Yesterday at 12: 20 a.m. EDT|Updated today at 2: 44 a.m. EDT
Yesterday at 12: 20 a.m. EDT|Updated today at 2: 44 a.m. EDT
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Blasts were reported outside Kyiv on Friday after Russia’s Defense Ministry warned of retaliation in response to Ukrainian strikes, as both sides prepare for a potentially bloody battle in the eastern Donbas region.
The attack comes after Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s premier warship in the Black Sea with two Neptune missiles, causing it to sink, a senior U.S. defense official confirmed.
As forces gear up for battle in eastern Ukraine, Russia appeared poised to capture the strategic port city of Mariupol and escalate attacks across Ukraine’s southeast, analysts said.
Here’s what to know
- As the fall of Mariupol appears imminent, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said the city “has been wiped off the face of the earth” by Russian forces.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Ukrainian officials believe that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war.
- Aiming to exert greater pressure on Moscow, Zelensky asked President Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal.
- Russia sent a formal diplomatic note to the United States this week warning that shipping weapons to Ukraine could bring “unpredictable consequences.”
- The Washington Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel for updates.
Explosions reported in Kyiv and Lviv
By Julian Duplain2: 44 a.m.
The mayors of Kyiv and Lviv said there were explosions in their cities early Saturday morning, after Russia warned that it would step up strikes on Ukraine’s capital.
“Kyiv came under fire. The explosions took place in Darnytskyi district on the outskirts of the city,” the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. The mayor of Darnytskyi said that the information regarding casualties is still being clarified.
In Lviv, there was an air raid lasting more than an hour, according to regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy.
Blasts were reported outside Kyiv on Friday, with Russian forces saying in a statement that they fired missiles on a suburban factory that produces Ukrainian weapons, in retaliation for what it claimed were attempted Ukrainian assaults on border towns inside Russia.
Klitschko urged residents of Kyiv currently away from the city not to return at present “and stay in safer places.”
War in Ukraine generates interest in nuclear energy, despite danger
The war in Ukraine has intensified interest across Europe in building new nuclear energy plants or extending the lives of old ones to liberate the continent from its heavy reliance on Russian oil and natural gas.
Belgium made an about-face, deciding to keep open a pair of reactors slated for closure. To replace Russian fuel, the Czech Republic offered nuclear fuel delivery by Western companies. Poland has been negotiating with the West to construct new nuclear reactors in quiet coastal towns. The nuclear debate has been reshaped at a time when prospects were looking dim.
“They’re all doing it for the same reasons: decarbonization, energy security and national security,” said David Durham, president of Westinghouse’s energy systems business, which as of early April had signed memorandums of understanding with 19 companies or government agencies in a dozen countries, including Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic.
The heightened interest comes as the war in Ukraine shows the dangers of building nuclear reactors on NATO’s front line. The dangers of nuclear reactors being built on NATO’s front line raised concerns about the damage enemy troops and drones could inflict upon installations.
Ukrainian singer performs solo as her bandmates fight
Oleksandra “Sasha” Zaritska stepped onstage at the South by Southwest music festival last month draped in the Ukrainian flag — a moment she had dreamed about for years. As she began to sing, her thoughts drifted towards her bandmates in a conflict half a globe away.
They were supposed to be there with her. The 29-year-old lead singer of the electro-pop band KAZKA had long wanted to play the music festival with her bandmates, 35-year-old guitarist Nikita Budash and 24-year-old woodwind player Dmytro Mazuriak. After the pandemic thwarted plans to do so in 2020 and 2021, they made South by Southwest their first stop on the band’s seven-city tour of the United States this spring.
Then came Feb. 24.
9: 46 p.m.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he met with other Ukrainian leaders to discuss Mariupol as Russia appeared poised to capture the southeastern port city. Zelensky said he would not publicly release details about the conversation with officials from across the government, including the Defense Council, Armed Forces and intelligence agency. But the Ukrainian president promised that “we are doing everything to save our people.”
Meryl Kornfield
,
Reporter
The latest on key battlegrounds in Ukraine
Russian-held areas and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
POL.
Chernihiv
Separatist-
controlled
area
Kyiv
Lviv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Mariupol
Odessa
ROMANIA
200 MILES
Control areas as of April 14
Sources: Institute for the Study of War,
AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
POLAND
Chernobyl
Kyiv
Sumy
Lviv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Separatist-
controlled
area
Odessa
Mariupol
Berdyansk
ROMANIA
Kherson
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
100 MILES
Black Sea
Control areas as of April 14
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
POLAND
Chernobyl
Kyiv
Sumy
Lviv
Kharkiv
Separatist-
controlled
area
UKRAINE
Mykolaiv
Mariupol
Berdyansk
Kherson
ROMANIA
Odessa
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
100 MILES
Control areas as of April 14
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
Mariupol: Ukrainian forces here are maintaining their hold on the Azovstal steel plant, one of the largest metallurgical factories in Europe, as Russian troops come closer to seizing this strategic southern port city. Mariupol has been under siege for weeks, creating a humanitarian catastrophe that has included the deaths of more than 10,000 civilians, according to its mayor. Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told CNN on Friday that Mariupol “is no more.”
