June 8, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukraine could pull back its military “to more fortified positions” in Severodonetsk, a regional leader suggested on Wednesday, while insisting that Ukraine would not “give up” the key city.

“Nobody is going to give up the city, even if our military will have to pull back to more fortified positions, as the city is constantly being shelled. Still, it wouldn't mean the city is given up," he added.

A leader in the Russian-allied so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, Rodion Miroshnik, said Wednesday that Ukraine has control “over only a small part” over the Azot chemical factory in Severodonetsk. Hayday said last week that around 800 civilians are sheltering under that facility.

“Ukrainian militants are firing indiscriminately at the quarters near the enterprise,” Miroshnik said on Telegram. “Snipers are working. The circle of allied troops around the remaining group narrows.”

Miroshnik also claimed that Severodonetsk airport had “already been cleared of Ukrainian formations.”

“The shelling that was carried out from there has stopped. The remaining militants [referring to Ukrainian forces] are hiding in forest plantations around the airport. Allied forces are searching for them and clearing," he added.

Hayday, the Ukrainian official, said that Russia has devoted huge resources to its attempt to cut the main road that links Severodonetsk and neighboring Lysychansk to Bakhmut, further west.

He said that Ukraine no longer uses that road, as anyone driving there has a “90% chance” of being shelled. “We have other routes to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate people,” he said.

Ukraine is expecting Russia’s offensive on Lysychansk and Severodonetsk to “increase multiple times,” he said. “We are expecting fierce battles.”

Nonetheless, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) said Wednesday morning that: “Our soldiers are successfully holding back the assault in the city of Severodonetsk, and hostilities continue.”

“Lysychansk is being shelled very hard,” Hayday said Tuesday evening. “They shoot purposefully at humanitarian headquarters, at schools [where people are sheltering]. Destroy the entire infrastructure completely.”

“Yes, it is very difficult to keep Severodonetsk,” he conceded. “Yes, they just destroy the city completely. But they do not control the city.”

He said that “fierce battles” also continue to rage in towns elsewhere in the Luhansk region, such as Zolote to the south.

“Settlements are shelled, simply completely erased from the face of the earth,” Hayday said. “But the enemy cannot pass them yet.”

More than 1,000 Ukrainian servicemen who recently surrendered in Mariupol will be transported to Russia for “investigation,” Russian state-run news agency TASS reported Wednesday, citing a source in law enforcement. 

Russia also plans to transport a number of other Ukrainian prisoners of war to Russian territory, the source added. 

Some context: In late May, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that roughly 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered after weeks of fighting in Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant. 

Shortly after, the Russian Investigative Committee — which operates as the Kremlin’s main investigating authority — said it would interrogate the Ukrainian “surrendered militants” evacuated from Azovstal. 

Ukrainian authorities are yet to publicly respond to the TASS report. 

The World Bank has approved $1.49 billion of additional financing for Ukraine, the institution said in a statement Tuesday. 

It's part of a support package worth more than $4 billion that will help pay the wages of government and social workers. 

The latest round of funding is supported by financing guarantees from Britain, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Latvia, the statement said.

Nearly $2 billion of the total funds pledged have already been paid to Ukraine. 

In late April, Ukraine’s Finance Ministry estimated it would cost $5 billion a month in the near-term to keep the country’s economy functioning.

The next winter will be the "most difficult" in the more than three decades since Ukraine gained independence, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Tuesday, as Russia's invasion brings the threat of an energy crisis.

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A "Book of Torturers" documenting "war criminals and criminals from the Russian army" will be launched in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during his nightly address on Tuesday.

"These are specific facts about specific people who are guilty of specific violent crimes against Ukrainians," he said.

The creation of this system has been underway for some time, Zelensky added.

Some context: Last month, a 21-year-old Russian soldier was sentenced to life in prison for killing an unarmed man in Ukraine's first war crimes trial since Russia's invasion began.

