Survivors have begun to emerge from the basement of a theatre hit by a Russian airstrike in the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, officials said. Hundreds of people were hiding beneath the theatre, which was designated as a shelter for displaced civilians, when it was struck on Wednesday. Authorities said it was not known if there were injuries or deaths among those inside.
More than 20 people were killed and 25 injured when a Russian airstrike destroyed a school and community centre in Merefa, close to the north-east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, local officials said. The attack took place at 3.30am local time (1.30am GMT) on Thursday morning, the Kharkiv prosecutor’s office said. It said 10 people were in critical condition.
Deaths are mounting in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, with 53 people killed by Russian forces on Wednesday alone, the regional governor, Viacheslav Chaus, said on Thursday. “We are suffering heavy losses – 53 citizens were killed yesterday,” he said.
The mayor of the besieged Ukrainian city of Melitopol, who was allegedly abducted by Russian forces, was freed in exchange for nine captured Russian conscripts, according to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office. Ukraine had accused Russia of kidnapping Ivan Fedorov last Friday, with surveillance footage appearing to show him being marched across a square in the city centre, apparently surrounded by Russian soldiers.
Lawyers are drafting a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow but a breakthrough depends on the Kremlin accepting a ceasefire, Ukraine’s defence minister has said. Oleksii Reznikov, who has been leading the Ukrainian delegation in the negotiations, said technical work was progressing but that Russia had to stop its shelling for any compromise to be possible.
The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said “we have stronger hopes for a ceasefire” after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Lviv. The meeting follows Çavuşoğlu’s visit to Moscow yesterday, where he declared: “We have not lost our belief in diplomacy.”
But western officials have warned there remains a “very big gap” between Ukraine and Russia in peace talks between the two nations. Reuters quotes an unnamed official as saying that both sides are taking peace talks seriously but that there was little sign of an imminent breakthrough.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy invoked the fall of the Berlin Wall in an attempt to persuade German MPs to do everything possible to halt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Speaking to the German parliament via video, the Ukrainian president upbraided Germany for having persisted in the past in its insistence that the gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 and other business projects with Russia were “purely economic” and not political.
The US president, Joe Biden, will speak with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Friday to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine “and other issues of mutual concern”, the White House said. Earlier, a Chinese official criticised the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, for his comments that China had an obligation as a member of the UN security council to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
A Russian court has extended the arrest of the US basketball star Brittney Griner for at least two more months, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Griner, a two-time Olympic champion, has been detained by Russian customs authorities, who claim they discovered vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
Uzbekistan’s foreign minister has called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict in Ukraine and said his country would not recognise Moscow-backed separatists in the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, Reuters reports. Abdulaziz Kamilov’s remarks signalled the strongest anti-war statement to come from Russia’s other former Soviet allies so far.
The UK’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said an impostor claiming to be the Ukrainian prime minister contacted him and asked several “misleading questions”. Wallace said he terminated the call after becoming suspicious, adding that “no amount of Russian disinformation” could distract from its human rights abuses.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended a joint mission with Russia to land a rover on Mars, because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The venture had been planned to launch in September using a Russian launcher and lander in order to drill into the surface of Mars in search of signs of life.
