That's our Ukraine live blog wrapping up for Monday evening. 

We're back on Tuesday morning with all the latest developments. 

US says Russia planning to annex eastern Ukraine this month

A senior US official says the United States believed Russia is planning this month to annex large portions of eastern Ukraine and recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic.

Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the suspected actions are “straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook” and will not be recognized by the United States or its partners and allies.

Carpenter said the US and others have information that Russia is planning “sham referenda” in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” that would attach the entities to Russia. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in the city of Kherson.

“We believe that the Kremlin may try to hold sham referenda to try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy and this is straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook,” he said, adding that the information suggested the votes could come as early as mid-May. “Such sham referenda, fabricated votes will not be considered legitimate, nor will any attempts to annex additional Ukrainian territory,” he said.

Carpenter did not detail the information that led to the assessment, although there have been public reports that Russia is moving to exert greater control over areas that it already controls and occupies in eastern and southern Ukraine. He pointed to evidence that local mayors and legislators there have been abducted, that internet and cell phone service had been severed and that Russian school curricula is soon to be imposed.

(AP)

Finnish and Swedish ice hockey players must choose national team glory or Russian contracts

Finnish and Swedish ice hockey players who will play next season in the Russian ice hockey championship (KHL) will not be eligible for selection for their national teams.

The ice hockey federations of the two Nordic countries made the announcement on Monday.

"The position of the Finnish Hockey Federation is that players playing next season in Russia will not be able to play for the national team," reads a statement.

The Swedish Federation indicated for its part that it would adopt a similar decision in a few weeks. "We are going in this direction, said its secretary general, Johan Stark, to the Swedish news agency TT.

"Players who choose to play in the KHL next season will not be eligible for our national team, but the formal decision will be formalized by our board at the end of the current season."

"In the best of all possible worlds, we would have preferred that no Swedes play in the KHL. The decision to stay there is up to the players themselves, but I know that it is not as easy as that to leave like that," Stark he added.

(AFP)

Pentagon: Russian Chief of Staff visited Donbas frontline

A senior Pentagon official in the US say Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov visited the frontline in the Donbas region last week, but was unable to confirm rumours that he was injured.

"What we can confirm is that we know that for several days last week he was in Donbas," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

"We don't think he's still there. (We think) he's gone and is back in Russia. We can't confirm reports that he was injured," he said. 

An adviser to Ukraine's interior minister said on Sunday that many Russian officers had been hit in an "explosion" in Izium, eastern Ukraine, adding that Valery Guerassimov was there at the time of the blast.

However another adviser to the minister told Ukrainian television that Guerassimov had not been injured.

"We have confirmation that he was there, in the region of Izioum (...). We have certain confirmations that he was not injured," the second adviser said. 

Valery Guerassimov is said to have inspected the front to better understand the conditions on the ground, as Russian forces, after failing to take Kyiv, are trying to take control of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

The Pentagon official also said on Monday that Russian forces were making limited progress in their battle against the Ukrainians in the region, calling their progress "anemic".

US officials said Russian troops have taken control of villages and then lost them to Ukrainian fighters, claiming the Russian military was demoralised and suffered from disorganised command. 

Russian progress on the battlefield is "very uneven... And in some cases, quite frankly, the best word to describe it would be anemic," the official said.

(AFP)

Russia missiles strike Odesa

Ukrainian authorities say a Russian missile attack struck the Black Sea port of Odesa on Monday evening.

“A missile strike on Odessa damaged a building in which five people were staying. A 15-year-old boy died,” the city council announced on the Telegram platform, but without giving details of the fate of the other three occupants of the building.

An Orthodox church under the Moscow Patriarchate had its roof torn off in the attack, Ukrainian Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told Ukrainian television. 

Odessa, a Russian-speaking city considered a major cultural center for both Ukrainians and Russians, has been attacked several times in recent weeks.

The airport was targeted by Russian missiles on Saturday, destroying its runway according to Ukrainian authorities. On 23 April an apartment building was hit, killed at least eight people there.

Ukrainians fear that the city is one of Russia's targets, especially since a Russian general claimed that the Kremlin's offensive in Ukraine was aimed at establishing a corridor from Russia to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which would pass through Odessa.

