosion of a nuclear bomb?

The default US policy answer, say some architects of the post-Cold War nuclear order, is with discipline and restraint. That could entail stepping up sanctions and isolation for Russian president Vladimir Putin, said Rose Gottemoeller, deputy secretary-general of Nato from 2016 to 2019.

But no one can count on calm minds to prevail in such a moment, and real life seldom goes to plan. World leaders would be angry, affronted, fearful.

Miscommunication and confusion could be rife. Hackers could add to the chaos. Demands would be great for tough retaliation — the kind that can be done with nuclear-loaded missiles capable of moving faster than the speed of sound.

When military and civilian officials and experts have war-gamed Russian-US nuclear tensions in the past, the tabletop exercises sometimes end with nuclear missiles arcing across continents and oceans, striking the capitals of Europe and North America, killing millions within hours, said Olga Oliker, programme director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

“And, you know, soon enough, you’ve just had a global thermonuclear war,” Oliker said.

It’s a scenario officials hope to avoid, even if Russia targets Ukraine with a nuclear bomb.

Updated

The UK has blocked the use of another private jet with links to Russian oligarchs, the transport secretary has said.

Grant Shapps did not provide further details of the aircraft, or its ownership, but said the move was taken on Saturday morning.

He added that the UK “won’t stand by and watch those who’ve made millions through Putin’s patronage live their lives in peace as innocent blood is shed”.

It comes after the grounding of a private jet with possible links to Russia on 19 March.

Updated

You can read the full report by Daniel Boffey and Martin Farrer on Ukraine’s announcement that they have recaptured the city of Brovary from Russian forces here:

The death toll after a strike on a government building in the southern Ukrainian city Mykolaiv has risen to at least 35, according to the governor Vitaliy Kim.

In an online post, Kim said that rescue workers had continued to dismantle the rubble and search for victims after the strike blasted a hole through the side of the building in central Mykolaiv.

Updated

Maksim Levin, a photographer and videographer who was working for a Ukrainian news website and was a longtime contributor to Reuters, was killed while covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to Reuters, his body was found in a village north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on 1 April, the news website LB.ua where he worked said on Saturday.

Levin, born in 1981, was a documentary filmmaker who had contributed to Reuters’ coverage of the country since 2013.

He had been working in the village of Huta Mezhyhirska. There had been heavy shelling in that area.

The prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine said Levin was “killed by servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces with two shots from small arms”.

He leaves behind his wife and four children.

Reuters have said that this could not be independently verified.

John Pullman, Reuters’ global managing editor for visuals, said:

We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Maksim Levin, a long-time contributor to Reuters, in Ukraine.

Maks has provided compelling photos and video from Ukraine to Reuters since 2013. His death is a huge loss to the world of journalism. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time.

Updated

'Heavy battles' ahead in south and east, says Ukraine

Heavy battles are coming up in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions and for the besieged city of Mariupol in particular, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said.

Speaking on national television, Arestovych said Ukrainian troops around Kyiv had retaken more than 30 towns or villages in the region and were holding the front line against Russian forces in the east.

“Let us have no illusions – there are still heavy battles ahead for the south, for Mariupol, for the east of Ukraine,” he said.

The main points made by Arestovych were:

  • Ukrainian troops have retaken over 30 settlements in Kyiv region from Russian forces
  • Ukrainian troops are holding the front line in the east
  • Heavy battles are coming for the east, the south and for Mariupol

Updated

Yesterday, a group of 2,000 people made it to safety from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol after travelling to nearby Berdyansk on their own. A 42-strong convoy of buses organised by the Ukrainian government and escorted by the Red Cross brought people who had congregated in the nearby Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk to the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday afternoon.

Russian forces allowed the vehicles to pass, in what represented a small breakthrough after the failure of several previous evacuation attempts. Those onboard the buses made it out of Mariupol to Berdyansk without assistance, after which they were allowed to leave Russian-controlled territory.

The Kyiv authorities reiterated on Friday that no aid or evacuation convoys had been allowed to reach Mariupol itself. Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees have also been crossing the border from Shehyni in Ukraine into Medyka, Poland, since cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol in the east ran out of supplies.

