Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia switching to defensive positions in all areas of combat except Bakhmut, claims Ukraine intelligence | Ukraine

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is chairing a meeting of the UN security council this afternoon and has clashed with the UN secretary general António Guterres.

Guterres said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing “massive suffering and devastation to the country and its people”, and called for urgent “effective responses”.

The UN chief added that the world faces historic high tensions between major powers.

However in response Lavrov, who is one of Putin’s key ministers and been in charge of foreign affairs for Russia for 19 years blamed the US and their western allies. He said the UN was “enduring a profound crisis” and that the US had replaced international law with “a certain rules-based order”.

Lavrov said the US had “embraced a policy of destroying” the architecture of UN.

Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Denis Pushilin, acting head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, has said the situation in Bakhmut continues to be tense, but that Wagner group forces have made some advances. Tass quotes him saying:

The situation in Bakhmut now continues to remain tense. Literally over the past 24 hours, the guys from the Wagner PMC have advanced in the western and northwestern parts of Bakhmut. Now they have approached a rather difficult area – a block of high-rise buildings, where the enemy has organised defence.

Work is also being actively carried out to finally and irrevocably cut off the enemy’s last supply route. Fighting continues in the area of ​​the Khromove settlement. The enemy still has some paths. The task is simple: to minimize and completely make it impossible for the enemy to move.

The battle situation in Bakhmut has made it impossible for journalists to independently verify battlefield reports. Donetsk is one of four partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex.

Russia has switched to defensive positions in all its areas of combat apart from Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian head of intelligence Kyrylo Budanov.

In an interview with RBC Ukraine, he said: “They have completely switched to positional defense everywhere. The only places on the frontline where they are making attempts are in the city of Bakhmut, an attempt to cover the city of Avdiivka from the north, and localized fighting in the city of Marinka. Both in Avdiivka and Marinka the tactics are identical to those in Bakhmut – just an attempt to wipe the settlement off the face of the earth.

“And against the backdrop of the lack of success elsewhere, they face the problem that even their ‘deceived’ society needs to see something, some kind of victory. This is the only place where they succeed at least. In addition, there is the fact that Prigozhin once said that he would take Bakhmut. He would be happy to sing about it, but he can’t. That is, everything just came together here.”

Budanov said that there was little chance of Vuhledar in the Donbas region, which has been the site of a long-term tank battle, being captured. He added that he didn’t think Russians were planning to intensify or launch offensive operations on the frontline.

Peter Beaumont

A dispatch here from our reporter Peter Beaumont in Kyiv.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are “forcibly evacuating” civilians in the area of Kherson region that they still occupy, a day after it was claimed that Ukrainian forces had established a bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

“I have information that the evacuation starts today [Sunday] with an excuse of protecting civilians from the consequences of heavy fighting in the area,” said Oleksandr Samoylenko, the Ukrainian head of Kherson’s regional council. Russian troops were “trying to steal as much as they can” as they withdrew, he added.

The claim cannot be verified, but it comes amid an apparent uptick in Ukrainian military activity in the south of the country that some analysts have interpreted as a potential precursor to Kyiv’s long anticipated counter-offensive.

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A woman charged withkilling a pro-war Russian military blogger using explosives has been denied bail by a Russian court.

Darya Trepova, 26, is accused of killing Vladen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, on 2 April. He was presented with a statuette containing a bomb while giving a talk at a cafe in St Petersberg.

Investigators say she was working on behalf of a pro-Ukrainian group with connections to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny – claims rejected by Navalny’s associates and Kyiv – and charged her with terrorist offences.

A court in Moscow on Monday rejected Trepova’s appeal against being held in prison until at least 2 June, Reuters reports. The appeal was largely procedural and did not concern the substance of the charges against her.

Trepova said she regretted what had happened and wished a speedy recovery to other victims, the Russian TASS news agency reported from the court. More than 40 others were injured in the blast.

Trepova’s husband previously told independent Russian media outlets he believed she had been framed and had not known the statuette she had been told to deliver contained explosives.

