April 10, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of the war in Ukraine has moved here.

A teacher in western Russia has been under criminal investigation since late March for making anti-war comments in the classroom that were secretly recorded by students, according to an April 7 interview on Radio Liberty.

Irina Gen, 45, was an English teacher at an elite school for young athletes in the country, many of whom qualify for major championships abroad.

In an audio recording published on Telegram on March 31, a student is heard asking Gen why Russia had been banned from the upcoming multi-sport European Championships.  

The conversation was recorded on March 18, according to Gen’s interview with Radio Liberty. She believes her students’ parents “persuaded the children to make a recording, which would be handed over to the authorities.” 

Authorities alerted: Gen said a Russian Federal Security officer came to the school on March 23, and told her she “had made a big mistake” by telling the students about Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure including the bombings in Mariupol — which Russian authorities have denied.

“It never occurred to me that someone could snitch on their teacher, or anyone else for that matter,” Gen told Radio Liberty. She resigned from her position on April 1.

Jail threat: Gen is being investigated for violating a new censorship law that bans the spread of so-called “false information” discrediting the Russian military. It carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to 5 million rubles (about $60,000).

Gen told Radio Liberty she hoped she would only be given a fine, and not made an example of. “There will definitely be an excruciating trial waiting for me. And then a verdict, which will dictate how I can begin to build my life anew,” she said 

CNN has reached out to Gen’s lawyer for comment on the case. The Human Rights media project OVD-info says Gen is under house arrest.

People wait for a bus as a children looks at the sky, a day after a rocket attack at a train station, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine on April 9.

More than 4.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, most crossing borders into neighboring countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Poland has welcomed the highest number of refugees, at nearly 2.6 million. Romania, Hungary and Moldova together have accepted nearly 2 million Ukrainian refugees.

“In light of the emergency and the scale of humanitarian needs of refugees from Ukraine, an inter-agency regional refugee response is being carried out, in support of the efforts of refugee-hosting countries,” the UNHCR added.

A general view shows the New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure over the old sarcophagus covering the damaged fourth reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine November 22, 2018.

Chernobyl nuclear power plant staff have rotated for the first time in three weeks, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday, citing Ukrainian authorities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it’s only the second time that staff have changed since the invasion began.

The shift change was important “for the safe and secure operation of the (Chernobyl power plant), which was controlled by the Russian military for five weeks until they withdrew on 31 March,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

Destroyed equipment: Ukraine told the IAEA that the plant’s analytical laboratories for radiation monitoring were “destroyed and the analytical instruments stolen, broken or otherwise disabled,” according to the IAEA.

“While it is very positive that Ukrainian authorities are gradually restoring regulatory control of the (Chernobyl) site, it is clear that a lot of work remains to return the site to normality,” Grossi warned.

Some context: Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, fell into the hands of Russian troops in the first week of the war in Ukraine, in late February. 

On March 31, Russian troops announced their intention to leave and handed over control to Ukrainian personnel. The plant is now back under the control of Ukrainian authorities.

On April 6, Ukrainian authorities released new drone video showing abandoned Russian military positions, including vacant pits and trenches — in a highly radioactively contaminated area of the uninhabitable exclusion zone near the plant.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed his nation Sunday, calling Ukrainians “the bravest people of the best country in the world.”

“We are coming to an end of another week,” Zelensky said in his speech, which he has given regularly during Russia’s attack on the country. “Our fight for freedom, for the state. Another week that Ukraine stayed alive, despite all the efforts of Russia to destroy us. We are fighting. We are defending. We are repelling the attacks.”

Zelensky said the nation is doing all it can to win the war and accused Russian leadership of “lying” in efforts to shift the blame away from them.

“When cowardice grows, everything turns into catastrophe,” he continued. “When people don’t have the courage to recognize their mistakes and apologize, to conform to reality, and to see that they are turning into monsters.”

The Ukrainian president said Russia has lost touch with reality, acting as aggressors yet blaming Ukraine for the actions committed by Russian troops, including the killings in Bucha, the missile strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, and “every destroyed city and burnt village.” 