Find out more in the Guardian’s video report as the events unfolded below:

Updated

Local authorities in the occupied Ukrainian town of Enerhodar said Russian forces had violently dispersed a pro-Ukrainian rally on Saturday and detained some participants.

Reuters reports:

Residents had gathered in the centre of the town in the south of the country to talk and sing the Ukrainian national anthem, when Russian soldiers arrived and bundled some into detention vans, the local administration said in an online post.

“The occupiers are dispersing the protesters with explosions,” it said in a separate post on Telegram, sharing a video of what appeared to be multiple stun grenades landing in a square and letting off bangs and clouds of white smoke next to the town’s main cultural centre.

It also accused Russian forces of shelling another part of the town on Saturday and said as a result four people had been wounded and were being treated in hospital.

Moscow denies targeting civilians and describes its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation.” Ukraine and the West say it is an unprovoked war of aggression.

Residents of some towns and villages seized by Russian troops since they invaded on Feb. 24 have staged regular rallies against the occupation.

Enerhodar lies on the Dnipro river in southern Ukraine and is home to workers of the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which has also been occupied by Russian troops.

Reuters have also said that they have been unable to verify the video or the local administration’s reports.

Updated

Quick line here from Reuters on a phone call between Vladimir Putin and the Kazakh leader, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev:

During a call between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the leaders said that an agreement must be reached for a neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free Ukraine, Kazakhstan’s presidential office said.

In a readout of the call, it said that Putin had briefed Tokayev on the progress of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

Updated

The National Cyber Security Centre is investigating claims that China launched cyber-attacks on Ukrainian military and nuclear targets shortly before the Russian invasion, the UK government has said.

More than 600 websites, including Ukraine’s defence ministry, were subjected to thousands of hacking attempts coordinated by the Chinese government, according to intelligence memos.

The Guardian’s global technology editor Dan Milmo reports:

Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has called for the international criminal court to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, AFP reports.

“Putin is a war criminal,” Del Ponte, 75, who investigated war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said in an interview with Le Temps.

Del Ponte, who also served for years on the UN commission investigating rights abuses in Syria’s war, stressed that issuing an arrest warrant signalled that “investigative work has been done”.

“It is the only instrument that exists that makes it possible to arrest the perpetrator of a war crime and bring them before the ICC,” she told Le Temps.

Del Ponte acknowledged that an arrest warrant did not necessarily mean Putin would be taken into custody.

“If he remains in Russia, that would never be the case. But it would be impossible for him to leave his country, and it would be a strong signal that he has many states against him.”

Updated

Pope Francis has come the closest he has yet to implicitly criticising Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by saying a “potentate” was fomenting conflicts for nationalist interests.

Reuters reports:

Moscow says the action it launched on Feb. 24 is a “special military operation” designed not to occupy territory but to demilitarise and “denazify” its neighbour. Francis has already rejected that terminology, calling it a war.

“From the east of Europe, from the land of the sunrise, the dark shadows of war have now spread. We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past,” the pope said in an address to Maltese officials after arriving on the Mediterranean island nation for a two-day visit.

“However, the icy winds of war, which bring only death, destruction and hatred in their wake, have swept down powerfully upon the lives of many people and affected us all,” he said.

“Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts, whereas ordinary people sense the need to build a future that, will either shared, or not be at all,” he said.

The pope has already strongly condemned what he has called an “unjustified aggression” and denounced “atrocities” in the war.

But he has only referred to Russia directly in prayers, such as during a special global event for peace on March 25.

“Now in the night of the war that is fallen upon humanity, let us not allow the dream of peace to fade!” he said on Saturday.

Pope Francis speaking in the Ambassadors’ Chamber of the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta, Malta, on Saturday.
Pope Francis speaking in the Ambassadors’ Chamber of the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta, Malta, on Saturday. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

Updated

Russia has said a prominent journalist, a video blogger and six other media figures to be “foreign agents”, the latest in a series of such moves that critics say are designed to stifle dissent.

Reuters reports:

The expanded list, published by the Justice Ministry late on Friday, included Elizaveta Osetinskaya, former editor-in-chief of several Russian business newspapers that published disclosures about the commercial interests of people close to President Vladimir Putin.

