Government’s top priority is ensuring supply of essentials
To raise taxes and fuel prices within six months
COLOMBO, April 9 (Reuters) – Sri Lanka will need about $3 billion in external assistance in the next six months to help restore supplies of essential items including fuel and medicine, its finance minister told Reuters on Saturday.
The island nation of 22 million people has been hit by prolonged power cuts and shortages which have drawn protesters out on to the streets and put President Gotabaya Rajapaksa under mounting pressure.
“It’s a Herculean task,” Finance Minister Ali Sabry said in his first interview since taking office this week, referring to finding $3 billion in bridge financing as the country readies for negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month.
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The country will look to restructure international sovereign bonds and seek a moratorium on payments, and is confident it can negotiate with bondholders over a $1 billion payment due in July.
“The entire effort is not to go for a hard default,” Sabry said. “We understand the consequences of a hard default.”
J.P. Morgan analysts estimated this week that Sri Lanka’s gross debt servicing would amount to $7 billion this year, with a current account deficit of around $3 billion.
The country has $12.55 billion in outstanding international sovereign bonds, central bank data showed, and foreign reserves of $1.93 billion at the end of March.
“The first priority is to see that we get back to the normal supply channel in terms of fuel, gas, drugs… and thereby electricity so that the people’s uprising can be addressed,” Sabry said.
‘SENSE OF CONFIDENCE’
Anti-government protests have raged across the island for days, with at least one turning violent in the commercial capital of Colombo, in a threat to the country’s lucrative tourism industry.
“We respect your right to protest, but no violence, because it is counterproductive,” Sabry said.
“Our tourism, which was beautifully coming back in February with 140,000 tourists coming in, has been severely affected ever since the demonstrations.”
On Sunday thousands of protesters gathered near the president’s seafront office in Colombo, making it one of the biggest shows of public outrage in recent days.
A large contingent of police and at least one water cannon stood deployed near the site where several protesters held the country’s national flag.
The protesters included dozens of Muslims who sat in the middle of a blockaded road to break their Ramadan fast and others who urged the president to step down with shouts of “Gota (Gotabaya) go home”.
Ali Sabry, newly appointed minister of finance, speaks during an interview with Reuters, amid the country’s economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, April 9, 2022. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte
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Sabry said he will lead a delegation of Sri Lankan officials to Washington to start talks with the IMF on April 18 and that financial and legal advisers would be selected within 21 days to help the government restructure its international debt.
“Once we go to them, first thing is there is a sense of confidence in the entire international monetary community that we are serious,” he said. “We are transparent, we are willing to engage.”
On Friday, a new central bank governor raised interest rates by an unprecedented 700 basis points in a bid to tame rocketing inflation and stabilise the economy. read more
Sri Lankan authorities will also reach out to rating agencies, Sabry said, as the country looks to regain access to international financial markets after being locked out due to multiple ratings downgrades since 2020.
Sabry said the government will raise taxes and fuel prices within six months and seek to reform loss-making state-owned enterprises.
These measures were among key recommendations in an IMF review of Sri Lanka’s economy released in early March.
“These are very unpopular measures, but these are things we need to do for the country to come out of this,” Sabry said. “The choice is do you do that or do you go down the drain permanently?”
‘FRIEND OF ALL’
Sri Lanka will seek another $500 million credit line from India for fuel, which would suffice for about five weeks, Sabry said.
The government would also look for support from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and bilateral partners including China, the United States, Britain and countries in the Middle East.
“We know where we are, and the only thing is to fight back,” Sabry said, looking relaxed in a blue T-shirt and jeans. “We have no choice.”
Discussions are ongoing with China on a $1.5 billion credit line, a syndicated loan of up to $1 billion and a request from Sri Lanka’s president in January to restructure some debt.
“Hopefully we will be able to get some relief which would help …until larger infusions come in,” Sabry said.
Beijing and New Delhi have long jostled for influence over the island off India’s southern tip, with the country pulling closer to China under the powerful Rajapaksa family.
But in recent weeks, as the economic crisis deepened, Sri Lanka has leaned heavily on assistance from India.
“We are a neutral country. We are a friend of all,” said Sabry, a lawyer who previously served as Sri Lanka’s justice minister. “So we think that goodwill will come in handy at this point in time.”
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Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe in Colombo; editing by William Mallard and Jason Neely
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — There is a body in the basement of the abandoned yellow home at the end of the street near the railroad tracks. The man is young, pale, a dried trickle of blood by his mouth, shot to death and left in the dark, and no one knows why the Russians brought him there, to a home that wasn’t his.
There is a pile of toys near the stairs to the basement. Plastic clothespins sway on an empty line under a cold, gray sky. They are all that’s left of normal on this blackened end of the street in Bucha, where tank treads lay stripped from charred vehicles, civilian cars are crushed, and ammunition boxes are stacked beside empty Russian military rations and liquor bottles.
The man in the basement is almost an afterthought, one more body in a town where death is abundant, but satisfactory explanations for it are not.
A resident, Mykola Babak, points out the man after pondering the scene in a small courtyard nearby. Three men lay there. One is missing an eye. On an old carpet near one body, someone has placed a handful of yellow flowers.
A dog paces by a wheelbarrow around the corner, agitated. The wheelbarrow holds the body of another dog. It has been shot, too.
___
This story is part of an ongoing investigation from The Associated Press and Frontline that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine i nteractive experience and an upcoming documentary.
___
Babak stands, a cigarette in one hand, a plastic bag of cat food in the other.
“I’m very calm today,” he says. “I shaved for the first time.”
At the beginning of their monthlong occupation of Bucha, he said, the Russians kept pretty much to themselves, focused on forward progress. When that stalled they went house to house looking for young men, sometimes taking documents and phones. Ukrainian resistance seemed to be wearing on them. The Russians seemed angrier, more impulsive. Sometimes they seemed drunk.
The first time they visited Babak, they were polite. But when they returned on his birthday, March 28, they screamed at him and his brother-in-law. They put a grenade to the brother-in-law’s armpit and threatened to pull the pin. They took an AK-47 and fired near Babak’s feet. Let’s kill him, one of them said, but another Russian told them to leave it and go.
Before they left, the Russians asked him an excellent question: “Why are you still here?”
Like many who stayed in Bucha, Babak is older — 61. It was not as easy to leave. He thought he would be spared. And yet, in the end, the stressed-out Russians accused him of being a saboteur. He spent a month under occupation without connection with the world, without electricity, without running water, cooking over a fire. He was not prepared for this war.
Maybe the Russians weren’t either.
Around 6 p.m. on March 31 — and Babak remembers this clearly — the Russians jumped into their vehicles and left, so quickly that they abandoned the bodies of their companions.
Now he watches police and other investigators arrive, look at the bodies in the courtyard, and leave. He wonders when the bodies will be taken away so families can mourn. Down the road is an empty playground, steps away from six charred bodies. People don’t know who they are.
“On this street we were fine,” Babak says, taking stock of the occupation. In Bucha, everything is relative. “They weren’t shooting anyone who stepped out of their house. On the next street, they did.”
___
Walking through Bucha, a reporter encountered two dozen witnesses of the Russian occupation. Almost everyone said they saw a body, sometimes several more. Civilians were killed, mostly men, sometimes picked off at random. Many, including the elderly, say they themselves were threatened.
The question that survivors, investigators and the world would like to answer is why. Ukraine has seen the horrors of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and nearby Irpin. But the images from this town an hour’s drive from Kyiv — of bodies burned, bodies with hands bound, bodies strewn near bicycles and flattened cars — have seared themselves into global consciousness like no others.
“It certainly appears to be very, very deliberate. But it’s difficult to know what more motivation was behind this,” a senior U.S. defense official said this week, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the military assessment.
