April 19, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Ukraine news here or read through the updates below.

The Ukrainian military says its units are standing firm in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut and throughout the Donetsk region. Russia launched a new round of strikes in eastern part of the country Wednesday and Ukraine reported shooting down multiple attack drones.

As the heavy fighting continues, Ukrainian officials have welcomed the arrival of more foreign weaponry, and report that Russian losses are several times higher than Ukrainian ones.

Catch up on the latest developments in the war:

Ukraine says it shot down 10 of the 11 “Shahed” drones launched by Russian forces on Wednesday night, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Telegram. 

No casualties were reported by the Air Force Command. 

“Shahed” drones are manufactured in Iran and have been frequently deployed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Air Force announced Tuesday that Russian forces launched an overnight attack on the city of Odesa using the Iranian-made drones. “Shahed” drones were also brought down over Dnipro city, according to Andriy Yermak, the head of the president’s office.

Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested on espionage charges, stands inside a defendant's cage before a hearing to consider an appeal for his arrest at the Moscow City Court in Moscow on Tuesday, April 18, 2023.

The lawyer for jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich says he is doing well but is only able to receive letters in Russian due to the prison rules.

Tatiana Nozhkina, who was retained by the Wall Street Journal to represent Gershkovich, said all of his letters are “censored,” but he has sent and received letters from family and friends. 

Nozhkina told the Russian language channel Current Time TV that she was “constantly in touch with Evan’s mother, we support her as much as we can, we send her regards, as Evan is very worried about her state of health.”

She said she could not divulge the specifics of the criminal case as it has to do with state secrets, but reaffirmed that Gershkovich rejects the accusation.

Nozhkina said she and her colleague Maria Korchagina, who also represents Gershkovich, visited the journalist in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center with permission from investigators. The lawyers have the opportunity to visit Gershkovich in Lefortovo about once every three weeks, she said.

Gershkovich was in quarantine when he was first brought to Lefortovo but has since been placed in a cell with another inmate.

She added that Gershkovich reads and writes notes that he plans to turn into a novel or work. He also has a TV in his cell and is granted one hour of walking per day which he uses to exercise.

Nozhkina declined to comment on suggestions by some Russian officials that discussions about any prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich could only take place once a verdict was reached.

“How soon the verdict will take place will also depend more on the investigating authorities and, in the future, on the court,” she added.

The bright flashes near the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday night may have been caused by a NASA space satellite falling to Earth, according to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.

CNN is reaching out to NASA for comment. The agency previously reported a defunct satellite that observed solar flares would fall to earth late Wednesday, US Eastern Time.

The retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft, was launched in 2002 and was decommissioned in 2018.

Air raid alerts went into force Wednesday night across several parts of Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.

The administration said on Telegram that an “air target was detected in the sky” and that “air defense forces are ready.”

A series of flashes and an apparent explosion in the air some distance from the capital can be seen in social media video. Air raid alerts were triggered for Kyiv city and the region, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

The head of the President’s office, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram that Iranian-made Shahed drones had been brought down over Dnipro city.

US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC on Wednesday.

The United States government has gained “vitally important” intelligence about the war in Ukraine from a surveillance law that allows the government to collect foreign communications without a warrant, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday.

The law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enables the US government to obtain intelligence by targeting non-Americans overseas who are using US-based communications services.

Monaco’s comments come amid an ongoing battle over whether to reauthorize the law, which is set to sunset at the end of 2023. The law has previously garnered bipartisan backing, although that support has frayed over the past several years over scrutiny for alleged misuse.

The searches are governed by a set of internal rules and procedures designed to protect Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, but critics say loopholes allow the program to look through the emails and other communications of American citizens — as opposed to foreign adversaries — without proper justification. 

Reauthorization imperative: However, Monaco said losing Section 702 would hamper the department’s efforts to hold Russia accountable because the information the department has uncovered from the law “has helped us as a country and as a national security community galvanize accountability efforts regarding Ukraine by allowing us to confidently and accurately speak with the international community about Russian atrocities.”

Monaco also raised concerns that there are other areas where the Justice Department lacks the resources or the authority to take stronger action against Russia.

She emphasized that while the department has “active investigations” into crimes perpetrated in the war and those cases “are moving just as fast as we can possibly move them,” the department is hoping to work with Congress to give federal prosecutors criminal jurisdiction over “crimes against humanity” and “expanding the department’s authority to prosecute acts of torture committed against US nationals abroad.”

Monaco also told the Judiciary Committee that the US government is “leaving money on the table” to support Ukraine that the Justice Department has seized from Russian oligarchs.