The term “foreign agent” carries negative Soviet-era connotations and subjects those listed to stringent financial reporting requirements. It also obliges them to preface anything they publish with a disclaimer stating they are foreign agents.

The list also included Maria Borzunova, a reporter from the independent TV Rain (Dozhd) channel, which was itself declared a “foreign agent” last August and suspended its work after Russia blocked access to its website in March.

Evgeny Ponasenkov, a writer and video blogger, known for witty off-the-cuff remarks taking aim at the government on social media and talk shows on state-run TV channels, was also named a “foreign agent”.

Anna Fazackerley has reported on the Russian academics and scientists who are attempting to escape Russia for western countries.

This is in response to the draconian measures put in place by Putin towards critics of the war, who could face up to 15 years in prison.

UK academics have also said that their fellow scientists and academics from Russia are turning to them for help.

You can read the full report here:

Updated

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has given an intelligence update regarding the conflict.

You can read more from the UK government’s response here.

Red Cross heading back to Mariupol after failed evacuation on Friday

A Red Cross convoy heading to Mariupol will try again to evacuate civilians from the besieged port as Russian forces looked to be regrouping for new attacks in the southeast.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross said: “Our team is on the move this morning from Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol. I’m not able to give further information at this stage.”

Earlier today, Ukraine said that it expects good news over the weekend regarding evacuations of people from the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelesnskiy has said.

Speaking on Ukranian television, Oleksiy Arestovych said:

“Our delegation has reached an agreement in Istanbul [during Ukraine-Russia peace talks] to provide evacuations,”

“I think that today or maybe tomorrow we will hear good news regarding the evacuation of the inhabitants of Mariupol.”

According to Reuters, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a team on Friday to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and other private vehicles out of the city, but they turned back, saying conditions made it impossible to proceed.

Updated

The pope has said on that he was considering a trip to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Reuters reports.

When asked by a reporter on the plane taking him from Rome to Malta if he was considering an invitation made by Ukrainian political and religious authorities, Francis answered: “Yes, it is on the table.”

He gave no further details.

Tom Levitt and Chris McCullough have reported on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine is leading to a dramatic decline in crops planted by farmers in the country this spring, with fears for domestic and international food security.

This is because at least one-third of the land in Ukraine normally used for spring crops such as maize and sunflower is likely to go unplanted.

Furthermore, one-third of the normal wheat harvest from the crop planted last autumn could be lost.

You can read the full report below:

Russia’s space director has said that the restoration of normal ties between partners at the International Space Station (ISS) and other joint space projects would be possible only once Western sanctions against Moscow are lifted.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, said in a social media post that the aim of the sanctions is to “kill Russian economy and plunge our people into despair and hunger, to get our country on its knees”.

He said:

“They won’t succeed in it, but the intentions are clear”.

“That’s why I believe that the restoration of normal relations between the partners at the International Space Station (ISS) and other projects is possible only with full and unconditional removal of illegal sanctions,” Rogozin said.

Reuters reports:

Rogozin added that Roscosmos’ prosposals on when to end cooperation over the ISS with space agencies of the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan will soon be reported to Russian authorities. He has previously said that the sanctions could “destroy” the U.S.-Russian partnership on the ISS.

Despite the tensions between Russia and the West, a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts safely landed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday after leaving the space station aboard the same capsule.

The European Space Agency said last month it was suspending cooperation with Roscosmos over the ExoMars rover mission to search for signs of life on the surface of Mars.
British satellite venture OneWeb said last month it had contracted with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send its satellites into orbit after calling off a 4 March launch of 36 satellites from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan because of last-minute demands imposed on it by Moscow.

Lizzy Davies has looked at how the war in Ukraine has affected food supply in several countries, including Egypt, Lebanon and Somalia.

The European Union has said that it is working on further sanctions on Russia but that any additional measures will not affect the energy sector.

According to the EU’s economic commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, the 27-nation bloc will be faced with a growth slowdown caused by the war in Ukraine but not a recession, he added, saying the 4% growth forecast was too optimistic and the EU would not reach it.