The residents of Bucha, as they venture out of cold homes and basements, offer theories. Some believe the Russians weren’t ready for an extended fight or had especially undisciplined fighters among them. Some believe the house-to-house targeting of younger men was a hunt for those who had fought the Russians in recent years in separatist-held eastern Ukraine and had been given shelter in the town.
Sometimes, they say, the Russians themselves explained why they killed.
In one backyard in Bucha are three graves, dug by neighbors too scared to put them elsewhere. One of the dead was killed on March 4, struck in the head with the butt of a rifle.
On March 15, a friend of the dead man was approached by Russians demanding his documents. They’re at home, he said. On the way there, they passed the grave. He pointed it out. The next moment, witness Iryna Kolysnik says, the soldiers shot him.
“He was talking too much,” one said, adding an expletive.
By the end, any shred of discipline broke down. “They went from normal soldiers to much, much worse,” says Roman Skytenko, 24, who saw four civilian bodies on the street near his house.
Grenades were tossed into basements, bodies thrown into wells. An elderly man at a nursing home was found dead in his bed, apparently of neglect, while a younger person, perhaps a caregiver, lay outside, shot to death. Women in their 70s were told not to stick their heads out of their houses or they’d be killed. “If you leave home, I’ll obey the order, and you know what the order is. I’ll burn your house,” Tetyana Petrovskaya recalls one soldier telling her.
Now that the Russians have left, bodies are being collected by searchers wary of booby traps and mines. The body bags are placed in rows at a cemetery. Some bags aren’t fully closed. A glimpse shows the bloodied face of a young person. Another shows a pair of white sneakers. Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said the count of dead civilians was 320 as of Wednesday. Most died from gunshots, and some corpses with their hands tied were “dumped like firewood” into mass graves.
Vladyslav Minchenko is an artist who helps to collect the bodies. During the occupation, he found another way to help — spotting Russians through binoculars and telling the “appropriate people” where they were. Three weeks ago, he says, he was discovered.
The Russians came and stripped him and put him near the wall to be shot. But in that final moment, something changed. The Russians had a list of Ukrainian military personnel to look for, and it happened that Minchenko was staying with one.
“I was almost killed,” he says, “but someone said, ‘This is not the guy from the list.’”
He worries the Russians will be back, with more experienced fighters who might not hesitate to fire.
___
Many Bucha residents describe similar, frightening encounters. A building was used as a base by the Russians; residents were forced to stay in the garbage-strewn basement. It was cold and crowded, with about 100 people. They used buckets for toilets. There was not enough food. Babies cried.
On March 3 or 4, one resident on her way into the shelter was told to stand near the bodies of several men who had been killed, some with their hands bound.
“I thought they’d shoot us right there,” she says, not giving her name. As she stood there, crying, a Russian soldier told her not to be afraid, they only wanted to speak with men. Three days later, she was released. It is not clear why.
A few homes away stands 80-year-old Galyna Cheredynachenko. She leans on two canes near the end of her sidewalk, a bright pink scarf around her head. When the Russians came to her door in the early days of the occupation, they parked their tank in her front yard, almost crushing her flower bulbs.
She refused to go to the shelter. The Russians moved in with her instead. They cooked in her courtyard, slept in her house, used her kettle for tea. She gave them her tomatoes and cucumbers. They told her not to leave her room. “They weren’t bad, they just wouldn’t let me out,” she says.
She is only beginning to learn about the town’s real toll — about how at least four people in her area were killed, all civilians, and how the Russians told people to bury the dead in their courtyards.
“I was born in World War II,” Cheredynachenko says. “If you tell me the Nazis did this, I’d understand. I don’t understand how the Russians can do this.”
They got hungry, says another survivor, 63-year-old Nataliya Aleksandrova. They got cold.
At first, she says, the Russians behaved: “They said they had come for three days.” But the war went on, and they started to loot. Clothing, shoes, alcohol, gold, money. They shot TV screens for no reason.
They feared there were spies among the Ukrainians. Aleksandrova says her nephew was detained on March 7 after being spotted filming destroyed tanks with his phone. He was accused of being a Ukrainian nationalist. Four days later, he was found in a basement, shot in the ear.
Days later, thinking the Russians were gone, Aleksandrova and a neighbor slipped out to shutter nearby homes and protect them from looting. The Russians caught them and took them to a basement.
“They asked us, ‘Which type of death do you prefer, slow or fast?’” Grenade or gun?
“I told them I didn’t want to die,” she says. They were given 30 seconds to decide.
Suddenly the soldiers were called away, leaving Aleksandrova and her neighbor shaken but alive.
“I’m not saying everyone was crazy, but some were very bad people,” she says. “Soldiers should have some dignity. They were just a gang of thieves.”
The Russians became desperate when it became clear they wouldn’t be able to move on Kyiv, says Sergei Radetskiy, who noticed fewer organized troop movements in the occupation’s final days. The soldiers were just thinking about how to loot and get out. They were more nervous and aggressive.
“They needed to kill someone,” he says. “And killing civilians is very easy.”
___
In a silent neighborhood, the gate of a home is open. An elderly woman in a fur coat lies in the front doorway, face down. A dog, one of many roaming the streets, stands beside her and yips. Inside, curled on the worn wooden floor under the kitchen table, is another elderly woman.
No one seems to know how they died. They have been lying there since March 5, says a neighbor, Sergiy. “Shock is not enough to describe it.” He believes a Russian sniper shot them at a distance.
Around the corner, on an empty street, a woman in a knitted cap watches from her gate. At a muffled blast from distant de-mining operations, she ducks in terror, grabbing her head. Then she sighs.
Valentyna Nekrutenko is 63 and spent the occupation with her husband, who is so ill he can barely stand. He lies on a mattress on their living room floor under blankets. Nekrutenko believes the war has shaken his mind. The dim home around them is scattered, too, with a half-made meal of bread and beetroot neglected near the sink.
Nekrutenko says she watched the Russians break into the house across the street. A piece of a mortar shell pierced her roof. Limping, not so well herself, she never went far, only going out for water.
Cut off for so long, she doesn’t know about the bodies of the elderly women a few houses away. She doesn’t know why the horrified world has come to her town to document the dead.
“Why come here?” Nekrutenko asks, honestly puzzled. “There’s nothing important about Bucha.”
___
Associated Press journalists Rodrigo Abd, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Felipe Dana and Vadim Ghirda in Bucha and Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russian soldiers ransacked the room where staff were sleeping, looting some of their belongings, according to a shift manager at the Chernobyl site. (Vasco Cotovio/CNN)
The sudden ear-piercing beep of a radiation meter fills the room as a Ukrainian soldier walks in. This is where Russian soldiers were living at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and radiation levels are now higher than normal.
There’s no visible presence of the source of the radioactive material in the room, but Ukrainian officials say it’s coming from small particles and dust that the soldiers brought into the building.
“They went to the Red Forest and brought radioactive material back with them on their shoes,” soldier Ihor Ugolkov explains. “Other places are fine, but radiation increased here, because they were living here.”
CNN was given exclusive access to the power plant for the first time since it came back into Ukrainian control.
Officials at the plant explain the levels inside the room used by Russian soldiers are only slightly above what the World Nuclear Association describes as naturally occurring radiation. One-time contact would not be dangerous but continuous exposure would pose a health hazard.
“They went everywhere, and they also took some radioactive dust on them [when they left],” Ugolkov adds.
It’s an example of what Ukrainian officials say was the lax and careless behavior of Russian soldiers while they were in control of the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area around Chernobyl, namely the Red Forest, is still the most nuclear contaminated area on the planet, with most of the radioactive particles present on the soil.
