The deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment says the Azvstal plant in Mariupol has been hit with naval artillery fire and air strikes, killing two women and wounding 10 others.
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By Jacqueline Howard
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By Jacqueline Howard
EU will meet today to discuss new sanctions on Russia
The European Union’s top diplomat says the bloc’s executive branch is on the cusp of proposing a new raft of sanctions against Russia, including on oil.
The union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the sixth round of sanctions will aim to "de-swift more banks, list disinformation actors and tackle oil imports.” Swift is the most widely used international system for bank transfers.
Member countries have been involved in drawing up the proposals, but they routinely take days to endorse them.
The sanctions can only enter force once they are published in the EU’s Official Journal.
Hungary and Slovakia, both heavily reliant on Russian oil, have already expressed reservations about signing on.
To keep the 27-nation bloc united, the Commission might offer Slovakia and Hungary "an exemption or a long transition period", an official said.
By Jacqueline Howard
Russia claims it hit 400 targets in Ukraine yesterday
The Russian military says its artillery has hit over 400 Ukrainian targets during the last day, according to a spokesperson
Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov said that the targets included Ukrainian artillery positions, troops strongholds and two fuel depots.
He said Russian aircrafts have hit 39 other targets, including concentrations of troops and weapons and two command posts.
He charged that a US-supplied artillery radar, four air defense radars and six ammunition depots were among the targets destroyed with precision-guided weapons over the last day.
By Jacqueline Howard
At least two civilians killed in Russia's overnight attack on steel plant, Azov commander says
Russian forces, backed by tanks according to the Ukrainian fighters still inside, began storming the sprawling plant overnight, which includes a maze of tunnels and bunkers spread out over 11 square kilometres.
Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said throughout the night, the plant was hit with naval artillery fire and airstrikes.
Two women, both civilians, were killed and 10 civilians were wounded in the attack, he said.
By Jacqueline Howard
Ukrainians wait in Mexico City for US entry
Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees are camping out in Mexico City and waiting for the US government to allow them into the country.
About 500 evacuees were waiting Tuesday in large tents under a searing sun on a dusty field on the east side of Mexico’s sprawling capital. The camp has been open only a week and from 50 to 100 people are arriving every day.
Some refugees have already been to the US border in Tijuana where they were told they would no longer be admitted. Others arrived at airports in Mexico City or Cancun.
When the US government announced in late March that it would accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, hundreds entered Mexico daily as tourists in Mexico City or Cancun and flew to Tijuana to wait for a few days – eventually only a few hours – to be admitted to the US at a San Diego border crossing on humanitarian parole.
Appointments at US consulates in Europe were scarce, and refugee resettlement takes time, making Mexico the best option.
A wait of two to four days was eventually shortened to a few hours as US border inspectors whisked Ukrainians in.
That special treatment ended in late April. To qualify for the new program people must have been in Ukraine as of February 11, have a sponsor (which could be family or an organisation), meet vaccination and other public health requirements, and pass background checks.
Giorgi Mikaberidze, 19, arrived in Tijuana April 25 and found the US border closed. He went from being just metres from the US to some 1,000 kilometres away in the Mexico City area. He said he traveled to Mexico alone.
“It’s very difficult to wait. We don’t know how the program will work,” he said.
By Jacqueline Howard
US to spotlight war-caused food insecurity at 2 UN events
The United States says it will put a spotlight on the impact of the war in Ukraine and other conflicts on the diminishing availability of food and rising prices at two UN events in May — an issue which has sparked fears of increasing hunger and starvation in many countries.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will chair a ministerial meeting on food insecurity across the globe on May 18 to review current and future humanitarian needs. It will include foreign ministers from many regionally diverse donor nations and countries most affected by the increasing difficulty to provide adequate food to their people, she said.
The US also holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council this month and the following day, May 19, Mr Blinken will chair a meeting where its 15 members “will consider steps we need to take to make sure increasing food insecurity does not drive new conflicts, instability, particularly in fragile states,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
Ms Thomas-Greenfield said Ukraine used to be a breadbasket for the developing world but since Russia’s invasion, which has sparked the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, the country’s crucial ports have been blocked, civilian infrastructure and grain silos have been destroyed, and “desperate hunger situations in Africa and the Middle East are getting even more dire.”
