Russia-Ukraine war latest news: Putin ‘orders drunk soldiers to be kept in holes in the ground as punishment’

Russian commanders have “likely” started a harsher punishment regime for their soldiers by placing them in “holes in the ground” called ‘Zindans’, the UK ministry of defence has said.

The Zindans are “improvised cells consisting of holes in the ground covered with a metal grille”, according to UK intelligence.

Behaviours which warrant such a punishment include drunkenness and soldiers attempting to terminate their contracts.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Sunday said its forces had taken four blocks in western Bakhmut, Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported – Reuters has said.

The news agency could not independently confirm the claim.

Russian forces have been struggling for months to capture the city in eastern Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of Hungarians flocked to Budapest’s main square Sunday for Pope Francis’ final Mass, gathering on the banks of the Danube as the pontiff wrapped up a weekend visit to the heart of Europe with pleas for a peaceful end to Russia’s war next door.

The Mass on Kossuth Lajos Square, with the Hungarian parliament and Budapest’s famed Chain Bridge as a backdrop, provided the visual highlight of Francis’ three-day visit that has been dominated by the Vatican’s concern for the plight of neighboring Ukraine.

Citing local organizers, the Vatican said some 50,000 people were participating at the Mass, more than 30,000 of them in the square on a brilliantly sunny spring morning. Among them were President Katalin Novak and Hungary’s right-wing populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, whose lukewarm support for Ukraine has rankled fellow European Union members.

Four civilians died as a result of Ukrainian shelling on a village just over the border in Russia‘s Bryansk region on Saturday evening, a local governor said.

“Four civilians have been killed,” Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on the Telegram messaging app. Two other citizens were being treated in hospital, Bogomaz said.

Bogomaz earlier said that one residential building had been completely destroyed and two other houses partially destroyed.

Bogomaz blamed the incident on “Ukrainian nationalists”. Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the 14-month-old Russian invasion on Ukraine.

“Work is continuing at the site of the incident to remove rubble and clear the area,” Bogomaz said. “A state of emergency has been introduced in the village.”

Russia‘s Bryansk region borders Ukraine. The village of Suzemka, where the incident occurred, is around 10 kms (6.2 miles) from the border.

Russia‘s Ministry of Defence on Sunday said its forces had taken four blocks in western Bakhmut, Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported.

Reuters could not independently confirm the claim. Russian forces have been struggling for months to capture the city in eastern Ukraine.

It was a month into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp.

His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager.

As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, said the oil depot was attacked by “two enemy drones” and four oil tanks had burned down. A third drone was shot down from the sky, and one more was deactivated through radio-electronic means.

He said the fire at the city’s harbour had been assigned the highest ranking in terms of how complicated it would be to extinguish. However, he reported that the blaze had been contained.

Pope Francis on Sunday presided over a big outdoor Mass where he urged Hungarians not to close the door on migrants and those who are “foreign or unlike us,” in contrast to the anti-immigrant policies of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

More than 50,000 people gathered in and around the square behind Budapest’s iconic neo-gothic parliament building, a symbol of the capital on the Danube, to see the pope on the last day of his visit to the country.

He continued a theme he began on the first day of his visit on Friday, when he warned against the dangers of rising nationalism in Europe, but put it in gospel context, saying that closed doors were painful and contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Orban, a populist who was attending the Mass, sees himself as a protector of Christian values. He has said he would not allow Hungary to be transformed into an “immigrant country,” as he claims others in Europe have become, unrecognizable to its native peoples.

In his homily, 86-year-old Francis said that if Hungarians wanted to follow Jesus, they had to shun “the closed doors of our individualism amid a society of growing isolation; the closed doors of our indifference towards the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close towards those who are foreign or unlike us, towards migrants or the poor”.

Francis believes migrants fleeing poverty should be welcomed and integrated because they can culturally enrich host countries and boost Europe’s dwindling populations. He believes that while countries have a right to protect their borders, migrants should be distributed throughout the European Union.

Orban’s government has built a steel fence on the border with Serbia to keep out migrants.

In his homily, Francis also spoke against doors “closed to the world”.

Russian troops who dug trenches in Chernobyl forest during their occupation of the area have been struck down with radiation sickness, authorities have confirmed.

Ukrainians living near the nuclear power station that exploded 37 years ago, and choked the surrounding area in radioactive contaminants, warned the Russians when they arrived against setting up camp in the forest.

But the occupiers who, as one resident put it to The Times, “understood the risks” but were “just thick”, installed themselves in the forest, reportedly carved out trenches, fished in the reactor’s cooling channel – flush with catfish – and shot animals, leaving them dead on the roads.