Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, May 24.
Get the latest updates here.
Fighting
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is waging “total war” and wants to “take away everything we have. Including the right to life for Ukrainians.”
- Ukrainian forces have “liberated” 24 settlements in the Kharkiv region, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces said.
- Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready for an exchange of prisoners with Russia, and called on his allies to put “maximum” pressure on Moscow at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
- Schools and universities in Kherson, south of Ukraine, will operate in Russian as it will become the state language, alongside Ukrainian, according to the Russian state-owned RIA news agency.
- Russia-backed Kherson authorities shared its plan to install a Russian military base for “peace and security in our region”, RIA reported.
- Russian nationalist figures are calling for further mobilisation in Ukraine due to criticism of Moscow’s failing “special military operation”, the Institute for the Study of War said.
- Zelenskyy said 87 military Ukrainian soldiers died in a Russian attack on a barracks last week in the town of Desna, northern Ukraine – the worst military losses in a single attack so far during the invasion.
- Zelenskyy said that many casualties would have been prevented if “we had received all the weapons we are asking for”.
- Three civilians died in Russian attacks, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, providing no further details.
- Kyiv sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier to life in prison for killing an unarmed Ukrainian civilian in the first war crimes trial held since Russia’s invasion.
Diplomacy
- Some 20 countries announced new security assistance packages for Ukraine, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said.
- Veteran Russian diplomat to the United Nations office in Geneva Boris Bondarev has resigned, criticising the “aggressive war unleashed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, and said that “never have I been so ashamed of my country”.
- US President Joe Biden said that the crisis in Ukraine is a “global issue”, underscoring the importance of maintaining international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty.
- “Part of Putin’s war is an attempt to erase Ukrainian identity,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his visit to the Ukrainian Institute for America.
- US troops could return to Ukraine to help protect the reopened embassy in Kyiv, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said.
- The US and the UK accused Russia of spreading misinformation and conducting cyberattacks to “manipulate public opinion about their war”, UK Deputy ambassador to the UN James Roscoe said.
Economy
- The European Union will likely agree on an embargo on Russian oil imports “within days”, German economy minister Robert Habeck told broadcaster ZDF.
- Americans are becoming less supportive of sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, with 51 percent believing it should be limiting damage to the US economy, a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research reported.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said that 580 foreign companies maintain operations in Russia as “they pretend that nothing happened”.
- The rouble’s rebound left it more than 30 percent stronger against the dollar than it was before Russia invaded Ukraine.
- Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia and Estonia will call for the confiscation of Russian assets frozen by the EU to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine.
- Poland decided to terminate an intergovernmental agreement with Russia on the Yamal gas pipeline, Polish climate minister Anna Moskwa said.
- Accumulated Russian oil at sea reached a record high – some 62 million barrels of Russia’s flagship Urals crude oil are sitting in vessels – data from energy analytics firm Vortexa showed, as traders struggled to find buyers.
- Starbucks will exit Russia completely, citing “the unprovoked, unjust and horrific attacks on Ukraine by Russia” as the reason.