Tatarsky was among the best-known of an influential group of bloggers who have surged to prominence since Russia invaded Ukraine. They have often been scathing in their criticism of Russia’s defence establishment and its conduct of the war, pushing for a more aggressive assault on Ukraine.

Last year, in a video shot at a ceremony in the Kremlin to mark Russia’s unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Tatarsky said Russia should “kill everyone” and “rob everyone” in Ukraine.

• Russia’s Black Sea Fleet repelled a drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol in the early hours of Monday, the Moscow-installed governor of the city has said on the Telegram messaging app.

• Ukraine’s military has set up positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River near Kherson city, the Institute for the Study of War cites Russian military bloggers as saying. Infiltrating the area could be a first step towards trying to dislodge Russians from positions they are using to shell and shoot at Kherson.

• China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and upholds the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. The comments come after the Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, made comments on Friday which cast doubt on the sovereignty of former Soviet states including Ukraine. France’s foreign ministry says it will discuss the issue with the ambassador on Monday.

• EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed confidence on Monday that the bloc would finalise a plan within days to buy ammunition for Ukraine after Kyiv expressed frustration at wrangling among EU member states. “Yes, still there is some disagreement. But I am sure everybody will understand that we are in a situation of extreme urgency,” Borrell told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

• The head of the Russian grain union said on Monday the Black Sea grain initiative to facilitate Ukrainian agricultural exports had not yielded anything positive for Russia or helped facilitate supplies to the global market. Russia has said it will walk away from the agreement on 18 May if restrictions that it claims are blocking Russia’s own agricultural and fertiliser exports are not addressed.

• Vladimir Rogov, chair of the pro-Russian “We are together with Russia” organisation in occupied Zaporizhzhia has posted to his Telegram channel to say that Ukrainian armed forces are massing in the area. Russian state-owned news agency Tass cites Rogov claiming that 12,000 Ukrainian service personnel are now in the area of ​​the city of Huliaipole, located directly on the line of contact in the region.

• More than 300 foreign correspondents who have worked in Moscow have written to the Russian government to call for the immediate release of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter being held on espionage charges, saying his arrest sends a “disturbing and dangerous signal” about the country’s attitude to independent media.

• Russia is using passports as a tool in the “Russification” of parts of occupied Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update. Authorities in occupied areas were “almost certainly” coercing the population to accept Russian passports, it said.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular media briefing on Monday that her remarks on sovereignty represents China’s official government stance.

China respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and upholds the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, Mao said earlier.

In an interview aired on French television on Friday, China’s ambassador in France had questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet countries like Ukraine.

Mao was asked on Monday if the ambassador’s stance represents China’s official position.

More than 300 foreign correspondents who have worked in Moscow have written to the Russian government to call for the immediate release of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter being held on espionage charges, saying his arrest sends a “disturbing and dangerous signal” about the country’s attitude to independent media.

Gershkovich, who was detained in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg last month on spying charges that carry a possible 20-year prison sentence, is the first US journalist detained on such charges since the end of the cold war. Both the Wall Street Journal and the US government has denied that he was involved in espionage.

The 301 signatories of the letter include the BBC’s Orla Guerin, the former New York Times journalist Bill Keller, John Kampfner, the executive director of the Chatham House thinktank and David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker. Between them, the journalists have worked for media outlets from 22 different countries. The earliest signatory arrived in Moscow in 1964, while the most recent left in the past few weeks.

The letter, addressed to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, says the journalists are “shocked and appalled” by Gershkovich’s arrest and the subsequent charges laid against him, and urges the dropping over the charges and his immediate release.

“Evan Gershkovich has a long and impressive record of journalistic work,” it reads.

“We have no doubt that the only purpose and intention of his work was to inform his readers about the current reality in Russia. Seeking out information, even if it means upsetting political interests, does not make Evan a criminal or a spy, it makes him a journalist. Journalism is not a crime.”

It goes on: “The arrest sends a disturbing and dangerous signal about Russia’s disregard for independent media and shows indifference to the fate of a young, talented and honest journalist.”

Read more here: Journalists who have worked in Moscow call for release of Evan Gershkovich