Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

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. 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

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.

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

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

Ukrainian firefighters and volunteer rescue workers search for bodies in the rubble of a collapsed building in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.

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

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