Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used his late-night address on Saturday to say Russia was targeting “the whole European project”. He said Russian aggression “was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone” and that the “entire European project is a target for Russia”.
Zelenskiy also said it was the “moral duty of all democracies, all the forces of Europe, to support Ukraine’s desire for peace”, adding that the country was ready to simultaneously fight and look for diplomatic ways to put an end to the war.
Civilians continued to flee eastern parts of Ukraine before an expected onslaught from Russian troops.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced nine corridors for evacuation in a Telegram post.
Officials said a grave with dozens of Ukrainian civilians was found in the village of Buzova , near Kyiv, the latest such discovery as Russian forces retreat from their offensive on the capital and shift their assault to the east.
Boris Johnson’s visit to Kyiv was “very timely and very important”, said Ihor Zhovkva, a senior diplomatic adviser to Zelenskiy. The UK prime minister “did not come empty-handed”, Zhovkva said, as Johnson and Zelenskiy discussed various types of support the UK could offer, including anti-ship missiles and financial support. Zelenskiy called for more weapons.
The Ukrainian military’s latest operational report said Russian forces were attempting to break through the Ukrainian defences in Izum, in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine, while also attempting to establish full control over the city of Mariupol.
Satellite images released by the US private space-technology company Maxar Technologies showed an eight-mile-long military convoy moving south through the eastern Ukraine town of Velykiy Burluk on 8 April. The town sits to the east of Kharkiv, close to Ukraine’s border with Russia.
The Russian ministry of defence claimed its forces carried out missile strikes in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions. The Guardian could not immediately verify those claims. The Russian military has repeatedly claimed it is targeting “foreign mercenaries” and “nationalist” formations in Ukraine and denies targeting civilian infrastructure, despite evidence to the contrary.
A school and several apartment buildings were hit by shelling in the Luhansk and Dnipro areas early on Sunday morning, wounding one person and causing a fire, officials said.