Odessa: Ukrainian troops off the coast of this southern city struck the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, with two missiles Thursday and caused it to sink, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday. This confirmation is coming after Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Moskva had been damaged by a “heavy thunderstorm” and an explosion.
Kharkiv region: Moscow has been amassing troops, military vehicles and equipment in this region in preparation for its expected assault on the Donbas area to the east. At least 10 people, including a 7-month-old baby, have been killed in Russian shelling, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Luhansk region: New video footage and images from this region, which is part of Donbas, show burned bodies among the rubble of a nursing home destroyed last month. Two civilians were killed when Russian troops shelled their homes. Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor, stated Friday. Controlling this region, along with the neighboring Donetsk region, is one of Russia’s central objectives in the war.
Kyiv region: Regional police chief Andriy Nyebytov alleged Friday that officials had found “more than 900” dead civilians in the region of roughly 3 million people as a result of Russian attacks. The date of the discovery was not specified by Nyebytov. Ukrainian officials have claimed that Russian forces are attacking civilians in the Kyiv area, particularly in the suburb of Bucha, and have called for investigations of potential war crimes.
Ukraine accuses Russia of releasing naval mines to hamper shipping
By Ayla Jean Yackley9: 01 p.m.
ISTANBUL — Naval mines discovered in Turkish waters in recent weeks are Soviet-era ordnance that had been stored in Crimea, under Russian control since 2014, and may have been deliberately left near Turkey’s coastline by Russian vessels to discourage commercial shipping, a Ukrainian official said Friday.
The appearance of floating mines in the southwest Black Sea set off alarm bells in Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria, drove up the costs of insuring cargo ships and stymied local fishermen. Turkey has successfully defused three of the mines found in its territory waters since March. One was located in Istanbul’s busy Bosporus Strait. A stray mine was also removed from Romania.
The U.S. Embassy in Ankara on Friday warned that “an undetermined number of drifting mines in the western Black Sea … pose a hazard to commercial and passenger vessels” and urged American citizens to reconsider traveling by ship in the area.
Russia has accused Ukraine of laying the mines and alleged that hundreds of them broke free during bad weather in March. The Russian claim has been denied by Ukraine. Turkey’s defense Minister has stated that the origins of the mines are not known.
A Ukrainian diplomat told reporters in Istanbul that “physically it is not possible” for the mines to have drifted southward into Turkish waters so quickly, saying Black Sea currents would have instead carried them farther west and north to Romania or Bulgaria’s shores. The government believes that the mines were deliberately brought “to the point where stream is flowing” towards Turkey. To discuss sensitive intelligence issues, the diplomat spoke under anonymity.
He said the devices appear to date to the Soviet period and had been stored at a military base in the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, a facility that Russia has administered since it annexed Crimea after a 2014 invasion. He said that Ukraine only has enough mines to keep Russian vessels out of its territorial waters and does not have sufficient ships to transport the mines to sea.
Ukraine is scanning faces of dead Russians, then contacting mothers
Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since the war began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.
The country’s IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses.
The Ukrainians champion the use of face-scanning software from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a brutal but effective way to stir up dissent inside Russia, discourage other fighters and hasten an end to a devastating war.
But some military and technology analysts worry that the strategy could backfire, inflaming anger over a shock campaign directed at mothers who may be thousands of miles from the drivers of the Kremlin’s war machine.
Clearing the deadly litter of unexploded Russian bombs in Ukraine
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Valeriy sucked in his breath as a colleague fastened the layers of his thick bomb suit, yanking the Velcro across his abdomen even tighter. Red gloves were put on Valeriy’s hands and then pads were taped over them. The final step was a bubble helmet, which made Valeriy look like an astronaut. His plastic visor was cracked from shrapnel.
In this city near Ukraine’s Black Sea shore, the 33-year-old was dressed to drop pieces of TNT on unexploded munitions lying around a residential neighborhood. Eight cluster munition bomblets were found in one field behind a block of houses.
Despite just seven weeks of war, much of Ukraine is already littered with deadly unexploded ordnances and mines. A spokesman for the State Emergency Service said 54,000 mines and unexploded ordnances — including almost 2,000 missiles — have been found and deactivated. More than 600 deminers are at work across the country, and the department is rushing to hire more. The goal for Mykolaiv is to increase the number of deminers from three to eight.
