Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Article content

Russia has widened strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the past week following setbacks on the battlefield and is likely to expand its target range further, Britain said on Sunday.

FIGHTING

Article content

* A top U.S. general visited a military base in Poland hosting U.S. troops. U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for vigilance saying the war was “not going too well for Russia right now” and it was unclear how Moscow might react.

* The Russian army, seeking contract soldiers for what it calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, is using mobile recruiting trucks to attract volunteers, offering nearly $3,000 a month as an incentive.

Article content

* Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the Donetsk region over the past day, while in Nikopol several dozen high-rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged by Russian strikes, the regional governors said separately.

* Ukraine’s military general staff reported fighting in multiple locations across a swath of the country’s south and east.

* One of the four main power lines at the Zaporizhzhia plant has been repaired and is supplying the plant with electricity from the Ukrainian grid two weeks after it went down, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday.

* Both sides reported injuries in fighting in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Saturday.

* Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.

Article content

KHARKIV REGION

* In the village of Kozacha Lopan, some 45 km (30 miles) north of Kharkiv and just some 5 km (3 miles) from the Russian border, a Reuters reporter was taken to a squalid cellar with rooms fitted with iron bars, which local officials said served as a makeshift prison during the occupation. Local district mayor Vyacheslav Zadorenko said the rooms had been used as a “torture cellar” to detain civilians. Reuters was unable to verify those accounts.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday investigators had discovered new evidence of torture used against some soldiers buried near Izium, one of more than 20 towns that were retaken in the northeastern Kharkiv region after a lightning advance by Ukraine’s forces earlier this month.

Article content

* He said in a video address that authorities had found a mass grave containing the bodies of 17 soldiers in Izium, some of which he said bore signs of torture.

* The Kremlin has not commented publicly on the discovery of graves at Izium. Moscow regularly denies committing atrocities in the war or deliberately attacking civilians.

* ‘Like Chornobyl’: Ukrainians have begun returning to their battle-scarred home towns in Kharkiv.

DIPLOMACY

* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday brushed off Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive, casting Russia’s invasion as a necessary step to prevent what he said was a Western plot to break Russia apart.

* U.S. President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin not to use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine in a clip released by CBS on Sunday. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two,” he told “60 Minutes.”

* Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global food crisis aggravated by the war will be the focus of world leaders when they convene for the United Nations General Assembly this week, a gathering that is unlikely to yield any progress toward ending the conflict.

A POP QUEEN’S MESSAGE

* Alla Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop music, denounced Putin’s war in Ukraine, which she said was killing soldiers for illusory aims, burdening ordinary people and turning Russia into a global pariah. (Compiled by Raissa Kasolowsky Editing by Frances Kerry)