Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine defences in Sievierodonetsk holding, says UK’s MoD; Chornobyl radiation detectors re-start – live

Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has posted to Telegram to say that “Nobody is going to surrender Sievierodonetsk”.

He writes that the regional centre of Luhansk is seeing the most intense fighting, saying: “Fierce battles are taking place in Sievierodonetsk, our defenders are fighting for every inch of the city.”

In his latest message he claims Russians “do NOT control the Lysychansk-Bakhmut route, but fire heavily. We do not use this road, it is too dangerous”.

Haidai writes:

The plans of the racists have not changed, they ‘want’ to capture Sievierodonetsk and the ‘way of life’ by 10 June. All the racist forces have been thrown into this. In addition, the orcs [slang term for Russian forces] again plan to cross the Seversky Donets River to create a bridgehead for the offensive.

With neither side prevailing on the battlefield, there seems little prospect of negotiations.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he “simply cannot see the preconditions for ending the war” in an interview with the Financial Times.

Victory meant restoring “all” of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea – annexed by Russia in 2014 – and separatist-held areas, he suggested.

“We have to achieve a full de-occupation of our entire territory,” Zelenskiy said by video link at an event hosted by the newspaper on Tuesday.

Most observers in Kyiv now expect the war to continue through the summer until at least the end of the year.

A stalemate with Russia is “not an option”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, reiterating a plea for foreign help in the war.

Ukraine’s fierce resistance of Russia’s invasion led to a stalemate in parts of the country, with Moscow re-focussing its forces in the east.

In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday, he said:

Victory must be achieved on the battlefield.

We are inferior in terms of equipment and therefore we are not capable of advancing.

We are going to suffer more losses and people are my priority.”

Asked what Ukraine would consider a victory, Zelenskiy said restoring the borders Ukraine controlled before Russia’s invasion on 24 February would be “a serious temporary victory”.

But he said the ultimate aim was the “full de-occupation of our entire territory”.

Asked about talks with Russia, which have been suspended since late March, Zelenskiy said he had not changed his position, adding that war should be ended at the negotiating table.

He said he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president.

According to the latest Ukrainian military operational report, Ukraine is holding back the Russian assault on its key eastern city.

Our warriors successfully hold back the assault in the city of Severodonetsk, the combat is ongoing.”

An attempt to capture the nearby towns of Toshkivka and Ustinivka was also unsuccessful, according to the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine.

Russian forces have been bombarding Ukrainian positions with intense artillery barrages, airstrikes and non-stop street-by-street fighting, according to the regional governor of Luhansk province.

Serhiy Haidai said earlier this week that tough street battles were continuing with varying degrees of success. “The situation constantly changes, but the Ukrainians are repelling attacks,” he said.

Between 10,000 and 11,000 civilians remain in the city.

Dozens of radiation detectors around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant have started transmitting radiation data for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA said the radiation monitoring network in the area stopped functioning when Russian forces occupied the Chornobyl site in February and held it for five weeks before withdrawing on March 31.

Radiation levels in the area surrounding Ukraine’s Chornobyl nuclear power plant are now back to normal after detectors came back online today, according to the UN nuclear watchdog.

Most of the 39 detectors sending data from the Exclusion Zone … are now visible on the IRMIS (International Radiation Monitoring Information System) map.

The measurements received so far indicated radiation levels in line with those measured before the conflict.”

“The resumption of radiation data transmission from the Exclusion Zone is a very positive step forward for nuclear safety and security in Ukraine,” the agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi said in the statement.

“It ends a long period of virtual information blackout that created much uncertainty about the radiation situation in the area, especially when it was under Russian occupation,” the agency’s director general Rafael Grossi said in the statement.

Russia continues to attempt assaults against Sievierodonetsk although Ukrainian defences are holding, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

Though it is unlikely that either side has gained significant ground in the last 24 hours, the agency added.

Regarding the unfolding situation in the eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk, the full report, released just after 6am BST, reads:

Russia continues to attempt assaults against the Sieverodonetsk pocket from three directions although Ukrainian defences are holding. It is unlikely that either side has gained significant ground in the last 24 hours.

While Russia is concentrating its offensive on the central Donbas sector, it has remained on the defensive on its flanks.”

Referring to Ukraine’s south-western Kherson region, British intelligence said Ukrainian forces have recently achieved some success through counterattacks, including regaining a foothold on the eastern bank of the Ingulets River.

With the frontage of the occupied zone stretching for over 500km, both Russia and Ukraine face similar challenges in maintaining a defensive line while freeing up capable combat units for offensive operations.

In the occupied Kherson region, Russia is forcibly aligning its administration with that of the Russian Federation by introducing the Russian rouble as legal tender and employing Russian teachers to introduce the Russian curriculum and language to schools.

Russia will highly likely claim its occupation of Kherson as evidence of delivering improved governance and living standards to the Ukrainian people.”

Russia has handed over to Kyiv the bodies of 210 Ukrainian fighters, most of whom who died defending the city of Mariupol from Russian forces at a vast steel works, the Ukrainian military confirmed.

