April 29, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Sweden and Finland could deepen their military cooperation if the security situation in the Baltic Sea region deteriorates generally or is triggered by a potential application to join NATO, Finland's Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Friday.

But, standing alongside his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde at a Helsinki news conference, Haavisto said that neither country has decided yet whether to apply for NATO membership. Russia has previously warned that such a move could lead to a more aggressive stance from Moscow. 

"We already have ongoing cooperation. Of course, if our security environment becomes more challenging of course we can add bilateral planning, and it includes all sectors on military cooperation," Haavisto said.

On the question of NATO membership, Linde said: "We have not come to a conclusion yet in Sweden." No decision will be made before May 13, when an analysis report from Parliament on membership is due to be delivered, she added.

Haavisto said it would be “important” that both countries make a decision on joining NATO “in the same direction and in the same timeframe,” while “fully respecting” the independence of their respective decision-making over the issue.

On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the accession process would “go quickly” and interim measures would be put in place should Finland and Sweden decide to apply to join the alliance.

Russia has threatened serious consequences should the countries do so, with the Kremlin saying on April 7 it would have to "rebalance the situation" if they did.

Finland joining NATO would add an additional 830-mile border between the alliance and Russia.

Russian troops have shelled an important railway hub and supply line for Ukrainian troops in the country's east, according to video footage published on Thursday and Friday.

The video shows railroad trucks on fire in the town of Lyman, a few miles east of Sloviansk, in Donetsk region.

The Russians were trying "to advance from the north of the region, neighbouring Kharkiv region -- in the Lyman direction, and do everything possible to get a direct route towards Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, reaching their strategic goals in the Donetsk region," said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk regional military administration.

Kyrylenko insisted that "the enemy cannot break through. Lyman city is under the Ukrainian Armed Forces control."

However, he said the Russians were using artillery and airstrikes to wipe out settlements and prevent the Ukrainian defenders from fortifying their positions.

Excluding the city of Mariupol, nearly 1.7 million people had lived in government-controlled parts of Donetsk on the eve of the war, Kyrylenko added. Now there are about 370,000 civilians in the region.

Some background: Lyman has come under bombardment as Russian troops continue their military offensive across Ukraine's eastern regions.

On Friday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces said that Russian forces are also trying to inflict air strikes in eastern Ukraine.

The Izium area, located in the Kharkiv region, has become a staging ground for Russian forces as they try to advance through neighboring Donetsk and Luhansk. No offensive operations in that area have been conducted in recent hours, said the Ukrainian military.

"The main effort was focused on reconnaissance, identification of defensive positions of the units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine and hitting them with artillery fire," the General Staff said.

Further southeast, "in order to prevent the redeployment of our troops, the enemy is shelling the positions with artillery, mortars and multiple rocket launchers along the entire line of contact," it added.

CNN's Julia Kesaieva contributed reporting to this post.

The UK will send a team of war crime experts to Ukraine to help investigate “atrocities” by Russian troops in the country, British officials have said.

They will arrive in Poland next week to meet the Ukrainian government, international partners, NGOs and refugees, according to a statement from the Foreign Office (FCDO).

The aim is to help gather evidence to prosecute Russian war crimes, the FCDO said on Friday.

The team will include experts in conflict related sexual violence, following reports of abuse by Russian forces in Ukraine. 

The news comes as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss travels to the Hague on Friday to meet with the International Criminal Court (ICC) President, Judge Piotr Hofmanski. Truss will also work with her Dutch counterpart, Wopke Hoekstra, during her visit to jointly hold Russia to account, the statement added.

"Russia has brought barbarity to Ukraine and committed vile atrocities, including against women," Truss said in the statement.

UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab also visited the Hague in March to support the ICC's investigations as well as a report produced under the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Moscow Mechanism), which found evidence of torture, rape and forced deportation of more than half a million people in Ukraine.

Some background: The announcement comes three days after the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Karim Khan, told CNN that here will be “a case to answer in due course” on Russia’s alleged war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

“We will get to the truth because there's no place to hide in the courtroom. Whatever the narratives and counter-narratives, the evidence should properly be tested ... and there will be -- I think -- a case to answer in due course,” Khan told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a wide-ranging interview, when asked how the ICC might build a case in Ukraine. 

Khan made the comments while reviewing images shared with CNN by Ukrainian prosecutors, as they investigate alleged Russian war crimes. 

Russian forces have closed off an area in Mariupol, potentially ahead of another attempt to storm the Azovstal steel plant, a Ukrainian official has said.

"For now, the occupiers closed the square of the Left Bank district from Veselka Park again. This may be due to another attempt to storm Azovstal or street fights," said Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol.

Veselka Park is situated to the north of Azovstal.

Andrushchenko also spoke about Russian efforts to take over more government functions in Mariupol.

He said the Russians' allies in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic were trying to "nationalize" Ukrainian property, such as the port.

On Thursday, DPR head Denis Pushilin said the seaport was being cleared and reconstruction begun, and "the port will be fully functional, we plan to make the first shipment in May."

Andrushchenko also said the Russians were also beginning a property census in parts of Mariupol, "despite public objections."

The census will assess the state of high-rise buildings in the southern port city, as well as surviving apartments and their owners, he said.

"Yesterday in Mariupol the occupiers issued the first birth certificate for the last month. For the first time in Mariupol, a Russian terrorist satellite has officially stolen the citizenship of our Ukrainian child," Andrushchenko added.

Andrushchenko comments came hours after the Ukrainian President's office said renewed efforts would be made to get civilians out of the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

Some background: In recent days Russian forces have stepped up attacks on the sprawling Azovstal industrial complex, as part of their efforts to fully capture Mariupol.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding which owns the plant, described the scene as "a humanitarian disaster."