Ukrainian officials have released drone footage of what they say were trenches dug by Russian soldiers in that area, which is particularly radioactive. At a safe location, on the edges of that area, CNN saw a Russian military ration box that exhibited radiation levels 50 times above naturally occurring values.
Russian soldiers held Chernobyl for a month and are thought to have been operating in contaminated areas most of the time.
Ukraine ‘expects to be granted EU candidate status in June’, minister says
Ukrainian minister Olga Stefanishyna says she expects Ukraine to be given European Union candidate country status in June.
Ukraine is “ready to move fast” with its application to become an EU member, Stefanishyna, who is Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, said.
On Friday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to offer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a quicker start to Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the European Union. The process typically takes years.
“It will not as usual be a matter of years to form this opinion but I think a matter of weeks,” von der Leyen said. Zelenskyy said he would come back with answers in a week.
— Natasha Turak
U.K. pledges additional $130 million in military aid to Ukraine
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged an another £100 million ($130 million) in high-grade military equipment to Ukraine, which will include Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, a further 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions capable of hovering in the sky until ready to fire at their target.
He also said Ukraine would be getting more helmets, body armor and night vision equipment, which will be added to the roughly 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment already pledged from the U.K.
Johnson condemned Friday’s rocket strike on the Kramatorsk train station that killed at least 52 people, saying that both the U.K. and Germany expressed “revulsion at the brutality being unleashed, including the unconscionable bombing of refugees fleeing their homes,” and that the train station attack “shows the depths to which Putin’s vaunted army has sunk.”
— Natasha Turak
Zelenskyy says train station attack must be part of future war crimes trial
The missile attack on a train station in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kramatorsk that killed at least 52 people Friday must be part of a future war crimes tribunal for Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address late that night.
Kyiv and Washington have blamed Russia for the strike, detailing the type of missile used. Moscow has denied involvement.
“Like the massacre in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile strike on Kramatorsk must be one of the charges at the tribunal, which is bound to happen,” Zelenskyy said.
“All the efforts of the world will be aimed to establish every minute: who did what, who gave orders. Where did the rocket come from, who was carrying it, who gave the order and how the strike was coordinated,” he said.
The remains of a Russian rocket, one of two to be launched at a railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, killing 30 and injuring 100 more.
Anatolii Stepanov | Afp | Getty Images
Russian forces continue to strike eastern Ukraine, non-combatants: U.K. Ministry of Defence
Russian forces are continuing their missile strikes and air activity is expected to increase in Ukraine’s south and east, though troops continue to face stiff Ukrainian resistance, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence outlined in its daily security update on Twitter Saturday.
“Russia continues to hit Ukrainian non-combatants, such as those killed in yesterday’s rocket strike on Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine,” the post read.
“Russian operations continue to focus on the Donbas region, Mariupol and Mykolaiv, supported by continued cruise missile launches into Ukraine by Russian naval forces.”
“Russian air activity is expected to increase in the south and east of Ukraine in support of this activity. However, Russian ambitions to establish a land corridor between Crimea and the Donbas continue to be thwarted by Ukrainian resistance.”
— Natasha Turak
Pentagon official says fighting in eastern Ukraine could be a ‘knife fight’
Despite major losses, Russia still has a lot of manpower and that could drag on the conflict for a long time, a senior U.S. Defense official said.
“This will be a knife fight,” the official said. “This could be very bloody and very ugly.”
After failing to capture capital city Kyiv, Moscow is refocusing its efforts on eastern Ukraine, where Russia and Ukraine have fought for eight years.
“The Russians are limiting their geographic aims, but they still have a lot of combat power available. This could go on for a long time,” the official said.
The official also said some of the Russian units that attacked Kyiv were “severely mauled.”
“We’ve seen indications of some units that are literally … eradicated — there’s just nothing left at the BTG except a handful of troops and maybe a small number of vehicles,” the official said.
Military developments in Ukraine remain difficult or impossible to confirm as the situation on the ground changes rapidly.
— Christine Wang
Ukrainians search for bodies in the devastation of Borodyanka
Ukrainian firefighters and volunteer rescue workers search for bodies in the rubble of a collapsed building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
Volunteers help rescuers to remove rumbles of a damaged building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 7, 2022, during Russia’s military invasion launched on Ukraine.
Aleksey Filippov | AFP | Getty Images
An aerial view taken on April 8, 2022 shows diggers working in the rubble of collapsed buildings in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
Ukrainian firefighters inspect a collapsed building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 8, 2022.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
Ukrainian firefighters search for bodies in the rubble of destroyed buildings in the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 8, 2022.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
A group photo of Ukrainians is seen in the wreckage of a damaged residential building by the Russian air raids in Borodyanka, Bucha Raion of Kyiv Oblast, on 7 April 2022.
Ceng Shou Yi | Nurphoto | Getty Images
E.U. imposes new sanctions on 216 Russians, including Putin’s daughters
Leading researcher at the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology of the Russian Health Ministry, member of the Presidium of the Russian Association for the Promotion of Science Maria Vorontsova attends “The Study of DNA as a Path to Self-Understanding” expert session at the Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ekaterina Chesnokova | Sputnik via AP
The European Union on Friday announced a sweeping new slate of individual sanctions targeting 216 Russian nationals and 18 entities. They include two of the adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and Herman Gref, the CEO of Sberbank, Russia’s largest lending bank.
Katerina Tikhonova and Mariya Putina (above), who are in their 30s, are rarely seen in public and almost never mentioned by their father.
The sanctions are part of a broader package of restrictions announced by the European bloc that includes a ban on imports of Russian coal set to take effect in August. This is the first time the EU has placed an embargo on Russian energy products, a controversial decision in a region that is highly dependent upon Russian oil, coal and gas.
Additionally, the EU imposed full blocking sanctions on four major Russian banks that together represent 23% of the Russian banking sector: VTB Bank, Sovcombank, Novikombank and Otkritie Bank (formerly known as NOMOS Bank).
Finally, the new sanctions bar Russian-flagged maritime vessels from docking in EU member state ports, although it includes a carveout for energy and agricultural shipments.
E.U. officials said the latest round of sanctions came in response to growing evidence of scores of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians, including rape, torture and execution-style killings.
— Christina Wilkie
Missile attack on Kramatorsk train station was Russian short-range missile, U.S. Defense official says
OTR-21 Tochka tactical ballistic missile fired during the Allied Determination-2022 military drill of Russian and Belarusian armed forces in Gomel, Belarus on February 15, 2022.
Stringer | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The devastating attack on the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine was carried out by a Russian short-range ballistic missile fired from inside Ukraine, a senior U.S. Defense official said.
The strike killed dozens of people as civilians wait at train stations to flee the eastern part of the country.
The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to share new details the Pentagon has gathered about the war, added that the U.S. believes the missile was a Russian OTR-21 Tochka, also known as an SS-21 “Scarab” missile. The SS-21 is a Russian-made mobile, short-range, single-warhead ballistic missile with a warhead payload of about 1,000 pounds.
The U.S. military has observed more than 1,500 Russian missile launches since the start of the war, according to the official. Russia has focused in particular on the coastal city of Mariupol.
Following the attack on the Kramatorsk train station, the Pentagon announced that it would reposition a Patriot missile battery in Slovakia to bolster air defense systems.
The latest: A missile attack killed at least 50 people at a train station in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, as an exodus from the country’s south and east picked up pace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike in Kramatorsk “another war crime of Russia” and vowed to hold the perpetrators responsible.
More than 6,600 people fled from embattled areas in the south and east via humanitarian corridors Friday, according to Kyiv, the highest count this week. The evacuations came as Russia dispatches thousands more troops to eastern Ukraine, according to Washington, suggesting fighting there would intensify.