Ukraine’s defence intelligence directorate issued a statement late on Tuesday:

The process of returning the bodies of the fallen defenders of Mariupol is under way.

To date, 210 of our troops have been returned – most of them are heroic defenders of Azovsta.

Work continues on bringing home all of the captured Ukrainian defender.”

More than 1,000 Ukrainian servicemen and foreign mercenaries, who had surrendered in Mariupol, have been transferred to Russia for an investigation there, a law enforcement source told Russian state-owned news agency, Tass.

More Ukrainian prisoners of war will be taken to Russia “later on”, the outlet cited a the Russian law enforcement source as saying.

Over 1,000 people from Azovstal have been transferred to Russia. Law enforcement officers are working with them.

Investigators also plan to send a number of other captives to Russia in the future, following a series of face-to-face confrontations.”

Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy previously said he thought more than 2,500 Azovstal defenders – who also include border guards, police and territorial defence – were being held by Russia.

Kyiv is seeking the handover of all the estimated defenders in a prisoner swap, but Russian lawmakers have demanded that some of the soldiers be put on trial

The Guardian’s Pjotr Sauer previously reported that more than 900 Ukrainian troops who had been trapped at Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian forces held out for weeks, had been sent to a prison colony on Russian-controlled territory within Ukraine.

Some residents who managed to escape are also saying they were given no choice but to travel to Russia in what Kyiv regards as “deportations”, Agence France-Presse added.

Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Samantha Lock and I will be bringing you all the latest news for the next few hours.

Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold their ground in bloody street-to-street fighting in the eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk as president Zelenskiy calls for a “full de-occupation” of Ukrainian territory.

If you’re just waking up, or just dropping in to find the latest information, here’s a summary of the main points you might have missed:

• Ukrainian forces are finding it hard to stave off Russian attacks in the centre of Sievierodonestk but Moscow’s forces do not control the frontline eastern city, regional officials say. Russian forces have seized residential quarters of the key eastern city and are fighting to take control of an industrial zone on its outskirts and the nearby towns, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said. The Luhansk governor, Serhiy Haidai, conceded that Russian forces control the industrial outskirts of the city. Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed significant damage in Sievierodonetsk and nearby Rubizhne.

• Some 800 civilians have taken refuge in a chemical factory in Sievierodonetsk, according to a lawyer for Dmytro Firtash, whose company owns the facility. “These 800 civilians include around 200 out of the plant’s 3,000 employees and approximately 600 inhabitants of the city of Sievierodonetsk,” Lanny J. Davis, a US lawyer, noted in a statement published on the company website.

• More than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered in the southern port city of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia, according to Russian state-owned news agency, Tass. More Ukrainian prisoners of war will be taken to Russia “later on”, the outlet cited a Russian law enforcement source as saying. Some residents who managed to escape are saying they were given no choice but to travel to Russia in what Kyiv regards as “deportations”, Agence France-Presse added.

• A stalemate with Russia is “not an option”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, reiterating a plea for foreign help in the war. “Victory must be achieved on the battlefield,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, adding that he “simply cannot see the preconditions for ending the war”. Victory meant restoring “all” of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea – annexed by Russia in 2014 – and separatist-held areas, he suggested.

• Russian proxy fighters in east Ukraine have said they are opening a trial against two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were captured fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol. The two men, who are serving in the Ukrainian military, and Ibrahim Saadun, a captive from Morocco, were shown sitting in a courtroom cage reserved for defendants in a video released on pro-Russian social media channels on Tuesday.
• Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food, Taras Vysotskyi, said it would take six months to clear the coast of Russian and Ukrainian mines. His remarks dealt a blow to a proposal under discussion where ships leaving Ukrainian ports would be given safe escort by Turkish naval vessels.

• The European Union needs to build warehouses and extend railway tracks across the Ukrainian border to help Kyiv in its attempts to move more grain out of the country to those who need it, says the country’s trade representative. Ukraine will not be able to export more than 2m tonnes of grain a month, around a third of pre-war levels, as long as its main trade routes through its Black Sea ports remain blockaded by Russia, said Taras Kachka.

• The World Bank has approved $1.49bn of additional financing for Ukraine to help pay wages for government and social workers, expanding the bank’s total pledged support for Kyiv to over $4 billion. The latest round of funding is supported by financing guarantees from Britain, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Latvia.

• Russia is ramping up oil exports from its major eastern port of Kozmino as it aims to offset the impact of EU sanctions with the surging demand from Asian buyers. Sources told Reuters that Russia has already increased the amount of crude pumped to Kozmino on its main Asian oil route, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd).

• The United States Treasury Department has banned US money managers from buying any Russian debt or stocks in secondary markets, on top of its existing ban on new-issue purchases, in its latest sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

• Former German chancellor Angela Merkel said she tried to prevent the situation in Ukraine and has no regrets while in office. “It’s a great sadness that it didn’t work out, but I don’t blame myself for not trying,” Merkel said during a televised interview on Tuesday, speaking on the 2014 Minsk agreement with Russia.

• Moscow’s Chief Rabbi has reportedly fled Russia, after coming under pressure to support Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt tweeted late on Tuesday: “Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt and Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine — and refused.”