April 22, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

We’ve moved our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine here.

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister thanked allies for their military aid to Ukraine thus far, but also emphasized the country’s need for even more help to defeat Russia. Andriy Melnyk called on Ukraine’s partners to “cross all artificial red lines” and devote 1% of GDP to supply weapons to Ukraine.

“Our allies have to comprehend the scale of this war,” the deputy minister said in a conversation with Ukrainian media Friday. “The support needs to be 10 times bigger right now.”

Here are other headlines you should know:

On the ground: The situation in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Avdiivka and Marinka “remains very difficult,” with Kyiv’s troops holding off constant Russian attacks, Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi said Saturday. Russian forces have “stormed” Ukrainian positions 24 times in the area during the last day, Dmytrashkivskyi said. He claimed the assaults were “not successful” and Moscow’s troops have retreated each time.

Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russia’s regular forces and fighters from the Wagner private military company are also launching nonstop assaults, according to Ukrainian commanders on the front lines.

Expelled diplomats: Russia’s foreign ministry said Saturday it has decided to expel German diplomats from Russia in what it called a tit-for-tat move, after the ministry claimed German authorities decided to further expel Russian diplomatic employees in Germany. More than 20 German diplomats are being expelled, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in an interview on the Zvezda TV Telegram channel Saturday.

Belgorod bomb: Around 3,000 people in the Russian city of Belgorod were evacuated Saturday after a bomb was found near the area where a Russian warplane dropped an explosive late Thursday, Russian state media TASS reported, citing local emergency services. The evacuees cleared out of 17 residential buildings as explosives specialists assessed the ammunition found Saturday, according to TASS. Officials eventually said there was no danger of explosion.

Facing criticism for recent remarks on Russia and Ukraine, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Saturday that he is simply calling for peace and restraint.

Lula was greeted by protesters during a state visit to Portugal this weekend, as he attempts to de-escalate comments that seemed to suggest both nations were at fault for the ongoing war, prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

“I never equated Russia and Ukraine. I know what an invasion is and what territorial integrity is. But now the war has already started and someone needs to talk about peace,” the Brazilian president said in a tweet Saturday. 

Lula’s most recent comments: The Brazilian president added fuel to the fire of older remarks on the invasion when he criticized the US last week for “encouraging” the war in Ukraine.

“The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace; the European Union needs to start talking about peace so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is in the interest of everyone and that war is only interesting, for now, to the two of them,” Lula said to journalists last weekend. 

Lula has since attempted to avert his previous comments by denouncing the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” while doubling down on his call for peace between both nations.  

“While my government condemns the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, we advocate a negotiated political solution to the conflict,” Lula said in a speech following his meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Wednesday. 

Ukraine’s response: The Brazilian president’s approach “puts the victim and the aggressor on the same scale,” Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign minister, said Tuesday.

“Countries that help Ukraine defend itself against deadly aggression, are accused of encouraging war, does not correspond to the real state of affairs,” the spokesperson wrote on Facebook.

Ukraine to welcome Brazilian presidential official: Ukraine is also set to host Brazil’s chief presidential adviser as both nations continue to have diplomatic talks, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriy Melnyk tweeted Saturday.  

Marcio Macedo, minister of the general secretariat of the Republic of Brazil, confirmed on Twitter that the adviser, Celso Amorim, is going to Ukraine.

“At the request of President Lula, Brazil is committed to contributing to the promotion of dialogue and peace, and the end of this conflict,” Macedo said in another tweet.

CNN’s Mariya Knight contributed to this post.

Ukraine needs to receive significantly more military support than allies have provided so far in order “to finish Russian aggression this year,” Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk said.

“We are thankful to our allies for their military help. But it is not enough. Ukraine needs 10 times more to finish Russian aggression this year,” Melnyk tweeted. 

He called on Ukraine’s partners to “cross all artificial red lines” and devote 1% of GDP to supply weapons to Ukraine. 

“Our allies have to comprehend the scale of this war,” the deputy minister said in a conversation with Ukrainian media Friday. 

Melnyk cited US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comment that an international coalition has so far provided Ukraine with $55 billion worth of support.

“That seems like a large number. But in contrast with the Second World War, where, unfortunately, more and more parallels can be drawn, over $50 billion worth of help was supplied under US lend-lease alone in the 1940s,” the Ukrainian official said. “The equivalent today would be around $700-800 billion.”

What Ukraine has received from allies: Modern battle tanks are among the key contributions provided to Ukraine by Western allies, with Ukrainian forces set to begin training on how to operate Abrams tanks next month.

The coalition’s $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine has included “more than 230 tanks and more than 1,550 armored vehicles and other equipment and munitions,” according to Austin.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Saturday it has decided to expel German diplomats from Russia in what it called a tit-for-tat move, after the ministry claimed German authorities decided to further expel Russian diplomatic employees in Germany. 