The fight: Russian forces continue to mount sporadic attacks on civilian targets in a number of Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian prosecutors have been taking detailed testimony from victims to investigate Russian war crimes.
The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. Russia has used an array of weapons against Ukraine, some of which have drawn the attention and concern of analysts.
In Russia: Putin has locked down the flow of information within Russia, where the war isn’t even being called a war. The last independent newsletter in Russia suspended its operations.
Photos: Post photographers have been on the ground from the very beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.
How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.
Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
Ukraine seeks more weapons, harsher sanctions on Russia
U.S., EU and Britain condemn railway station attack
West imposes more trade restrictions on Russia
LVIV, Ukraine, April 9 (Reuters) – Britain’s defence ministry said on Saturday that Russian forces were targeting civilians, a day after a missile attack on a train station crowded with women, children and the elderly killed at least 52 people, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russia was focusing its offensive, which included cruise missiles launched by its naval forces, on the eastern Donbas region, the British ministry said in a daily briefing.
It said it expected air attacks would increase in the south and east as Russia seeks to establish a land bridge between Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and the Donbas but Ukrainian forces were thwarting the advance.
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Ukrainian officials said shelling had increased in the region in recent days as more Russian forces arrived.
“The occupiers continue to prepare for the offensive in the east of our country in order to establish full control over the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, in the eastern region of Donetsk, a deliberate attack on civilians. The city’s mayor estimated 4,000 people were gathered there at the time.
Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the station was hit by a Tochka U short-range ballistic missile containing cluster munitions, which explode in mid-air, spraying bomblets over a wider area. read more
Reuters was unable to verify what happened in Kramatorsk.
Cluster munitions are banned under a 2008 convention. Russia has not signed it but has previously denied using such armaments in Ukraine. read more
The United States, the European Union and Britain condemned the incident which took place on the same day European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Kyiv to show solidarity and accelerate Ukraine’s membership process.
“We expect a firm global response to this war crime,” Zelenskiy said in a video posted late on Friday.
“Any delay in providing … weapons to Ukraine, any refusals, can only mean the politicians in question want to help the Russian leadership more than us,” he said, calling for an energy embargo and all Russian banks to be cut off from the global system.
Russia’s more than six-week long incursion has seen more than 4 million people flee abroad, killed or injured thousands, left a quarter of the population homeless and turned cities into rubble as it drags on for longer than Russia expected.
In Washington, a senior defence official said the United States was “not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren’t responsible”, and believed Russian forces had fired a short-range ballistic missile in the train station attack. read more
The Russian defence ministry was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the missiles said to have struck the station were used only by Ukraine’s military and that Russia’s armed forces had no targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday.
Russia has denied targeting civilians since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on Feb. 24 in what he called a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Russia’s southern neighbour.
Ukraine and its Western supporters call that a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
The Kremlin said on Friday the “special operation” could end in the “foreseeable future” with its aims being achieved through work by the Russian military and peace negotiators.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has warned the war could last months or even years. read more
The White House said it would support attempts to investigate the attack in Kramatorsk, which Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said showed “the depths to which Putin’s vaunted army has sunk”.
FORENSIC INVESTIGATION
Following a partial Russian pullback near Kyiv, a forensics team on Friday began exhuming a mass grave in the town of Bucha. Authorities say hundreds of dead civilians have been found there.
Russia has called allegations that its forces executed civilians in Bucha a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating its army and justifying more sanctions.
Visiting the town on Friday, von der Leyen said it had witnessed the “unthinkable”.
She later handed Zelenskiy a questionnaire forming a starting point for the EU to decide on membership, telling him: “It will not as usual be a matter of years to form this opinion but I think a matter of weeks.” read more
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is due to visit on Saturday for talks with Zelenskiy.
The bloc also overcame some divisions to adopt new sanctions, including bans on the import of coal, wood, chemicals and other products alongside the freezing of EU assets belonging to Putin’s daughters and more oligarchs.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the possibility of an oil ban would be discussed on Monday but called oil sanctions “a big elephant in the room” for a continent heavily reliant on Russian energy.
Ten humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from besieged regions have been agreed for Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The planned corridors include one for people evacuating by private transport from the devastated southeastern city of Mariupol.
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Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Yahidne, Ukraine, and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Costas Pitas, Michael Perry; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Zelenskiy says railway station strike must be in future war crime tribunal
Here is a recap of the comments made by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in his late night address on Friday. Zelenskiy referred to the missile strike on a railway station in eastern Ukraine as a Russian war crime and said it must be one of the charges to feature at any future tribunal.
Some 52 people were killed, including five children, when a missile hit Kramatorsk railway station on Friday. The US has also blamed Russia, saying it believes it used a short range ballistic missile. Russia has denied responsibility.
Zelenskiy said he expects “a firm, global response”.
“Like the massacre in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile strike on Kramatorsk must be one of the charges at the tribunal, which is bound to happen,” he said.
“All the efforts of the world will be aimed to establish every minute: who did what, who gave orders. Where did the rocket come from, who was carrying it, who gave the order and how the strike was coordinated,” he said.
Zelenskiy also repeated his call for more weapons to be provided to Ukraine, and for greater sanctions to be imposed on Russia.
“The pressure on Russia must be increased. It is necessary to introduce a full energy embargo – on oil, on gas. It is energy exports that provide the lion’s share of Russia’s profits. Russian banks must also be completely disconnected from the global financial system,” he said.
Zelenskiy added that Ukraine had provided details of the military equipment it requires.
“Any delay in providing such weapons to Ukraine, any excuses can mean only one thing: the relevant politicians want to help the Russian leadership more than us Ukrainians,” he said.
07:08
Ten humanitarian corridors agreed for Saturday
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 humanitarian corridors for people from besieged regions have been agreed, Reuters reports.
This includes one for people evacuating by private transport from the city of Mariupol, Vereshchuk said.
06:51
Luhansk Governor calls for more evacuations, warning of Russian troop build up
More evacuations are needed from the Luhansk region in Ukraine as shelling has increased in recent days and more Russian forces have been arriving, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Saturday, according to Reuters.
He said that some 30% of people still remain in settlements across the region and have been asked to evacuate.
“They (Russia) are amassing forces for an offensive and we see the number of shelling has increased,” Gaidai told the public television broadcaster.
06:44
Some 176 children have been killed following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office. A further 324 children have been injured, it said.
06:17
Russian efforts to establish a land corridor between Crimea and the Donbas continue to be thwarted by Ukrainian resistance, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says in its latest update.
It also states:
Russia continues to hit Ukrainian non-combatants, such as those killed in yesterday’s rocket strike on Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine.
Russian operations continue to focus on the Donbas region, Mariupol and Mykolaiv, supported by continued cruise missile launches into Ukraine by Russian naval forces.
Russian air activity is expected to increase in the south and east of Ukraine in support of this activity.
06:09
A curfew will be in place in Ukraine’s southern city of Odessa from this evening until Monday evening. This is in response to the shelling of the train station in Kramatorsk, and the threat of a missile strike, reports AFP.
06:03
In its latest analysis, the US-based Institute for the Study of War says that Ukrainian forces retain control of defensive positions in eastern and southwestern Mariupol.
Russian forces are continuing to attempt to redeploy troops withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine to support an offensive in eastern Ukraine. However, such troops are “unlikely to enable a Russian breakthrough and face poor morale”, ISW says.
Here are its key takeaways:
Ukrainian forces continued to hold out against Russian assaults in areas of southwestern and eastern Mariupol, notably in the port and the Azovstal Metallurgy plant, respectively.
Ukrainian forces continued to repel daily Russian assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
A Russian Tochka-U missile struck a civilian evacuation point at the Kramatorsk rail station in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 and wounding around a hundred evacuees.