(AP, AFP)

CIA urges Russian dissidents to get in touch via darknet

The CIA says Russians disaffected by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may be trying to get in touch with US intelligence -- and it wants them to go to the darknet.

On Monday the American spy agency began a new push to promote its presence on a part of the internet accessible only through specialised tools that provide more anonymity. The CIA has a darknet site that has the same features as its regular homepage but accessible only through the Tor internet browser, which has encryption features not available on most regular browsers.

Instructions in English and Russian on how to access the darknet site appeared Monday on the CIA’s social media channels. The agency hopes Russians living abroad can share the instructions with contacts inside the country.

While many Russians appear to support what the Kremlin officially calls a “special military operation,” longtime Russia watchers think Putin’s management of the war may push away some powerful people who disagree with him. Even with immense capabilities to capture communications and satellite imagery, it remains critical for Western intelligence agencies to recruit human sources who can offer insight into the Kremlin and conditions inside Russia.

“Our global mission demands that individuals can contact us securely from anywhere,” the agency said in a statement.

(AP)

UEFA rules on Russian hosting, participation

Football's European governing body UEFA has decided that Russia won't be able to take part in this summer's EURO 22 tournament -- instead they'll be replaced by Portugal. 

UEFA announced on Monday evening that Russian teams will also be banned from its club competition next season.

In addition, the UEFA Executive Committee has thrown out bids submitted by Russia to host EURO 2028 or 2032. 

Read more: 

Unknown fate for civilians still trapped in Mariupol steel mill 

Unknown fate for civilians trapped in Mariupol steel mill

Russia hijacks internet in occupied Ukrainian city 

The Kremlin has reportedly taken control of the internet in Kherson, after a temporary outage. 

Network analysts say internet service in Ukraine's Black seaport of Kherson, which was seized by Russia in March, experienced 24 hours without internet. 

Yet, when the service was restored on Sunday, traffic was rerouted through Russia's state-controlled Rostelecom. 

In a statement, the Ukrainian State Service of Special Communication called the outage “another enemy attempt to leave Ukrainians without access to the true information.”

It suggested Moscow had falsely claimed Ukraine’s government had ordered the shutdown.

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said internet and cellular communications were cut in a large area of the Kherson region and blamed Russia. They attributed the outages to breakages in fibre-optic backbone cables and a power outage.

“Someone must have activated a line from Crimea to Kherson,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik Inc, describing the events as “eerily similar” to what happened after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The Ukrainian State Service of Special Communication also accused Russia of preparing to try to cement political control by introducing the Russian ruble as currency and staging a “possible fake referendum.”

More than 3,000 Ukrainian civilians killed by war, says UN 

The number of civilians in Ukraine who have died as a result of the war has topped 3,000, according to UN figures published Monday. 

The United Nation's human rights office (OHCHR) recorded 3,153 civilian deaths, since the outbreak of conflict in February. 

But it said the real death toll is likely to be "considerably higher." 

This gap is because information is hard to obtain in many areas of the country, especially where conflict is raging, and many reports require confirmation. 

The UN report did not say who was responsible for the deaths, but it believes most civilians have been killed by indiscriminate explosive weapons, such as missiles and airstrikes. 

First Mariupol steel mill survivors evacuated

The first group of civilians has been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plan in Mariupol, with officials and relief workers in Ukrainian-held territory anxiously awaiting more survivors.

The steel mill is the last stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated city, and there's believed to be 1,000 civilians trapped there as well, amid ongoing Russian bombardment.

Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel mill and boarding a bus.

More than 100 civilians from the bombed-out plant were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” he said in his latest video message.

However, at least some of the people evacuated from the plant on Sunday were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. The Russian military said that some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory. The information could not be independently verified.

In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia. Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia.

The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the Sea of Azov city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-upon evacuation routes.

The latest evacuation efforts are being overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross.

(Euronews / AP)

Poland urges EU unity over Russia energy sanctions

Poland urged its European Union partners on Monday to unite and impose sweeping sanctions on Russia's oil and natural gas sectors over the war in Ukraine, and not to cave in to pressure to pay for their gas in Russian rubles.

EU ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss their response to Russia’s decision last week to cut gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland. Energy giant Gazprom says the two countries failed to pay their bills in April.

“We will call for immediate sanctions on Russian oil and gas. This is the next, and urgent, and absolute step," Polish Climate and Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said. “We already have coal. Now it’s time for oil, and (the) second step is for gas. The best option is take them all together.”

