Russia-Ukraine war live: new Russian law shows Moscow expects lengthy conflict, warns UK — as it happened (2023)

Five Ukrainians from Russian-occupied Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia oblast will be tried by a Russian court for being part of a “terrorist group”, according to Russian state media.

The five Ukrainians were transported from Melitopol to Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, and subsequently transferred to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre in Moscow, the Kyiv Independent reports.

Ukraine hasn’t commented on Russia’s accusations against the five Ukrainians.

Ukraine will receive another $5bn in aid from G7 countries, according to Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal.

He said that the agreement came from spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Switzerland will also commit $2bn over six years, and Denmark will create a special fund worth $1bn.

Spain, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Iceland and the Netherlands will also provide additional support to Ukraine, Shmyhal said.

“All this will help us win and ensure the stability of our economy,” he added.

Russia has been using drones to attack police officers in Kherson, according to the region’s police force.

In an update posted on Facebook, Kherson’s police said: “The Russian military once again attacked police officers with the help of drones. In Kherson, in the Korabel area, a police car was attacked by a UAV. Two police officers were injured, the car was damaged.”

They added that two cars in Beryslav were targeted, with one officer injured and cars mechanically damaged, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The family of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who is being held by Russia, have spoken of their worries after he was arrested and how they are optimistic that he will be freed.

In a video interview with the WSJ, his mother, Ella Milman, said: “It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed: be optimistic, believe in happy, happy endings … and that’s where we stand right now.

“But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved. But that’s what I choose to believe.”

Gerschovich’s parents separately fled the Soviet Union to the US in 1979 and met in New York City. Their journalist son was arrested on 29 March in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage. He was accused of trying to obtain classified information about a military facility.

Mikhail, his father, was asked whether he had worried about his son wanting to cover Russia.

“No. But I trusted him. I trusted his judgment. Of course, it makes things more difficult for me now, because I felt I failed in some way as a father.”

Gershkovich, the WSJ and US officials have denied the charges and say he is being wrongly held.

A Russian official has claimed four people were killed and 10 injured in Ukrainian shelling of a town in Russian-controlled Donetsk.

Denis Pushilin said a seven-year-old girl was among those wounded in Yasynuvata, Reuters reports.

Neither the Guardian nor the Reuters news agency have been able to independently verify the shelling or the casualties.

Nine people have been killed in a Russian rocket attack on a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, including a two-year-old boy who died in hospital.

Authorities confirmed the death toll on Saturday morning, after Friday evening’s attack on the neighbourhood, AFP reported.

Slovyansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. According to Kyiv, it was struck by seven missiles which hit five buildings, five homes, a school and an administrative building.

Vadim Lyakh, the head of Slovyansk’s military administration, confirmed on Saturday that nine people had died – including a woman whose body was recovered from the rubble overnight – and 21 were wounded.

Five people were still under the rubble and their identities were established, he said.

AFP journalists saw rescue workers digging for survivors on the top floor of the typical Soviet-era housing block, and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.

A new Russian law has removed an obstacle that has allowed some men to dodge the draft and suggests Moscow anticipates a lengthy conflict in Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

Vladimir Putin was reported to have signed a bill on Friday to create a digital draft system, making it easier to mobilise Russians into the army and stirring fresh fears in the country amid the war with Ukraine.

The UK MoD said in its latest intelligence briefing – posted on Twitter – that under the law, authorities would be able to serve call-up papers electronically, rather than by letter, removing one way of avoiding military duties.

The ministry said:

With individuals’ call-up data now digitally linked to other state-provided online services, it is likely that the authorities will punish draft-dodgers by automatically limiting employment rights and restricting foreign travel.

The measures – reported to be coming into force later in the year – did not specifically indicate any major new wave of enforced mobilisation, it said.

Russia is, for now, prioritising a drive to recruit extra volunteer troops. However, the measure is highly likely part of a longer-term approach to provide personnel as Russia anticipates a lengthy conflict in Ukraine.

Finland’s border guard has unveiled the first section of a 125-mile (200km) border fence with Russia, being built after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.

Finland joined Nato a week ago and its 800-mile border has also doubled as the frontier between the military alliance and Russia.

Agence France-Presse reported that the fence – 3 metres (10ft) tall and topped with barbed wire – would cost about €380m (£340m/$422m) and was due to be completed by 2026.

Officials showed the construction site of the first 1 mile section near the Imatra border crossing point in south-eastern Finland on Friday.

Jaakko Makela from GRK, the construction company building the first phase, said:

We started work on the site about a month ago. We have built a road and foundations.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said the US should stop “encouraging war” in Ukraine “and start talking about peace”.

In that way, the international community would be able to “convince” the Russian and Ukrainian presidents that “peace is in the interest of the whole world”, Lula told reporters in Beijing at the end of a visit where he met President Xi Jinping.

