May 10, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Ukrainian forces are conducting “effective counterattacks” in the Bakhmut area, according to the commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company, also indicated that Ukrainian forces have been able to advance south of Bakhmut.

“It was the competent conduct of the defensive operation that exhausted the trained forces of the Wagner PMC and forced them to be replaced in certain areas by less trained units of the Russian regular army, which were defeated and retreated,” Syrskyi said.

Prigozhin said earlier that units of Russia's 72nd brigade had retreated from their positions. Other Russian accounts have said Wagner forces have moved to the city itself.

He singled out the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, which was involved in an assault on the positions of the 72nd Brigade, and “inflicted a powerful strike on the enemy in the battle,” Syrskyi said.

Poland summoned Russia's ambassador on Wednesday after a Russian fighter jet intercepted a Polish border patrol plane last week and nearly resulted in a collision, according to Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lukasz Jasina.

A Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet intercepted a Polish Border Police aircraft flying a mission over the Black Sea near the Romanian border on Friday, Romanian authorities said Sunday.

The incident took place on Friday morning, about 60 km (37 miles) east of Romania’s airspace, the Romanian defense ministry said in a statement. 

The Polish aircraft was there as part of a joint mission coordinated by the European Union border patrol system Frontex. The mission, which is set to last until mid-December, focuses on preventing irregular migration, illegal fishing, marine pollution and other cross-border crimes in the Western Black Sea, according to the ministry. 

The Polish Border Guard on Twitter said the Russian SU-35 flew into the area without radio contact and performed “aggressive and dangerous maneuvers.” 

CNN's Tim Lister and Xiaofei Xu contributed reporting.

The Russian offensive is concentrated in four different parts of the Donetsk region, with the "fiercest battles" in the cities of Bakhmut and Mariinka, according to the Ukrainian military's General Staff.

Russia conducted unsuccessful offensive actions in Bakhmut and the Avdiivka and Mariinka areas, it said. Russian forces claimed earlier Wednesday that they had taken the village of Kamianka, north of Avdiivka, where Ukrainian forces have been surrounded on three sides for several months.

Further south — where observers expect a Ukrainian counteroffensive to be focused — Russian forces are conducting “defensive operations in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions,” and had carried out a number of airstrikes, the General Staff said.

Settlements close to the front lines had also been shelled, including 35 airstrikes and four attacks from MLRS [rocket systems] on the positions of Ukrainian troops and settlements of the Kherson region, it added.

The General Staff also claimed that Russians were evacuating civilians in the town of Tokmak in the Zaporizhzhia region to ”terrible living conditions” further south. “Russian occupiers, under the pretext of evacuating civilians, continue to take away looted property from the front-line settlements of the Zaporizhzhia region,” it said, adding that medical institutions in the city of Enerhodar had been looted.

The Ukrainian air force had carried out several strikes, it said, including against a Russian electronic warfare unit. The Ukrainians appear to be trying to disrupt both Russian military communications and electronic warfare capabilities ahead of a counter-offensive.

Fighters from the Wagner private military group have been pulled back to the eastern city of Bakhmut from other areas where they had combat missions, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar. They have been replaced by regular Russian army troops in those areas, she said.

As the situation around Bakhmut appears to become more fluid, Ukraine's military has not lost any positions in the area over the last day, Maliar said on Telegram.

Russian military bloggers have made similar reports, but they have complained that there is little coordination between Wagner fighters and Russian forces. Those same complaints have also been aired by the head of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Earlier Wednesday, Prigozhin said a Russian brigade had abandoned its positions south of Bakhmut, leading to many casualties among his fighters.  

France has opened a war crime investigation following the death of Agence France-Presse journalist Arman Soldin in Ukraine, a statement from the country's antiterrorism prosecution office said on Wednesday. 

The investigation was opened under three "war crimes," according to the translated statement, including: a "voluntary attack on the life and physical or psychological integrity of a person," the "deliberate attack against the civilian population," and the "deliberate attack in the knowledge that it will cause incidental loss of civilian life or injury to the civilian population."

France’s antiterrorism prosecution office has already opened seven preliminary investigations against "persons unknown" for war crimes committed since February 2022 against French nationals in Ukraine, the statement added. "Two of them concern crimes committed against French journalists in the exercise of their profession," it said.

Soldin was killed in a rocket attack on the outskirts of the town of Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, AFP announced on Twitter, citing colleagues who witnessed the incident. Soldin and the reporting team were with Ukrainian soldiers when they came under fire around 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to AFP. The 32-year-old was with four colleagues at the time of the attack, but the other journalists were not injured, the news agency added.

Italy on Wednesday told its nationals still in Ukraine to leave the country "immediately" ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces.

"Rocket attacks on the whole country continue. All compatriots still present are advised to leave Ukraine immediately. Risk of collapse of energy infrastructure,” the Italian embassy in Kyiv said on its website.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has assured a counteroffensive “will happen,” while demurring on any exact start date.

Latvia and Canada will begin to train Ukrainian soldiers in Latvia starting on May 15, a statement from the Canadian government said on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the initiative was developed jointly between Canadian Armed Forces and the Latvian National Armed Forces and will see both forces deliver the training for the Armed Forces of Ukraine through Operation UNIFIER.  

This initiative is in addition to the other ongoing deployments through Operation UNIFIER in support of Ukraine, the statement said. 

Some background: About 800 Canadian Armed Forces members are currently deployed to Latvia, where Canada has served as Framework Nation of the NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group Latvia since 2017, the statement said.

Two Russian servicemen have been sentenced to 2.5 years for refusing to serve in Ukraine, according to the independent human rights monitor OVD-Info.

Both men — from the Kamchatka area in Russia’s Far East — were found guilty under the article on refusal to participate in hostilities, which carries a maximum penalty of up to three years in prison, according to OVD-Info.

One of the soldiers, Alexander Stepanov, was sentenced on April 25, according to the case file. The press service of the court reports that on January 18, Stepanov refused to follow the orders of the commander of the military unit and refused to go to war in Ukraine during mobilization.

The second serviceman is Andrey Mikhailov, who was sentenced on April 27 under similar circumstances. Mikhailov refused to go to fight in Ukraine on January 21 — three days after Stepanov's decision.

The Russian courts have already received more than 500 cases against servicemen who directly refused to carry out orders to be sent to Ukraine or have deserted from the front, according to calculations by the independent media outlet Mediazona in March. But it added that most such cases were hidden from public view: sentences are usually not published and statistics are hidden or deleted.

In more than one-third of known AWOL convictions defendants receive suspended sentences, which means they can be sent to the front again, Mediazona reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Wednesday permitting the conscription for military training of citizens in the reserve, according to a document published on the government’s website.

Military training of Russian citizens in the reserve is an annual event.

The Russian military reserve consists of a special combat army reserve, which may number as many as two million, and a larger group of eligible reservists, estimated by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as almost 25 million people.

Some background: Russia’s move to send hundreds of thousands to fight on the battlefields of Ukraine has generated dissent and protest and prompted many Russians – young men in particular – to flee the country. In April, Putin signed a law that made the country’s conscription program more efficient, more modern – and harder to evade.

CNN's Rob Picheta contributed to this post.