The U.S. does not believe that the recent escalation observed in Kremlin’s statements will lead to the usage of nuclear weapons.
Russia struck targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building and wounded 10 people, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
Russia said on Friday that its forces had destroyed the production facilities of a space-rocket plant in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with high precision long-range missiles.
The U.S. House gave final passage Thursday to legislation that would streamline a World War II-era military lend-lease program to more quickly provide Ukraine and other Eastern European countries with American equipment to fight the Russian invasion.
Here are the latest updates:
LVIV
Lavrov: 1 million evacuated from Ukraine
Russia’s foreign minister says Moscow has evacuated over 1 million people from Ukraine since the war there began.
The comments Saturday by Sergey Lavrov in an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua come as Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcefully sending Ukrainians out of the country. Mr. Lavrov said that figure included more than 300 Chinese civilians.
Mr. Lavrov offered no evidence to support his claim in the interview. – PTI
ROME
Wives of Mariupol defenders appeal for soldiers’ evacuation
Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol are calling for any evacuation of civilians to also include soldiers, saying they fear the troops will be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by Russian forces.
“The lives of soldiers matter too. We can’t only talk about civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol.
“We are hoping that we can rescue soldiers too, not only dead, not only injured, but all of them.” She and Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys Prokopenko is the Azov commander, made their appeal in Rome on Friday for international assistance to evacuate the Azovstal plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic and now bombed-out port city. – PTI
LVIV
UK: Russian forces have ”weakened morale”
The British military believes Russian forces in Ukraine are likely suffering from “weakened morale.” The British Defense Ministry made that assessment in a tweet Saturday as part of a daily report it provides on Russia’s war on Kyiv.
It says Russia “still faces considerable challenges” in fighting. The British military believes Russian forces have “been forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from the failed advances in northeast Ukraine.” It offered no information on how it arrived at this assessment. However, analysts believe Russian forces that failed to take Kyiv at the start of the war have been redeployed without the time needed to properly rearm and restaff. – PTI
ZAPORIZHZHIA
‘Our roots are there’: Ukrainians cross front line for home
A tiny, Soviet-made car is bed tonight for the older couple waiting to risk their lives by crossing the war’s front line in Ukraine. But they’re not fleeing — they’re going back in.
“Everything is there. Our roots are there,” says the man, 75. “Even people from Mariupol want to go back.”
They don’t want to share their names out of fears for their safety as they attempt to make the long drive back to the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting. – AP
KYIV
Ukraine fights to hold off Russian advances in south, east
Ukrainian forces fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the country’s industrial Donbas region, and a senior U.S. defense official said Moscow’s offensive is going much slower than planned.
While artillery fire, sirens and explosions were heard Friday in some cities, the United Nations sought to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, where the mayor said the situation inside the steel plant that has become the southern port city’s last stronghold is dire. – PTI
WARSAW
War has shown Zelenskyy’s true qualities to all, says wife Olena
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, says the war with Russia has not changed her husband but only revealed to the world his determination to prevail and the fact that he is a man you can rely on.
Ms Zelenska, in an interview published Friday in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, also said she has not seen her husband, 44-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy, since Russia invaded Ukraine. – AP
KYIV
Russia ‘strikes’ Kyiv during UN chief’s visit
Russia confirmed on Friday it carried out an air strike on Kyiv during a visit by the UN chief, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks and one that killed a journalist.
Vera Gyrych, a producer for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, died when a Russian missile slammed into the house where she lived in Kyiv, the media group said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had deployed “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” that it added “have destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes, which immediately followed his talks with Antonio Guterres, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything that the organisation represents”. – AFP
NEW DELHI
Nationalism returning to Europe, warns EU’s longest serving foreign minister
Mr. Asselborn is surprised by the turn of events in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. “I never expected this from Russia. There was a certain amount of trust in Russia in a lot of European countries,” he said during an exclusive interview with The Hindu.