The 27 nation EU imports around 40% of the gas it consumes from Russia. But some member countries, notably Hungary and Slovakia, are more heavily dependent on Russian supplies than others, and support for a gradual phasing in of an oil embargo is emerging.

Germany believes it could cope if supplies of Russian oil were cut off by Moscow. Economy Minister Robert Habeck said that Russian oil now accounts for 12% of total imports, down from 35% before the war, and most of it goes to the Schwedt refinery near Berlin.

(AP)

Denmark, US announce return of diplomats to Kyiv

America hopes to have diplomats back at the embassy in Kyiv "by the end of the month." 

The senior US diplomat in Ukraine Kristina Kvien told a press conference in Lviv on Monday that her priority for returning "is the safety of the staff." 

"If the security agents tell us that we can return to Kyiv, then we will return there" Ms. Kvien said. 

The US decided to move its embassy in Ukraine from Kyiv to the city of Lviv in the west of the country on 14 February, ten days before the launch of the Russian invasion, and later evacuated staff from the country completely. 

Denmark reopened its embassy in the Ukrainian capital on Monday.  

Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod -- who is visiting Kyiv -- told broadcaster Danish public service broadcaster DR that "it's a very strong symbol of the Danish support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people."

Several other countries, including France, the United States and Britain, have recently announced they are moving their embassies back to Kyiv.

(Euronews / AFP / Reuters)

Finnish energy company pulls the plug on Russian-built nuclear plant 

A Finnish nuclear energy company said Monday it has decided to terminate with immediate effect a contract with Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom for the delivery of a nuclear power plant, in part due to the war in Ukraine “which has worsened the risks for the project.”

The company, Fennovoima, also cited “significant delays and inability to deliver the project” for terminating the deal to build the northern Finland Hanhikivi Nuclear Power Plant.

It was proposed to house a Russian-designed pressurized water reactor, with a capacity of 1200 MW and the nuclear power plant was to generate approximately 10% of Finland’s electricity needs, the company said.

In April 2021, the company announced that construction was to begin in 2023 and commercial operation would start in 2029.

In a statement, Fennovoimas’s CEO Joachim Specht said the decision “is estimated to have a significant employee impact in Fennovoima and is expected to impact also the supply chain companies.”

(AP)

Ukraine's foreign minister adds to criticism of Russia over 'anti-Semitic' comments

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says his Russian counterpart’s recent remarks about Adolf Hitler and Jews demonstrate “the deeply-rooted antisemitism of the Russian elites.”

In an interview with an Italian news channel, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Ukraine could still have Nazi elements even if some figures, including President Volodymry Zelenskyy, were Jewish. “Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean anything,” he said, according to an Italian translation.

“Lavrov could not help hiding the deeply rooted antisemitism of the Russian elites,” Kuleba said in a tweet Monday. “His heinous remarks are offensive to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine, Israel, and the Jewish people. More broadly, they demonstrate that today’s Russia is full of hatred towards other nations.”

(Euronews / AP)

Russia reportedly shifts battalions from Mariupol to eastern Luhansk

The Ukrainian military says that Russia has redeployed some of its forces from the port of Mariupol to join its offensive in the east.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said Monday that several Russian battalions had been sent from Mariupol to the town of Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region.

Popasna has been one of the epicentres of fighting in the east as the Russian military has sought to break through the Ukrainian defences there in a bid to encircle the forces in the east.

The Ukrainian General Staff also said that the Russians were trying to press their attacks from Izyum to the towns of Slovyansk and Barvinkove.

The Russian military is still struggling to uproot the last remaining Ukrainian pocket of resistance at the giant Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol. The UN is set to coordinate an effort Monday to evacuate civilians sheltering at the plant.

Russian gas: EU crisis talks seek unity over roubles payment demand

EU energy ministers hold crisis talks on Monday, striving for a united response to Moscow's demand that European buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles or face their supply being cut off. 

Diplomats say the EU is edging towards a ban on Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

Read more here:

EU ministers hold emergency talks over Russian gas purchase in roubles

Russia halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland last week after they refused to meet its demand to effectively pay in roubles.

