Seven Russian officers killed in strike near Mariupol

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At least seven Russian officers have been killed in a missile strike near occupied Mariupol, a Ukrainian official has claimed.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s exiled Ukrainian mayor, said at least six missiles struck a camp being used by the Russian military in Babakh-Tarama, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The attack caused at least seven fatalities, while more than ten other people were injured.
“All of them [the victims] are officers, no soldiers live there,” he said in a post on Telegram.Ukrainian forces have repeatedly targeted key Russian bases deep behind enemy lines, using long-range missiles and drones.
Thank you for following today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. 
We’ll be back soon with all the latest updates from the conflict.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appealed for “speed” on providing weapons to Ukraine.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Zelenskiy said: ““The key now is speed. The speed of implementing agreements with partners on the supply of weapons for our warriors. The speed of eliminating all Russian schemes to circumvent sanctions. The speed of finding political solutions to protect lives from Russian terror.”
“Every leader who does not waste time is a life saver. Every state that knows how to act quickly safeguards the rules-based world order. I thank everyone in the world who helps our people restore normal life after the Russian strikes. I thank everyone who helps our warriors defend the cities and villages of Ukraine from Russian evil.”
The key now is speed. The speed of implementing agreements with partners on the supply of weapons for our warriors. The speed of eliminating all Russian schemes to circumvent sanctions. The speed of finding political solutions to protect lives from Russian terror. Every leader… pic.twitter.com/hEG5cKJmO3
As we reported this morning, Nato is planning training exercises in Finland near the Russian border on Friday, a move that the Kremlin has warned risks “possible military incidents” (see our 9:49 am post).
The UK is also involved in the drills. A fleet of nine British Army Apache attack helicopters, worth £40 million each, are already in transit to join a training mission in Finland described as the “largest Nato exercise since the Cold War”, before heading for another exercise in Estonia with more aircraft.
Four Wildcat reconnaissance helicopters and two RAF Chinook support helicopters will just go to Estonia and spend a longer time there.
The training exercise with the Apache attack helicopters in Finland is called Exercise Arrow, while the one in Estonia – with all three types of helicopter – is called Exercise Swift Response.
The practices come under the umbrella of Exercise Steadfast Defender 24, which is testing Nato’s plans for reinforcing defences in Europe against a “near-peer adversary”.
Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lambert described Exercise Steadfast Defender as “the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War”. 
Around 20,000 British personnel are involved, among 90,000 troops from all 32 members of the military alliance.
Russian forces have hit a Ukrainian drone production facility and a Ukrainian army fuel depot, the defence ministry said on Wednesday, without providing more details.
Germany has rejected fresh calls to supply Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine but has urged other EU nations to provide Kyiv with Patriot air defence systems. 
Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, said during a press conference with Rishi Sunak that his decision to rebuff Volodymyr Zelensky’s plea for Taurus rockets “won’t change”. 
Speaking alongside the Prime Minister in Berlin he also said that other European nations should “look at their stocks” and see if they can “spare” Patriot systems. 
Germany has already supplied two of the US-made air defence batteries, which are vital to Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russian rocket and drone attacks.
Germany has taken ‘far-reaching’ decisions to combat irregular migration, Olaf Scholz says. 
He describes measures to speed up court-hearings into asylum cases, which can take up to 20 months, and digitise the system. 
Benefits for migrants are also being restricted. 
The changes are the most significant of the last “twenty or thirty years”. 
Berlin has received 3.8 million asylum applications in the past decade and Mr Scholz has been under intense pressure over the security of Germany’s borders. 
Rishi Sunak is responding to questions about how he plans to fund the boost in defence spending to 2.5  per cent of GDP. 
‘We have a very clear idea of how to reduce civil service headcount,” Mr Sunak said, saying it has “grown considerably over the past few years.” 
“It’s a completely funded plan”, he says. 
Rishi Sunak praised Germany for increasing its defence spending.
“At this dangerous moment, the bond between our two nations is stronger than ever. We meet as a war rages on our continent and new threats are rising around the world,” Mr Sunak said.
He congratulated Mr Scholz on his leadership and taking the “historic decision” to increase Germany’s defence spending.
