Liz Truss has vowed to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for war crimes after a “horrifying” bombing of a school in eastern Ukraine left 60 people feared dead.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said Russian forces launched an air strike on Saturday afternoon on the school where about 90 people were sheltering, causing a fire that engulfed the building.
He said the bodies of two people were pulled from the rubble in the village of Bilohorivka after a four-hour mission to put out the blaze and 30 evacuated. He added: “Sixty people were likely to have died under the rubble of buildings.”
On Sunday afternoon, the British Foreign Secretary tweeted: “Horrified by Russia’s latest attack on a school in Luhansk, resulting in the deaths of innocent people sheltering from Russian bombardment.
“Deliberate targeting of civilians & civilian infrastructure amounts to war crimes. We will ensure Putin’s regime is held accountable.”
Rescuers could not work overnight because of a threat of new strikes, but resumed their work on Sunday.
Follow the latest updates below.
12:37 PM
‘Surrender not an option’: Ukraine forces in Azovstal
Ukraine forces holed up in the sprawling Azovstal steel works in the Russian controlled city of Mariupol said Sunday that they were unable to surrender fearing reprisals from Russian forces.
“We, all of the military personnel in the garnison of Mariupol, we have witnessed the war crimes performed by Russia, by the Russian army. We are witnesses. Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives,” said Ilya Samoilenko, an Azov regiment intelligence officer.
12:36 PM
Putin vows ‘as in 1945, victory will be ours’
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed that “as in 1945, victory will be ours” as he congratulated former Soviet nations on the 77th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II.
“Today, our soldiers, as their ancestors, are fighting side by side to liberate their native land from the Nazi filth with the confidence that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” said Putin, who sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February.
“Today, it is our common duty to prevent the rebirth of Nazism which caused so much suffering to the peoples of different countries,” said Putin. He added he hoped “new generations may be worthy of the memory of their fathers and grandfathers”.
Putin also made multiple references not just to soldiers but also civilians on the “home front… who smashed Nazism at the cost of countless sacrifices”.
“Sadly, today, Nazism is rearing its head once more,” charged Putin who has insisted that Ukraine is in the grip of fascism and a threat to Russia.
“Our sacred duty is to hold back the ideological successors of those who were defeated” in World War II, which Moscow dubs “the great patriotic war,” said Putin, as he urged Russians to “take revenge.”
11:26 AM
Italy ‘will have to pay’ for upkeep of seized luxury yacht
By Alvise Armellini
The Italian state will have to pay for the upkeep of the luxury yacht it impounded on suspicion it might be owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a lawyer for the company doing refitting work on the 450ft-long vessel said on Sunday.
The Scheherazade, one of the world’s largest superyachts, reported to be worth $700 million and featuring spas, swimming yachts and helipads, was seized by Italy’s Guardia di Finanza police late on Friday.
As a result, the Agenzia del Demanio, the Italian state property agency, will be responsible for ordinary maintenance work, custody and management fees, lawyer Tommaso Bertucelli told Il Tirreno newspaper.
“It will be the Agenzia del Demanio who will pay, including for the the crew which remains on board,” said Bertucelli, who represents the Italian Sea Group, owners of the shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Tuscany.
The arrangement is standard practice for assets seized from Russian oligarchs in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
An Italian police official, who asked not to be named, said the state would recoup the costs from the vessel’s owners before returning it to them. No figures are available, but they are likely to be substantial.
11:21 AM
Watch: Dozens of civilians evacuated from Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol
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10:59 AM
Ukraine troops retreat from Popasna, Luhansk governor confirms
Ukrainian troops retreated from the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, the governor of Luhansk region said on Sunday, confirming previous reports that it had been taken.
The head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, had said on Sunday his troops had taken control of most of Popasna.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukraine television that Ukrainian troops had retreated to take up more fortified positions, adding: “Everything was destroyed there.”
Russian forces launched a new offensive push in April along most of Ukraine’s eastern flank, with some of most intense attacks and shelling taking place recently around Popasna in the Luhansk region.
10:40 AM
Jill Biden meets Ukraine refugees in Slovakia
US first lady Jill Biden met with Ukrainian refugees in eastern Slovakia on Sunday, the last day of her tour of Romania and Slovakia to visit US servicemen deployed there and women and children who fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ms Biden spoke to refugee families, volunteers and local authority workers at a refugee centre in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice, one of the main transit points for over 400,000 Ukrainian refugees who have crossed the border to Slovakia since the invasion.
The United Nations says 5.8 million people in total have fled Ukraine.
“When the war started we understood that nowhere in Ukraine is safe,” Viktoria Kutocha, a teacher who fled from the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod with her 7-year old daughter, told Ms Biden.
