Russia-Ukraine war latest: Russian troop withdrawal ‘noticeable’, says Zelenskiy; exchange of captured soldiers reported – live | Ukraine

Reuters: The United States will work with allies to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine to bolster its defences in the Donbas region, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a US official.

The transfers, requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would begin soon, the unnamed official said, according to the Times. The official declined to say how many tanks would be sent or from which countries they would come, the paper said.

The Pentagon declined to comment to Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The tanks would allow Ukraine to conduct long-range artillery strikes on Russian targets in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine bordering Russia, the official said, according to the Times.

It marks the first time in the war that the United States has helped transfer tanks, the newspaper said.

A senior Chinese diplomat says the government is not deliberately circumventing sanctions on Russia. Speaking on Saturday, a day after a virtual summit between China and the European Union, Wang Lutong told reporters that China is contributing the global economy by conducting normal trade with Russia. Wang is the director-general of European affairs at China’s foreign ministry. According to the Reuters report, Wang also said Ukraine, Iran, and others were “points of cooperation” rather than points of friction.

Associated Press reports on the annual Russian conscription campaign which began this week. A few hours ago Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy urged Russian families to keep their sons at home, warning it was “guaranteed death for many young guys”.

As Moscow’s forces bog down in Ukraine, many young Russians of draft age are increasingly jittery about the prospect of being sent into combat. Making those fears particularly acute is an annual spring conscription that began Friday and aims to round up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pledged at a meeting of the military brass this week that the new recruits won’t be sent to front lines or “hot spots.”

But the statement was met with skepticism by many in Russia who remember the separatist wars in the southern republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, when thousands of poorly trained young men were killed.

“I don’t trust them when they say they won’t send conscripts into combat. They lie all the time,” said Vladislav, a 22-year-old who is completing his studies and fears he could face the draft immediately after graduation. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing reprisals.

All Russian men ages 18 to 27 must serve one year in the military, but a large share avoid the draft for health reasons or get deferments granted to university students. The share of men who avoid the draft is particularly big in Moscow and other major cities.

Even as President Vladimir Putin and his officials say that conscripts aren’t involved in what Russian authorities call “the special military operation in Ukraine,” many appeared to have been taken prisoner during its initial days. Videos emerged from Ukraine of captured Russians, some being shown calling their parents, and were put on social media.

The mother of one of the prisoners said she recognised her 20-year-old draftee son in a video even though he was shown blindfolded.

“I recognised him by his lips, by his chin. You know, I would have recognised him by his fingers,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Lyubov, for security reasons. “I breastfed him. I raised him.”

The Defense Ministry was forced to walk back its statements and acknowledge that some conscripts were sent to Ukraine “by mistake” and were taken prisoner while serving with a supply unit away from the front.

There have been allegations that before the invasion, some conscripts were forced to sign military contracts that allowed them to be sent into combat — duty that is normally reserved only for volunteers in the army. Some of the captured soldiers said they were told by their commanding officers that they were going to a military exercise but suddenly found themselves fighting in Ukraine.

Olexiy Danylov, Ukraine’s secretary of the national security and defence council appeared on TV earlier, according to Victor Kovalenko, a former Ukrainian journalist and soldier. Danylov said it was too early to celebrate Russia’s apparent retreat, according to Kovalenko’s translation.

“I would like everybody to realise that Putin doesn’t abandon an idea to destroy Ukraine. Now he is rebuilding his forces to continue strikes. Do not enjoy that someone voluntarily leaves our cities – this is the work of our army. Behind the liberation of every city are the lost lives of our your men and women. That is why saying that “they run”… I would not say that. There is a high price for us for their retreat. They want to reformat very much. They need a victory. They have the sacred date – 9 May. To this date they have a goal to end everything with a victory parade. We have many battles ahead of us, so I don’t recommend anyone relax. The situation is not that joyful, as we all would want.”

The UK Ministry of Defence says the destruction of oil tanks at a depot in the Russian city of Belgorod means probable loss of fuel and ammunition supplies to invading forces. It will likely add more strain to Russia’s already stretched logistic chains. Supplies to Russian forces encircling Kharkhiv may be particularly affected.

Reuters: The US department of defense will provide an additional $300 million in security assistance to Ukraine, to include laser-guided rocket systems, drones, and commercial satellite imagery services.

“This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide new capabilities to Ukraine*s Armed Forces,” department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

Earlier on Friday, the US department of commerce added 120 Russian and Belarusian entities, mostly companies linked to the military, to the list of those under restrictions from receiving supplies and goods from the US.

More from Zelenskiy’s address:

He said 6,266 people had been rescued through humanitarian corridors in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, including 3,071 from Mariupol. They were also negotiating on the removal of the dead from the city.