“We stand here today together as the leading defence spenders in Europe,” he added.
He continued: “Together we have acted to meet this movement. We have taken greater responsibility for our collective security and today we are going even further, opening a new chapter in the security relationship between our two nations.”
Rishi Sunak says Germany and Olaf Scholz deserve “particular praise” for their leadership on supplies of air defence systems. 
“Everyone can bring something different to the table,” Mr Sunak said, “so Putin can see his aggression ends in failure.”
Olaf Scholz says Germany has delivered the largest amount of weapons to Ukraine in Europe. 
The Chancellor said Berlin had delivered 28 billion euros of ammunition, air-defence systems, and tanks. 
“No other individual country” has made as substantial donations of Patriot air defence systems, Mr Scholz said. 
He did not directly address a question about his refusal to send long-range Taurus missiles. 
Mr Scholz is reportedly unwilling to send the missiles for fear of escalating the war with Russia. 
Rishi Sunak said Germany and the UK were tied by long-standing friendship, referencing the upcoming Euro 2024 football tournament.
The prime minister said the British people’s “love” for Jurgen Klopp and the Munich population’s for Harry Kane was an example of the close bond between the nations.
Earlier this morning, we reported that Russia’s deputy defence minister has been detained amid accusations of “large-scale bribery” (see our 8:44am post).
The arrest of Timur Ivanov, a long-time ally of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, marks the most dramatic corruption case in Russia for years.
Mr Ivanov, 47, who oversaw construction for Russia’s military infrastructure projects, was detained by the FSB services late on Tuesday evening at his work. 
Earlier today, Mr Ivanov, wearing his military uniform, appeared behind a glass screen in a Moscow court, where he was formally arrested and charged with high bribery. 
The court remanded him in custody for two months and placed him in the high-security Lefortovo prison in Moscow. He faces 15 years in jail if convicted.
An acquaintance of Mr Ivanov, identified as Sergei Borodin, was also arrested and ordered into pre-trial detention on the same charges. 
Both men are to remain in custody until at least 23 June.
The United States and Russia are set for a standoff later today over nuclear weapons in space, with a vote due on a resolution to prevent a new arms race.
Some diplomats expect Russia to block the US-drafted resolution, which comes after Washington accused Moscow of developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon whose detonation could disrupt everything from military communications to taxi apps.
Russia has flatly denied the claims, with President Vladimir Putin saying the country has “always been categorically against” deploying nuclear weapons in space.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, whose signatories include Russia and the United States, bars countries from placing “in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”
The resolution will go to the 15-member UN Security Council, and needs nine states to vote for it without vetoes from Russia, the US, China, UK or France.
Drones sent by Ukraine’s SBU security service have “destroyed” two Rosneft-owned oil depots in Russia’s Smolensk region in an overnight attack on Wednesday, a Ukrainian intelligence source said.
The source said the depots contained 26,000 cubic metres of fuel and that the attack caused major fires and evacuation of personnel.
“The SBU continues to effectively destroy military infrastructure and logistics that provide fuel to the Russian army in Ukraine,” said the source. “These facilities are and will remain our absolutely legitimate targets.”
 
Russia will further increase its “buffer zone” inside Ukraine if Ukraine receives longer-range missiles from the US, the Kremlin warned on Wednesday.
The US is preparing a $1bn military aid package for Ukraine, two US officials told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.
The US could begin sending Ukraine new weapons as soon as “this week” after the United States Congress passed a $61 billion aid package after months of bitter deadlock.
When asked about the possibility the package would include longer-range Atacm missiles, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s stance on the subject – that it will be forced to expand what it calls a buffer zone in Ukraine if longer-range missiles are delivered – had not changed. 
The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import billions of pounds worth of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels, new data shows.
Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that record imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same value as the previous year, up from £434.2 million in 2021.
Russia is the largest supplier of crude oil to India and China, while Turkey has become one of the biggest importers of Russian oil since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
This comes as Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure becomes increasingly frequent, with only a few major power plants not yet damaged or wrecked.