More than 20 German diplomats are being expelled, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in an interview on the Zvezda TV Telegram channel Saturday.

Sources from the German Federal Foreign Office told CNN that in recent weeks they had been “in contact with the Russian side on the presence of our respective missions abroad, with the aim of reducing the Russian intelligence presence in Germany.”

“Today’s departure of a certain number of Russian embassy staff is related to this,” the German foreign ministry sources added. 

The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that it would be significantly limiting the maximum number of employees of German diplomatic missions in Russia “as a reaction to Berlin’s hostile actions.” 

The German ambassador to Russia was notified of the decision on April 5, according to the Russian foreign ministry statement. 

In April 2022, Germany expelled “a significant number” of Russian officials, and Russia expelled 40 German diplomats later that month.

A photograph of an injured pregnant woman being carried from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has won the World Press Photo of the Year award.

The photo – taken by Evgeniy Maloletka for the Associated Press on March 9, 2022 – was widely reported around the world, including by CNN, and became emblematic of Russia’s aggression against its neighbor.

The woman in the image – named by World Press Photo as Iryna Kalinina – and her baby both died, a surgeon who treated her confirmed days after the photograph was taken.

Maloletka is a war photographer, journalist and filmmaker from Berdiansk, Ukraine, according to the World Press Photo Contest.

Members of the jury said the image “captures the absurdity and horror of war” and “rises as a deeply painful historical fact.”

“By giving the image a platform, the jury hopes that the world will stop and acknowledge the intolerable realities of this war and consider the future of Ukraine,” the jury added.

Global jury chair Brent Lewis, a New York Times photo editor and co-founder of Diversify Photo, said:

“The haunting image from the siege of Mariupol was unanimously chosen as the winner of the World Press Photo of the Year. With the vote being decided on the first anniversary of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the jury mentioned the power of the image and the story behind it, as well as the atrocities it shows.”

The attack on the key southeastern Ukrainian city came after it had been besieged by Russian forces, with trapped residents forced to shelter underground, melt snow for water and scavenge for food.

CNN’s Tim Lister and Olga Voitovych contributed reporting to this post.

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Residents remain sheltered underground in the southeast Ukrainian city of Orikhiv, facing a constant Russian onslaught that makes it too dangerous to return to the surface.

CNN’s chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh and his team narrowly escaped a missile strike while reporting in the area this week.

The crew was leaving Orikhiv after receiving a warning of incoming strikes. As they drove, a missile landed between the armored car carrying Paton Walsh and a trailing vehicle with his producer.

After a few tense moments, the two teams were able to communicate via radio and left the area safely.

Escape from Russia’s onslaught isn’t a practical reality for many Ukrainians, however. Paton Walsh and his team visited an underground shelter where residents had access to the only electricity and running water in town.

Fighting could only intensify near Orikhiv if Ukraine launches an expected counteroffensive this spring. It’s a key territory for potentially cutting off Crimea — which Russia has claimed as annexed since 2014 — from the rest of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly vowed to take back Crimea from Russian rule.

Russia’s regular forces and fighters from the Wagner private military company are launching nonstop assaults on the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Ukrainian commanders on the front lines.

The situation there “remains extremely tense,” Yurii Fedorenko, the commander of a company in Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, told Ukrainian television.

“The fighting is extremely difficult,” Fedorenko said. “The enemy is using all available attack and assault potential, both in terms of equipment and manpower.”

Russian paratroopers and special forces have joined the assault, and they’ve had some tactical success, according to the commander. Russia uses onslaughts from aircraft to “literally destroy” Ukrainian positions, then moves forward to fill up the vacuum, Fedorenko said.

But, the commander continued, Kyiv’s troops are conducting “active defense” and retaking some positions, “both on the outskirts of the town and in the town itself, pushing the enemy away from the communication routes and driving them out of their positions.”

Some positions change hands back and forth through the course of battle.

Another officer, Lt. Roman Konon, said Russian forces are pushing ahead with unprecedented force, destroying everything in their path. Each side is suffering casualties, Konon said.

Chipping away at Russia’s forces: Fedorenko endorsed the grinding, monthslong efforts to defend Bakhmut, claiming “the enemy suffers much greater losses during the assault than the Ukrainian forces.”

And if Ukraine allowed Russia to achieve its objectives in Bakhmut, the commander said it would free up “an extremely large number of forces and means, which are quickly redeployed to other areas of priority and importance to the enemy.”

That could include the eastern cities of Marinka or Lyman.

As long as Russia is tied up fighting in Bakhmut, Ukraine is able to “destroy this strike and assault potential of the enemy,” Fedorenko said.