He added Russia, fearing defeat, will launch more full-scale combat actions in Ukraine’s east. 

“But we are ready,” the president said, promising Ukraine will ensure it has enough weapons and demand stronger sanctions against Russia so that justice will be served.

Moments prior to his address, Zelensky said he honored “18 defenders of Ukraine” – including members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Special Communications Service and police officers – for their heroism. He also thanked the journalists sharing the truth of what is unfolding in the country.

“The truth will win and Ukraine will win,” Zelensky said. “This is for certain. Glory to Ukraine.”

A Ukrainian policeman walks past damaged vehicles outside a train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on April 8.

The death toll in the Kramatorsk, Ukraine, train station strike rose to 57, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration said Sunday.

“As of 11 a.m. today, April 10 [the total is] 57 dead, 109 injured,” Pavlo Kyrylenko said. “Those with minor injuries have been released to go home, the heavily injured are being transported to safe regions and being provided with the necessary aid.” 

Clean-up operations at the site of the blast have begun. CNN saw workers wearing plastic gloves gather scattered human remains. Others looked through papers and documents that were strewn across the station. Plastic bags filled with food lay on the ground, alongside shredded hats, gloves and shoes.

Several points of impact from the strike were visible, including what appeared to have been a direct hit on a car. Pools of blood and a deceased dog, partially covered by white sheeting, lay by the tracks.

Here are more of the latest headlines from the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration called Izyum the “hottest spot” in the northeastern province, amid ongoing fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, 

Syniehubov claimed a “big enemy military equipment convoy that was moving towards Izium direction was destroyed” by Ukrainian forces, but provided no further specifics. CNN could not verify that claim. 

Ukrainian officials have warned in recent days of efforts by Russian forces to reinforce their presence in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which border Kharkiv region. 

A man lays flowers at the Kramatorsk railway station after the Russian missile strike in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on April 9.

The head of the Donetsk regional military administration said Sunday the death toll from a Russian missile strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, had risen to 57. 

“As of 11 a.m. today, April 10 [the total is] 57 dead, 109 injured,” Pavlo Kyrylenko said. “Those with minor injuries have been released to go home, the heavily injured are being transported to safe regions and being provided with the necessary aid.” 

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer addresses a joint press conference in Berlin on March 31.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Sunday he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.

Nehammer also called for evacuation corridors, a ceasefire and a “full investigation of war crimes.”

He said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, EU leaders and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been informed about the meeting with Putin. 

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on April 7.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Sunday that Russia’s initial plan of the invasion of Ukraine “failed” and that “history will demonstrate whose plan will prevail,” after Russia appointed a new general to lead its military invasion. 

When asked to comment on the appointment of Russia’s Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov to direct the war in Ukraine, Kuleba said: “‘now they have another plan, but we have our plans.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a statement to media with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, Belgium on March 23.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday pledged to support Ukrainians fleeing their country amid Russia’s invasion, saying Canadians and Europeans are willing to continue taking in refugees.

“We’ve already taken in over 14,000 and we’re continuing to do many, many more,” Trudeau told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Von der Leyen told Tapper on the same program that “it is amazing to see the open hearts and the open doors of the European people mainly in the front-line countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, just to name a few. They are very much willing to take these refugees in – more than 4 million.”

“Yesterday I was in Kyiv. I saw President Zelensky and I promised to him that we’re going to take good care of the refugees until they can return safely home. That is very important to rebuild their country,” von der Leyen said.

More than 4.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country, according to statistics from the United Nations, with more than 2.5 million going to Poland.

Trudeau also weighed in on the question of whether Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, saying that though images out of cities like Bucha showing civilians brutally killed are “horrific,” the question is something that “will be determined.”