The trial came amid mounting evidence of alleged Russian war crimes as Ukrainians reclaimed areas previously occupied by invading troops.

In April, Ukraine's prosecutor general said her office was investigating nearly 6,000 cases of alleged Russian war crimes, with "more and more" proceedings opening every day.

Russia has denied allegations of war crimes and claims its forces do not target civilians. But CNN journalists on the ground in Ukraine have seen firsthand evidence of atrocities at multiple locations across the country.

As of Tuesday, the bodies of 210 Ukrainian soldiers have been repatriated by Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense Main Intelligence Directorate. 

It said most of the bodies returned to Ukraine were those of the “heroic defenders of Azovstal," so Ukrainian soldiers at the massive Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol, the last bastion of Ukraine’s defense in that southern port city, before it fell to Russian and Russian-backed forces.

The Coordination Staff on behalf of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is working to get the bodies of all the deceased returned, as well as some 2,500 POWs believed held in the custody of Russian or Russian-backed forces.

The statement adds that work continues to bring home “all captured Ukrainian defenders."

CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman reported this week on workers at Kyiv’s central morgue examining the contents of scores of body bags containing the remains of those Ukrainian soldiers killed in the two-month siege of Mariupol. 

Ukraine and Russia have conducted an exchange of bodies as part of the agreement that ended that siege. 

Watch:

Military strikes have hit at least two hospitals in the Ukrainian cities of Severodonetsk and Rubizhne, new satellite images taken on Monday by Maxar Technologies show. 

Significant portions of Severodonetsk have been destroyed by fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces. The Ukrainians have maintained their defensive positions in the city, so far thwarting attempts by the Russians to take the city.

Even hospitals and their surrounding areas have not been spared by military strikes. In central Severodonetsk, a number of buildings in a hospital complex — a large red cross is seen painted on the roof — have been destroyed.

In southern Rubizhne, another hospital has been destroyed. The buildings surrounding it, including a pharmaceutical company, have also been destroyed.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it has created conditions for two maritime humanitarian corridors to allow for the safe movement of ships in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, according to a statement posted to Telegram on Monday.

The statement comes amid international condemnation over Russia's months-long blockade of key ports.

Some context: Global leaders have condemned a months-long blockade by Russian forces at key ports in Ukraine — including Mariupol on the Sea of Azov and Odesa on the Black Sea — which has left more than 20 million tons of grain stuck inside the country. The Ukrainian Navy said Monday that approximately 30 Russian ships and submarines continued the blockade of civilian shipping in the Black Sea.

According to the Russian statement, the maritime humanitarian corridor in the Sea of Azov will operate around the clock to allow ships to exit the port of Mariupol,

Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said a maritime humanitarian corridor will operate during working hours "to leave the ports of Kherson, Mykolaiv, Chornomorsk, Ochakiv, Odesa, and Yuzhne in the southwestern direction from the territorial sea of Ukraine."

The ministry also accused Ukrainian authorities of not taking steps to solve the issue of blocked ships.  

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov restated that Ukraine must de-mine the coastal waters for grain ships to pass and ensured Russia will facilitate their passage and won't use the de-mined sea corridors to attack Ukraine. 

Ukraine has also accused the Russians of placing mines in the Black Sea.

CNN’s Anna Chernova contributed reporting to this post.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen conceded on Tuesday that inflation is at “unacceptable levels,” but also sought to underscore it is not a problem exclusive to the United States.

“Putin’s war in Ukraine is having impacts on energy and food prices globally,” Yellen told lawmakers. “We are not the only country experiencing inflation. You can see that in virtually every developed country around the world.” 

Speaking during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday, Yellen pointed to the Biden administration’s record-setting release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 

“Energy and gasoline prices, while very high, they would be higher without that,” Yellen said of the emergency oil release. 

She also emphasized that the US is not immune to global energy shocks. 

She added it is critical that the US becomes “more dependent on the wind and the sun that are not subject to geopolitical influences.”