Russia and Ukraine together produce 30 per cent of the world’s wheat supply, 20 per cent of its corn, and export about three-quarters of the world’s sunflower seed oil.
David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, warned the Security Council in March that the war in Ukraine has created “a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe” and will have a global impact “beyond anything we’ve seen since World War II” because many of the Ukrainian farmers who produce a significant amount of the world’s wheat are now fighting Russians.
He said already high food prices are skyrocketing and the war in Ukraine is turning “the breadbasket of the world to breadlines” for millions of its people, while devastating countries like Egypt that normally gets 85 per cent of its grain from Ukraine and Lebanon that got 81 per cent in 2020.
By Jacqueline Howard
Mine removal efforts underway at Chernobyl
By Jacqueline Howard
Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is 'personal' for soldiers protecting their families in the Donetsk region
By Europe correspondent Nick Dole
Ukrainian troops on the frontline of Russia's war don't pretend to know what's going through the minds of "the enemy", but if they had to guess, they think the invaders' hearts aren't in it.
"The Russians don't seem to care," one of them told the ABC.
Dimas, a Ukraine soldier taking the ABC to the frontline near Shevchenko, in the Donetsk region, says the Russians might have "thought they'd be welcomed here".
"But… nobody wants them," he adds.
The Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline, however, have everything to fight for.
The nearby city of Zaporizhzhia is preparing for that frontline to soon reach its doorstop.
Residents are determined to keep the city under Ukrainian control and out of Russia's hands.
One soldier, Doc, said the battle was "personal" for him. His wife and family live in the area.
"I've got a family and a home to protect," he said.
Soldiers are also fighting to protect loved ones in other areas of south-east Ukraine.
After Russian troops started their encirclement of Mariupol in early March, many residents were left with few means to escape.
Vorchun, who joined the army just days before Russia invaded Ukraine, said his family was still living near the city.
"They wanted to know who would be prepared to protect the motherland, so I volunteered," he said, as the sounds of Russian artillery grew louder in the distance.
"They are trying to force us out of here. We won't let them"
By Jacqueline Howard
By Jacqueline Howard
More photos of evacuated civilians finding safety in Zaporizhzhia
By Jacqueline Howard
'No safe cities in Luhansk'
Attacks and shelling has intensified in the Luhansk region.
The most dangerous area is the city of Popasna, regional governor Serhiy Haida said, however, nowhere in the region is safe, he said.
"There are no safe cities in Luhansk region," Mr Haida said on Telegram.
He said there were civilians requiring evacuation, but the constant bombardment made it impossible to organise.
By Jacqueline Howard
Ukrainian band Antytila collaborates with Ed Sheeran for charity song, while fighting Russia's invasion
Ukrainian band Antytila have collaborated with singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran to record and release a charity single and music video while fighting Russia's invasion.
"The sirens interrupted our sleep, grabbed in two suitcases everything that is in the past, then go!" sings frontman Taras Topolia on the group's remix of Sheeran's hit single 2step.
Topolia added a new verse to the song, and created a video partly filmed amid the war with Russia.
He said although it was dangerous, it made for a dramatic scene.
"We were doing our job. And like driving and between the positions of our battle in the Ukrainian army and just stopped on the road and took the GoPro camera and shot this video," he said.
By Jacqueline Howard
French president speaks with Putin
French President Emmanuel Macron has used a phone call with Vladimir Putin to stress the gravity of the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, and called on the Russian leader to allow evacuations from the Mariupol steel mill to continue.
Mr Macron urged Russia consider its obligations as a UN member.
"I have called on Russia to live up to its international responsibility as a UN Security Council member by putting an end to this devastating attack," Mr Macron said in a statement released following the call.
He also asked Mr Putin to restart evacuations at the Azovstal plant, which has served as a refuge for Ukrainians, in coordination with humanitarian units, while allowing evacuees to choose their destination, as called for under international law.
It was the first time that the French president has had a conversation with his Russian counterpart since March 29 — before the world discovered the horrors left behind in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
The call came three days after Mr Macron last spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Concerned about world food security, Mr Macron said he was willing to work with international organisations to try to help seek a lifting of the Russian blockade on exports of food via the Black Sea.
He also restated his willingness to work on conditions for a negotiated solution to the war, for peace and for full respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and reiterated his oft-stated demand for a cease-fire, the statement said.