“Obviously, the messages we’re seeing, the stories of what Russian soldiers are doing, not just the murder of civilians, but the systematic use of sexual violence and rape to destabilize and have the greatest negative impact on the Ukrainian people as possible, is absolutely unforgivable and unacceptable,” he told Tapper. “And that’s why the global community is going to and is responding so strongly.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki talks to reporters during the daily news conference on April 8 in Washington, DC.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Russia’s appointment of new military leadership, “shows that there’s going to be a continuation of what we’ve already seen on the ground in Ukraine.”

“And that’s what we’re expecting,” Psaki said to Dana Perino in an interview on Fox News Sunday. 

CNN reported on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new general to direct the war in Ukraine as his military shifts plans after a failure to take Kyiv, according to a US official and a European official.

The officials told CNN that Army General Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, has been named as theater commander of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, following a series of battlefield setbacks and an apparent lack of coordination among groups of Russian forces operating in Ukraine.   

Psaki called Dvornikov responsible for the “atrocities we saw in Syria and said that for Ukraine, the US continues with officials to work to make sure they have the weaponry and assistance they need to be successful on the battlefield.

“Just this week, our national security adviser, our secretary and our chairman of the Joint Chiefs had a two-hour call with their counterparts to go through item by item exactly what the Ukrainians were requesting, what they wanted, if we can’t meet what they need. We’re working with our allies and partners as we did with the S-300,” Psaki said, referencing that Slovakia transferred to Ukraine this week and the US intends to place an American Patriot missile system in Slovakia in return. 

Psaki also said the administration found the admission from the Kremlin that their forces had suffered great losses, “interesting,” for a country that is slow to admit defeat. 

“It was significant,” she said, calling it a reflection of “the courage of the Ukrainian leaders.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated which country sent the S-300 missile defense system to Ukraine.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director and commander of Central Command who also oversaw the war in Afghanistan until 2010, said that Ukrainians can expect “quite a fight” as Russian forces are preparing for a “massive breakthrough” in eastern Ukraine.

Satellite images collected and analyzed by Maxar Technologies show an eight-mile-long military convoy moving south through the eastern Ukraine town of Velkyi Burluk on April 8.

The town sits to the east of Kharkiv, close to Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Some context: Ukrainian officials say major fighting is underway in the east of the country, with heavy shelling reported throughout the Donbas region, ahead of what they are warning may be a major Russian offensive. Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief on Friday told CNN that Russian troops are regrouping across the border and plan to advance toward Kharkiv. Officials have urged the evacuation of civilians from the region, as Russian forces shift focus to southern and eastern Ukraine.

Watch the full analysis from Petraeus here:

People inspect damaged vehicles around the Kramatorsk railway station on April 9.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Sunday it would be “extremely difficult” to even think about negotiations with Russia, after the missile strike in the eastern city of Kramatorsk and the atrocities committed in the town of Bucha. 

“It’s extremely difficult to even think about sitting down with people who commit or find excuses for all these atrocities and war crimes, who have inflicted such a horrendous damage on Ukraine,” Kuleba said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

At least 52 people died on Friday, including children, and dozens were injured, after Russian forces carried out a missile strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk as civilians were trying to flee the fighting. 

Rep. Liz Cheney speaks with CNN on Sunday, April 10. 

US House Rep. Liz Cheney said Sunday morning that she thinks the missile strike on the Ukrainian train station this week “clearly is genocide,” and said that European countries need to “understand that they’re funding that genocidal campaign” through the purchase of oil and gas from Russia. 

Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that the US should increase its own production of oil to aid Europe, but added “they need to understand that every single time, every single day that they are continuing to import Russian oil and gas, they’re funding Putin’s genocide in Ukraine.” 

Cheney, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, also said she disagrees with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan about negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“No, I wasn’t satisfied with what I heard,” she said in reference to Sullivan’s interview with Tapper earlier in the program. “I think that that it’s crucially important that United States be clear that we are absolutely committed to Zelensky’s victory. We should not be talking about, as Jake Sullivan did just now, improving Zelensky’s position at the negotiating table. This is about defeating Russian forces in Ukraine.”

