April 16, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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

Russia has demanded Ukrainian forces still fighting to defend the besieged city of Mariupol lay down their weapons. The apparent ultimatum comes as Russia continues its relentless and devastating attack on the southeastern city.

Russian state media Ria reported that “without exception” all “Ukrainian armed units and foreign mercenaries” must exit from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Moscow time (same as local time) “without any weapons and ammunition,” citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

An estimated 100,000 people remain in Mariupol and its immediate surroundings, which are reported to be largely under Russian control, with Ukrainian troops confined to pockets of resistance.

Some context: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekensky late Saturday called the situation in the besieged city of Mariupol “inhuman,” saying the situation remained “as severe as possible.”

“Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there in Mariupol,” he said in his latest video address.

A restaurant partnered with celebrity chef and global humanitarian José Andrés’ organization, World Central Kitchen, was hit by a missile in Kharkiv, Ukraine, wounding four staffers, WCK CEO Nate Mook said Saturday.

He described the scene as one of “horrific brutality.”

In a video posted on Twitter, Mook stood in front of the building that took what he said was a “big hit” from a missile that left “tremendous amounts of damage” and “a dozen cars burnt out.” The kitchen also suffered damage, according to Mook, who said no one was killed at the restaurant but that one person was killed in the strike.

CNN has not independently confirmed the death.

“This is a tremendous amount of carnage left behind for no reason,” Mook said, adding that “coming to work, cooking for people that are hungry is an immense act of bravery.”

The WCK CEO said a fire was burning at the site, which he also visited before the attack, on Friday, to pick up meals with the WCK team. He described the area as residential with offices.

Mook said he was heading to a hospital to check on the restaurant staff, whom he was told were “OK.” 

Following the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Andrés provided meals along the country’s western border through World Central Kitchen. He said WCK started making food in Ukraine hours after the fighting started and that they’re serving 250,000 meals each day.

In 2021, Andrés was a recipient of Jeff Bezos’ Courage and Civility Award, an honor which came with $100 million.

Andrés has earmarked some of those funds for Ukraine.

Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov claimed in a statement Saturday the Russian military had shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane carrying military equipment from Western countries.

The statement said “a Ukrainian military transport aircraft was shot down in the air” in the Odessa region while “delivering a large batch of weapons supplied to Ukraine by Western countries.”

CNN could not verify the claim and reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

Russia has claimed to have destroyed more Ukrainian military aircraft than were known to be in Ukraine’s inventory, according to open-source information.  

A M777 towed 155 mm howitzer is placed in its firing position near Mosul, Iraq on February 3, 2017.

Shipments from the Biden administration’s latest security assistance package to Ukraine “have begun arriving,” a White House official told CNN Saturday.

President Biden this week approved an additional package of $800 million worth of weapons, ammunition, and security assistance to Ukraine.

The US has, for the first time, agreed to provide Kyiv with the types of high-power capabilities some Biden administration officials a few short weeks ago viewed as too great of an escalation risk, including 11 Mi-17 helicopters; 18 155 mm Howitzer cannons[ and 300 more Switchblade drones.

 On Friday, a senior defense official told CNN the first flight of weapons and equipment was expected to arrive in the region in the following 24 hours and would be picked up at the border by Ukrainians and taken into the country.

The official referred CNN to the US Department of Defense for more details.

The $800 million shipment brings the total amount of military assistance the US has provided to Ukraine to more than $3 billion.

A local resident sits next to a fire in a courtyard outside a building damaged in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 14.

In his latest Saturday video address to the people of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the situation in the besieged port city of Mariupol and promised a better future once hostilities are over.

Zelensky said “the situation in Mariupol remains as severe as possible. Just inhuman.”

“Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there in Mariupol,” he said.

An estimated 100,000 people remain in Mariupol and its immediate surroundings, which are largely under Russian control, with Ukrainian troops confined to pockets of resistance.

“There are only two ways to influence this,” Zelensky said. “Either our partners will give Ukraine all the necessary heavy weapons, planes, and, without exaggeration, immediately… Or a negotiating path, in which the role of partners should also be decisive.”

Zelesnky said his government has tried every day to end the siege of Mariupol: “Military or diplomatic – anything to save people. But finding this solution is extremely difficult.”

“Although we have heard many intentions from those who wanted to help and who are really in positions of international influence, none of them have been realized yet.” he added.

French President Emmanuel Macron proposed on March 25 a mass evacuation by sea, but the plan went nowhere.

