For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
Recap of April 30:
FIGHTING
* Ukraine is said to be holding its own in the face of relentless shelling in the East, South.
* Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange with Russia on Saturday; seven soldiers and seven civilians to return home.
HUMANITARIAN
* France will step up military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.
* Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to Lviv, Ukraine.
ECONOMY
* Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister accuses Russian forces of the “outright robbery” of "several hundred thousand tons" of grain in areas Russia has occupied.
The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
9:35 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian army has destroyed more than 1,000 Russian tanks, nearly 200 Russian aircraft, and almost 2,500 armored fighting vehicles, CNN reported Saturday.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted the same information on Facebook.
"Of course, the occupiers still have equipment in stock. Yes, they still have missiles to strike at our territory," he added. "But this war has already weakened Russia so much that they have to plan even fewer military equipment for the parade in Moscow."
Russia plans to hold its traditional Victory Day parade in Red Square May 9, commemorating the German surrender to the Soviet Union in the Second World War.
9 p.m.:
8:15 p.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Saturday with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba about U.S. diplomats returning to Ukraine as soon as this coming week, according to spokesperson Ned Price.
7:45 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy switched into Russian in his nightly video address to urge Russian soldiers not to fight in Ukraine, The Associated Press reports.
He said Russia has been recruiting new troops “with little motivation and little combat experience” for the units that were gutted during the early weeks of the war. He said Russian commanders fully understand that thousands of them will die and thousands more will be wounded.
“The Russian commanders are lying to their soldiers when they tell them they can expect to be held seriously responsible for refusing to fight and then also don’t tell them, for example, that the Russian army is preparing additional refrigerator trucks for storing the bodies,” Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
“Every Russian soldier can still save his own life. It’s better for you to survive in Russia than to perish on our land,” he said.
7:20 p.m.: The British Foreign Office said on Sunday that Russia is using a troll factory to spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine on social media and target politicians across a number of countries including Britain and South Africa, Reuters reports.
Among their targets have been senior British ministers and other world leaders, Britain said, adding that traces of the operation had been detected across eight social media platforms including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok.
Britain cited UK-funded expert research, which it did not publish.
Russia says the Western media have provided an excessively partial narrative of the war that largely ignores Moscow's concerns about the enlargement of NATO.
6:25 p.m.: The Swedish Armed Forces said in a statement Saturday that a Russian AN-30 propeller plane entered Swedish airspace late Friday in the Baltic Sea near the island of Bornholm.
The Swedish Air Force scrambled fighter jets, which photographed the Russian plane.
Sweden and neighboring Finland are both considering NATO membership, and Moscow has warned that such a move would have consequences, without giving specifics.
5:30 p.m.: The runway at the Odesa airport that was destroyed by a Russian missile strike had taken 10 years to design and build and had formally opened last July, Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said, Reuters reports.
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it would be rebuilt.
"The Odesa airport runway was destroyed. We will, of course, rebuild it. But Odesa will never forget Russia's behavior towards it," he said.
Odesa regional governor Maksym Marchenko said Russia had used a Bastion missile, launched from Crimea.
"Thank God no one was hurt. Anti-sabotage measures are being carried out in the region," he said in a video posted online.
4:20 p.m.: Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed the progress of the U.N. effort to evacuate people from Mariupol talk Saturday with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The United Nations has been attempting to broker an evacuation in the port city where some 100,000 civilians remain. Up to 1,000 civilians are living beneath a Soviet-era steel plant in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials.
3:45 p.m.: Ukraine’s national grid operator says it has restored a reliable power supply in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, around the site of the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster, The Associated Press reports.
According to a post Saturday on Telegram, the state-owned Ukrenergo restored “the last necessary 330 kV power transmission line” and restored another 330 kV line in the northern Kyiv region, helping to stabilize the energy supply in the capital. It said the reconstruction of further transmission lines in and around Kyiv remains underway.
3 p.m.: Actress and U.N. humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, the Lviv regional governor said on Telegram.
Jolie, who has been a UNHCR Special Envoy for Refugees since 2011, had come to speak with displaced people who have found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April, Maksym Kozytskyy said.
“She was very moved by (the children’s) stories,” Kozytskyy wrote. “One girl was even able to privately tell Ms. Jolie about a dream she’d had.”
2:20 p.m.: Ukraine's military said on Saturday that Russian planes had continued to launch strikes on the besieged city of Mariupol, focusing on the Azovstal steelworks where troops and civilians are sheltering. In a Facebook post, the general staff of the armed forces also said the Ukrainian military had regained control over four settlements in the Kharkiv region.
2:10 p.m.: Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent newspaper on Saturday quoted the Danish publication OLFI, which reported that Denmark will send Ukraine 25 Piranha III armored personnel carriers, 50 M113 armored personnel carriers, and M10 mortars with thousands of shells for them.
2:00 p.m.: President Joe Biden expressed admiration for U.S. journalists ahead of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday evening. “Think about what the American press has done, the courage it has taken to stay in these war zones, the courage it's taken to report every single day," Biden said. "I can’t tell you how much respect I have watching them in these zones where they're under fire, risking their lives to make sure the world hears the truth.”