Russian forces continued attacks south of Izyum toward Slovyansk and Barvinkove but did not take any new territory.
Ukrainian counterattacks have likely taken further territory west of Kherson, threatening Russian control of the city.
05:49
Zelenskiy says railway station strike must be in future war crime tribunal
Here is a recap of the comments made by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in his late night address on Friday. Zelenskiy referred to the missile strike on a railway station in eastern Ukraine as a Russian war crime and said it must be one of the charges to feature at any future tribunal.
Some 52 people were killed, including five children, when a missile hit Kramatorsk railway station on Friday. The US has also blamed Russia, saying it believes it used a short range ballistic missile. Russia has denied responsibility.
Zelenskiy said he expects “a firm, global response”.
“Like the massacre in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile strike on Kramatorsk must be one of the charges at the tribunal, which is bound to happen,” he said.
“All the efforts of the world will be aimed to establish every minute: who did what, who gave orders. Where did the rocket come from, who was carrying it, who gave the order and how the strike was coordinated,” he said.
Zelenskiy also repeated his call for more weapons to be provided to Ukraine, and for greater sanctions to be imposed on Russia.
“The pressure on Russia must be increased. It is necessary to introduce a full energy embargo – on oil, on gas. It is energy exports that provide the lion’s share of Russia’s profits. Russian banks must also be completely disconnected from the global financial system,” he said.
Zelenskiy added that Ukraine had provided details of the military equipment it requires.
“Any delay in providing such weapons to Ukraine, any excuses can mean only one thing: the relevant politicians want to help the Russian leadership more than us Ukrainians,” he said.
05:42
Hello, it’s Rebecca Ratcliffe with you as we continue our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here are the latest developments:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has described a missile strike on a railway station in eastern Ukraine as a Russian war crime and called for a “firm global response”. At least 52 people, including five children, were killed in the missile strike on Kramatorsk train station. The US believes Russia used a short range ballistic missile on the train station. Russia has denied responsibility.
Two UN agencies have called for “urgent action” to help an estimated 1,000 seafarers stranded in Ukrainian ports and waters with dwindling supplies. Some 6,665 civilians were evacuated through humanitarian corridors on Friday, the majority of them rescued from Mariupol and Berdiansk.
Russian troops have “forcibly deported” more than 600,000 Ukrainians, including about 121,000 children, to Russia, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Lyudmila Denysova, said. Denysova also said residents of the temporarily occupied city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region are being forcibly moved to Russia.
Some Russian military units have experienced major losses, a senior US defence official said, and the Pentagon estimates Russia’s combat power is between 80% and 85% of pre-invasion levels. The US defence department is expecting Russia to shift its focus to the Donbas region and eastern Ukraine.
International prices for food commodities, including grains and vegetable oils, reached all time highs in March amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. The conflict was causing massive disruptions, the UN said on Friday, threatening millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere with hunger and malnourishment.
The European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, pledged to offer Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a speedier start to his country’s bid to become a member of the EU. At a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, Von der Leyen said: “It will not as usual be a matter of years to form this opinion but I think a matter of weeks.”
Forensic investigators have begun exhuming a mass grave in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, wrapping in black plastic and laying out the bodies of civilians who officials say were killed during the Russian invasion. Since Russian troops pulled back from Bucha last week, Ukrainian officials say hundreds of civilians have been found dead.
Russia’s justice ministry has revoked the registration of 15 foreign organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The ministry said in a statement that the Russian units of the organisations “were excluded due to the discovery of violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation”.
MERSING, Malaysia, April 9 (Reuters) – A French woman and British man who disappeared at sea while diving off the coast of Malaysia were found safe on Saturday after drifting for some 100 km (80 miles) for two and a half days after they went missing, police said.
The search for another diver who went missing at the same time, the 14-year-old son of the British man, was expanded to Indonesian waters, they said.
Alexia Alexandra Molina, 18, from France, and Briton Adrian Peter Chesters, 46, were in a group of four who went missing on Wednesday afternoon on a training dive near Tokong Sanggol, a small island off the southeastern town of Mersing.
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The group’s instructor, Kristine Grodem, 35, from Norway, was rescued on Thursday. read more
Fishermen spotted Molina and Chesters at around 1 a.m. (1700 GMT on Friday) off Indonesia’s Bintan island, southeast of Singapore, and some 100 km south of where they went missing, officials said.
“They are in stable condition and under observation, but they are not ready to be interviewed. We will do that as soon as they are ready,” Mersing district police chief Cyril Edward Nuing told reporters.
He said Indonesian authorities would take over the search for Chesters’ 14-year-old son, Dutch citizen Nathan Renze Chesters, as he had likely drifted into their waters.
“We believe there is a high likelihood that he is no longer in Malaysian waters based on the movement of sea currents, as well as the time and location where the other victims were found,” he said.
Malaysian assets would be on standby to help, he said.
Grodem earlier told officials the group surfaced about an hour into their dive on Wednesday but could not find their boat.
She was later separated from the others after being caught in strong currents.
The boat operator who took them to the dive site was detained after testing positive for drugs, police said.
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Reporting by Rozanna Latiff and Ebrahim Harris;
Editing by Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Pentagon official says fighting in eastern Ukraine could be a ‘knife fight’
Despite major losses, Russia still has a lot of manpower and that could drag on the conflict for a long time, a senior U.S. Defense official said.
“This will be a knife fight,” the official said. “This could be very bloody and very ugly.”
After failing to capture capital city Kyiv, Moscow is refocusing its efforts on eastern Ukraine, where Russia and Ukraine have fought for eight years.
“The Russians are limiting their geographic aims, but they still have a lot of combat power available. This could go on for a long time,” the official said.
The official also said some of the Russian units that attacked Kyiv were “severely mauled.”
“We’ve seen indications of some units that are literally … eradicated — there’s just nothing left at the BTG except a handful of troops and maybe a small number of vehicles,” the official said.
Military developments in Ukraine remain difficult or impossible to confirm as the situation on the ground changes rapidly.
— Christine Wang
Ukrainians search for bodies in the devastation of Borodyanka
Ukrainian firefighters and volunteer rescue workers search for bodies in the rubble of a collapsed building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
Volunteers help rescuers to remove rumbles of a damaged building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 7, 2022, during Russia’s military invasion launched on Ukraine.
Aleksey Filippov | AFP | Getty Images
An aerial view taken on April 8, 2022 shows diggers working in the rubble of collapsed buildings in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
Ukrainian firefighters inspect a collapsed building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 8, 2022.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
Ukrainian firefighters search for bodies in the rubble of destroyed buildings in the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv, on April 8, 2022.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
A group photo of Ukrainians is seen in the wreckage of a damaged residential building by the Russian air raids in Borodyanka, Bucha Raion of Kyiv Oblast, on 7 April 2022.
Ceng Shou Yi | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Cayman Islands says it has frozen $7.3 billion in sanctioned Russians’ assets
Mint Images RF | Getty Images
The government of the Cayman Islands announced that it has frozen approximately $7.3 billion worth of assets belonging to more than 800 sanctioned Russian oligarchs and entities since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Caribbean island chain is an overseas British territory, so banks and regulators follow the same sanctions directives they would in the United Kingdom. The Caymans are also one of the world’s most popular tax havens, drawing thousands of wealthy individuals who employ complex corporate structures to avoid taxes back home.
$7.3 billion is a startling amount for a country with fewer than 65,000 residents. By comparison, the global financial powerhouse of Switzerland announced this week that it has frozen only slightly more than the Caymans, approximately $8 billion since the start of the war.
Cayman Premier G. Wayne Panton said the asset freezes highlight that the islands are “responsible and reputable” participants in the global economy.
