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Ukraine’s emergency services are reporting an oil depot in the village of Kalinovka in the north-west of the country was hit by Russian shelling and caught fire overnight.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners in the first swap of soldiers since Moscow invaded a month ago, Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said writing the first “full-fledged exchange of prisoners of war took place” where 10 “captured occupiers” were exchanged for 10 Ukrainian service personnel. In a recent update published to her official Telegram channel just before midnight local time, Vereshchuk said the humanitarian hostages taken in Mangush had been released.
Ukraine accused Moscow of forcibly taking hundreds of thousands of civilians from shattered Ukrainian cities to Russia, where some may be used as “hostages” to pressure Kyiv to give up. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, had been taken against their will. The UN told the BBC that Ukrainians were being arbitrarily detained and subjected to enforced disappearances in Russian-controlled areas.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy shared his appearance at the EU summit where he thanked European Council members for putting sanctions on Russia but said it was “a little late”, in a video message posted to his official Facebook account.
The Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev said it was “foolish” to believe western sanctions against Russian businesses could have any effect on the Moscow government. The sanctions would only consolidate the Russian society and not cause popular discontent with the authorities, Medvedev told Russia’s RIA news agency in an interview.
Joe Biden will travel to a town near the Polish-Ukrainian border on Friday in an attempt to signal western resolve. The US president is expected to meet experts on the humanitarian response and US troops stationed in Poland. On Saturday, he is to meet his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, to discuss the humanitarian and human rights crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian forces had reoccupied towns and defensive positions up to 35 km east of Kyiv. In an earlier report, the ministry said Ukraine was striking “high-value targets” that was forcing Russian forces to divert resources to defend their supply lines. It cited the attacks on a landing ship and ammunition storage depots at Berdyansk as examples. “It is likely that the Ukrainians will continue to target logistical assets in Russian-held areas. This will force the Russian military to prioritise the defence of their supply chain” and reduce ability to carry out offensive operations, it said.
Ukrainian forces have been bolstered by the destruction of the Russian landing ship as it brought in supplies to its troops. Dramatic pictures showed fire and black smoke billowing from the vessel as it docked in Berdyansk on the Azov Sea after it was hit by Ukrainian ballistic missiles.
The Ukrainian defence ministry said its troops had pushed back Russian forces from some areas around the capital, Kyiv. Russian troops did not have enough resources to push ahead with their offensive in Ukraine, Oleksander Motuzyanyk, Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson said.
These accounts appear to be corroborated by a senior Pentagon official who said Russia was running out of precision-guided munitions and it was more likely to rely on so-called dumb bombs and artillery. The undersecretary of defence for policy, Colin Kahl, said Russiawas experiencing failure rates as high as 60% for some of its precision-guided missiles while its forces had taken heavy casualties and were low on supplies.