1:30 p.m.: Russia’s armed forces said they had hit 17 Ukrainian military facilities with high-precision missiles on Saturday and also destroyed a command post and a warehouse used to store rockets and artillery, Reuters reported. In an online post, the defense ministry also said air force strikes during the day killed more than 200 Ukrainian troops and destroyed 23 armored vehicles. The post made no mention of an attack on Odesa airport which the local governor said had been hit by a Russian missile, putting the runway out of action.
12:15 p.m.: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia is part of peace talks with Ukraine, but senior Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak denied that this was the case. "At present, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are actually discussing on a daily basis via video-conferencing a draft of a possible treaty," Lavrov said in comments to China's official Xinhua news agency published on the Russian foreign ministry's website on Saturday. "The talks' agenda ... includes, among other things, the issues of denazification, the recognition of new geopolitical realities, the lifting of sanctions, the status of the Russian language," Lavrov said, without elaborating. But Podolyak was dismissive, saying Lavrov had not attended a single negotiating round, and that Ukraine did not need lessons in "denazification" or use of the Russian language from those who had attacked and occupied Ukrainian towns and cities.
12:05 p.m.: Ukraine evacuated more people Saturday in the eastern town of Lyman in the fiercely fought-over region of Donetsk, where at least half the residents have fled Russian shelling since the start of the war. About 20 mostly elderly people boarded a minivan amid the sounds of outgoing artillery and explosions in the distance, AP reported. All the shops in the almost-empty town were closed and those who decided to remain rely on aid distributed by groups including the Ukrainian Red Cross. Those who remain say they are either too old, don’t know where to go or don’t want to leave their homes unattended. They seek shelter in their basements whenever the shelling starts. Meanwhile, in Dobropillya, further to the west, two airstrikes hit the town on Saturday, damaging buildings and slightly injuring seven people including three children, according to authorities.
12:00 p.m.: A Russian missile strike on Odesa airport has damaged the runway and it can no longer be used, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday, Reuters reported.
11:50 a.m.: There are signs of a possible breakthrough in securing at least one evacuation route in the besieged city of Mariupol, the CNN television network reported. "There is hope for the evacuation of Mariupol residents to territory controlled by Ukraine," Mariupol city council said on its Telegram account. Although the council is still waiting for confirmation, the council's post says the evacuation would be today from Port City, which is a shopping mall. "The occupiers allowed movement between the Left Bank district and other districts of the city on the right bank. The movement is open across the bridge to Mukhino," CNN quoted Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor, on Telegram. The network said it is unclear whether any evacuation would include civilians and soldiers trapped at the Azovstal steel plant. Separately, CNN reported cited Ukrainian media and witness reports of multiple explosions in the southern city of Odesa soon after 6 p.m. local time. One witness told CNN that she saw at least one combat plane over the city.
11:25 a.m.: A group of civilians has left the Azovstal steel workshops in Mariupol, a correspondent for Russia's TASS news agency reported from the site on Saturday. A total of 25 people, including six children under 14 years old, reportedly have exited.
11:15 a.m.: Russian soldiers are allegedly stealing lung ventilators from Mariupol hospital, according to the Kyiv Independent newspaper, which quotes the adviser to that city’s mayor. Petro Andryushchenko said the Russians are stealing ventilators and other medical equipment, and taking the items to Russia.
11:05 a.m.: The governor of Russia’s western Kursk region said several shells were fired Saturday at a checkpoint near its border from the direction of Ukraine. Speaking in a video posted on his Telegram channel, governor Roman Starovoit said there were no casualties or damage. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report, and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
11:00 a.m.: Ukrainian police said Saturday they had found the bodies of three civilian men in the Bucha district north of Kyiv, bound and in some cases gagged, with several gunshot wounds that police said indicated they had been tortured, Reuters reported. Kyiv says more than 1,000 bodies have been discovered in or around Bucha, where it alleges systematic abuse by Russian soldiers who have occupied the area in an abortive attempt to seize the capital. Moscow rejected the allegation.
10:50 a.m.: Russia reportedly plans to “oblige” Ukrainians deported to Russia to return to Mariupol and rebuild that city, according to Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent newspaper, which cited statements by Petro Andryushchenko, advisor to Mariupol’s mayor. The report says plans to rebuild Mariupol were announced by the leader of Russian proxies in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin.
10:45 a.m.: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet Saturday that he continues holding talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, discussing defense cooperation, humanitarian aid delivery and Ukraine’s “path to NATO membership.”
10:15 a.m.: Russian forces pounded Ukraine's eastern Donbas region on Saturday but failed to capture three target areas, Ukraine's military said, while Moscow said Western sanctions on Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine were impeding peace negotiations. The Russians were trying to capture the areas of Lyman in Donetsk and Severodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in a daily update reported by Reuters. "Not succeeding - the fighting continues," it said.
