The US believes that Russia used a short-range ballistic missile in an attack on the Kramatorsk train station which killed at least 52 people, including five children, in eastern Ukraine. Russia denies responsibility for the attack.
Some Russian military units have suffered heavy casualties, said a senior US defense official, and the Pentagon estimates that Russia’s combat capability is between 80% and 85% of pre-invasion levels. The US Department of Defense expects Russia to shift its focus to the Donbass region and eastern Ukraine.
International food prices, including grains and vegetable oils, reached all-time highs in March amid the Russian war in Ukraine. The conflict caused massive disruption, the UN said on Friday, threatening millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere with hunger and malnutrition.
Russian troops have “forcibly deported” more than 600,000 Ukrainians.including about 121,000 children, to Russia, said Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmila Denysova. She also said residents of the temporarily occupied town of Izyum in the Kharkiv region were being forcibly relocated to Russia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to offer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a faster start in his country’s bid for EU membership. At a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, von der Leyen said: “It will not be a matter of years, as usual, to form this opinion, but I think a matter of weeks.”
Forensic investigators have started exhuming a mass grave in the Ukrainian city of Buchawrapped in black plastic and laid out the bodies of civilians officials say were killed during the Russian invasion. Since Russian troops withdrew from Bucha last week, Ukrainian officials said hundreds of civilians have been found dead.
The Russian Justice Ministry has revoked the registration of 15 foreign organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The ministry said in a statement that the organizations’ Russian units “were expelled due to the discovery of violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation.” Human Rights Watch said the move was evidence that the Russian government “has no use for any facts about the protection of civilians in Ukraine.”