Updated

Grant Shapps, the British transport minister, has said that he has prevented the use of another private jet that has links to Russian Oligarchs.

This comes after the government imposed sanctions on more than 370 Russian individuals, including more than 50 oligarchs.

Reuters reports:

The Department for Transport (DfT) said it has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) to prevent the aircraft from taking off from London Luton Airport.

The aircraft will remain at the airport while officials investigate further whether it falls under the recent sanctions legislation banning all aircraft connected with Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine.

The DfT said it would not be commenting on the aircraft’s ownership while it investigates.

The department has already detained one private helicopter belonging to HeliCo Group LLC and two private jets.

The two jets belong to Eugene Shvidler, a sanctioned billionaire business associate of Roman Abramovich.

Russia denies targeting civilians in an invasion that began on Feb. 24 when Putin launched what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Updated

The Ukrainian economy has shrunk by 16% in the first quarter of 2022, the Ukrainian economy ministry has said.

It has also been forecasted that the economy will contract 40% in 2022.

Ukraine expects good news over the weekend regarding evacuations of people from the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelesnskiy has said.

Speaking on Ukranian television, Oleksiy Arestovych said:

“Our delegation has reached an agreement in Istanbul [during Ukraine-Russia peace talks] to provide evacuations,”

“I think that today or maybe tomorrow we will hear good news regarding the evacuation of the inhabitants of Mariupol.”

According to Reuters, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a team on Friday to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and other private vehicles out of the city, but they turned back, saying conditions made it impossible to proceed. They were due to try again on Saturday.

Updated

Seven humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from Ukraine’s besieged regions are planned for Saturday, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.

According to Reuters, the planned corridors include one for people evacuating by private transport from the city of Mariupol and by buses for Mariupol residents out of the city of Berdyansk, Vereshchuk said.

Updated

Summary

  • Russian forces are hiding mines in houses and dead bodies as they retreat from northern parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a pre-dawn video address.
  • Zelenskiy said the military situation in the country’s east remained extremely difficult. He repeated warnings that Russia was preparing for strikes in the Donbas region and Kharkiv. In a video address late on Friday, he said Russian troops in the north of the country were slowly pulling back.
  • Zelenskiy also said that Russia was trying to conscript troops from Crimea as it began its annual conscription drive. But he said that being drafted to fight in Ukraine was “guaranteed death for many young guys” and warned their families: “We don’t need more dead people here. Save your children so they do not become villains. Don’t send them.”
  • The US department of defense will provide an additional $300m in security assistance to Ukraine, to include laser-guided rocket systems, drones, and commercial satellite imagery services.
  • A senior Chinese diplomat, speaking after the China-EU summit, says the government is not deliberately circumventing sanctions on Russia.
  • Russian missiles hit two cities in central Ukraine early on Saturday, damaging infrastructure and residential buildings, the head of the Poltava region said, according to Reuters
  • Ukraine exchanged 86 members of their armed forces with Russia on Friday, according to senior Ukrainian officials.
  • Ukraine’s armed forces says it repelled nine Russian attacks on Friday, destroying eight tanks, 44 armoured vehicles, 16 other vehicles and 10 artillery systems.
  • Russia says Ukrainian helicopters attacked an oil storage facility in Belgorod, Russia, about 16 miles from the border and close to Kharkiv, destroying fuel tanks. Ukrainian officials have denied their forces were involved.
  • The international committee for the red cross (ICRC) will re-attempt an evacuation mission to Mariupol on Saturday, after being forced to turn back on Friday.
  • Other evacuation operations saw more than 3,000 escape the city on Friday.
  • The UK Ministry of Defence says the destruction of oil tanks at the depot means probable loss of fuel and ammunition supplies to invading forces. It will likely add more strain to Russia’s already stretched logistic chains. Supplies to Russian forces encircling Kharkhiv may be particularly affected.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, earlier spoke with Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kulebo today and discussed “ways the US allies and partners are helping Ukraine defend against Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war”, Blinken said.
  • The US will work with allies to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine to bolster its defences in the Donbas region, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a US official.
  • Zelenskiy also said more than 3,000 people had been led to safety from the besieged city of Mariupol. More than 6,000 in total had been rescued from Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had been unable to reach the city but will try again to evacuate civilians on Saturday.
  • The Hollywood actor Sean Penn has called for a billionaire to come forward and buy two squadrons of F-15 or F-16 aircraft for Ukraine in an unlikely attempt to tip the scales against the Russian invaders in the five-week-old war.
  • European governments have more time to figure out how they are going to act on Russia’s demand to pay for Russia gas in roubles after the Kremlin said today that it would not immediately halt gas supplies
  • Around 200 Ukrainian national guard members have likely been taken prisoner by the Russian troops as they withdrew from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the mayor of Slavutych, Yuri Fomichev, said.