According to Monaco, the department has seized more than half a billion dollars in assets from Russian oligarchs and people who support the Russian government and have evaded US sanctions. But the department is only able to seize and transfer Russian assets that came from certain types of sanctions evasion, Monaco said.

That means “millions” of dollars can’t be transferred to the Ukrainian government for humanitarian efforts like repairing damage from the war, she said.

“We are leaving money on the table if we don’t expand our ability to use the forfeited access that we gain from enforcement of our export control violations,” Monaco said, adding that the DOJ wants “Congress to give us that authority so we can make the oligarchs pay for rebuilding Ukraine.”

Ukrainian soldiers fire towards Russian positions near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on April 18.

The Ukrainian military says its units are standing firm in the eastern city of Bakhmut and elsewhere in the Donetsk region amid heavy fighting.

Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has welcomed the arrival of more foreign weaponry – amid growing speculation about when and where Ukraine might launch a counter-offensive.

Besides Bakhmut, fighting is heaviest along the Donetsk front in Lyman, Avdiivka and Mariinka, according to the Ukrainian military’s General Staff.

In the Lyman sector, to the northeast of Bakhmut, the enemy “conducted unsuccessful offensives near the southern outskirts of Kreminna,” the Ukranian military said. And the Russians, it claimed, made no progress in the Avdiivka area, which President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Tuesday.

“In the Mariinka sector, our defenders repelled numerous enemy attacks in the areas of Mariinka and Pobieda,” the Ukrainian military said.

Further south in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson sectors, it reported Russian shelling of more than 30 settlements. But unlike in Donetsk, Russian forces in these areas are in defensive mode.

The Ukrainian military asserted that Russian occupation “authorities” continue to set up military hospitals behind the front lines – the latest being in the Luhansk village of Kabychivka.

More US, French and German hardware arrives

While Ukrainian units hold their ground, Ukraine continues to receive Western equipment for both offensive and defensive units, including French armored vehicles (AMX-10 RC) and US Patriot missile defense systems.

Defense Minister Reznikov said that “building a multi-level air and missile defense system as soon as possible is our priority. This is to protect peaceful cities, critical infrastructure, and our people in the rear and at the front. Patriot systems create a capability that did not exist before — to defeat ballistic targets.”

Recently leaked US military documents indicate the Ukrainians were rapidly depleting or had exhausted some categories of anti-air munitions.

Reznikov also welcomed another IRIS-T from Germany – a highly effective system for combatting cruise missiles. 

But, he said, “We need more platforms of various levels and ammunition for them. We need more man-portable air defense systems.”

Reznikov’s deputy — Oleksandr Pavliuk — later confirmed that “Patriot air defense systems from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany arrived to Ukraine.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a press conference on April 18.

The United States is pledging an additional $325 million security assistance package to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday.

The aid will help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, he said.

“Russia could end its war today. Until Russia does, the United States and our allies and partners will stand united with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the statement said.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin testifies before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington, DC, on April 19.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told US lawmakers Wednesday that his office has registered around 80,000 incidents of potential war crimes, and to date has convicted 31 Russians for war crimes in Ukrainian courts.

Kostin told lawmakers in the House Foreign Affairs Committee that his office has also identified 310 potential perpetrators of the crimes, and has “finished cases against 152 potential war criminals.”

Kostin urged the international community to share intelligence information to help aid his office’s work in convicting alleged war criminals, noting that they have identified thousands more but they do not have complete evidence to convict those alleged criminals.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on April 19.

The Biden administration is set to announce additional security assistance for Ukraine, marking the 36th drawdown of aid amid Russia’s ongoing war. 

The package is expected to be announced by the Pentagon and the State Department on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

The security assistance is “part of our ongoing efforts to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion,” Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre did not say how much the assistance will cost.

A 16-year-old Ukrainian was forcibly sent to Russia “for vacation” and was placed with a family who attempted to indoctrinate him with pro-Russian propaganda, a representative for the teen told the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.

Last month, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another top Russian official, Maria Lvova-Belova, for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the representative told lawmakers that 16-year-old Roman, who is an orphan, left his school after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and walked 60 kilometers (about 37 miles), all while allegedly being threatened by Russian soldiers along the way. After he reached his destination — a village in Donetsk — Russians occupied that village as well, and Roman was put in a local hospital with other children, the representative said.

The representative said he was then sent to another hospital in Donetsk, issued a new birth certificate on behalf of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, and then was sent to Russia “for a vacation.” Once there, Roman and other Ukrainian children were visited by Lvova-Belova, who told them they would be adopted, which the children protested. They were instead sent to a boarding school, the representative said.

His communication with his peers was restricted, his movements were tracked through his cell phone, and they “forced him to say that he liked his new family and his new life,” she said. 

