As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 411th day, we take a look at the main developments.
Here is the situation as it stands on Monday, April 10, 2023:
Fighting
- Shelling by Russian forces over the weekend killed at least seven civilians, Ukrainian officials reported on Sunday.
- Russian forces launched 40 air strikes, four missile strikes and 58 attacks from multiple-rocket launchers on various parts of Ukraine between Saturday and Sunday morning, the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces reported.
- The Zaporizhia region’s Governor Yurii Malashko said 18 communities in all were shelled.
- The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said two communities there were hit by bombs from warplanes late on Sunday, but he did not immediately report any casualties.
- Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said two men died on Sunday in shelling in Kupiansk, a city that Russia held before Ukrainian forces regained control of almost all of the province.
- The Wagner Group, a private Russian military company whose fighters have spearheaded the offensive on Bakhmut, has been incurring heavy losses, making it necessary to move in regular army units, Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, said on Sunday.
- More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea. Kyiv estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia since the invasion.
- Russia has destroyed a depot containing 70,000 tonnes of fuel near the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday.
- Ukraine’s military reported continued Russian attacks and shelling, with the heaviest fighting still focused on two cities, Bakhmut and Avdiivka, in the eastern Donetsk region.
Diplomacy
- Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova is due to visit India on Monday and will seek humanitarian aid and equipment to repair energy infrastructure damaged during Russia’s invasion, the Hindu news agency reports.
- Russia threatens to bypass UN-brokered grain deal unless obstacles to its agricultural exports are removed, while Turkey seeks a grain deal extension.
- The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said on Saturday that it thinks Russia’s overall offensive “is approaching culmination”, citing Ivan Tymochko, the head of the Ukrainian Council of Reservists for the country’s ground forces.
- Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country’s invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.
Conflict
- US officials suspect that highly classified military and intelligence documents that appeared online, with details ranging from Ukraine’s air defences to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, may have been leaked by someone from the United States, reports Reuters news agency.