May 15, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

The United Nations aid chief is calling for Russia and Ukraine to find an agreement to continue the Black Sea grain deal, after stalled talks last week.

Martin Griffiths, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said efforts continue to extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine, a pact Russia has threatened to quit over obstacles to its own grain and fertilizer exports.

Last week, Griffiths met with senior officials from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Turkey, but said there was no Russian agreement to extend the deal. Russia is demanding that a pipeline is restarted that delivers Russian ammonia to a Ukrainian Black Sea port, which the United Nations has been pushing for.

US Deputy UN ambassador Robert Wood said Russia is at fault for the failure to continue the Black Sea grain deal so far and that Russia is not interested in negotiating on the extension of the grain deal. 

Key background: Turkey, alongside the United Nations, has been helping to broker agreements. The current deal was renewed for 60 days in March and is set to expire on May 18.

A Black Sea grain deal has enabled the passage of Ukrainian ships carrying agricultural products to depart the country, which was a challenge in the early days of the war with Russia preventing the ships from leaving.

The agreement established a procedure that guaranteed the safety of ships carrying Ukrainian grain, fertilizer and other foodstuffs through a humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea.

Multiple social media videos from Bakhmut show intense battles continuing among high-rise apartment buildings on the western edge of the city. 

The videos, which are filmed from the Ukrainian side and were published Monday, show strikes among the buildings in a district where fighters of the Wagner private military company have been trying to win ground.

Ukrainian military units acknowledge that inside the city the situation is extremely difficult.

The 5th Assault Brigade said on its Facebook page: “Although we are pushing the enemy back on the flanks, the situation in the city is on the verge of hell because the enemy is using all means. He is "pouring" fire on every house, destroying all of them. So the situation is... Although we have partial successes, the situation is still very difficult.” 

Myroshnykov, a Ukrainian military blogger, echoed the assessment, saying “The town itself is a living hell. There is nothing left to defend there, but our soldiers are not leaving and are standing firm!”

The 5th Brigade said that outside the city, it has made gains against Russian forces in recent days and weeks, and had moved forwards by some 2.5 kilometers (about 1.5 miles) over the past couple of months, gradually pushing the Russian front line away from the village of Ivanivske, immediately to the west of Bakhmut.

It also said that supply routes into the part of Bakhmut still held by Ukrainian forces were more stable. “Now all these roads are under our absolute control, both in terms of fire control and physical control. The garrison's supply is stable.” 

The Brigade said “regular Russian troops are not ready to fight like Wagner…They have no particular desire to fight.”

There have been contrasting accounts from different Ukrainian units about the performance of regular Russian forces around Bakhmut. 

The 5th Brigade added that the Russians retained a huge advantage in the amount of artillery they can use. 

“Their goal was to destroy and capture Bakhmut at any cost. They are doing it all. So, unfortunately, not only our frontline is suffering, but all the towns and villages are also suffering.”

Overall, according to multiple accounts and geolocated social media video, Wagner fighters continue to try to take the western parts of Bakhmut city they don’t already control, while Ukrainian units to the west and south of the city appear to be making incremental gains.

Some background: Bakhmut is the site of a months-long assault by Russian forces, including Wagner mercenaries, that has driven thousands from their homes and left the area devastated. But despite the vast amounts of manpower Russia has poured into capturing the city, they have been unable to take total control, and this week suffered heavy losses in the area.

CNN’s Vasco Cotovio contributed to this post.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday some countries see what they consider “Western double standards” in regard to the war in Ukraine. 

Speaking at the Global Vision Summit in Berlin, Scholz said that leaders from countries — such as India, South Africa, and Vietnam — abstained from calling on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly in February because they are “struggling with the unequal application” of the West’s “principles.”   

Scholz told the summit that the G7 group will take steps toward creating “secure and resilient economies based on partnerships with the Global South” at the G7 conference in Japan later this week. 

“I will also remain personally committed to working towards a more inclusive, more equitable global order,” Scholz said, “particularly when it comes to [Europe’s] neighboring continent, Africa."

NATO’s “most urgent task” is to ensure that Ukraine wins against Russia’s war, the military alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Monday.

“The most urgent task now is to ensure that Ukraine prevails — that (Russian) President Putin does not win this war,” Stoltenberg said. 

“Fundamentally, NATO's task is to support Ukraine, as NATO allies and NATO have done now for more than a year, but also to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine,” the official said.

The chief of the US-led alliance also stated that it's important that Ukraine is armed to defend itself from Russian aggression now and in the future.

"We don't know how this war will end, but what we do know is that when it ends, it is extremely important that we are able to prevent history from repeating itself,” he added.

The NATO chief said that he expects Ukraine will join the alliance when the war is over.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lauded the promises of fresh military aid made by the European leaders he has met with in recent days.

Speaking to journalists after his most recent meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday, he said: “I had very good meetings with Giorgia [Meloni], Olaf [Scholz], and Emmanuel [Macron], and today, in the United Kingdom [with Rishi Sunak]. Really important, powerful defense packages. That's what it is, that's what the agreements are.”

The publicized agreements include a $3 billion military aid package from Germany – its largest pledge since the war began – and the commitment to send more armored vehicles and light tanks from France.

But Zelensky is still campaigning for Ukraine’s allies to come together in a so-called “coalition” to send it modern fighter jets, which Zelensky admitted in Berlin on Sunday was, “not an easy question.”