10:00 a.m.: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that it has been informed by Kyiv that Russia has sent nuclear specialists to help monitor the Zaporizhzhya power plant in Ukraine's southeast, RFE/RL reported. The nuclear plant, which is under Russian control but still operated by Ukrainian staff amid heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, has been a source of concern for the UN's nuclear watchdog. IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said in statement Friday that Ukrainian staffers at the plant, which was captured by Russian forces on March 4, are working "under incredible pressure." Citing Ukrainian officials, the IAEA said that eight representatives of the Russian state nuclear concern Rosenergoatom had been sent to the Zaporizhzhya facility. Kyiv has accused Russia of deliberately attacking the plant's six nuclear reactors, causing a fire and raising fears that the action against Ukraine's largest nuclear facility could lead to a global catastrophe akin to Soviet Ukraine's infamous Chernobyl disaster.
9:15 a.m.: CNN reported that satellite images taken Friday show that nearly every building on the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol has been destroyed. According to the news network, large holes now appear in rooftops, some of which are completely collapsed, and some buildings have been destroyed entirely, as have many residential and government buildings east of the plant. Sviatoslav Palamar, an Azov Regiment commander at the plant, told CNN Friday that the plant has been intensely shelled by artillery, ships and airstrikes. "There are cellars and bunkers that we cannot reach because they are under rubble," Palamar said. "We do not know whether the people there are alive or not. There are children aged four months to 16 years. But there are people trapped in places that you can't get to."
9:00 a.m.: President Emmanuel Macron said France would step up military and humanitarian support to Ukraine during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. Macron reiterated his “strong concern” over Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian cities and the “unbearable situation” in the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, the French presidency added in its statement, Reuters reported. Russia denies targeting civilians in what it calls it “special military operation” in Ukraine.
8:45 a.m.: Russian forces have stolen "several hundred thousand tons" of grain in the areas of Ukraine they occupy, Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister said on Saturday. Speaking to Ukrainian national TV, Taras Vysotskiy expressed concern that most of what he said was 1.5 million tons of grain stored in occupied territory could also be stolen by Russian forces, Reuters reported. Ukraine's foreign ministry accused Russia on Thursday of stealing grain in territory it has occupied, an act it said increased the threat to global food security. Agriculture minister Mykola Solskyi said the “outright robbery” of grain in occupied Ukraine had increased in the last two weeks, which could create food problems in areas that are currently not controlled.
8:15 a.m.: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Al Arabiya Television that the West has always been “Russia phobic” and that his country never lived a day without being subject to Western sanctions.
“So...to believe that this latest wave of sanctions is going to make Russia cry ‘Uncle’ and to beg for being pardoned, those planners are lousy and, of course, they don’t know anything about [the] foreign policy of Russia and they don’t know anything about how to deal with Russia.”
8:00 a.m.: Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv was reportedly targeted by mortar and artillery shelling Saturday. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised address Friday night that Ukrainian forces had recaptured a strategically important village near the city and evacuated hundreds of civilians.
RFE/RL reports that in its daily briefing Saturday, the Ukrainian military said that the greatest enemy losses were taking place near Izyum, in the region of Kharkhiv bordering the Luhansk and Donetsk territories.
The continuation of negotiations to end Russia's war against Ukraine is in doubt, with Ukraine's president saying it is hard to discuss peace amid public anger over alleged atrocities carried out by Russian troops, and Russia's foreign minister saying that Western sanctions and arms shipments were impeding the talks.
7:30 a.m.: Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to hold off Russian attacks in the south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to take the industrial Donbas region; Western military analysts said Moscow’s offensive was going much slower than planned. Meanwhile, the U.N. continued trying to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, which Russia has sought to capture since it invaded Ukraine more than nine weeks ago. An estimated 2,000 fighters and 1,000 civilians remain holed up in that city's Azovstal steel complex.
5:16 a.m.: CNN reports that Poland has sent Ukraine military equipment worth $1.6 billion, including more than 200 T-72 tanks.
4:24 a.m.: Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister says Russian forces have stolen "several hundred thousand" tons of grain in Ukraine, Al Jazeera reports.
3:03 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has been hit by Russian shelling, killing one person and injuring five. The city is the second biggest in Ukraine.
2:04 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K.'s defense ministry says that Russia is aiming to concentrate its combat power, shorten supply lines and simplify command and control. The update notes that Russia still faces "considerable challenges."
"It has been forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from the failed advances in north-east Ukraine," the update says. "Many of these units are likely suffering from weakened morale." In addition, it says, Russia suffers from inconsistent air support.
1:15 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that under new laws in Ukraine, anyone who collaborates or shows public support for the Russians faces up to 15 years in prison. Officials say more than 200 criminal cases on collaboration have been opened.
12:02 a.m.: The Washington Post reports that Ukrainian officials are accusing Russian forces of stealing more than 2,000 pieces of art from Mariupol. The Mariupol City Council says the Russians have raided three local art museums, moving more than 2,000 pieces to the Russian-controlled area of Donetsk, the Post reports.
Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