She also knocked the Biden administration over the supply of weapons to Ukraine, saying “we need to be doing right now is doing much more much faster to provide them with the equipment that they need.”

She said the United States should be more involved in the sea of Azov to keep aid going to Ukraine, saying “we ought to be doing much more to help keep the shipping lanes open to ensure that the Ukrainians are not continuing to suffer from the kind of economic blockade that the Russians are attempting to impose now,” she said.

“I think the West and NATO has got to understand that Putin’s defeat in Ukraine is a fundamental national security interest for us.”

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba gives a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on April 7.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Sunday it was a “strategic mistake” by Germany and France to not allow Ukraine to join NATO in 2008. 

“The strategic mistake that was made in 2008 by Germany and France who rejected the efforts of the United States and other allies to bring Ukraine in, is something that we are paying for,” Kuleba said. 

“It’s not Germany or France that are paying the cost for this mistake, it’s Ukraine,” he added. 

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks with CNN on Sunday.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that the US expects Russia’s new top general directing its war in Ukraine to carry out further brutal attacks on civilians.

“This particular general has a resume that includes brutality against civilians in other theaters, in Syria, and we can expect more of the same in this theater,” Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “This general will just be another author of crimes and brutality against Ukrainian civilians.”

CNN reported Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has named Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, as its theater commander of its war in Ukraine following a series of battlefield setbacks and an apparent lack of coordination among groups of Russian forces operating in Ukraine.

Dvornikov, 60, was the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria, after Putin sent troops there in September 2015 to back the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia provided airpower to support Assad’s ground forces and helped reverse the tide of the Syrian civil war at a terrible cost.

Russian aircraft backed the Assad regime and its allies as they laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, bombarding densely populated neighborhoods and causing major civilian casualties.

Still, Sullivan downplayed the importance of the appointment to Russia’s overall chances of success, saying that Russia had already suffered “a strategic failure.”

A woman walks near a destroyed apartment building on April 9 in Borodianka, Ukraine.

Cleaning crews have arrived at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainians were killed by a Russian missile strike on Friday while waiting to flee fighting.

CNN saw workers wearing plastic gloves gather scattered human remains. Others looked through papers and documents that were strewn across the station. Plastic bags filled with food lay on the ground, alongside shredded hats, gloves and shoes.

Several points of impact from the strike were visible, including what appeared to have been a direct hit on a car. Pools of blood and a deceased dog, partially covered by white sheeting, lay by the tracks.

At least 50 people, including five children, were killed in the attack, Ukrainian officials said Friday, with dozens more taken to local hospitals.

Here are more of the latest headlines from the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

This satellite image shows a convoy of armored vehicles and trucks near Kharkiv, Ukraine on April 8.

US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s congressional delegation meets with the US Ambassador to Poland at the embassy in Warsaw, in this handout photo released on April 10.

US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is leading a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to Poland this weekend to meet with US armed forces and other groups amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a statement from his office.

The California Republican met with the Prime Minister of Poland, the Defense Minister of Poland, and the US Ambassador to Poland, according to the statement.

Reps. Steve Scalise, Michael McCaul, Michael Turner, Ken Calvert, French Hill, Kathleen Rice, Stephanie Murphy, Mike Garcia and Michelle Fischbach accompanied McCarthy, according to the statement.

McCarthy meets with troops in Poland, in this handout photo released on April 10.

Smoke rises from the airport in Dnipro on Sunday, April 10.

Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said the airport in the east-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro had been destroyed in a Russian strike, without providing extensive details. 

“And one more attack on the airport in Dnipro,” he said “There is nothing left of it already. The airport and the infrastructure nearby have been destroyed. But rockets keep flying.”

Reznichenko said information about casualties was being clarified. 

The airport was hit previously by Russian forces. Reznichenko said on March 15 that a Russian missile strike had put the runway out of use and damaged a terminal building. 

Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian MP, said on Twitter that the latest strike “leaves no infrastructure and destroys everything around the airport. Such a shame, as the airport was completely renovated just last year. All the investments and all the efforts completely wrecked.”