Ukraine specifically wants US-made F-16 fighter jets, Andriy Yermak, the Head of the Office of the Ukrainian President, said in a tweet on Sunday: “We need F-16s, and we are doing everything to ensure that we get them as soon as possible.”

In a pre-taped video address played at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Monday morning, Zelensky said F-16s would help Ukraine in “defending freedom” and said it was “not a problem to be discussed for months." Zelensky’s speech was played to the conference before his meeting with Sunak later Monday morning. He said F-16s were one of three things that Ukraine needed: weapons (including the F-16s), NATO membership and increased international pressure on Russia.

Sunak's spokesperson said on Monday that Britain has no plans to send fighter jets to Kyiv because the Ukrainian military’s preference was for the F-16s, which it does not have. "The Ukrainians made the decision to train their pilots on F-16s and you will know the RAF don't use those," the spokesperson said.

Remember: In March, CNN reported that the US was working with Ukrainian pilots in the United States to determine how long it would take to train them to fly F-16 fighter jets. A US military official said, “There are no updates to provide regarding F-16s to Ukraine.” 

CNN’s Sugam Pokharel in London and Saskya Vandoorne in Paris contributed to this post.

The UK government has pledged to train Ukrainian pilots beginning this summer, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Monday during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The “elementary flying phase” program is aimed at “training Ukrainian citizens to be absolutely combat-ready aircraft pilots" with knowledge of NATO tactics, he said at Chequers, the prime minister’s official country residence.

"It is not a straightforward thing — as Volodymyr and I have been discussing — to build up that fighter combat aircraft capability," Sunak said.

"It's not just the provision of planes, it's also the training of pilots and all the logistics that go alongside that and the UK can play a big part in that.

Earlier, Sunak’s spokesperson confirmed that there are no plans to send fighter jets to Ukraine.

"The Ukrainians made the decision to train their pilots on F-16s and you will know the RAF don't use those,” the spokesperson said.

The announcement comes just days after delivered multiple “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles to Ukraine. 

UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace described the donation as Ukraine’s “best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality,” after CNN exclusively reported the deal last week.

Poland has received the first batch of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, to deploy near the Russian border, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak announced Monday.

“Today we are accepting HIMARS to the Polish Army. [An] equipment that has proven itself in combat in the hands of the Ukrainians, stopping the Russian invasion," Błaszczak said.

The HIMARS, a truck-mounted system that can fire missiles as far as 300 kilometers or 186 miles, carries a preloaded pod of six 227mm guided missiles, or one pod loaded with a tactical missile.

The delivery of the first pieces of the M142 HIMARS launchers is the result of an agreement from February 2019 regarding the acquisition of the first squadron fire module of HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in the "American configuration," Poland's Ministry of Defense said in a press release.

"We are negotiating another deal on the HIMARS. The US Congress approved the sale of almost 500 launchers to Poland," Błaszczak said, adding: "We want to ensure that under this new contract, currently being negotiated, the co-production of Himarses, both launchers and missiles, takes place in Poland."

The deliveries currently being carried out are the first step in equipping the Polish Armed Forces with systems of multiple rocket launchers capable of hitting targets at the operational level, i.e. several hundred kilometers, the Ministry said Monday in a press release.

Some context: Poland is a key NATO ally currently housing thousands of American troops that also serves as a hub for Western weapons transfers to Ukraine. US service members are also training Ukrainian troops there.

CNN's Kevin Liptak contributed to this post.

There have been at least two explosions in the Russian-held eastern city of Luhansk Monday – following several blasts towards the end of last week.

Among the injured in one of the blasts was acting Interior Minister of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, Igor Kornet, who was "severely" wounded and is in intensive care, official Russian news agency TASS reported, citing local law enforcement. Another Russian state outlet, RIA Novosti, quoted doctors as saying that Kornet's condition was stable.

While there have been several attempts to assassinate Russian-appointed officials in Ukraine’s southern regions, this would be the first known of a senior official in Luhansk. 

The first blast, at around 8 a.m. local time, struck a building that used to be an aviation school, according to local authorities. Its current function is not known.

The acting head of LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, blamed “Ukrainian nationalists” for the attack, which he said “hit the area of Luhansk Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators area.”

Darya Lantratova, a senior member of Russia’s ruling party and a senator from the LPR, said two missiles hit the building. She accused Ukraine of striking a predominantly civilian neighborhood.

Geolocated video showed thick smoke rising from the building. The cause of the explosion isn’t known, but as with the explosions last week, local authorities late said that Storm Shadow missiles, recently donated to Ukraine by the UK, were responsible. Local officials released photographs purporting to be fragments of the missiles. 

There were no casualties, according to the local health ministry. The Ukrainian authorities have made no comment about the incident. 

Hours later, a second blast occurred in central Luhansk inside a barber’s shop, which injured several people and extensively damaged property, according to video from the scene. TASS, citing law enforcement, said the acting minister was injured in the explosion in central Luhansk.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree which makes easier the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for foreign citizens who have signed military service contracts with the Russian Armed Forces since the beginning of the war.

Those who signed "for a period of one year" can apply for citizenship through a simplified procedure, according to the decree published on the official website.

This new decree amends the previous decree issued by Putin last September, which required foreigners to serve for at least one year and be actively involved in combat for at least six months to qualify for a simplified citizenship procedure.

The bottom line: The new version of the decree does not imply direct participation in hostilities.

The updated rules also extend the eligibility for simplified citizenship to family members of military personnel.