At least 5,000 people have been killed in the besieged city, according to local authorities. An estimated 170,000 are still there, facing shortages of food, water and electricity. The international Red Cross said a team heading to the city to conduct a separate evacuation effort was forced to turn back Friday after “arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed”.

The Red Cross said its team will try again Saturday.

Europe has no right to react in silence to what is happening in Mariupol, Zelenskiy said.

He said he also Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, in Kyiv, and discussed “how to accelerate Ukraine’s ascension to the EU”, as well as arms supplies and deepening sanctions policy.

“If there is an embargo it is an embargo. If there is SWIFT it is for all banks. And if it is business with Russia then it is not just suspension of activities but a complete withdrawal of European companies.”

He also said he had spoken to French president Emmanuel Macron, and was talking to Turkey to act as a mediator, saying there would be more details soon.

Hello, this is Helen Davidson to take you through the next few hours of updates on the Ukraine conflict.

In the last hour Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has released a video statement. Speaking from what looks like a conference room, with a screen bearing the Ukrainian flag behind him, he has levelled further accusations of war crimes at Russia, claiming it was trying to conscript people from Crimea into the armed forces to fight.

In the video, Zelenskiy said Russian forces were withdrawing from the north of Ukraine, in a “slow but noticeable” way, sometimes expelled by Ukrainian forces but other times leaving of their own accord.

“After them a complete disaster and many dangers are left, it’s true,” he said, adding that bombs may continue and the Russians were leaving mines in the area as they left, including in houses, equipment, and the bodies of people left behind.

“Anyone who returns to this area must be very careful,” he said. It is still impossible to return to normal life as it was… Wait for our land to be cleared, wait until you can be assured that new shelling is impossible.”

Zelenskiy said Russian forces were massing in Donbas, towards Kharkiv and were “preparing for even more powerful blows”.

He noted the beginning of Russia’s conscription season, saying this year it was “guaranteed death for many young guys”.

He sent the men and their families a warning: “We don’t need more dead people here. Save your children so they do not become villains. Don’t send them to the army. Do whatever you can to keep them alive. Keep them at home.”

He accused Russia of trying to take people into the army from Crimea, which he said was a violation of humanitarian law, and called for further sanctions in response. He urged people in Crimea to refuse but if they couldn’t, to surrender to Ukrainian military “at the first opportunity”.

“We will understand everything. You will live,” he said.

Separately, he said Russia had installed “temporary leaders” in some southern Ukraine areas, who were threatening employees of businesses and authorities into cooperating. Zelenskiy warned of problems” for anyone who became one of these leaders, who he termed “collaborators.

Here are some of the key developments of the day:

• The state department said the US will continue to provide support to Ukraine, and won’t push the country to make concessions in negotiations with Russia following a report that said Britain was concerned the US, France and Germany will push Ukraine to “settle” in a peace deal.
• The US military has cancelled plans to test an intercontinental ballistic missile in an effort to reduce tensions with Russia.
• European governments have more time to figure out how they are going to act on Russia’s demand to pay for Russia gas in rubles after the Kremlin said today that it would not immediately halt gas supplies
• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, spoke with Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kulebo today and discussed “ways the US allies and partners are helping Ukraine defend against Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war”, Blinken said.
• Around 200 Ukrainian national guard members have likely been taken prisoner by the Russian troops as they withdrew from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the mayor of Slavutych, Yuri Fomichev, said.
• Ukraine exchanged 86 members of their armed forces with Russia today, according to senior Ukrainian officials.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was unable to reach the besieged city of Mariupol and will try again to evacuate civilians on Saturday. Sergei Orlov, deputy mayor of Mariupol, told CNN: “The city is totally destroyed, is like ruins.”

A convoy of 42 buses organized by the Ukrainian government and escorted by the Red Cross has helped a group of 2,000 people make it to safety from the besieged city of Mariupol.

The buses brought the group to the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday afternoon after Russian forces allowed the vehicles to pass. Several previous evacuation attempts had failed.

 

The state department said in a statement Friday that the US will continue to provide support to Ukraine, and won’t push the country to make concessions in negotiations with Russia. The statement comes after the Times reported that a senior UK government source said Britain was concerned that the US, France and Germany were “over-eager” and will push Ukraine to “settle” in a peace deal.

US officials denied that claim.

The state department’s full statement:

We are focused on putting Ukraine in the strongest possible negotiating position by continuing to provide security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself and by increasing pressure on Putin by imposing severe costs on Russia.

We will not push Ukraine to make concessions, and we have consistently stated that sovereign states have the right to choose their own alliances and make their own decisions about their security.

While we will defer to Ukraine to discuss the specifics of the negotiations, we are committed to a Ukraine that is sovereign, independent, and secure. We are in constant conversation with the Ukrainian government and our Allies and partners, but, as always, we will keep those discussions private.