The so-called ‘loophole’ allows Russian oil to continue being imported to the UK despite sanctions imposed, as long as the oil is refined in another country.
This is not illegal and does not breach the UK’s Russian oil ban, as it is no longer considered to have originated in Russia, but critics say it undermines sanctions aimed at restricting funds to pay for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church has imposed a three-year suspension on a priest who presided over the memorial service for the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny last month, according to a church statement.
The Moscow diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church did not give a reason for the discipline, which has forbidden Dmitry Safronov from giving blessings, wearing the frock or bearing the church’s priestly cross until 2027.
“At the end of the period of penance, based on feedback from the place of obedience, a decision will be made on the possibility of his further priestly service,” said the diocese in a statement on Tuesday.
Mr Safronov will be transferred to another church in Moscow to act as a psalm-reader.
On 26 March, Mr Safronov led the memorial service attended by thousands for Mr Navalny, who was Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic inside Russia.
Mr Safronov was also one of the priests who publicly called on state authorities to release Navalyny’s body to his family after the opposition leader died in an Arctic prison in February, according to local reports.
Russia has warned that the upcoming Nato exercises near its border with Finland increase the risk of “military incidents.”
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told local RIA state news the drills are “provocative.”
Finland officially joined Nato earlier this month, ditching decades of non-alignment to join the military alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The country shares a 832 mile border with Russia, so its entry, nearly two years after applying, will more than double the size of Nato’s border with the nation.
Commenting on the drills, planned to start on Friday, Ms Zakharova said: “Nato military exercises near the Russian borders are provocative in nature. Their task is to exert military pressure on the Russian Federation through a demonstration of force.”
Russian missiles injured six people and damaged residential buildings in Kharkiv early on Wednesday, the region’s governor has claimed.
The attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city damaged three residential buildings, two offices, three non-residential buildings and a gas pipeline in the central district of the city, said the governor Oleh Synehubov in a statement on messaging app Telegram.
Some 568 windows and 33 cars were damaged, Mr Synehubov added, while the city’s mayor Ihor Terekhov told Ukrainian TV two S-300 missiles were also used in the strike, but did not cause significant damage to residential areas.
Mr Terekhov said the work to repair the gas pipeline continued as the city raced to restore supply on Wednesday morning.
A Russian court has formally arrested a minister and charged him with bribery, according to Reuters news agency.
Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, who was once accused by the team of the late Alexei Navalny of living a lavish lifestyle, was detained yesterday on suspicion of accepting “large scale” bribes.
He is suspected of taking a bribe worth at least 1 million roubles ($10,730, €10,025) and could face 15 years in prison if found guilty, according to Russian news agency TASS.
Mr Ivanov, who had been in his job for eight years, was in charge of large construction projects rebuilding the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was heavily bombarded and taken by Russia as part of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the US Senate’s approval of a $61bn (£49bn) package of aid for the war-torn nation as proof of Washington’s role as a “beacon of democracy”. 
In a statement on messaging app Telegram earlier today, he said he was “grateful” for the “vital aid to Ukraine.”
The US is already preparing a $1bn (£802,000) military aid package, the first sourced from the bill, with the bulk following in the coming weeks.
This includes vehicles, Stinger air defence munitions, additional ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems and 155mm artillery ammunition.
In an interview shortly after the vote, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said:  “This national security bill is one of the most important measures Congress has passed in a very long time to protect American security and the security of Western democracy.”
Fires broke out overnight at fuel and energy facilities in Russia’s Smolensk district after a Ukraine-launched drone attack.
“Our region is again under attack by Ukrainian UAVs,” said Vasily Anokhin, the governor of the Smolensk region in Russia’s west, on the Telegram messaging app.
In a separate incident, people were evacuated from parts of Lipetsk, in southwest Russia, after a drone landed on an industrial park there.  
Igor Artamonov, the governor of the region, said that there were no injuries, but nearby residents were evacuated as a precaution measure.
The US Senate voted on Tuesday to approve $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as a bipartisan resounding-majority joined forces to send the long-stalled package to Joe Biden’s desk to sign.
The final vote was 79 to 18.
Our US Editor Tony Diver has the full story here