By Jacqueline Howard
Lviv substation in flames
Firefighters are battling a huge fire at an electrical substation in Lviv, one of three that were hit by Russian missiles a few hours ago.
By Jacqueline Howard
Shelling too intense to recover bodies in Kharkiv
The north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, was under bombardment, as it has been since the early days of the invasion, the Ukrainian military said.
Giving an early update on the battlefront, Ukraine's general staff said its forces were defending the approach to Kharkiv from Izyum, a town on the Donets river, some 120 kilometres to the south-east, as Russian forces left a trail of destruction in Luhansk province.
Ukraine's military said Russian forces were trying to take the frontline Luhansk province town of Rubizhne and prepare an assault on nearby Sievierodonetsk.
The heaviest clashes were taking place around Popasna, farther south.
Shelling was so intense it was not possible to collect bodies, said regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai.
"I don't even want to speak about what's happening with the people living in Popasna, Rubizhne and Novotoshkivske right now. These cities simply don't exist anymore. They have completely destroyed them," he said.
Russian troops are now trying to encircle a large Ukrainian force there, attacking from three directions with massive bombardment along the front.
By Jacqueline Howard
Strike in Odesa destroys equipment donated by Ukraine's western allies
Russia has struck a military airfield near Ukraine's southwestern city of Odesa with missiles, destroying drones, missiles and ammunition supplied to Ukraine by the United States and its European allies.
"High-precision Onyx missiles struck a logistics centre at a military airfield in the Odesa region through which foreign weapons were being delivered," the Russian defence ministry said.
"Hangars containing unmanned Bayraktar TB2 drones, as well as missiles and ammunition from the US and European countries, were destroyed," it said.
Russian missiles and artillery also struck various military targets across Ukraine, including command centres, arsenals, and an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system.
By Jacqueline Howard
Some Mariupol evacuees decided to stay behind
The UN humanitarian chief in Ukraine says about 30 people who came out of the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol chose not to leave the city, saying they were “horrified” at its total devastation and first wanted to find out if their loved ones were still alive.
Osnat Lubrani told a virtual press conference from the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia soon after the arrival Tuesday of 127 people evacuated from the plant and the town of Manhush on Mariupol’s outskirts that she wants to believe the successful operation will be “a stepping stone to more such operations” from Azovstal and other towns and cities being shelled and bombarded by the Russians.
She said “there is knowledge that there are civilians still trapped in the Azovstal plant,” but the UN has no numbers.
“Some of them may have been afraid to come out, some of them probably couldn’t make it,” Ms Lubrani said.
“It’s a huge area” and some of the elderly people could hardly walk and a broken bus with flat tires was used to help some of them leave.
Speaking of the people who wanted to stay in Mariupol, she said, “These are people that have lived their lives and worked in Mariupol and so it was difficult for them to just leave without knowing what the fate of their loved ones is.”
Ms Lubrani said the people still trapped underground in the Avostal plant will hear about the safe evacuation to Zaporizhzhia which is very important, “so if we do another operation, I think hopefully more will come out.”
By Jacqueline Howard
Russian shelling targets railroads
Ukrainian officials say the Russian military has struck railroad infrastructure across the country.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the Ukrainian railways, said the Russian strikes on Tuesday hit six railway stations in the country’s central and western regions, inflicting heavy damage.
Kamyshin said at least 14 trains were delayed because of the attacks.
Dnipro region Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Russian missiles struck railway infrastructure in the area, leaving one person wounded and disrupting train movement.
The Ukrainian military also reported strikes on railways in the Kirovohrad region, saying there were unspecified casualties.
By Jacqueline Howard
Call for soldiers to be evacuated from Mariupol
As those who were evacuated from the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol began swapping stories and speaking to journalists, a few women held up handmade signs, calling on Ukrainian authorities to evacuate the soldiers — their relatives and loved ones — who are still trapped there and encircled by Russian forces.
"We're scared that after the evacuation of civilians, the guys will be left there." said Ksenia Chebysheva, 29, whose husband is among the Azov Regiment servicemen there.
Ms Chebysheva, who held up a sign saying "Save the Military from Azovstal", said she had heard her husband was still alive on April 26 but had not had any news since.
"They don't have food, water or ammunition," shouted another woman.
"They're forgotten by everyone."
