Russia Ukraine war – latest news: Putin launches nuclear drill amid warning over Bakhmut battle

The Russian military conducted drills of its strategic missile forces Wednesday, deploying mobile launchers in Siberia in a show of the country’s massive nuclear capability amid the fighting in Ukraine.

As part of the drills, the Yars mobile missile launchers will maneuver across three regions of Siberia, Russia‘s Defense Ministry said. The movements will involve measures to conceal the deployment from foreign satellites and other intelligence assets, the ministry said.

The Defense Ministry didn’t say how long the drills would last or mention plans for any practice launches. The Yars is a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of about 11,000 kilometers (over 6,800 miles). It forms the backbone of Russia‘s strategic missile forces.

The Defense Ministry released a video showing massive trucks carrying the missiles driving out from a base to go on patrol. The maneuvers involve about 300 vehicles and 3,000 troops in eastern Siberia, according to the ministry.

The massive exercise took place days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, Russia‘s neighbor and ally.

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for use on the battlefield and have a relatively short range and a much lower yield compared to the long-range strategic missiles fitted with nuclear warheads that are capable of obliterating whole cities.

Putin’s decision to put the tactical weapons in Belarus followed his repeated warnings that Moscow was ready to use “all available means” — a reference to its nuclear arsenal — to fend off attacks on Russian territory.

Orthodox monks who’ve been ordered out of a monastery in Kyiv have refused to leave today, as a deadline to vacate the complex expired.

The dispute over the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site, is part of a wider religious conflict playing out in parallel with the war.

The monks using the property belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of links to Russia.

Read the full story here:

Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has gravely violated the United Nations charter and international law.

Mr Lee was speaking at the Boao forum in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan.

Big powers have the responsibility of maintaining stable and workable relations with one another, and the most worrying is the state of relations between the United States and China, he said today.

A Russian court on Tuesday convicted a single father over social media posts criticizing the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to two years in prison — a case brought to the attention of authorities by his daughter’s drawings against the invasion at school, according to his lawyer and activists.

The case of Alexei Moskalyov, who was indicted and tried in his hometown of Yefremov, about 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) south of Moscow, has drawn international attention and is a grim indication that the Kremlin is intensifying its crackdown on dissent, targeting more people and handing out harsher punishments for any expression of criticism of the war.

Russian forces have witnessed some success in Bakhmut over the past day after being stalled around the Donetsk city for weeks in a slow-burning fight, officials from the Ukrainian side have said.

“Enemy forces had a degree of success in their actions aimed at storming the city of Bakhmut,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its regular night-time report.

“Our defenders are holding the city and are repelling numerous enemy attacks,” the top military command said.

For four straight weeks of this month, the average number of daily Russian attacks on the front line reported by Ukraine‘s general staff has declined.

Whereas earlier Russian attacks were recorded to be around 124 in the first week of March, the next seven days saw 69 attacks.

On Wednesday, this dipped further to 57 attacks.

Journalists near the frontline west of Bakhmut and in the northern sector have also observed notable declines in the intensity of Russian attacks last week.

After prematurely announcing the capture of most of Bakhmut in early March, the Russian officials now say that their forces are in the process of gaining ground in street-by-street fighting.

A festival accompanying the Eurovision Song Contest will be a celebration of Ukraine “tinged with bitterness” as the war continues in the European country.

EuroFestival, a two-week series of events in Liverpool, has announced 24 culture commissions for May which include a performance by Ukrainian Eurovision Song Contest winner Jamala and collaborations between British artists and Ukrainian artists.

Tetyana Filevska, creative director at the Ukrainian Institute, told the PA news agency at the British Music Experience in Liverpool, during the launch of the programme on Tuesday, that celebrating her culture is a form of “resistance”.

British ammunition stockpiles are being used for the purpose they were intended – degrading Russia’s fighting ability, Rishi Sunak has said.

The Prime Minister said he would “not necessarily see it as a negative” that levels of shells and missiles were being run down because they were being used to deter the threat from Vladimir Putin’s military.

Mr Sunak’s comments came as British-supplied Challenger 2 tanks were poised to begin combat missions in Ukraine.

The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog returned Wednesday to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a day after saying a deal to protect Europe’s largest nuclear power facility from a catastrophic accident due to the war in Ukraine was “close.”

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi crossed the war’s front lines for a second time to reach the plant, which is located in a partially Russia-occupied part of Ukraine where combat has intensified.

The IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, has a rotating team permanently based at the plant. Grossi told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday he feels it is his duty to ramp up talks between Kyiv and Moscow aimed at safeguarding the facility.