‘Neptune’ missile strike shows strength of Ukraine’s homegrown weapons
Soon after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, a Ukrainian defense firm used an arms show in Kyiv to unveil its latest project: An anti-ship cruise missile it called “Neptune.”
The new missile drew little attention at the time. It is now the center of attention after an American defense official claimed that Ukrainian forces used Neptune missiles in a strike against Russia’s main warship, Moskva.
The strike on Wednesday marked a major boost for Ukraine — not only for its war effort but also for the homegrown arms industry, even as it relies on weapons donated by Western allies.
Satellite imagery reveals fresh graves in Russian-occupied Kherson
Rows upon rows of graves are being dug in Russian-occupied Kherson, according to recent satellite imagery analyzed by London-based nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience (CIR).
Planet Lab imagery revealed at least 824 new grave plots were added to the Kherson cemetery between Feb. 28 and April 15, CIR reported. CIR reported that the burial ground is located on the city’s outskirts just east of the airport.
CIR has been monitoring a number of gravesites and cemeteries in Russian-occupied areas or areas where Russian forces are close by, said Benjamin Strick, the director of investigations. Strick said that it was frightening to consider how “*” died, and other happenings in the area.
Similarly, the group recently spotted a series of mass graves in a forest near Chernihiv, a regional capital. According to imagery, new graves were dug after Kiev was liberated from Russian control.
Kherson was quickly seized by Russia’s military during the first week of its war on Ukraine. About 400 miles south of Kyiv, the city is home to a port on the Dnieper River close to the Black Sea, making it a strategically important site in the conflict.
Many of Kherson’s 280,000 residents have fled the city since the invasion. The occupying Russian troops have faced civilian resistance since the invasion.
Zelensky asks Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made a direct appeal to President Biden for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal.
Zelensky’s request, which has not previously been reported, came during a recent phone call with Biden that centered on the West’s multifaceted response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the conversation.
Biden did not commit to specific actions during the call, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dialogue between the two leaders. They said that the president had told his Ukrainian counterpart that he was open to exploring a variety of options to put more pressure on Moscow.
Even during the Cold War, Washington refrained from imposing this designation on the Soviet Union despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorist actors throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Such a measure could have a range of effects, including the imposition of economic penalties on dozens of other nations that continue to do business with Russia, the freezing of Moscow’s assets in the United States, including real estate, and prohibiting a variety of dual-use exports, among other actions.
“Adding Russia to the state sponsors of terrorism list would be the nuclear economic option,” Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official and expert on terrorism designations, wrote in a recent essay.
Governor says Mariupol ‘has been wiped off the face of the earth’
Ukrainian troops remain in control of Mariupol as Russian forces close in, but the city is already a husk of its former self, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region told CNN on Friday.
“The enemy cannot seize Mariupol. Pavlo Kyrylenko the governor stated that the enemy could seize Mariupol’s land, but Mariupol itself is gone. “The city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation.”
Kyrylenko said that Ukrainian and Russian forces may engage in a major battle in Mariupol in the next several days and that he has been urging civilians in Mariupol to evacuate. Humanitarian agencies have been trying to facilitate safe-passage corridors out of Mariupol for weeks, with mixed success.
Moscow views the southern port city as an important bridge between Ukraine’s east and the Russian-seized Crimea region. Russia would also gain control of the Sea of Azov coast if it occupied Mariupol.
Russian warship was hit by two Ukrainian missiles before sinking, Pentagon says
Ukrainian forces struck the Russian warship Moskva with two Neptune missiles Thursday, causing it to sink, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.
The confirmation comes after Ukrainian forces said Thursday that they had attacked the cruiser Moskva. Russian officials said that the vessel had been set on fire. According to the Pentagon, Russian sailors were seen evacuating their ship from the flames in lifeboats.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said that Russia will not be able to replace the loss in the war. Russia owns two similar vessels, however, they are not based in Turkey. Turkey also stated that Russia will not be able to replace the loss in war.
A Ukrainian Passover tale: How the mohel of Dnipro became a refugee
He has circumcised males aged 8 days to 80 years. His kit has been used in hospitals and synagogues, making anxious mothers and elderly men feel more spiritual.
He is the mohel of Dnipro, a.k.a. Jacob Gaissinovitch, a 46-year-old Ukrainian Jew and ritual circumciser. Since 1998, he has performed exactly 8,302 such procedures — an average of almost one per day. The mohel, driving his small Nissan SUV across Ukraine, is both familiar and an odd sight. He is the purveyor for the belief that it is not difficult to connect with your heritage. All you need is a knife, and some knowledge.
But the sharpest cut the mohel felt was six weeks ago, when he became a refugee. Again.
He and his family had been forced to flee their home in Donetsk in 2014 when war arrived. With helicopters flying overhead and sirens blasting near their Dnipro apartments, the mohel and his family fled their home in Donetsk.