Updated

The Guardian has published some new reporting today on how the war is affecting food supplies, particularly the Middle East and North Africa.

The Russian invasion is leading to a dramatic decline in crops planted by farmers in the country this spring, with fears for domestic and international food security, writes Tom Levitt and Chris McCullough.

Known for its fertile soils, Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat, barley, sunflower and maize, in particular to north Africa. However, farmers and analysts have told the Guardian that planting, harvest and export have all been disrupted by a lack of fertiliser, low or no fuel supplies for tractors, closure of ports and military activity.

At least one-third of the land normally used for spring crops such as maize and sunflower is likely to go unplanted. Furthermore, one-third of the normal wheat harvest from the crop planted last autumn could be lost.

Read more here:

Meanwhile, the prices of basics such as oil and wheat are shooting up and shortages are showing on supermarket shelves in Lebanon, Somalia and Egypt, reports Lizzy Davies.

Lebanon, already mired in economic crisis and battling inflation before the war broke out in Ukraine, now finds itself grappling with even higher price rises for wheat and cooking oil.

Even before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on 24 February, Somalia had more than enough on its plate: the worst drought for four decades; hunger so widespread that famine could develop within months; a resurgence in violence by jihadi terrorists seeking to overthrow the fragile government.

Last year, Egypt imported more than 70% of its wheat from either Russia or Ukraine, according to the UN, so the first challenge for the state is to seek alternative suppliers away from the Black Sea.

Read more here:

412 children killed or injured says Ukraine prosecutor general

At least 158 children have been killed and more than 254 injured in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, the country’s office of the prosecutor general has said.

The office said two of the fatalities were among 13 people killed when Russian forces fired at civilian cars on a highway in Chernihiv around 18 March.

In the message broadcast on Ukrainian government Telegram channels, the office said the numbers were not finalised as there were still active hostilities preventing proper investigation, particularly in places like Mariupol.

The office said there were 75 affected children in Kyiv, 71 in Donetsk, 56 in Kharkiv, 46 in Chernihiv, and 31 each in Mykolaiv and Luhans. It did not provide a breakdown of deaths and injuries across different regions.

The war in Ukraine has come with an ever-present threat of cyber catastrophe, as experts and US military officials remain on high alert for potential hacks. And while the big one has yet to come, the battle online continues to escalate.

UK intelligence officers warned on Thursday that Russia is increasingly seeking out cyber targets as its ground military campaign in Ukraine stalls. Additional reports on Wednesday revealed Russian hackers recently attempted to penetrate the networks of Nato and the militaries of some eastern European countries.

These developments showed that “things are heating up” on the cyber front, said Theresa Payton, cybersecurity expert and former White House chief information officer. “We should prepare for the worst and operate at our best,” she said.

Still, Payton noted, Russia had been very slow to deploy cyber tactics in the war to date. There could be a number of reasons for this, she said: Putin might not feel the need to use cyber-attacks in his strategy at this juncture in the war, or he might want to avoid additional retaliation promised by the US in the case of a cyberwar.

Putin might also be “playing a long game” and having his cyber operatives infiltrate various adversaries and gain footholds, then wait until he decides to launch a cyber-attack.

“It is possible that digital attacks are under way and not fully understood in the fog of a ground war,” Payton said.

Read more:

Russian missiles hit two cities in central Ukraine early on Saturday, damaging infrastructure and residential buildings, the head of the Poltava region said, according to Reuters.

“Poltava. A missile struck one of the infrastructure facilities overnight,” Dmitry Lunin wrote in an online post. “Kremenchuk. Many attacks on the city in the morning.”