Zelensky said every day either he or the armed forces chief or the head of Ukraine’s negotiating team had been “in touch with our defenders of Mariupol. Every day.”

Zelensky also said his government had begun to plan for a post-war future. 

“Today I held a meeting dedicated to the reconstruction of our cities,” he said. “Of course, this is a huge amount of work. But still less than defending the state in war.”

The president added, “Now it is a historic moment; the moment when we can solve many old problems of the whole environment of our life once and for all.”

Zelensky addressed the housing situation and what he called the “real modernization of our cities.”

A priority, he said, would be homes for veterans to “provide housing for all those who have defended or are defending the state, who have worked or are working in the interests of society, and do not have their own housing. It can no longer be the case that a person devotes his whole life to military service, but retires without having his own apartment.”

Zelensky also said memorials were being planned, one of which “will tell the story of the destroyed bridge in Kyiv region, which connected Irpin and Bucha with Kyiv. The story of people who escaped from Russian invaders to Kyiv using this bridge and this road.”

The bridge was the escape route for thousands of civilians escaping Russian bombardment in March.

The Russian navy’s commander-in-chief, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, met with the crew of the guided-missile cruiser Moskva in Sevastopol, according to Russian state news agency TASS, citing the defense ministry.

TASS released ministry of defense video Saturday showing what was described as officers and sailors of the sunken warship standing in formation two rows deep.

The number of sailors in formation was not clear. The Russian military has released no information about casualties aboard the Moskva, which sank Thursday in the Black Sea. It was unclear how many crew members were aboard, or how many survived.

The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claimed it had hit the cruiser with anti-ship missiles, while the Russian military acknowledged only the ship had sunk after a fire on board and the detonation of ammunition.

Evmenov said conscript sailors from the Moskva would be released from service in accordance with the law from May to July, TASS reported.

Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg announced the death of a Russian general in Ukraine in a statement of condolence Saturday. 

The city expressed condolences for the deputy commander of Russia’s 8th Army, Major General Vladimir Frolov, who died in Ukraine this week, the mayor’s press office said in a statement.

St. Petersburg Mayor Alexander Beglov attended the funeral, held at the historic Serafimovskoe Cemetery on Saturday, the statement said.

“Today we say goodbye to a true hero,” Beglov said, according to the statement. “Vladimir Petrovich Frolov died a heroic death in battle with Ukrainian nationalists. He sacrificed his life so that children, women and old people in the Donbas would no longer hear the explosions of bombs. So that they stop waiting for death and, leaving home, say goodbye as if it were for the last time.”

CNN could not confirm the circumstances of Frolov’s death. Several top Russian officers have been killed in Ukraine.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, speaks during the opening ceremony of the Invictus Games at The Hague, Netherlands, on Saturday, April 16.

During a speech at Saturday’s opening ceremony of the Invictus Games at The Hague, Prince Harry said “the world is united” with Ukraine.

Speaking of the Ukrainian servicemen and women who traveled to the Netherlands to compete, he said: “You told me yesterday why you decided to join us, despite all odds. You said you came to be on this global stage, not simply to show your strength, but to tell your truth, the truth of what is happening in your country.”

Prince Harry was joined by his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. The Invictus Games, which will run until next Friday, had been postponed for two years due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also paid tribute to the Ukrainian team.

“Unity and solidarity will always win out over confrontation and conflict,” he said in a statement on social media. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian Invictus community. Some of them can’t be here because they are fighting on the frontlines. Others have lost their lives in the war. They are in our thoughts.

“The stories of the athletes competing in the Invictus Games are stories of resilience,” Rutte’s statement said. “They show us that, whatever challenges we face, our souls remain unconquered.”

Prince Harry founded the games in 2014 as a way to use sport to help the recovery and rehabilitation of injured service members. The Prince served in the British Army for 10 years and completed two tours in Afghanistan.

Before arriving in The Hague from their home in California, Harry and Meghan stopped by the UK to visit Queen Elizabeth. 

A car passes an oil refinery in Lysychansk after if was hit by a missile in the Luhansk region in Ukraine on Saturday.

As Sunday approaches in Ukraine, Russian forces appear to be focusing on areas in eastern Ukraine ahead of a planned ground offensive while carrying out strikes in other regions.

Attacks across Ukraine on Saturday:

Worries over ammunition: There is growing concern about the need to get more ammunition — and in particular artillery ammunition — to Ukrainian forces more rapidly as heavy ground combat against Russian units is expected to unfold in the coming days, according to a US official. Even the amount of security assistance from the US could be expended within several days, raising the prospect of Ukraine forces running out of ammunition, the official said.