“Sooner or later, we will have to regain every centimeter, every meter of Bakhmut — which means everything that we can hold here and now, needs to be held now,” the commander said.

This is the current map of control:

Around 3,000 people in the Russian city of Belgorod were evacuated Saturday after a bomb was found near the area where a Russian warplane dropped an explosive late Thursday, Russian state media TASS reported, citing local emergency services.

The evacuees cleared out of 17 residential buildings as explosives specialists assessed the ammunition found Saturday, according to TASS. Officials eventually said there was no danger of explosion.

Belgorod’s regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel that the bomb has been removed from the area and people are gradually returning to their apartments.

The explosion on Thursday left a crater about 20 meters (65 feet) across, blowing a car onto a roof and damaging buildings, in what state media called an “accidental” or “emergency” release of air ordnance by a Russian fighter jet.

Belgorod is 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) north of the border with Ukraine. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in New York on Monday, Russian state media TASS reports, citing Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya. 

Almost all members of Lavrov’s delegation to the UN Security Council were issued visas to attend, Nebenzya told state television Russia 24, TASS reported Thursday. He said visas had not yet been issued to journalists. 

Earlier this week, Nebenzya said Lavrov is set to discuss the Black Sea grain deal with Guterres during his visit to New York.

Russia took over the presidency of the Security Council on April 1, in what Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called “the world’s worst April Fool’s joke.”

The situation in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Avdiivka and Marinka “remains very difficult,” with Kyiv’s troops holding off constant Russian attacks, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said Saturday.

“Shelling there does not stop around the clock,” the official, Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, said on Ukrainian national TV. “Thanks to the good work of our artillery, none of the enemy’s attacks were successful.”

Russian forces have “stormed” Ukrainian positions 24 times in the area during the last day, Dmytrashkivskyi said. He claimed the assaults were “not successful” and Moscow’s troops have retreated each time.

Russia has launched fewer attacks lately on a third town, Vuhledar, which is located further southwest of Marinka, according to the spokesperson.

Some background: Avdiivka, which is home to a large smelting plant, has been battered by heavy fighting for months. The town is largely destroyed, though about 1,800 civilians still remain in the town despite efforts to persuade them to leave, according to local officials.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Avdiivka during a Tuesday tour of the frontline region.

The town is surrounded by Russian troops from three sides, but Ukrainian forces still control the routes to the west.

The Ukrainian government is demanding the return of every Ukrainian captured by Russia, a top military official said Saturday.

“If there is at least a small hope that this person is alive, we will demand from (Russia) that this person returns home. The work will not stop until we return everyone, the living and the dead,” said Bohdan Okhrimenko, an official from the Coordination Headquarters on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Speaking at an event in Kyiv, Okhrimenko said some 2,230 Ukrainians have been brought home from Russian captivity since the beginning of its full-scale invasion.

Around 20% of those people had been reported missing, according to Okhrimenko. He said there had been “no confirmation, no evidence” that these people were in captivity, so they were designated missing until they were found.

Oleh Kotenko, the Ukrainian commissioner for missing persons, said Saturday:

The commissioner’s office is tasked with searching for people, analyzing information and communicating with relatives of those who are missing, Kotenko said. The office includes a call center as well as several on-the-ground teams that are searching through recently liberated areas.

As Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds into a second year, some Ukrainians who fled the fighting and ended up in far-flung parts of Russia are still unsure if they will ever be able to return home — and whether they would be welcome when they get there.

In the absence of a reliable evacuation corridor to Ukrainian-held territory, going to Russia was the only option for many people.

Natalia was one of them. She fled the fighting in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Mariupol and crossed into Russia with her family.

From there, she and many other Ukrainians were encouraged by Russian authorities to take a 4,000-mile train journey east to the very edge of Siberia, to a coastal town called Nakhodka on the Sea of Japan, a stone’s throw from North Korea. It’s closer to Alaska than to the front lines.

Ukraine describes these refugees as forcibly deported, though Natalia says no one forced her to leave. “It was our decision,” she told CNN by phone from Russia’s far east, where she has resettled since arriving last spring.

Over the course of many months, CNN has managed to reach a handful of Ukrainians like Natalia. Read their story here.

Ukrainian military search teams have been tasked with a harrowing assignment: surveying the battlefield for fallen soldiers.

In the almost 14 months since the war began, the teams have recovered just under 500 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers, a military commander said on Saturday. 

Col. Volodymyr Liamzin, who heads the central Central Department of Civil-Military Cooperation of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said his teams surveyed almost 600 locations in search for missing troops.

Liamzin said the search and recovery operation involves a complex set of tasks and includes sappers who survey the ground for mines and other explosives. He stressed it was not safe for civilians to venture into areas near the frontlines.

“Unfortunately, there are cases of explosions and injuries. So it makes sense only for military groups to work on the contact line,” he said. 

