Russia-Ukraine war: bloodiest battle ends as Ukrainian fighters evacuated from Mariupol steel plant – live

Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the governor of Sumy in the north-east of Ukraine, has posted to Telegram that Okhtyrka was struck by Russian missiles overnight. He said:

Five Russian missiles landed on civilian targets and caused a lot of damage.

Warehouses caught fire. The shock wave damaged the front door of the two-story building, and people were trapped inside.

Many private houses were affected. The windows in the church were broken. The “Fairy Tale” Kindergarten also suffered. This is the same one that was bombed by the racists in the first days of the war, when people died here.

At least five people have been injured in today’s attack on the city.

The claims have not been independently verified. Russia has repeatedly insisted its attacks only target the military and military infrastructure.

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is due to appeal against a nine-year prison sentence he was handed in March on charges that he and his allies say are politically motivated, AFP reports.

The news agency writes:

His hearing on Tuesday comes as Russian authorities seek to silence remaining government critics and Moscow pushes on with its military campaign in neighbouring Ukraine, with thousands killed and 10 million displaced.

A vocal critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, Navalny in late March had his jail time extended to nine years after he was found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court.

He is already serving two-and-a-half years in a prison 100 kilometres east of Moscow for violating parole on old fraud charges.

On Tuesday, he will appeal against the extension of his jail term, joining the hearing at a Moscow court via video link from his prison colony.

If his new sentence comes into force, the 45-year-old opposition politician will be transferred to a strict-regime penal colony, which will place him in much harsher conditions.

The new sentence will replace the old one – that he was handed in February last year – meaning Navalny will remain behind bars for another eight years.

As part of the new charges, investigators accused Navalny of stealing for personal use several million dollars’ worth of donations that were given to his political organisations.

The evacuation of Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant, their last remaining redoubt in the city, began on Monday. Here are some images from that evacuation:

A village in Russia’s western province of Kursk bordering Ukraine came under Ukrainian fire on Tuesday, regional governor Roman Starovoit said, according to Reuters, but there were no injuries, although three houses and a school were hit.

Russian border guards returned fire to quell the shooting from large-calibre weapons on the border village of Alekseyevka, Starovoit wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

The scale of the damage left behind by Russian troops north of Kyiv illustrates Russian willingness to use artillery on inhabited areas, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update, adding that Moscow is likely to rely more on artillery in the Donbas in coming weeks.

In the Chernihiv region north of Kyiv, approximately 3,500 buildings are estimated to have been destroyed or damaged during Russia’s abandoned advance towards the Ukrainian capital. 80% of the damage has been caused to residential buildings.

The scale of this damage indicates Russia’s preparedness to use artillery against inhabited areas, with minimal regard to discrimination or proportionality.

Russia has likely resorted to an increasing reliance on indiscriminate artillery bombardment due to a limited target acquisition capability, and an unwillingness to risk flying combat aircraft routinely beyond its own frontlines.

In the coming weeks, Russia is likely to continue to rely heavily on massed artillery strikes as it attempts to regain momentum in its advance in the Donbas.

Russia is conducting its main combat efforts in the Donetsk region, Ukraine’s general staff has said in its 6am update, claiming that Ukrainian forces had repulsed 11 attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk over the past 24 hours, destroying equipment including five tanks, one Tor anti-aircraft missile system, six artillery systems, and 12 armoured combat vehicles.

It also said Russian aircraft had “destroyed civilian and military infrastructure in the Eastern Operational Zone and industrial facilities deep in Ukraine” without giving any more details.

In Kharkiv, where Ukrainian forces have reportedly driven back Russian forces to the Russian border, the “enemy’s main efforts are focused on maintaining their positions and preventing the advance of our troops.”

The general staff also said it was compiling a separate report on the “total losses of the enemy” which would be published soon.

It has been very difficult to verify the scale of Russian losses in the war.

Moscow last released casualty data in late March, admitting that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded in the first month of the war. The government has not released any more information on casualties in the last month and a half, except to say that they were “significant”.

Western estimates have been 10 or even 20 times as high, with some suggesting that Russia has lost more than 30,000 soldiers since the beginning of the war.

A surprisingly candid assessment from a Russian analyst on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with subtitles provided by the BBC’s Francis Scarr – fascinating viewing if you have five minutes to watch it.

Mikhail Khodaryonok argues that Russian reports of demoralisation among Ukrainian troops are just individual cases and not indicative of a general mood. In fact, he says, Ukrainians are highly motivated and ready to die for their country, which he says is a “component of an army’s high combat readiness, one of the most important components.”

He also warns against “sabre-rattling with missiles in Finland’s direction … after all the main deficiency of our military-political position is that, in a way, we are in full geopolitical isolation and that, however much we would hate to admit this, virtually the entire world is against us.”

A bit more from the ISW assessment, which says there is growing friction between Russian occupation administrations and pro-Russian collaborators in occupied areas of Ukraine, while inside Russia military bloggers are increasingly in-line with western assessments of Russian military failures.

Russian forces in Zaporizhia, are having “serious conflicts” with collaborators due to “interpersonal power conflicts,” in the Zaporizhia region, the US-based think tank cites the region’s military administrations as saying.

A well-known collaborator in Zaporizhia accused the Russian-installed governor of the area of stealing his 10,000 ruble compensation. Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryshchenko additionally claimed that relatives of those mobilized into the forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) are holding a mass protest against mobilization in Donetsk City.

While ISW cannot independently verify these claims, such discontent amongst occupation elements suggests a general lack of planning by Russian authorities in occupied areas, now compounded by increasingly evident Russian losses.

The ISW meanwhile predicted that the “continued disenchantment of pro-Russian milbloggers with the Russian war effort may fuel dissatisfaction in Russia itself, especially if Moscow continues to press recruitment and conscription efforts that send poorly-trained cannon-fodder to the front lines.”

One such blogger, Igor Strelkov, claimed that the Russian offensive to take Donbas has ultimately failed and that “not a single large settlement “has been liberated.

Strelkov even noted that the capture of Rubizhne [a city in Luhansk] is relatively insignificant because it happened before the new offensive in Donbas had begun.

Strelkov stated that Russian forces are unlikely to liberate Donbas by the summer and that Ukrainian troops will hold their positions around Donetsk City.

Strelkov notably claimed that Russian failures thus far have not surprised him because the intent of Russian command has been so evident throughout the operation that Ukrainian troops are aware of exactly how to best respond and warns that Russian troops are fighting to the point of exhaustion under “rules proposed by the enemy.”

The Russian withdrawal from around Kharkiv is different from previous Russian withdrawals from around Kyiv and other cities, when they pulled back to Russian territory, in that they are trying to retain a position in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War think tank writes in its latest assessment of the conflict.

The Russian grouping around Kharkiv City is notably trying to hold the border and prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing further north.

Russian troops may seek to retain positions in Ukraine and continue artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions in order to prevent Ukrainian forces from getting into tube or rocket-artillery range of the outskirts of Belgorod, a major city in Russia and a key hub of the Russian military effort.

The Russians might alternatively hope to conduct a counter-counter-offensive to push back south toward Kharkiv, although such an effort is highly unlikely to succeed.

Ukrainian soldiers evacuated from Mariupol steelworks

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