Poltava city is the capital of the Poltava region, east of Kyiv, and Kremenchuk one of the area’s major cities.

There was no immediate information about possible casualties, Lunin said. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Updated

Russians placing mines in homes and corpses as they withdraw, says Zelenskiy

Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned his people early on Saturday that retreating Russian forces were creating “a complete disaster” outside the capital Kyiv by leaving mines across “the whole territory,” including around homes and corpses.

The Ukrainian president said Russian forces were withdrawing slowly but noticeably from around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.

But he warned: “They are mining the whole territory. They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed. There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers.”

Ukraine’s military said it had retaken 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.

Updated

The international committee for the red cross (ICRC) will re-attempt an evacuation mission to Mariupol on Saturday, after being forced to turn back on Friday. The team had planned to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and vehicles out of the besieged city, where an estimate 160,000 people are trapped, but aborted the trip after conditions made it impossible to proceed, the aid organisation said.

The ICRC says its Mariupol operation has been approved by both sides, but major details were still being worked, out such as the exact timing and destination of the convoy, which would be an undetermined location in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s armed forces says it repelled nine Russian attacks on Friday, destroying eight tanks, 44 armoured vehicles, 16 other vehicles and 10 artillery systems. In an update shared on official Telegram channels, it said Russian troops had tried but failed to target critical infrastructure in Odessa. It also estimated Russia had withdrawn 20% of its units from Kyiv, but other government and defence officials have warned against thinking Russia is in retreat.

Agence France Presse has filed a dispatch from Irpin after a Russian retreat returned it to Ukrainian control. The city suffered extraordinary levels of destruction and an evacuation operation continues.

The last survivors in the ruins of Irpin have just one word to describe the Russians who have retreated after one of the pivotal battles of the war in Ukraine.

“Fascists!” rages Bogdan, 58, as he and his friends walk a dog through a deserted town centre that is free of shelling for the first time in a month. His friends nod in agreement.

“Every 20 to 30 seconds we heard mortar shots. And so all day long. Just destruction,” the tent construction worker told AFP journalists who reached Irpin on Friday.

A damaged building is pictured in Irpin, near Kyiv, on April 1, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A damaged building is pictured in Irpin, near Kyiv, on April 1, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

It used to be a smart commuter town in the pine forests on Kyiv’s northwestern edge. But Irpin held off the full force of Russia’s invasion, becoming the closest Moscow’s forces got to the centre of the capital some 20 kilometres (12 miles) away. The town whose once leafy parks were left strewn with bodies is now back under Ukrainian control, as Russian troops hastily pull back from outside Kyiv.

Victory came at a terrible price that has left Irpin looking more like Aleppo or Grozny than an affluent satellite town in Ukraine. Barely a building has escaped the fighting unscathed. Shelling has blasted huge chunks out of modern, pastel-coloured apartment blocks. The foggy streets are eerily empty, littered with cars with bullet-scarred windscreens, and echoing with the sound of stray dogs.

“It’s the apocalypse,” says a Ukrainian soldier who hitches a ride across the empty town.

People cross the Irpin river near a destroyed bridge as they evacuate from Irpin town, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine April 1, 2022.
People cross the Irpin river near a destroyed bridge as they evacuate from Irpin town, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine April 1, 2022. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

For the past three weeks Irpin has been closed off to the media since the death of a US journalist, with Ukrainian authorities saying it was too dangerous to enter.

Now, near a sign in the town centre that says “I love Irpin” with a red heart, the handful of the town’s residents who stayed tell how they survived more than a month of relentless shelling.

“We hid in the basement. They fired Grad rockets, mortars and tank shells,” says Bogdan, asking to be identified only by his first name. “My wife and I came under mortar fire twice. But that’s okay, we are alive and well.”

Rescue workers are still retrieving the dead from Irpin and placing them in body bags, before taking them to the blown-up bridge that links the town with Kyiv. The bridge is covered with dozens of burned, bullet-ridden and abandoned cars, which rescue workers are now trying to clear.