— Christina Wilkie
E.U. imposes new sanctions on 216 Russians, including Putin’s daughters
Leading researcher at the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology of the Russian Health Ministry, member of the Presidium of the Russian Association for the Promotion of Science Maria Vorontsova attends “The Study of DNA as a Path to Self-Understanding” expert session at the Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ekaterina Chesnokova | Sputnik via AP
The European Union on Friday announced a sweeping new slate of individual sanctions targeting 216 Russian nationals and 18 entities. They include two of the adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and Herman Gref, the CEO of Sberbank, Russia’s largest lending bank.
Katerina Tikhonova and Mariya Putina (above), who are in their 30s, are rarely seen in public and almost never mentioned by their father.
The sanctions are part of a broader package of restrictions announced by the European bloc that includes a ban on imports of Russian coal set to take effect in August. This is the first time the EU has placed an embargo on Russian energy products, a controversial decision in a region that is highly dependent upon Russian oil, coal and gas.
Additionally, the EU imposed full blocking sanctions on four major Russian banks that together represent 23% of the Russian banking sector: VTB Bank, Sovcombank, Novikombank and Otkritie Bank (formerly known as NOMOS Bank).
Finally, the new sanctions bar Russian-flagged maritime vessels from docking in EU member state ports, although it includes a carveout for energy and agricultural shipments.
E.U. officials said the latest round of sanctions came in response to growing evidence of scores of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians, including rape, torture and execution-style killings.
— Christina Wilkie
U.S. and Polish Army troops train in joint tactical session
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanized Division and the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division take part in tactical and fire training in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
The tactical and fire training for U.S. and Polish units is meant to increase their ability to operate together.
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
The training will include shooting from Pioruns (man-portable air-defense systems) and Javelins (anti-tank guided missiles), known for their effectiveness in combating Russian troops in Ukraine.
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
Troops from the Polish 18th Mechanised Division and the 82nd Airborne Division (USA) take part in tactical and fire training on April 8, 2022 in Nowa Deba, Poland.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
Missile attack on Kramatorsk train station was Russian short-range missile, U.S. Defense official says
OTR-21 Tochka tactical ballistic missile fired during the Allied Determination-2022 military drill of Russian and Belarusian armed forces in Gomel, Belarus on February 15, 2022.
Stringer | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The devastating attack on the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine was carried out by a Russian short-range ballistic missile fired from inside Ukraine, a senior U.S. Defense official said.
The strike killed dozens of people as civilians wait at train stations to flee the eastern part of the country.
The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to share new details the Pentagon has gathered about the war, added that the U.S. believes the missile was a Russian OTR-21 Tochka, also known as an SS-21 “Scarab” missile. The SS-21 is a Russian-made mobile, short-range, single-warhead ballistic missile with a warhead payload of about 1,000 pounds.
The U.S. military has observed more than 1,500 Russian missile launches since the start of the war, according to the official. Russia has focused in particular on the coastal city of Mariupol.
Following the attack on the Kramatorsk train station, the Pentagon announced that it would reposition a Patriot missile battery in Slovakia to bolster air defense systems.
— Amanda Macias
EU chief promises speeded up process for Ukraine to seek membership
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (l) speaks at a joint press conference with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. During her visit to Kiev, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen encouraged Ukraine on its way to the European Union.
Michael Fischer | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to offer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a speedier start to Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the European Union.
Handing Zelenskyy a questionnaire which will form a starting point for the EU to decide on membership for Kyiv, she said: “It will not as usual be a matter of years to form this opinion but I think a matter of weeks.” Zelenskyy said he would come back with answers in a week.
She underlined the sanctions put on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, saying: “Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards the European future, this is what I see.”
— Reuters
U.S. sending Patriot missile system to Slovakia
U.S. Army MIM-104 Patriots, surface-to-air missile (SAM) system launchers, are pictured at Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Poland March 24, 2022.
Stringer | Reuters
The Pentagon will reposition a Patriot missile system in Slovakia under U.S. command after Slovakian officials agreed to send Ukraine its S-300 air defense system.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he expected the long-range missile system, which is made by Raytheon, and U.S. crew will arrive “in coming days.” He said U.S. military leaders are talking to Slovakian government “about more permanent air defense solutions,” according to a statement released by the Pentagon.
“This deployment of Patriot capabilities to Slovakia aligns perfectly with our previous efforts to bolster NATO’s defensive capabilities and to demonstrate our collective security requirements under Article 5 of the NATO treaty,” Austin wrote.
President Joe Biden also confirmed in a statement that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had previously asked for the S-300 missile defense system.
“The entire world has now witnessed the effectiveness of those weapons, as courageous Ukrainian forces have used them to repel the Russian attack on Kyiv, keep the skies of Ukraine contested, and deliver severe blows to the Russian military,” Biden wrote.
— Amanda Macias
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visits Bucha
Editor’s note: Graphic content. The following article contains a photo of casualties at Bucha.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the deaths of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha showed the “cruel face” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army, pledging to support Kyiv in its defense of the “border of Europe.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (M) and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell (behind) and Denys Shmyhal (green cap), Prime Minister of Ukraine, stand behind body bags in Bucha on April 8th, 2022.
Michael Fischer | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
During a visit to Bucha, where forensic investigators started to exhume bodies from a mass grave, von der Leyen looked visibly moved by what she saw in a town where Ukrainian officials say hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian forces.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (M), EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell (M,r) and Denys Schmyhal (behind von der Leyen), Prime Minister of Ukraine, stand behind destroyed military vehicles in Bucha on April 8th, 2022.
Michael Fischer | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Russia denies targeting civilians in its more than six-week war against Ukraine and has called the allegations that Russian forces executed civilians in Bucha while they occupied the town a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating the Russian army.
Speaking to reporters in Bucha, von der Leyen, wearing a flak jacket, said the EU would do everything to support Ukraine to do “the necessary steps” to secure membership of the bloc — a demand Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell (2nd from right) light candles for the victims of the massacre in a church next to a mass grave in Bucha on April 8th, 2022.
Michael Fischer | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
“The unthinkable has happened here. We have seen the cruel face of Putin’s army. We have seen the recklessness and the cold heartedness with which they have been occupying the city,” von der Leyen told reporters in Bucha.
— Reuters
Putin’s approval rating soars since he sent troops into Ukraine, state pollster
People wave flags during a rally in support of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, in Simferopol, Crimea on April 7, 2022.
– | Afp | Getty Images
The proportion of Russians who trust President Vladimir Putin has risen to 81.6% from 67.2% before he ordered troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to a survey by the state-run pollster VTsIOM.
The conflict has displaced more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, killed or injured thousands, turned cities into rubble and led to sweeping Western sanctions that will push down Russian living standards.
VTsIOM said 78.9% of respondents in its latest survey said they approved of Putin’s actions, compared to 64.3% in the last poll before the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation.” The proportion who disapproved of his actions fell to 12.9% from 24.4%.
Ukraine and Western leaders have condemned Russia’s military campaign as unprovoked aggression. The Kremlin says it had to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and pre-empt a threat from the Western NATO alliance.
— Reuters
At least 50 people killed in rocket attack at Kramatorsk rail station
Editor’s note: Graphic content. The following article contains a photo of casualties and wounded in Kramatorsk
At least 50 people have been killed after a Ukraine railway station was hit by rockets, according to the governor of the Donetsk region. That number includes five children.
EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Ukrainian soldiers clear out bodies after a rocket attack killed at least 35 people on April 8, 2022 at a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that was being used for civilian evacuations.
Fadel Senna | AFP | Getty Images
Pavlo Kyrylenko said the number of victims at Kramatorsk train station is “constantly changing” as a result of the attack, with 98 believe reported to have been taken to hospitals.