Ms Biden, the wife of US President Joe Biden, asked Kutocha how she explained the war to children. “It’s very difficult to explain. I only said there is a war and I cannot explain because I do not know myself,” Ms Kutocha said.
“It’s senseless,” Ms Biden responded, before embracing the mother and her child.
10:05 AM
Ukraine morning briefing
Here are four other stories you may have missed from overnight.
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Wounded and medics next for evacuation, says Zelensky: All women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday, after a week-long effort to rescue hundreds of people during an ongoing Russian attack on the plant.
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Nearly 200 heritage sites destroyed or damaged: Russian forces have destroyed or damaged nearly 200 cultural heritage sites, said President Volodymyr Zelensky, as he lamented the recent destruction of the Hryhorii Skovoroda National Museum caused by a missile strike.
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Berlin authorities looking into device disabled at residence housing Russian media: Berlin criminal investigators and prosecutors were on Saturday studying a device found and destroyed at a residential building housing Russian news agency staff in the city’s Steglitz district.
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Britain pledges £1.3bn in military support and aid: The Government will provide a further £1.3 billion in military support and aid to Ukraine, making the pledge ahead of a planned video call today by G7 leaders with Volodymyr Zelensky.
09:40 AM
CIA director says ‘no evidence’ Russia planning to deploy nuclear weapons
The US Central Intelligence Agency has no “practical evidence” that Russia is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine, according to its director.
Bill Burns, who took up the role last year, says that Vladimir Putin is “stewing in a very combustible combination of grievance and aggression,” but has not yet moved to deploy the most severe weapons in Russia’s arsenal.
Speaking at a Financial Times conference, Mr Burns said: “We don’t see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this point of Russian planning for the deployment or even potential use of tactical nuclear weapons.”
However, Mr Burns warned that the second phase of the war – concentrated in Ukraine’s east – is “at least as risky” and perhaps “even riskier” than the first phrase.
09:06 AM
Putin’s forces increasingly ineffective, says MoD
Russian has become “slow to respond to setbacks and unable to alter its approach on the battlefield”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says.
British military intelligence officials said in their latest briefing: “These issues are likely to endure given the relative lack of operational command experience of the officers promoted in place of those killed.”
Read more below.
08:58 AM
German parliament president arrives in Kyiv
The president of the German parliament Baerbel Bas arrived in Kyiv on Sunday to commemorate victims of World War Two and to hold political talks, a parliament official said on Twitter.
Enrico Brissa, Bundestag’s chief of protocol, posted on Twitter pictures of Baerbel arriving on a train and her meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
08:22 AM
Russia says it hit Ukrainian warship near Odesa and downed two bombers
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday it had destroyed a Ukrainian navy ship near Odesa with a missile strike overnight.
The ministry said its missiles had hit a ‘Project 1241’ corvette, a class of Soviet missile corvettes with a NATO reporting name of Tarantul.
Russia’s air defences also shot down two Ukrainian SU-24 bombers and a Mi-24 helicopter over the Snake island in the Black Sea at night, the ministry said in a statement.
It said a total of four Ukrainian warplanes, four helicopters and an assault boat had been destroyed over the past 24 hours. Reuters could not independently verify the report and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
08:05 AM
Britain pledges an extra £1.3 billion in military support to Ukraine
Britain will provide an extra £1.3 billion in military support to Ukraine in another escalation of assistance for Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces trying to repel the Russian invasion.
The funding means that the UK military spending on a conflict is at the highest rate since the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Prime Minister, the US president and leaders from other G7 nations will hold talks with the Ukrainian leader on Sunday to discuss the new round of financial support.
The £1.3 billion package, drawn from the UK’s reserves, includes £300 million of military kit, including anti-battery radar systems to target Russian artillery, GPS-jamming equipment and night vision devices, as promised by Boris Johnson earlier this week.
07:52 AM
Watch: Ukrainian military says drone strikes destroyed Russian warship near Snake Island
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07:48 AM
Russians ‘trying to finish off’ Mariupol’s last defenders to gift Putin
Ukraine’s last soldiers in the port city of Mariupol face a brutal final showdown Sunday with besieging Russian forces, who are hoping to deliver a critical win ahead of the country’s victory day.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is also set to hold talks with G7 leaders via video conference to discuss the situation in his country, which fears a renewed intensity to Moscow’s offensive after the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks.
The complex – the final pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city – has taken on a symbolic value in the war, with the last soldiers holed up in tunnels and bunkers.
Taking full control of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a land bridge between the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and regions run by pro-Russian separatists.
“The enemy is trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal, they are trying to do it before May 9 to give (Russian President) Vladimir Putin a gift,” Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to Ukraine’s president, said.