Meanwhile, Russian leaders — angry over the loss of its Black Sea Fleet flagship — have warned of “unpredictable consequences” if the US continues supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Evacuations: Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Saturday that nearly 1,500 people have been evacuated so far from areas in southern and eastern Ukraine affected by fighting.

It took six hours for one elderly woman who spoke with CNN to be evacuated from a frontline town to the relative safety of a care home further west due to shelling threats, she said.

People stand in front of the entrance of a bomb shelter, where they have been hiding from shelling since the beginning of the war, in the Luhansk region of Severodonetsk on Saturday, April 16.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday that 1,449 people have been evacuated so far from areas in southern and eastern Ukraine affected by fighting.

Vereshchuk said that only 170 people managed to escape from Mariupol by their own means of transport to Zaporizhzhia on Saturday. Another 1,211 residents of Polohy, Vasylivka, Berdiansk and Melitopol made safe passage to Zaporizhzhia. 

Despite constant shelling, 68 people were evacuated from the cities of Severodonetsk, Rubizhne and Kreminna in the Luhansk region, Vereshchuk said.

Vereshchuk said that due to heavy and mass shelling, the evacuation of people from Lysychansk was completely disrupted. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday that “the UK will stop at nothing to ensure Ukrainians have the resources they need” to defend their country against Russia’s invasion, according to a statement on social media.

Johnson spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Saturday afternoon, according to the tweet.

In his own statement on Twitter, Zelensky said the two spoke about the agreements reached during Johnson’s recent visit to Kyiv earlier this month, adding that they spoke about defense and macro-financial support as well as the situation in the besieged port city of Mariupol. 

According to a statement from Downing Street, “the Prime Minister paid tribute to the bravery of Ukrainian forces who continue to valiantly defend their country’s freedom.” 

Hundreds who died in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha are now being exhumed more than two weeks after Russia’s occupation of the area.

There is a wide-scale operation to recover and identify the dead in the town’s mass grave and those buried in other shallow graves, according to CNN’s Phil Black.

The Russian retreat revealed at least 20 bodies lining a single street. The widow of a man who was killed while riding his bicycle said she urged her husband not to go outside, but he insisted on leaving their home. He was killed as soon as he reached the road, she said via translated remarks, and his bike still remains there.

There is a social media database that people can search to find images and information about their dead loved ones, Black reported, which is “harrowing” to go through.

More than 900 bodies of civilians from the Kyiv region have been discovered since the Russian army withdrew from the area, police said Friday.

Watch the report below. (Note: It contains graphic imagery.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Saturday, according to statements from both leaders on social media.

“I described the critical situation in Mariupol,” Zelensky’s statement said. “We discussed defense support for Ukraine and toughening of anti-Russian sanctions.”

Zelensky said he thanked Andersson for supporting Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

“Sweden and EU work relentlessly to support Ukraine, impose further sanctions on Russia, and ensure accountability for war crimes,” Andersson said in a statement.

Firefighters work to put out a fire at an oil refinery in Lysychansk after if was hit by a missile in the Luhansk region, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 16.

Serhii Haidai, head of the Luhansk region military administration, said there was extensive damage to civilian infrastructure following Russian strikes in the eastern Ukrainian region. 

“In one day, the Russians damaged ten infrastructure facilities – an oil refinery and a hospital in Lysychansk,” he said. “Another 26 buildings were partially or completely destroyed. There were 16 residential buildings [hit] in Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Kreminna, and Lysychansk.” 

Haidai said a strike on a market in the town of Lysychansk led to a fire that spread to two sludge tanks at a refinery, set fire to three bread vans and damaged a medical building.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a shopping center and surrounding buildings after a Russian missile strike on Saturday, April 16, in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

The Kharkiv Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that two civilians were killed and 18 injured in a cruise-missile strike in the northeastern Ukrainian city.

In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said Russian forces hit the Slobidskyi and Osnoviansky districts of Kharkiv with a Kalibr cruise-missile strike. Residential buildings, cars, a market and shops were also damaged or destroyed, the statement said. 

Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said rescue workers were on the scene.

Elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, Serhii Zelensky, the mayor of the town of Lozova, urged residents to evacuate immediately by train amid signs of a stepped-up Russian offensive. 