Agence France-Presse reported that Lula said:

The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace. The European Union needs to start talking about peace.

Lula’s visit to China, Brazil’s top trading partner, focused on strengthening ties and spreading the message that “Brazil is back” as a key player on the global stage.

He is carrying out a balancing act as he also seeks closer ties with Washington. His visit comes after a meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, in February.

Unlike western powers, neither China nor Brazil have imposed sanctions against Russia after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and both seek to position themselves as mediators to achieve peace.

Before the trip, Lula had proposed creating a group of countries to mediate in the war, and said he would discuss this in Beijing.

Asked about the progress of this initiative after his conversation with Xi, Lula did not give details.

“It is important to have patience” to talk with Putin and Zelenskiy, he said.

But above all, it is necessary to convince the countries that are supplying weapons, encouraging the war, to stop.

Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton with the latest developments to bring you up to speed.

Brazil’s president has accused the United States of “encouraging war” in Ukraine and says Washington and the European Union should “start talking about peace”.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made the comments in Beijing at the end of a visit in which he met with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

More on this story shortly.

In other developments as it turns 9am in Kyiv:

• At least nine people were killed, including a two-year-old child, and 21 wounded on Friday when a Russian missile hit residential buildings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, emergency services in the Donetsk region said. The regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told national TV earlier that seven Russian S-300 missiles had been fired and there were “no fewer than seven spots hit” in the city, west of Bakhmut. Rescue teams searching for victims sifted through rubble throughout the night using cranes, ladders and other heavy equipment.

• Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, has been grappling with severe stomach pain in jail that could be the result of slow-acting poison, a close ally said on Friday. “His situation is critical. We are all very concerned,” Ruslan Shaveddinov said in a phone interview.

• Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has signed a bill allowing authorities to issue electronic notices to draftees and reservists amid the fighting in Ukraine, sparking fears of a new wave of mobilisation. The bill was signed into law on Friday and published on the official register of government documents. Russia’s military service rules previously required the in-person delivery of notices to conscripts and reservists who are called up for duty.

• Ukraine’s security service has issued a warning to the millions of people in the country celebrating Orthodox Easter this weekend, Sky News reported. Ukrainians were asked to “limit the attendance of mass events” and avoid lingering “unnecessarily” in temples during the traditional blessing of the Easter basket.

• Jack Teixeira has been detained pending a detention hearing that is set for Wednesday 19 April. The member of the US air force national guard has been charged with the unauthorised removal and retention of classified documents and materials from the Pentagon. The 21-year-old made his first appearance in a federal court in Boston on Friday after the FBI arrested him in Massachusetts the previous day.

• Ukraine retrieved the bodies of 82 of its soldiers from Russian-controlled territory on Friday, a government ministry said. It gave no details about how the bodies were retrieved but said it was carried out “in accordance with the norms of the Geneva convention”.

• The parents of the detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich have said they remain optimistic for a positive outcome to his detention, insisting that their son “still loved Russia”. “It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, you know, be optimistic, believe in a happy ending,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told the WSJ, speaking on Friday for the first time since his arrest on spying charges. “But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved, but that’s what I choose to believe.”

• China approved the provision of lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine but wanted any shipments to remain a secret, according to leaked US government documents. A top-secret intelligence summary dated 23 February states that Beijing had approved the incremental provision of weapons to Moscow, which it would disguise as civilian items, according to a report in the Washington Post. China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, said on Friday that the country would not sell weapons to parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine and would regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use.

• Ukrainian forces are finding a growing number of components from China in Russian weapons used in Ukraine, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said.

• Rishi Sunak denounced a video purporting to show the beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner of war and said those responsible should be brought to justice. The UK prime minister told Zelenskiy in a call on Friday that the footage was “abhorrent”, Downing Street said. Sunak also “discussed efforts to accelerate military support to Ukraine”.

• The 15 Russian diplomats expelled by Norway this week had sought to recruit sources, conduct “signal intelligence” and buy advanced technology, Norwegian security police said on Friday.

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• The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has written to Russia, Ukraine and Turkey raising concerns about recent impediments to the Black Sea grain export deal. The move comes after the UN said no ships were inspected on Tuesday under the deal “as the parties needed more time to reach an agreement on operational priorities”.

• Ukraine has barred its national sports teams from competing in Olympic, non-Olympic and Paralympic events that include competitors from Russia and Belarus, the sports ministry said. The decision, published in a decree on Friday and criticised by some Ukrainian athletes, comes after the International Olympic Committee angered Kyiv by paving the way for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, will meet with his counterparts in Sweden and Germany next week, including hosting a Ukraine-related defence meeting with top officials from almost 50 countries, the Pentagon said.