War in Ukraine: 5 Killed in Kyiv Strikes; Russia Uses Long-range Bombers to Attack Mariupol | Top Updates

Russian missiles struck a military factory near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in a tit-for-tat military escalation that makes the missiles Ukraine used to hit the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, according to reports. The strikes came after the Russian defence ministry warned of intensifying attacks on Kyiv in response to strikes targeting border towns. “The number and scale of missile strikes against targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or sabotage committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime on Russian territory,” the ministry said in its daily update.

Russian strikes had killed five people in the east of the country after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow’s forces were aiming to “destroy” the region. In a report issued by the presidency, Kyiv said two people had been killed and two more wounded in the eastern Lugansk region while another three had been killed and seven wounded in the neighbouring Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said seven people were killed and 27 people were injured in a Russian attack on buses ferrying civilians in Izium district. “On April 14, Russian servicemen fired on evacuation buses carrying civilians in the village of Borova in the Izium district,” the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said in a statement on social media.

Here are the top developments of the day

• Ukraine said that Russia will seek revenge after the sinking of its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva. “The Moskva cruiser strike hit not only the ship itself: it hit the enemy’s imperial ambitions. We are all aware that we will not be forgiven for this,” Natalia Gumeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military forces said.
• Ukraine said it swapped several captured soldiers with Russia. “After tense negotiations, we managed to reach agreements on a prisoner exchange near the village of Posad-Pokrovskoye, where four Russian military personnel were exchanged for our five,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said.
• Russia’s foreign ministry warned of unspecified “consequences” should Finland and Sweden join the US-led NATO defence alliance. “The choice is up to the authorities of Sweden and Finland. But they should understand the consequences of such a step for our bilateral relations and for the architecture of European security as a whole,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. A Finnish cabinet minister said it was “highly likely” that Finland would apply for NATO membership.
• More than five million people have fled Ukraine since Russian invasion began on February 24, according to UN data. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 4,796,245 million Ukrainians has fled across the borders, while the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) says nearly 215,000 third-country nationals have also escaped to neighbouring countries.
• Fighting continued around Mariupol city’s Illich Steel and Iron Works and port as Ukraine said it was trying to break Russia’s siege. “The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now. The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city,” defence ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said. “But as of now the Russians haven’t managed to completely capture it,” he told a televised briefing.
• Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said on Friday that for, the first time since the start of its invasion, Russia used long-range bombers to attack Mariupol. Motuzyanyk said Russia was concentrating its efforts on seizing the cities of Rubizhne, Popasna and Mariupol.
• The EU is working on broadening sanctions on Russia to include oil and gas embargoes but such measures would take “several months”, European officials said. The bloc last week announced a ban on Russian coal in a first step against Russian energy exports — together, Moscow’s main hard currency earner. But the coal sanction only kicks in from mid-August, and would hit around eight billion euros ($8.7 billion) in Russia’s sales abroad, annually.
• North Macedonia’s foreign ministry has ordered the expulsion of six more Russian diplomats in the second such move in less than a month. “The six Russian diplomats in question were engaging in activities contrary to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” said the statement posted on ministry’s website.
• Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said several buyers of Russian gas have agreed to switch to payments in roubles. “We expect the decision (to switch to roubles) from other importers,” he added, in comments published in the ministry’s in-house magazine. He did not disclose the identities of customers who had already switched.
• Russia’s media regulator on Friday blocked the Russian-language website of the independent news outlet The Moscow Times over its coverage of Ukraine. The newspaper, which has covered Russia for three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, said on its English-language website that its Russian service was blocked after it published what “authorities call a false report on riot police officers refusing to fight in Ukraine”.

(With inputs from AFP, Reuters)

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