Two rockets hit a station in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region, where scores of people were waiting to be evacuated to safer areas, according to Ukrainian Railways.
Andrea Carrubba | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
“Of the 98 wounded who were taken to medical facilities, 16 were children, 46 were women and 36 were men. Twelve of them died at the hospital. 38 people died at the station,” Kyrylenko said via Telegram, according to a translation.
— Sam Meredith
Death toll from Kramatorsk train station rocket attack rises to 39: Donetsk governor
The death toll from the rocket attack on a railway station in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kramatorsk has risen to at least 39, according to the governor of the Donetsk region. The train station was one of many sites in the country’s east where thousands of civilians are trying to flee as Russian attacks worsen.
“As of 13:00, 39 people were killed and 87 were injured in the shelling of the Kramatorsk railway station,” governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on his official Telegram channel.
The rockets hit an area “from where evacuation trains run in an organized manner, taking residents of Donetsk region to safer regions of Ukraine. The Russians are deliberately trying to disrupt the evacuation of civilians,” he said. “For them, people’s lives are just a bargaining chip and a tool to achieve their cynical goal.”
Moscow has denied any involvement in the rocket strikes.
— Natasha Turak
Almost 4.5 million people have fled Ukraine since invasion began, U.N. says
Ukrainian refugees rest in the ticket hall at Przemysl Glowny train station, after fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland, April 2, 2022.
Hannah Mckay | Reuters
The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees said that 4,382,316 people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, an increase of 62,822 since Wednesday. The rise in the number of people fleeing has slowed, but those trying to escape often spend weeks in very poor conditions.
“The war in Ukraine has triggered one of the fastest-growing displacement and humanitarian crises ever,” UNHCR spokesman Matt Saltmarsh said.
Civilians, fleeing from Ukraine due to ongoing Russian attacks, continue to arrive at the Medyka border in Przemysl, Poland on March 31, 2022.
Ayhan Mehmet | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
“While the pace of arrivals is slowing, overall flows continue given the ongoing hostilities.”
Newly arrived refugees have spent weeks “hunkering down at home or in shelters in dire conditions,” he added. — Natasha Turak
Global food prices reach ‘highest levels ever’ due in part to Ukraine war, UN says
Global prices for some grains have spiked since the Russia-Ukraine war started, with both countries contributing a significant percentage of the world’s supply for some of those commodities such as wheat.
Vincent Mundy | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Global food commodity prices reached “their highest levels ever” in March, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to data provided by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices of food commodities, averaged 159.3 points in March, up 12.6% from February, which was then the highest level since its inception in 1990.
The latest index reading was 33.6% higher than the year prior.
“The FAO Cereal Price Index was 17.1% higher in March than in February, driven by large rises in wheat and all coarse grain prices largely as a result of the war in Ukraine,” the organization wrote, adding that Ukraine’s wheat and maize account for 20% of the world’s exports.
The FAO Food Price Index for vegetable oil also rose by 23.2% in March, driven by demand for sunflower seed oil. Ukraine is the world’s leading exporter of the product.
— Amanda Macias
More than 30 killed, 100 wounded in Russian rocket attack on Ukraine railway station
More than 30 people were killed and over 100 injured in a rocket attack on a railway station in eastern Ukraine where families and individuals were waiting to evacuate to safer parts of the country, the national railway company said.
Two rockets hit a train station in the city of Kramatorsk, currently an evacuation point for thousands of civilians trying to flee intensifying Russian bombardment.
“According to operational data, more than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in the rocket attack on Kramatorsk railway station,” Ukrainian Railways said via Telegram.
“This is a deliberate blow to the passenger infrastructure of the railway and the residents of Kramatorsk.”
Moscow denied involvement in the strike, and denies targeting civilians despite well-documented evidence to the contrary.
— Natasha Turak
NATO chief says Finland is ‘welcome’ to join the military alliance
Finland is “welcome” to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, amid the prospect of the Nordic country applying for membership.
Local media outlets have shown Finnish support for NATO membership hitting a record high following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
“The message from NATO and from me is that it is for Finland to decide,” NATO’s Stoltenberg told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble.
“We will respect the decision regardless of what the conclusion will be, but if Finland decides to apply for membership, I am confident that NATO allies will warmly welcome them — and we can quite quickly make the decision to have them as a member of the allies.”
— Sam Meredith
Putin might turn to weapons of mass destruction if Russia fails to win in eastern Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin might turn to weapons of mass destruction, like chemical or tactical nuclear weapons, if he fails to gain a “conventional forces victory” in eastern Ukraine, said Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
If Russian forces are too weary to accomplish a decisive victory over the next few weeks in the Donbas, Putin might find himself in an “extremely difficult” situation without an obvious off-ramp, Ferguson told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday.
The Donbas in eastern Ukraine is the site of two breakaway regions where Ukrainian forces and Moscow-backed separatists have fought since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.
With Russia and the United States — the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world — on the brink of conflict, Ferguson said this is a “much more dangerous” situation than most people appreciate.
Russia has said it is at war with the West because of the economic sanctions it has imposed on the country.
“That’s why although I think we’re not on the brink of World War III, we can’t rule that scenario out completely,” Ferguson said.
— Chelsea Ong
Russian forces in northern Ukraine have ‘fully withdrawn’ but will be redeployed, UK ministry says
Road service workers clean debris around a burnt Russian tank and vehicle on a road west of Kyiv, on April 7, 2022, during Russia’s military invasion launched on Ukraine.
Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images
Russian troops that had invaded the northern part of Ukraine have “fully withdrawn” to Belarus and Russia, the U.K. Ministry of Defence said on Friday.
In an intelligence update, the ministry said at least some of those units will be transferred to the eastern part of Ukraine to fight there. Moscow is widely expected to shift the focus of its offensive to the Donbas region, where Russia has engaged in military adventurism for years.
However, the redeployment of those much-depleted Russian units — which were defeated by determined Ukrainian resistance around Kyiv and elsewhere — is not expected to happen easily or quickly.
“Many of these forces will require significant replenishment before being ready to deploy further east, with any mass redeployment from the north likely to take at least a week minimum,” the British ministry said.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to shell cities in the east and south of Ukraine, the ministry said.
Russia denies that it uses artillery barrages to attack Ukrainian cities, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
— Ted Kemp
Kremlin spokesman admits ‘significant’ Russian troop losses in Ukraine
People attend a farewell ceremony for Sergei Sokolov, the 21 year-old serviceman who was killed during Russian military action in Ukraine, in the settlement of Zubkovo in Novosibirsk region on March 24, 2022.
Rostislav Netisov | AFP | Getty Images
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has admitted that Russia has suffered “significant” casualties in its invasion of Ukraine.
“We have significant losses of troops, and it’s a huge tragedy for us,” Peskov told Sky News Thursday night.
Ukrainian forces have surprised leaders and military experts the world over in their ability to push back on Russian military advances six weeks into the war, though both sides have suffered high casualty numbers.
NATO estimates that Russia’s death toll could be as high as 15,000 troops, while Moscow last announced its casualty figures on March 25 at 1,351 deaths.
— Natasha Turak
Ukraine tells NATO that Donbas battle could be like World War II
Residents run near a burning house following a shelling Severodonetsk, Donbass region, on April 6, 2022, as Ukraine tells residents in the country’s east to evacuate “now” or “risk death” ahead of a feared Russian onslaught on the Donbas region, which Moscow has declared its top prize.
Fadel Senna | AFP | Getty Images
The fighting to come in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region will be reminiscent of battles during World War II, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has told NATO.
“The battle for Donbas will remind you of the Second World War, with large operations, maneuvers, involvement of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes, artillery — this will not be a local operation based on what we see in Russia’s preparations to it,” Kuleba said.