"The city's literally under siege for almost two months now. And the Russians, they don't allow us to bring food into the city or water into the city," Ryzhenkov told CNN.

Built in 1933 under Soviet rule, the plant was partially demolished during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s before being rebuilt.

Now it is gone again -- its carcass sheltering Ukrainian soldiers and around 1,000 civilians in a maze of underground chambers, according to Ukrainian officials.

Azovstal has since become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russia's unrelenting military assault on Ukraine.

CNN's Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Isa Soares, Madalena Araujo and Oleksandra Ochman contributed reporting to this post.

Two British male volunteers have been abducted by Russian forces in Ukraine as they were evacuating civilians, Dominik Byrne, the co-founder, and chief operating officer of the UK not-for-profit, Presidium Network, told CNN Friday.

The aid workers lost contact with the organization on Monday morning as they were traveling somewhere south of the city of Zaporizhzhia in central Ukraine to help organize a civilian evacuation of the area.

Neither work directly with Presidium Network, but the organization had been offering them support, according to Byrne. 

A family the two men had tried to evacuate from Zaporizhzhia were later taken in and interrogated by Russian soldiers, who asked them whether the volunteers were "British spies," Bryne told CNN. 

The family were eventually released and are now safe in Poland, Bryne added. 

CNN has reached out to the British Foreign Office for comment.

Multiple reports of abductions by Russian forces -- including those of local mayors, children, religious leaders, and journalists -- have surfaced since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine more than two months ago. 

Few beyond the metals industry had heard of Mariupol's Azovstal Steel and Iron Works before it became the scene of a desperate last stand against Russia's invading forces.

Until recently Azovstal was a major player on the global stage, producing 4 million tons of steel annually and exporting the majority across the globe, according to its owner Metinvest Holding, Ukraine's biggest steelmaker.

From London's Shard skyscraper to Hudson Yards in Manhattan to Genoa's San Giorgio Bridge (which replaced the collapsed Morandi Bridge), steel produced at Azovstal is used in some of the world's most recognizable landmarks.

But for weeks now, the world has been gripped by the battle raging over the steelworks on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

The pocket of Ukrainian fighters entrenched at the plant has become a symbol of the country's unwavering resistance in the face of an enemy that far outnumbers them.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding which owns the plant, is devastated by what he sees happening to the plant and to Mariupol.

Read the full story here:

RELATED

'They never expected Mariupol to resist.' Locals horrified by Russia's relentless attack on the vast steel plant shielding Ukrainians | CNN

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of "robbing" wheat from parts of the country they have occupied, a move which increases the threat to global food security.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement reported by Reuters: “The looting of grain from the Kherson region, as well as the blocking of shipments from Ukrainian ports and the mining of shipping lanes, threaten the world’s food security."

The ministry demanded that Russia stops "the illegal theft of grain, unblock Ukrainian ports, restore freedom of navigation and allow the passage of merchant ships.”

"The United Nations estimates that about 1.7 billion people may face poverty and hunger due to food disruptions as a result of a full-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine,” the ministry added.

Asked about the allegations by Reuters, the Kremlin said it had no information on the matter.

The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces also claimed Friday that Russian troops were "robbing" wheat stocks, as heavy fighting continues in the country's eastern and southern regions.

CNN is unable to verify these allegations independently. 

Ivan Fedorov, mayor of the southern city of Melitopol, which has been held by Russian troops for weeks, also spoke about the removal of grain stocks.

"Today it has moved to an industrial scale," he said. "Yesterday we published a video of a convoy of 50+ cars with trailers taking grain out of our occupied territories ... And today we do not know where they sent it."

The area around Melitopol produces substantial cereal crops.

The wheat crisis: Ukraine is known as the "breadbasket of Europe," and is a key source of wheat and corn -- especially for countries in the Middle East and North Africa that depend on imports. The likely wholesale disruption of its harvest this year could be a disaster, leaving these countries in short supply -- and driving up prices for important agricultural goods.

A checkpoint in the Russian village of Krupets, Kursk, was hit by incoming shelling and mortar fire, said the regional governor in a Telegram post on Friday.  

“This morning in the Rylsky district near the border was not peaceful. Around 8:00 a.m. (local time) a checkpoint in the village of Krupets was shelled with mortar fire. The firing points were suppressed by retaliatory fire from our border guards and the military,” said Gov. Roman Starovoyt.

He added that “there are no casualties or damage.” 

The Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, has been the site of several recent attacks, according to Starovoyt. He also claimed Kursk saw incoming fire on Wednesday, and that two Ukrainian drones were shot down over the village of Borovskoye on Monday. 

Russian officials have repeatedly accused Ukraine of mounting cross-border attacks on fuel depots and military installations, claims which Ukrainian government agencies say are intended to stoke "anti-Ukrainian sentiment."

An operation to evacuate civilians from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol is planned for Friday, according to a statement from the Ukrainian president's office on Friday.

The statement gave no further details.

Hundreds of civilians are thought to be trapped in the sprawling complex on the eastern outskirts of Mariupol, which was heavily bombed by Russian aircraft on Wednesday night and has faced relentless shelling for weeks.

United Nations gets involved: On Thursday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged humanitarian corridors be opened in Mariupol.

Guterres said Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed “in principle” for the UN and the Red Cross to be involved in evacuating civilians from the steel plant, and that he had held “intense discussions” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make evacuation from Mariupol a reality.  

The UN chief met with Zelensky and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday, following a visit to Moscow where he met Putin on Tuesday.