The team has recovered about 500 bodies of Russian soldiers since the beginning of the war, Liamzin said. The Ukrainian military is arranging the “the return of the occupiers’ bodies to representatives of the Russian Federation,” according to the commander.

The front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine have moved several times over the past months, so it is not unusual for the Ukrainian search teams to come across dead Russians.

CNN spent time with Liamzin’s team in November. Watch here:

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Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group, claimed the son of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has served as a gunner with the fighting force.

“Dmitry Sergeevich Peskov, who at one time had the reputation of being a complete liberal, asked me to take his son — who lived part of his life in America, if I’m not mistaken, or in England — came to me and said: ‘Take him as a simple artilleryman,’” Prigozhin claimed in a video interview with Alexander Simonov, RIA FAN military correspondent. 

“By the way, he worked absolutely fine, as a simple gunner knee-deep in mud and s*** … Few people know about it,” the mercenary leader added.

Prigozhin did not name the gunner, but Russian media has reported Prigozhin to be talking about Nikolai Peskov. Prigozhin also did not specify what period of time he was talking about, or whether Peskov’s son had served for Wagner in Ukraine.

The outspoken Wagner boss has a track record of making unsubstantiated claims, often employing sarcasm, and CNN is unable to verify his claim.

CNN has reached out to Dmitry Peskov for comment but is yet to receive a response.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated who Prigozhin says asked him to recruit Peskov’s son. It was Peskov himself, according to the Wagner head.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large has warned of an “uncontrollable” arms race and emphasized the need for Russia to build up its tactical missile potential.

“In essence, we are witnessing a missile arms race with consequences that are difficult to predict. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested in improving rocket technology. This process becomes uncontrollable,” Grigory Mashkov wrote in the Russian Foreign Ministry magazine International Affairs.

Mashkov also wrote “there is an obvious need for Russia to build up its tactical missile potential, to further increase the effectiveness of its use and to stockpile missile weapons in advance to effectively respond to any challenges to national security, including in Kaliningrad, where NATO set out to take Russian territory under the guns of American MLRS [multiple launch rocket systems].” 

The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is an isolated but strategically significant territory on the Baltic coast.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, experts have feared that Kaliningrad could become a flashpoint in tensions between Moscow and Europe. It is Russia’s westernmost territory, and the only part of the country surrounded by EU states; Lithuania stands between it and Belarus, a Russian ally nation, while Poland borders it to the south.

In the article, Mashkov also said once the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty expires in 2026 there could be a “vacuum” in strategic stability.

More on the treaty: Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February he was suspending his country’s participation in the treaty with the United States, imperiling the last remaining pact that regulates the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.

The treaty puts limits on the number of deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons that both the US and Russia can have. It was last extended in early 2021 for five years, meaning the two sides would soon need to begin negotiating on another arms control agreement.

International Atomic Energy Agency experts at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have heard shelling nearly every day over the past week, the agency said in an update on Friday. 

At one point, they were told to shelter at the site because of the potential dangers, according to an update from IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.

“I saw clear indications of military preparations in the area when I visited the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant just over three weeks ago. Since then, our experts at the site have frequently reported about hearing detonations, at times suggesting intense shelling not far from the site. I’m deeply concerned about the situation at the plant,” Grossi said.

The plant still relies on one functioning power line “for the external electricity it needs for reactors cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions,” Grossi added. Prior to the war, the plant had four such power lines.

In addition, due to the “significant reduction” of staff at the site, the plant “currently does not have a systematic maintenance and in-service inspection schedule,” Grossi said.

Some background: Russian forces continue to control the plant, which is the largest nuclear power station in Europe and sits in a part of the Zaporizhzhia region that Russia occupied after its invasion of Ukraine last February. The plant has frequently been disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid due to intense Russian shelling in the area, raising fears across Europe of a nuclear accident.

The IAEA announced in January that it would establish a continuous presence of nuclear safety and security experts at all of Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities, significantly stepping up its efforts to help prevent a nuclear accident during the current military conflict.

This week, CNN viewed a letter dated from March that the US Department of Energy sent to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom, warning Russia not to touch sensitive nuclear technology the US has at the plant.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a warning Friday about NATO’s “dangerous” statements regarding Ukraine joining the alliance. 

It comes after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Kyiv on Thursday and said that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO.”

He later said all NATO members have agreed Ukraine should be a member, but did not give a definitive date for when this would happen.

Russia opposes further expansion of the security bloc and pushed back against Stoltenberg’s statements.

“NATO sets itself the goal of ‘defeating’ Russia in Ukraine, and to motivate Kyiv, it promises that after the end of the conflict, the country can be accepted into the alliance,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

“Such statements are short-sighted and downright dangerous. This can lead to the final collapse of the European security system,” Zakharova said.