“He was forced to obtain a passport of the Russian Federation, but then immediately they took it away from him, saying that they will process papers for adoption,” she said.

Roman was able to make his way back to Ukraine with the help of volunteers from the country, the representative said.

More background: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said there have been 16,000 forced deportations of Ukrainian children, but that number could be higher.

The Russian government doesn’t deny taking Ukrainian children and has made their adoption by Russian families a centerpiece of propaganda. According to Lvova-Belova’s office, Ukrainian children have been sent to live in institutions and with foster families in 19 different Russian regions.

Moscow battered parts of eastern Ukraine with a fresh round of strikes on Wednesday, in a region that has been the site of some of the most intense fighting since the war began.

Catch up on the latest developments in the war:

Lyubov speaks to US House of Representatives lawmakers on Wednesday, April 19.

A Ukrainian woman from Kherson recounted to US House of Representatives lawmakers on Wednesday how she was beaten at the hands of Russian forces earlier this year. 

Lyubov, 57, whose last name was withheld and face was not shown, worked as an accountant and lived under Russian occupation for more than a year. 

“In January of this year, they came for me,” she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee via a translator. Lyubov said that Russian soldiers forced their way into her house, claiming they were looking for weapons, and confiscated “a map of Ukraine, the flag of Ukraine, souvenir magnets with Ukraine images, and a token with blue and yellow ribbon symbolizing victims of World War II.”

“Those were their evidence against me,” she said.

She was taken to what she called a “torture chamber” and held for five days, where she was beaten, forced to undress, cut with a knife, and threatened with rape and murder.

She said she saw other people being tortured, “taken out with black plastic bags on their heads.”

“I worry so much for them. I would love to find them one day but I am not sure if they’re still alive,” she said.

Lyubov said the soldiers let her go, “but they said they will come back.”

When she returned to her house, it had been looted, and they had taken away medals that belonged to her father.

She was able to flee Kherson and made her way to the United States to be with her daughter, but she hopes be able to return to Ukraine.

Documenting atrocities: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights catalogued thousands of cases of civilian casualties along with cases of torture, rape and arbitrary detention in the Ukraine conflict over six months, from August 2022 to January 2023, calling the situation “dire.”

State of control: Russia currently occupies areas of the southern Kherson region, while Moscow’s troops were pushed out of the city of Kherson and the western part of the region in November 2022.

A pedestrian crosses a street in the city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhia region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on November 24.

As speculation intensifies about where and when a Ukrainian counteroffensive may take place, the mayor of one town in occupied Zaporizhzhia has warned residents to be aware of tougher scrutiny by Russian forces.

The town is adjacent to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power plant (ZNPP). Orlov himself is not in Enerhodar, and his remarks cannot be verified. 

Russian forces check phones for “Ukrainian channels, patriotic photos,” call the Ukrainian currency hryvnia a “foreign currency” and suspect everyone of “illegal currency transactions,” Orlov added.

Additionally, Ukrainian officials and Western analysts have said that Russian forces have strengthened their defenses in the Zaporizhzhia region with extensive use of minefields.

Last week, a Russian mine exploded near the engine room of a reactor at ZNPP, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company Energoatom. Orlov also claimed that the minefields are also near Enerhodar.

Over the weekend Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, a military spokesman in the east, said the Russians were “trying to take children out from the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia region.”

According to posts on an unofficial Enerhodar telegram group in recent days, the evacuation of children has already begun.

One post said: “Information about forcible evacuation is being spread in local schools and kindergartens in Enerhodar. The evacuations has already begun and will last until April 20. They plan to take children to Crimea using ZNPP buses, thus allegedly authorising the theft of ZNPP vehicles used for the staff transfer to work.”

CNN is unable to verify the claim.

The Russian-backed local authorities in Zaporizhzhia denied that there are plans to organize the evacuation of children from the town of Enerhodar.

In a Telegram post on Wednesday, authorities said the town’s civil military administration had reported “false information about the evacuation of children.”

The Russian-backed local government was responding to the circulation on social media of a poster advising that children in Enerhodar would be evacuated.

It said the text referred to a Department of Education and Youth, which does not exist.

US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Justice Department has an unwavering commitment to prosecuting Russian war crimes during her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning. 

“The facts are clear: Russia has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine,” Monaco said in her opening remarks. 

Monaco thanked the Senate Judiciary Committee for supporting the Biden administration’s response to the war in Ukraine on a bipartisan basis, adding that the Justice Department could work with the committee on other matters, such as “conferring federal criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes against humanity, increasing the range of seized assets we can transfer for the rebuilding of Ukraine, and expanding the department’s authority to prosecute acts of torture committed against US nationals abroad.”