“Either you help us now — and I’m speaking about days, not weeks — or, your help will come too late. And many people will die, many civilians will lose their homes, many villages will be destroyed, exactly because this help came to late.”
The focus right now is to get Russia to leave Ukraine, says think tank
The current focus for NATO and its allies is to get Russia to end its war, says Jonathan Katz, director of democracy initiatives and a senior fellow with The German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“The more that Russia is isolated from the international system, the less damage they can do,” Katz said.
While countries cut economic ties with Russia, “more important right now is to get Russia to stop, to end its violence, to leave Ukraine,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Friday.
On Thursday, the United Nations voted to remove Russia from its seat on the Human Rights Council, following reports Russian troops raped, tortured and killed Ukrainian civilians.
— Charmaine Jacob
EIU warns Asia-Pacific remains vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices, despite less direct exposure to the war
Asia-Pacific countries may be less exposed to the war in Ukraine compared with other regions, but they could still see less direct hits in areas ranging from commodities to tourism and weapons, according to a new report from the Economic Intelligence Unit.
Russia and Ukraine account for a significant proportion of global supply of some food commodities, such as wheat and fertilizer. Any jump in prices will be a concern for Asia, given the region’s high levels of dependence on energy and agricultural commodity imports, warned the EIU.
Russia is also the world’s second-largest arms supplier and is a major source of arms for China, India and Vietnam, the research firm pointed out.
The report also listed which countries in Asia-Pacific would be most and least affected.
— Weizhen Tan
Biden has authorized more than $1.7 billion in security aid to Ukraine since war began
Ukrainian servicemen load a truck with the FGM-148 Javelin, American man-portable anti-tank missile provided by US to Ukraine.
Sergei Supinsky | AFP | Getty Images
The Biden administration has approved more than $1.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in late February, according to the White House. The U.S. has provided a total of $2.4 billion to Ukraine since the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
The Pentagon also confirmed that all of the anti-armor and anti-air systems from the two weapons packages announced in March have been delivered to Ukraine. The Defense Department added that the U.S. is working to “identify additional weapons systems to help the Ukrainian military.”
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has requested “longer-range anti-aircraft systems,” the Pentagon said.
More than 30 nations have sent Ukraine security assistance. Here is the firepower the U.S. has committed thus far, according to the Defense Department:
— Amanda Macias
Pro-Russian forces fight in Mariupol
Pro-Russian forces search houses and inspect streets in the southern port city of Mariupol.
Service members of pro-Russian troops carry out a search of a house during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 7, 2022.
Alexander Ermochenko | Reuters
A service member of pro-Russian troops checks the documents of a local resident during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 7, 2022.
Alexander Ermochenko | Reuters
A local resident looks on as service members of pro-Russian troops inspect streets during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 7, 2022.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A missile hit a train station in eastern Ukraine where thousands had gathered Friday, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a new, looming Russian offensive, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack, denounced by some as yet another war crime in the 6-week-old conflict, came as workers unearthed bodies from a mass grave in Bucha, a town near Ukraine’s capital where dozens of killings have been documented after a Russian pullout.
Photos from the station in Kramatorsk showed the dead covered with tarps, and the remnants of a rocket with the words “For the children” painted on it in Russian. About 4,000 civilians had been in and around the station, heeding calls to leave before fighting intensifies in the Donbas region, the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who says he expects a tough global response, and other leaders accused Russia’s military of deliberately attacking the station. Russia, in turn, blamed Ukraine, saying it doesn’t use the kind of missile that hit the station — a contention experts dismissed.
Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in his nightly video address Friday that efforts would be taken “to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed to.”
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor of Donetsk, in the Donbas, said 52 people were killed, including five children, and many dozens more were wounded.
“There are many people in a serious condition, without arms or legs,” Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko said, adding that the local hospital was struggling to treat everyone.
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace denounced the attack as a war crime, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it “completely unacceptable.”
“There are almost no words for it,” European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in Ukraine, told reporters. “The cynical behavior (by Russia) has almost no benchmark anymore.”
Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of atrocities in the war that began with a Feb. 24 invasion. More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and millions more have been displaced. Some of the grisliest evidence has been found in towns around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, from which Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops pulled back in recent days.
In Bucha, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk has said investigators found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians and were still finding bodies in yards, parks and city squares — 90% of whom were shot.
Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
On Friday, workers pulled corpses from a mass grave near a town church under spitting rain, lining up black body bags in rows in the mud. About 67 people were buried in the grave, according to a statement from Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova’s office.
“Like the massacres in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile attack on Kramatorsk should be one of the charges at the tribunal that must be held,” Zelenskyy said, his voice rising in anger late Friday.
He expounded on that theme in an excerpted interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, citing communications intercepted by the Ukrainian security service.
“There are (Russian) soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of (Russian) prisoners of war who admitted to killing people,” he said. “There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead.”
Zelenskyy’s comments echo reporting from Der Spiegel saying Germany’s foreign intelligence agency had intercepted Russian military radio traffic in which soldiers may have discussed civilian killings in Bucha. The weekly also reported that the recordings indicated the Russian mercenary Wagner Group was involved in atrocities there.
German government officials would not confirm or deny the report, but two former German ministers filed a war crimes complaint Thursday. Russia has denied that its military was involved in war crimes.
Russian forces, who pulled back after failing to take the capital in the face of stiff resistance, have now set their sights on the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and control some areas.
A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that the Pentagon believes some of the retreating units were so badly damaged they are “for all intents and purposes eradicated.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
The official did not say how many units sustained such extensive damage, but said the U.S. believes Russia has lost between 15% and 20% of its combat power overall since the war began. While some combat units are withdrawing to be resupplied in Russia, Moscow has added thousands of troops around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, he said.
The train station hit is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, but Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack. So did the region’s Moscow-backed separatists, who work closely with Russian regular troops.
Western experts refuted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that Russian forces “do not use” that type of missile, saying Russia has used it during the war. One analyst added that only Russia would have reason to target railway infrastructure in the Donbas.
“The Ukrainian military is desperately trying to reinforce units in the area … and the railway stations in that area in Ukrainian-held territory are critical for movement of equipment and people,” said Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Bronk pointed to other occasions when Russian authorities have tried to deflect blame by claiming their forces no longer use an older weapon “to kind of muddy the waters and try and create doubt.” He also suggested that Russia specifically chose the missile type because Ukraine also has it.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, also said Russia’s forces have used the missile — and that given the strike’s location and impact, it was “likely” Russia’s.
Ukrainian officials have almost daily pleaded with Western powers to send more arms, and to further punish Russia with sanctions and exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system.
NATO nations agreed Thursday to increase their supply of weapons, and Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced on a trip to Ukraine on Friday that his country has donated its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine. Zelenskyy had appealed for S-300s to help the country “close the skies” to Russian warplanes and missiles.
American and Slovak officials said the U.S. will then deploy a Patriot missile system to Slovakia.
After meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, during which he urged the EU to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and gas, von der Leyen provided him with a questionnaire that is a first step for applying for EU membership.
Elsewhere, in anticipation of intensified attacks by Russian forces, hundreds of Ukrainians fled villages that were either under fire or occupied in the southern regions of Mykolaiv and Kherson.
In the northeast’s Kharkiv, Lidiya Mezhiritska stood in the wreckage of her home after overnight missile strikes turned it to rubble.
“The ‘Russian world,’ as they say,” she said, wryly invoking Putin’s nationalist justification for invading Ukraine. “People, children, old people, women are dying. I don’t have a machine gun. I would definitely go (fight), regardless of age.”
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Anna reported from Bucha, Ukraine. Robert Burns in Washington, Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