Ukrainian soldiers pass on a destroyed bridge at the entrance of Irpin, near Kyiv, on April 1, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers pass on a destroyed bridge at the entrance of Irpin, near Kyiv, on April 1, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Reuters: The United States will work with allies to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine to bolster its defences in the Donbas region, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a US official.

The transfers, requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would begin soon, the unnamed official said, according to the Times. The official declined to say how many tanks would be sent or from which countries they would come, the paper said.

The Pentagon declined to comment to Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The tanks would allow Ukraine to conduct long-range artillery strikes on Russian targets in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine bordering Russia, the official said, according to the Times.

It marks the first time in the war that the United States has helped transfer tanks, the newspaper said.

China not deliberately circumventing sanctions, says official

A senior Chinese diplomat says the government is not deliberately circumventing sanctions on Russia. Speaking on Saturday, a day after a virtual summit between China and the European Union, Wang Lutong told reporters that China is contributing the global economy by conducting normal trade with Russia.

“China is not a related party on the crisis of Ukraine. We don’t think our normal trade with any other country should be affected,” said Wang, the director-general of European affairs at China’s foreign ministry.

Wang’s comments come a day after an EU-China virtual summit that saw the EU warn Beijing against allowing Moscow to get around the economic sanctions imposed in response to the Ukraine invasion. At the summit Beijing, which has forged close ties with Moscow and refused to condemn its actions or call it an invasion, offered assurances that it would seek peace for Ukraine but “in its own way.”

“We oppose sanctions, and the effects of these sanctions also risk spilling to the rest of the world, leading to wars of the currency, wars of trade and finance and also risk jeopardising the supply chain and industrial chain and globalisation and even the economic order,” Wang said.

Wang also said Ukraine, Iran, and others were “points of cooperation” rather than points of friction.

Updated

Hello, I’m Helen Davidson and welcome to the new live blog on the Russia-Ukraine war. If you’re just joining us or you need a catchup on what’s been going on, here are some of the main developments from the past few hours:

  • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the military situation in the country’s east remained extremely difficult. He repeated warnings that Russia was preparing for strikes in the Donbas region and Kharkiv. In a video address late on Friday, he said Russian troops in the north of the country were slowly pulling back.
  • Zelenskiy also said that Russia was trying to conscript troops from Crimea as it began its annual conscription drive. But he said that being drafted to fight in Ukraine was “guaranteed death for many young guys” and warned their families: “We don’t need more dead people here. Save your children so they do not become villains. Don’t send them.”
  • The US department of defense will provide an additional $300 million in security assistance to Ukraine, to include laser-guided rocket systems, drones, and commercial satellite imagery services.
  • Ukraine exchanged 86 members of their armed forces with Russia on Friday, according to senior Ukrainian officials.
  • Russia says Ukrainian helicopters attacked an oil storage facility in Belgorod, Russia, about 16 miles from the border and close to Kharkiv, destroying fuel tanks. Ukrainian officials have denied their forces were involved.
  • The UK Ministry of Defence says the destruction of oil tanks at the depot means probable loss of fuel and ammunition supplies to invading forces. It will likely add more strain to Russia’s already stretched logistic chains. Supplies to Russian forces encircling Kharkhiv may be particularly affected.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, earlier spoke with Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kulebo today and discussed “ways the US allies and partners are helping Ukraine defend against Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war”, Blinken said.
  • The United States will work with allies to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine to bolster its defences in the Donbas region, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a US official.
  • Zelenskiy also said more than 3,000 people had been led to safety from the besieged city of Mariupol. More than 6,000 in total had been rescued from Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had been unable to reach the city but will try again to evacuate civilians on Saturday.
  • The Hollywood actor Sean Penn has called for a billionaire to come forward and buy two squadrons of F-15 or F-16 aircraft for Ukraine in an unlikely attempt to tip the scales against the Russian invaders in the five-week-old war.
  • European governments have more time to figure out how they are going to act on Russia’s demand to pay for Russia gas in rubles after the Kremlin said today that it would not immediately halt gas supplies
  • Around 200 Ukrainian national guard members have likely been taken prisoner by the Russian troops as they withdrew from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the mayor of Slavutych, Yuri Fomichev, said.
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