Russia said its patience should not be tested over nuclear weapons, in another repeat of hardline rhetoric over their use. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia would do “everything to prevent the development of events according to the worst scenario … but not at the cost of infringing on our vital interests”.
Vladimir Putin has previously made comments saying he wants to avoid nuclear war, but his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told a UN hearing on Monday that the world was “possibly more dangerous” than during the cold war.
The Kremlin said that relations with European countries are at their “lowest possible level” amid more expulsions of diplomats.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it welcomed anything that could hasten the end of the Ukraine conflict when asked about Wednesday’s phone call between the Chinese and Ukrainian leaders.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, also welcomed the discussion between President Xi and President Zelenskiy and repeated the possibility of the war ending at the “negotiating table”.
Stoltenberg said 98% of promised combat vehicles have now been delivered to Ukraine. This comprises 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks. This equates to nine new Ukrainian brigades.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is “genocide”, at a session on Thursday.
A resolution on “deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied: create conditions for their safe return, stop these crimes and punish the perpetrators” passed with 87 votes in favour, meaning an overwhelming majority. One representative voted against and another abstained.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that its forces had taken four blocks in north-western, western and south-western Bakhmut, Russia state-owned news agency RIA reported.
Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May. It said the measure was taken in response to Washington’s failure to process visas for “representatives from the journalistic pool” of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.
The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine during a visit to the Vatican. He asked the pontiff for help to return children from the east of Ukraine who have been forcibly taken to Russia by Kremlin forces.
Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s former ambassador to Berlin, said Germany was still failing to provide the support it should. “The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should,” he told Die Zeit in an interview in Kyiv.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner, claimed he was joking when he said the mercenary group would suspend fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.
Russia has reinforced its defences before a widely expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple fortified and included a “gush of manpower”. The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
Relations with European countries are at their “lowest possible level”, the Kremlin has said, adding that each wave of expulsions of Russian diplomats is reducing the space for diplomacy. Germany is one of the latest country to send diplomats home, expelling 20 on Saturday. Russia responded by expelling 40.
EU diplomats are still seeking to convince central and eastern European countries to extend Ukraine’s tariff-free access to the EU market for another year.
The EU dropped tariff barriers on Ukrainian grain after the Russian invasion last year and is now seeking to extend the policy, which expires on 5 June. But logistical bottlenecks have meant much of the grain has stayed in the EU, depressing prices and farm incomes in neighbouring countries.
At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraine’s presidential office has said, including one person killed and 23 wounded – including a child – when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv.
The remains of an “unidentified aerial military object” have been found in northern Poland near the city of Bydgoszcz, Poland’s defence ministry and its justice minister have said. The broadcaster RFM FM said the object was an air-to-surface missile measuring several metres, with its head missing.
Russian forces pounded the city of Bakhmut, for months the focal point of their attempts to capture the eastern Ukrainian industrial region of Donbas, and the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force said Ukrainian troops were pouring in ahead of an inevitable counteroffensive.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, spoke to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Wednesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv had publicly sought such talks for months. Zelenskiy described the hour’s phone call as “long and meaningful”. Xi told Zelenskiy that China would send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties seeking peace, Chinese state media reported.
The White House welcomed the phone call, but said it was too soon to tell whether it would lead to a peace deal.