The mayor said an evacuation train to the city of Khmelnytskyi would be available Saturday afternoon, along with evacuation buses that would depart for the city of Pavlohrad. 

“You will be met there,” he said. “So don’t panic. Whoever wants, leave. There is no ground threat. Only – I repeat – missile danger. As well as bombing.”

CNN’s Clarissa Ward meets with 86-year-old Lidia from Avdiivka, Ukraine.

An elderly woman who was stuck in a frontline Ukrainian town that underwent heavy shelling has been evacuated to safety.

86-year-old Lidia from Avdiivka, Ukraine, told CNN’s Clarissa Ward on Thursday that she was spending her nights in pitch darkness while praying for an end to war.

“’I never imagined that my end would be like this,’ she says. ‘You can’t even die here because there’s no one to provide a burial ceremony,’” Ward reported, translating the woman’s words.

There was an outpouring of people all over the world wanting to help her after her story was told, Ward said. She was able to connect Lidia with a care home in Dnipro, she said.

It wasn’t easy to be evacuated, Ward said, translating her remarks, as there was a lot of shelling. It took six hours to make the journey west, and at one point, she and the volunteers had to pull over to wait for a few hours in a safe house, according to Ward.

Lidia’s son lives in Russia, Ward said, and she was hoping to finally get through to him today to tell him she has been evacuated.

Watch the interview here:

There is growing concern about the need to get more ammunition — and in particular artillery ammunition — to Ukrainian forces more rapidly as heavy ground combat against Russian units is expected to unfold in the coming days, according to a US official.

While the United States is shipping 18 155mm towed howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds to Ukraine as part of the new security assistance announced by President Joe Biden’s administration this week, even that amount could be expended within several days, raising the prospect of Ukraine forces running out of ammunition, the official said.

During some of the heavy earlier fighting, Ukrainian forces fired up to thousands of artillery rounds in a given day, the official noted. 

Going forward, the US believes the likely Russia strategy is to move weapons and troops into eastern Ukraine from their current positions just north, and then encircle and cut off Ukraine forces that are there, the official said.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley are conducting daily phone calls with counterparts in the region to encourage them to ship more weapons and supplies to Ukraine as soon as possible.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon hosted the CEOs of the military’s eight largest prime contractors to figure out how to arm Ukraine faster.

The roundtable discussion, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, focused on the Pentagon’s objectives to keep supplying Ukraine with arms while also being able to maintain the readiness of US forces and support the defense of allies.

Polish Mi-17 helicopters are seen during Dragon-17 military exercises at the military range near Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, September 21, 2017. Agencja Gazeta/Cezary Aszkielowicz via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. POLAND OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN POLAND.

Related article Why the Biden administration is giving new, heavier weapons to Ukraine

Members of the Kharkiv emergency response services unit search a rooftop for rocket debris from recent Russian attacks on April 15, in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

At least one person has been killed and several others injured in Kyiv after the Ukrainian capital “came under fire” on Saturday morning, the city’s mayor said.

Fighting has intensified in eastern and southern Ukraine after the sinking of Russian flagship Moskva in the Black Sea earlier this week.

And a senior US defense official said Ukrainian missiles hit Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea earlier this week – supporting Ukraine’s account.

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know:

Smoke is seen rising over Kyiv, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 16.

At least one person was killed and several others injured in Kyiv after the Ukrainian capital “came under fire” on Saturday morning, the city’s mayor said.

“As a result of the morning rocket strike, one person was killed and several injured were hospitalized in the Darnytskyi district of the capital,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in televised remarks.

“Our air defense forces are doing everything possible to protect us, but the enemy is insidious and ruthless,” he added.

Klitschko earlier urged residents who have evacuated from Kyiv to refrain from returning, after several explosions on the outskirts of the capital.

“It is no secret that one of the Russian generals recently stated that they were ready for missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital. And, as we see, they are carrying out such shelling,” he added.

Some context: The Russian military warned on Wednesday that it would strike Ukrainian “decision-making centers” – including those in Ukraine’s capital – in response to what it said were “attempts of sabotage and strikes” on Russian soil.

Two days later Russia carried out such an attack on a “military facility” on the outskirts of Kyiv.

“Tonight a military facility on the outskirts of Kyiv was hit by Kalibr high-precision long-range sea-launched missiles,” said Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov.

“As a result of the strike on the Zhuliany Vizar machine-building plant workshops for the production and repair of long-range and medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems were destroyed, as well as anti-ship missiles,” Konashenkov added.