Monaco’s testimony comes amid several days of focus from the Justice Department on their efforts to hold Russia accountable for crimes in Ukraine. 

Earlier this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland hosted Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin and announced that the US Justice Department would detail a prosecutor to the Hague to assist in investigating Russian crimes of aggression in Ukraine. 

Remember: In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

The day prior, the UN found in a report that Russia has “committed a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” in Ukraine, including “attacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, wilful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as unlawful transfers and deportations of children.”

The local authorities in the Russian-controlled part of Kherson region in southern Ukraine say they have begun seizing boats for the use of the military. 

The Russian state news agency TASS said that the acting head of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, ordered the seizure of civilian boats in the region for the military.

Saldo said the boat owners would receive compensation if their livelihoods were affected, and the boats would be returned after “a certain time.”

On his Telegram channel, Saldo said that the confiscations were permitted under martial law.

“In particular, about 30 boats with motors were seized in Henichesk to provide the military with watercraft,” he said. Henichesk is a port on the Sea of Azov near Crimea.

Some more context: Russian forces control the whole of the coastline of the Sea of Azov, as well as the east bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson.

The city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine has been battered by heavy fighting for months. The struggle has come at considerable cost to manpower and resources to both Ukrainian and Russian forces.

With a pre-war population of 70,000 dwindling down to estimated 4,000, there isn’t much left to fight for. Yet the fight continues. Ukraine has repeatedly ignored some Western calls to tactically retreat from Bakhmut amid the losses, choosing instead to keep fighting.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky previously said in March letting go of Bakhmut “would be open road for the Russians to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction.”

While the strategic value of the city might be limited — most analysts agree that its capture would not dramatically alter the course of the war — it is seen as important for the morale of the troops.

Its capture would represent a long sought-after success for Russian forces, a first significant gain since taking the eastern town of Soledar in mid-January.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits the border with Belarus in Volyn region, Ukraine, on April 19.

On his visit to Ukraine’s northwest border, shared with Poland and Belarus, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky surveyed the defense preparations that are underway.

“To repel a possible enemy invasion from the territory of Belarus, engineering barriers, fortifications and remote video surveillance systems are being built up,” a readout from Zelensky’s office said.

“From the position of the observation post, it was demonstrated how remote video surveillance systems are used to monitor the border line around the clock,” it added.

Zelensky used the occasion to praise the role of the State Border Service in defending both the border and the city of Bakhmut.

This visit comes as Zelensky continues a tour of Ukraine’s front lines. On Tuesday, he paid a surprise visit to Avdiivka, a town in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, that is surrounded on three sides by Russian forces.

Some background: Tensions have been mounting at the 1,000-kilometer border between Ukraine and Belarus, a country that has played a key role in aiding Russia’s attack. Kyiv has closed all border crossings to Belarus out of concern Belarus could be used for a further invasion by Russia — just as it was used as one of its launch pads for the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Joint military drills over the past year between Belarus and Russia have contributed to concerns that Belarusian troops could join the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine.

Ukrainian artillerymen fire a rocket launcher towards Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on April 18.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar says Russian losses in the battered eastern city of Bakhmut are several times higher than Ukrainian ones, while conceding that Moscow’s troops have been advancing in some areas of the city.

“The enemy has thrown all its efforts to take it under control. They have concentrated not only their main professional units there — Wagner, special forces, air assault troops — they are also sending weapons and equipment there,” Maliar said in an interview with Ukraine’s state broadcaster on Wednesday. “They cannot fight street battles with us because they are losing in them, so they have resorted to their proven Syrian tactics and are actually wiping out buildings. In such a state, it is very difficult to hold positions.”

“In fact, it is impossible to hold them in such a situation. Indeed, in some areas there is a slight advance of the enemy,” she added.

That advance, though, came at a cost for Russian forces, Maliar added. 

Maliar said restraining Russian forces in Bakhmut was an important task, not just because of the losses Ukraine was able to inflict on Moscow but also because it prevented its armies from advancing further. 

“This is a very important defense not only for this settlement, but it is important in the context of the enemy’s movement deeper into the territory,” she said.

Some key context: While leaked US intelligence documents allege troop casualty numbers, death tolls for both Russian and Ukrainian service members are difficult to pin down, and CNN cannot independently verify either side’s reported death toll.

Back at the end of March, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said the battle over Bakhmut has turned into a “slaughter-fest” for the Russians and Wagner mercenary group fighters.

Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said earlier in April that Wagner fighters have been “the most aggressive in the Bakhmut direction,” but Russian paratroopers and infantry soldiers are also fighting in the area.

CNN’s Radina Gigova and Maria Kostenko contributed reporting to this post.