Russia-Ukraine war: Russia claims capture of strategic town as fighting rages in east; Johnson and Zelenskiy hold talks – live

More on Vladimir Putin’s phone conversation with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Reuters reports that Putin warned Macron and Scholz against ramping up arms supplies to Ukraine, saying they could further destabilise the situation in the pro-Western country.

Putin told them the continuing arms supplies were “dangerous”, warning “of the risks of further destabilisation of the situation and aggravation of the humanitarian crisis”, the Kremlin said.

Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was prevented from leaving Ukraine to take part in a meeting of a Nato body in Lithuania, his party’s parliamentary faction has said.

Reuters reports Poroshenko was stopped twice at a border crossing with Poland while he was on his way to the meeting of Nato’s Parliamentary Assembly, a consultative interparliamentary organisation, a statement said.

Ukrainian media reported Poroshenko could not cross the border due to “technical problems” with a permit allowing him to leave the country.

His European Solidarity parliamentary faction said: “Poroshenko had received all the formal permissions to leave the country and had been included … in the official delegation of the Parliament of Ukraine for this event.”

Poroshenko was to have several high-level meetings in Vilnius, including with the president of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda. He was also scheduled to participate in a meeting of the European People’s Party in Rotterdam, it said.

In January, Poroshenko won a court ruling allowing him to remain at liberty while being investigated for treason in a probe he says was a politically motivated attack linked to allies of his successor, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Poroshenko is being investigated in connection with the financing of Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country through illegal coal sales in 2014-15.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told the leaders of France and Germany in a phone call today that Russia was willing to discuss ways to make it possible for Ukraine to resume shipments of grain from Black Sea ports, the Kremlin said.

Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies, while Russia is also a key global fertiliser exporter and Ukraine is a major exporter of corn and sunflower oil.

Reuters reports that the Kremlin said:

For its part, Russia is ready to help find options for the unhindered export of grain, including the export of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports.

It added that Putin also said Russia was willing to resume talks with Ukraine.

Special attention was paid to the status of the negotiations that are frozen because of Kyiv. President Vladimir Putin confirmed the Russian side’s openness to resume dialogue.

The Kremlin said Putin also informed French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that Russia was ready to increase its export of fertilisers and agricultural products if sanctions against it were lifted – a demand he has raised in conversations with the Italian and Austrian leaders in recent days.

Ukraine and Western countries have accused Russia of weaponising the food crisis created by its invasion of Ukraine, which has sent the prices of grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertiliser soaring.

Russia has blamed the situation on Western sanctions against it, and on the mining of Ukrainian ports.

Johnson and Zelenskiy discuss concerns over food supplies in phone call

The son of a Conservative MP has told how he helped save a fellow British volunteer fighter in Ukraine while under heavy Russian gunfire after he was injured by a landmine.

Ben Grant arrived in Ukraine in March, when he told the Guardian he was moved to volunteer after seeing footage of a Russian bombing of a house where a child could be heard screaming. He said he went without telling his mother, MP Helen Grant, he was going.

Dramatic video footage, published by the Telegraph, follows the 30-year-old, who is a veteran of Afghanistan and a former Royal Marine, screaming: “We’ve got to move now or we’re gonna die!”

Meanwhile, he and others dragged former grenadier guard Dean Arthur to safety after a Russian ambush in a woodland north of Kharkiv earlier this month.

He told the newspaper of his terror, saying: “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life.”

More on the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine which the Russian defence ministry claims Russian forces are now in full control of.

Reuters is reporting on a statement from the Russian defence ministry which said:

Following the joint actions of the units of the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian armed forces, the town of Krasny Liman has been entirely liberated from Ukrainian nationalists.

Krasny Liman, which had a population of around 20,000 people before the hostilities broke out, is the town’s old name.

Located in the north of the eastern Donetsk region, Lyman lies on the road to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the capital of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he has had a phone conversation with the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson.

In a tweet, Zelenskiy said they had spoken about “strengthening defence for Ukraine, intensifying work on security guarantees, supplying fuel to Ukraine”.

He added: “We must work together to prevent a food crisis and unblock Ukraine’s ports.”

Ukraine has started receiving Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the US, Ukrainian defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said.

“The coastal defence of our country will not only be strengthened by Harpoon missiles they will be used by trained Ukrainian teams,” Reznikov wrote on his Facebook page.

He said Harpoon shore-to-ship missiles would be operated alongside Ukrainian Neptune missiles in the defence of the country’s coast including the southern port of Odesa.

Reznikov said the supplies of Harpoon missiles were the result of cooperation between several countries, saying the deliveries from Denmark took place “with the participation of our British friends”.

Ukraine has also received a range of heavy artillery pieces, he said, including modified US-made M109 self-propelled howitzers that will allow the Ukrainian military to strike targets from longer distances.

In a daily update, Russia’s defence ministry said it had used missile strikes to destroy Ukrainian command posts in Bakhmut and Soledar.

Both towns lie on a strategically important road running southwest from Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, where the main Russian offensive is now concentrated.

Reuters reports that the ministry said it had destroyed five command and observation posts, hit areas where Ukrainian soldiers and equipment were located and destroyed four ammunition depots near the towns of Nyrkove, Bakhmut and Myronivka.

The Guardian could not independently confirm the Russian claims.

A ship has entered the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia completed its capture of the city to load metal and ship it east to Russia in a move Kyiv branded as “looting”.

A spokesperson for the port told Tass news agency the vessel would be loading 2,700 tonnes of metal before travelling 160km (100 miles) east to the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Monday.

The spokesperson did not say where the metal being shipped had been produced, Reuters reports.

Writing on the Telegram messaging app Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova said the shipment amounted to looting by Russia:

Looting in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine continue.

Following the theft of Ukrainian grain, the occupiers resorted to exporting metal products from Mariupol.

On Friday, Ukraine’s largest steelmaker Metinvest said it was concerned that Russia may use several ships stranded in Mariupol to “steal and smuggle metallurgical products” belonging to the group. It accused Russia of piracy.

Asked on Saturday whether the metal due to be shipped out belonged to Metinvest, a company spokesman said: “We said yesterday that our metal is in the port of Mariupol, yes.”

Russia seized full control of Mariupol last week when more than 2,400 Ukrainian fighters surrendered at the besieged Azovstal steelworks. It said on Thursday that the port had been demined and was open again to commercial vessels.