Israel summons Russian ambassador over Lavrov's antisemitic remarks

Israel has summoned the Russian ambassador over comments made by the Russian foreign minister about Nazism and antisemitism.

In an interview with an Italian news channel, Sergey Lavrov explained that Ukraine could still have Nazi elements even if some figures, including the country’s president, were Jewish.

“Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean anything,” he said, according to an Italian translation.

In a statement Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called the remarks “unforgivable and scandalous and a horrible historical error”.

“The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” Lapid said. “The lowest level of racism against Jews is to blame Jews themselves for antisemitism.”

Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem called the remarks “absurd, delusional, dangerous and deserving of condemnation".

A quarter of Kremlin's troops combat ineffective, including some of its elite forces

More than a quarter of all troops Russia deployed for its war in Ukraine are now “combat ineffective”, the UK Ministry of Defence stated in its daily briefing on Monday.

Russia committed over 120 so-called “battalion tactical groups” into the war since February, which represents 65% of all of Moscow’s combat strength.

The ministry said, “It is likely that more than a quarter of these units have now been rendered combat ineffective.”

The British military said that some of Russia’s most elite forces, like the VDV Airborne, “have suffered the highest levels of attrition”.

“It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces,” the ministry said.

Russian tourists expected in Turkey despite war, Erdogan says

Turkey’s president says the war in Ukraine should not negatively affect the tourism season.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday morning that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is “very sensitive" about Turkey's need for tourism revenue and has already pledged to give his support.

Turkey suffers from skyrocketing inflation and needs tourists’ foreign currencies.

Erdogan added that Saudi tourists would also be arriving following his visit to the country last week.

In an interview with Greek state broadcaster ERT, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian tourism brought revenue to neighbouring Greece and Turkey and called this “blood money.”

Zelenskyy pointed to a double standard where Turkey acted as a meditator between Kyiv and Moscow while preparing destinations for Russian tourists.

Erdogan said he’ll speak with Putin this week to discuss speeding up evacuations from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and find a way for grain exports from Ukraine and Russia.

Zelenskyy: Russia wages 'war of extermination'

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Kremlin of waging “a war of extermination,” citing strikes against non-military targets on Sunday.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses, and residential neighbourhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.

“The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army,” he said.

He said Moscow will gain nothing from the damage but will further isolate itself from the rest of the world.

“What could be Russia’s strategic success in this war?" Zelenskyy said. "Honestly, I do not know.

Several killed in Russian bombardment of Donetsk region, local authorities say

Four civilians were reported killed and 11 more were injured by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region on Sunday, the Ukrainian regional governor said that evening.

The deaths and seven of the injuries were in the northern city of Lyman, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post. One person also died in the city of Bakhmut from injuries received in the Luhansk region, he said.

In the same post, Kyrylenko said that it was impossible to determine the number of victims in the bombed-out port city of Mariupol and the town of Volnovakha, which is controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists.

Railway bridge in Russia's Kursk region damaged, explosions heard in Belgorod overnight

An explosive device damaged a railway bridge on Sunday in the Kursk region of Russia, which borders Ukraine, and a criminal investigation has been started.

The explosion on Sunday caused a partial collapse of the bridge near the village of Konopelka, on the Sudzha-Sosnovy Bor railway, the region’s government reported in a post on Telegram.

Overnight on Monday, two loud explosions could be heard in the area of Belgorod.

According to the region's governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, there was no damage or casualties.

Social media users reported seeing bright flashes in the sky and hearing the sound of explosions.

Recent weeks have seen a number of fires and explosions in Russian regions near the border, including Kursk.

An ammunition depot in the Belgorod region burned after explosions were heard, and authorities in the Voronezh region said an air defence system shot down a drone.

Russian forces continue shelling of Mariupol steel mill, Ukrainian military claims

A Ukrainian military officer says that Russian forces have resumed their shelling of a steel plant in the war-torn port city Mariupol immediately after the partial evacuation of civilians.

Ukrainian National Guard brigade commander Denys Shlega said Sunday in a televised interview that the shelling began as soon as rescue crews ceased evacuating civilians at the Azovstal steel mill.

Shlega says that at least one more round of evacuations is needed to clear civilians from the plant. He says dozens of small children remain in bunkers below the industrial facilities.

The commander estimates that several hundred civilians are still trapped at the site alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and numerous dead bodies.

The plant is the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.