Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to a military headquarters in Russian-occupied Ukraine in an area where his troops are bracing themselves for an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
Video put out by the Kremlin showed the Russian president stepping off a military helicopter and then being driven to a military headquarters in southern Ukraine, where he met a senior officer from Russia’s airborne troops, Col Gen Mikhail Teplinsky, who has reportedly taken up a powerful new role in the invasion.
Andrew Roth reported that the Kremlin claimed Putin had travelled to the front without either the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, or the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, and directly appealed to local commanders for information about the battle in Ukraine’s Kherson region, where Russian troops have retreated and are reinforcing their positions.
Photograph: Kremlin Pool/UPI/Shutterstock
Russian plane accidentally strikes Russian city
A Russian warplane has accidentally fired a weapon into the city of Belgorod near Ukraine, causing an explosion and damaging buildings, the Tass news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying.
Belgorod’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, announced a state of emergency, saying on Telegram there was a crater measuring 20 metres (65ft) across on one of the main streets. Four cars and four apartment buildings were damaged, he added.
Local authorities reported a large blast in the city, which lies just across the border from Ukraine, late on Thursday. Gladkov said two women had been injured.
“As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition,” the defence ministry said, according to Tass.
The west braces for Putin to use anything he can
Western leaders are preparing for Vladimir Putin to use “whatever tools he’s got left”, including nuclear threats and cyber-attacks, in response to an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia, Pippa Crerar reported.
British officials at the G7 foreign ministers’ summit in Japan said they were expecting Russia to retaliate and “must be prepared” for extreme tactics as it attempted to hold on to Ukrainian territory.
In the meantime, a transatlantic group of former senior diplomats and high-level military advisers said the war was on course to become a stalemate unless the west goes “all in” and increases its level of military support, Patrick Wintour reported.
Ukrainian grain shipment checks resume
Inspections of ships transporting Ukrainian grain have resumed under a UN-brokered agreement, the country’s deputy prime minister has said.
Writing on Facebook on Wednesday, Oleksandr Kubrakov said: “Ship inspections are being resumed, despite the Russian Federation’s attempts to disrupt the agreement.”
As part of the UN deal, inspection teams from Russia, Ukraine, the UN and Turkey ensure ships carry only food and other agricultural products and no weapons. However, Russia has been accused by Ukraine of delaying inspections, leading to a halt in grain shipments. Peter Beaumont and Jennifer Rankin looked at the state of the grain deal.
Slovakia, meanwhile, joined Poland and Hungary by unilaterally halting imports of grain and other food products from Ukraine to protect its farmers in decisions criticised by Kyiv and the European Commission as unacceptable, Jon Henley reported.
Ukrainian corruption crackdown under scrutiny
A fierce debate has broken out in Ukraine over allegations that a clampdown on corruption is being used to frame high-profile business advocates of state reform, Patrick Wintour reported, raising wider doubts about Ukraine’s internal political trajectory – and its ability to absorb billions in European reconstruction funds once the war ends.
The concerns have been expressed to the US Department of State and the UK Foreign Office, and are shared in part by Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigners.
The issue is diplomatically sensitive since critics are wary of playing into a Russian narrative that Ukraine is endemically corrupt, or suggesting that anti-corruption institutions, which western allies and Ukrainian civil society played a large part in establishing, have gone off the rails.
Wagner mercenary admits ‘tossing grenades’ at injured PoWs
A former Wagner fighter has admitted to killing and torturing dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, in one of the most detailed first-person accounts of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Alexey Savichev, 49, a former Russian convict recruited by Wagner last September, told Guardian correspondent Pjotr Sauer in a telephone interview that he participated in summary executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war during his six months of fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“We were told not to take any prisoners, and just shoot them on the spot,” he said.
In one instance, while fighting near the eastern Ukrainian city of Soledar last autumn, Savichev said he participated in the killings of 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were surrounded. “We sprayed them with our bullets,” he said. “It is war and I do not regret a single thing I did there. If I could, I would go back.”
Russian judge rejects WSJ reporter’s detention appeal
A Russian judge has rejected an appeal by the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich against the decision to hold him in detention before his trial on charges of espionage, Shaun Walker reported.
Gershkovich, 31, is the first US journalist to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war and, if found guilty, could face up to 20 years in prison.
Russia’s FSB security service has accused him of collecting state secrets about Russia’s military for the benefit of US intelligence, charges that have been roundly condemned as political and unfounded.
Kyiv criticises Lula’s peace efforts
The Ukrainian government has criticised Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his efforts to broker a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, and invited the Brazilian leader to visit the war-torn country and see for himself the consequences of the Russian invasion.
The comments came a day after Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, visited Brasília and praised Lula’s calls for a negotiated settlement.
Lula has refused to supply weapons to Ukraine and suggested that Brazil could lead a “peace club” of neutral countries to mediate discussions between the two sides, as part of his efforts to return the South American country to international relevance after the isolation of the Jair Bolsonaro years.
A non-aligned approach is coherent with Brazil’s longstanding foreign policy tradition of peace and cooperation, Constance Mallaret reported. But the west increasingly views Brazil’s neutrality in the war as skewed towards Russia.
Kyiv marks Orthodox Easter without Moscow clergy
Dawn did not break over wartime Kyiv on Orthodox Easter Sunday. It was more that the darkness gradually paled, leaving the pinnacle of the 18th-century bell tower wreathed in a wan mist. Soon after 5.30am, the faithful began to trickle into Dormition Cathedral, which stands at the heart of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves.
Easter has been celebrated on this spot since the 11th century, when monks from Mount Athos first hollowed out the rocky hillside to form their cells and shrines, establishing the lavra as the spiritual heart of eastern Orthodoxy. Charlotte Higgins and Artem Mazhulin reported this story.
