Recent political events
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Finland said on Thursday that it would apply to join NATO “without delay”, and Sweden is expected to follow suit.
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The Kremlin has said that Finland’s move to join NATO will “definitely” be a threat to Russia.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed his support for the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, a separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.
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Ukraine has said Russia has stolen about $ 100 million worth of grain and is trying to sell it to other countries.
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More than six million people have fled Ukraine’s borders because of the war.
Updates from the ground on the 78th day of the war
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Ukraine’s High Representative for Human Rights has accused Russia of detaining and torturing civilians.
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According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces fired on Ukrainian troops in the direction of Zaporozhye, a refuge for civilians fleeing Mariupol.
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The governor of Belgorod, Russia’s border region, said at least one civilian had been killed and six others wounded in Ukrainian shelling.
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Ukrainian authorities say an air strike has killed at least three people and injured 12 others in the Chernihiv region.
Russian official warns of “military-technical” retaliation
In response to Finland’s statement on joining NATO on Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that “Russia will be forced to take retaliatory measures with military-technical and other characteristics to counter emerging threats to its national security.” .
The ministry said Finland’s move violated previous agreements with Russia.
A man shows a photographer part of a rocket found in a residential area after the Russian shelling in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Thursday. (Andriy Andrienko / Associated Press)
Earlier on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Finland’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty would “definitely” be a threat to Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said NATO’s support for Ukraine “increases the likelihood that the ongoing proxy war will turn into an open and direct conflict between NATO and Russia.”
He added that “there is always a risk that such a conflict could turn into a full-scale nuclear war, a scenario that will be catastrophic for all.”
Commenting on the news release, Medvedev called on the United States and its allies to consider the possible consequences of their actions and “not to drown in their own saliva in the paroxysms of Russophobia.”
An air strike killed three people in the Chernihiv region, officials said
The Ukrainian military says at least three people have been killed in a Russian air strike on a city in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, and another 12 have been injured.
WATCH NATO Special Forces are conducting training exercises in Eastern Europe:
NATO Special Forces are conducting exercises in Eastern Europe
In the shadow of the battle for Ukraine, NATO special forces are conducting training exercises in Eastern Europe, improving the ability of member states to work in tandem against a common enemy.
In the early hours of Thursday, Russian troops fired numerous missiles at a school and student housing complex in the city of Novgorod-Siversky, Ukraine’s North Operational Command said on Facebook.
He added that the nearby buildings, which house local government offices, college dormitories and private houses, have also suffered varying degrees of damage.
The accuracy of these allegations could not be verified immediately.
Russia said on Thursday that its forces had struck two ammunition depots in the Chernihiv region.
More than 6 million have fled Ukraine
The UN refugee agency says more than six million people have already fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
The Geneva-based UNHCR also said on Thursday that the number of refugees returning to Ukraine, in part or in full, had reached more than 1.6 million. It says the number reflects cross-border movements and does not necessarily mean “sustainable” returns. The agency says it is too early to draw conclusions about “final trends” in returns.
A woman and child who fled Ukraine after the war are expected to return to the country at Kyiv’s railway station on Thursday after returning from Poland. (Sergey Supinski / AFP / Getty Images)
Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesman for the agency, also said on Thursday that a total of 2.4 million people who had left Ukraine had moved beyond Ukraine’s immediate border countries, which had accepted the lion’s share of the country’s refugees.
In Poland alone, more than 3.2 million people have fled Ukraine. It and other EU Member States have open borders, which makes tracking where people go a difficult endeavor.
He claims that Ukrainian civilians were detained and tortured
Lyudmila Denisova, head of human rights in Ukraine, said on social media on Thursday that Kyiv was aware of at least two prisons in which civilians were detained in the eastern Donetsk region.
She said about 3,000 Mariupol civilians were being held there by pro-Russian separatists.
A demolished apartment building can be seen on Thursday – through a drone photo – in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Pavel Klimov / Reuters)
According to Denisova, authorities have received reports of people being “tortured, interrogated, threatened with execution and forced to co-operate”, while others have disappeared after interrogations.
She also claims that the detainees were kept in “inhumane conditions”, with insufficient access to bathrooms and a place to sleep.
Denisova claims that some prisoners were released 36 days after unspecified documents were signed, but she did not provide further details. Ukrainian authorities are calling on the UN to intervene.
More reports on cluster munitions
Ukrainian authorities have also accused Russia of using cluster bombs and phosphorus munitions in the southern Krivoy Rog region. The claim cannot be verified immediately.
“The occupiers are firing, including using banned phosphate and cluster munitions,” regional military governor Alexander Vilkul said on Thursday on Ukrainian television. He did not provide details on where and when they were allegedly used.
A man smokes while standing near a building destroyed by shelling the day before in the village of Komishuvaha, Ukraine. (Gleb Garanic / Reuters)
He said one person was killed and one was injured in the past 24 hours.
The cluster munition is a container full of small explosive bombs that are scattered over a wide area and pose a risk to civilians. The bombs are banned by the Cluster Munitions Convention, but Russia has not signed an international treaty.
In March, the United Nations said it had credible reports that Russian forces had used cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine at least two dozen times since the February 24 invasion.
Ukraine takes over villages in the northeast
After Russia redirected the war to the eastern region of Donbass, Ukraine managed to regain several towns and villages in the northeastern part of the country, according to British intelligence.
The British military said the change in Russia’s approach had left the rest of its troops around the city of Kharkov “vulnerable to mobile and highly motivated Ukrainian counterattacks”.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his determination to snatch separatist-controlled territory from Ukraine in a congratulatory message to the head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers sit on a tank transported by a transporter near Bakhmut on Thursday. (Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP / Getty Images)
In a statement issued by the Kremlin, Putin said: “I am confident that through our joint efforts we will defend the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the Luhansk Republic.
The head of Luhansk’s self-proclaimed republic, Leonid Pasechnik, said it would never return to Ukrainian control and that most of its people want it to be part of Russia.
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