June 2, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Russia has taken control of most of the eastern city of Severodonetsk despite a series of counterattacks by Ukrainian forces, while at least seven people have been killed in Russian strikes on targets across Ukraine in the past 24 hours.

Here are the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine:

Around 800 people are hiding in several bomb shelters underneath the Azot chemical factory in Severodonetsk, which has been targeted by Russian missile attacks, said Serhiy Hayday, the head of Luhansk region military administration.

Hayday told CNN Thursday that local residents have sought shelter in the Soviet-era bomb shelters under the factory.

In a separate update on Thursday, regional Ukrainian officials said the Russians have again fired on Azot factory and “hit one of the administrative buildings and a warehouse where methanol was stored,” although it’s unclear how much methanol remained there.

The Ukrainians still maintain control of the Severodonetsk industrial zone, the statement said, one of the remaining parts of the city Russia has not taken.

"Most" of Severodonetsk, one of the last cities to hold out in Luhansk, has been taken by Russia, Hayday said earlier.

Hayday said a Russian airstrike hit a tank of nitric acid at the Azot factory on Tuesday. Images that day showed a thick orange-colored cloud of smoke rising from the area. But Hayday said the people sheltering under the factory were not in danger.

Hayday said that the factory is privately-owned, and the owners say there are only small amounts of chemicals left at the plant.

Hayday added that the factory is not significant from a military point of view, therefore “Azot is definitely not Azovstal” -- referring to the steel plant in Mariupol which Russia took after a weeks-long siege.

More than 1.6 million people from Ukraine and breakaway republics in the Donbas region have crossed into Russia since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion, Russian state news agency TASS reported Thursday, citing a law enforcement source.

"As of Wednesday morning, more than 1.6 million people, including almost 263,000 children, crossed the border," said the source.

CNN cannot independently confirm the number of border crossings, but the numbers are similar to official Ukrainian estimates.

Earlier Thursday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of pursuing a “consistent criminal policy of deporting [Ukrainian] people” into mostly remote areas of Russia, adding that more than 200,000 children had been taken to Russia so far.

The aim is “to steal people” and “make deportees forget about Ukraine and not be able to return," said Zelensky. 

According to TASS, 33,000 people, including 11,000 children, are currently being kept in 559 temporary accommodation centers across Russia.

The rest “have been placed with relatives and privately," it added.

Four sources familiar with the latest Western intelligence assessments told CNN in late May that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have now been processed through a series of “filtration camps” in eastern Ukraine.

They were then sent across the border to Russia as part of a systemized program of forced removal and resettlement, the sources said.

Some context: In April a CNN investigation revealed that Russian forces and allied separatist soldiers were taking residents of the city of Mariupol to a so-called “filtration center” set up in Bezimenne, where they were registered before being sent on to Russia, many against their will.

At the time, Mariupol's city council accused Russian forces of bringing Ukrainians to these centers as part of a broader effort to cover up potential war crimes by "destroying" potential witnesses.  

Zelensky has also alleged that Ukrainians have been forced to move to Russia.

"Their documents and means of communication are confiscated,” he said on May 6.   

According to Michael Carpenter, US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the practice "would be in violation of international humanitarian law, and a war crime if people were forcibly being displaced from Ukraine to Russia.”

The war in Ukraine has left at least 7 people dead and 26 injured in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.

Here is where much of the fighting is taking place:

Donbas: Ukraine's military said it has repelled 13 enemy attacks in the direction of Donetsk and Luhansk -- the two regions that make up Donbas -- in the past 24 hours.

Northeast of Sloviansk in the Lyman area, Russian forces tried to advance but “suffered losses and withdrew,” an update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

"Most" of Severodonetsk, one of the last cities to hold out in Luhansk, has been taken by Russia, a Ukrainian military official there said.

Southern Ukraine: Two people were killed and two other were injured Wednesday in Mykolaiv, a southern city not far from the front line, after Russia “fired on residential quarters,” damaging two high-rise buildings and four homes, regional officials said.  

Mykolaiv is not far from Kherson, which has been under Russian control since early in the invasion. Kim said reports have emerged that Russian forces in Kherson “have started looting stores in Kherson” and “they are taking everything out in the direction of Crimea," in the event that Ukrainian forces re-take the city.

Regional officials said the situation in Kherson is “stably tense” with “fighting and shelling” continuing. Many areas are “without electricity, water and gas,” and in need of “medicine and humanitarian aid.”

Further west in South Buh, six areas were targeted by mortars and artillery, and air strikes were also launched from Mi-24 helicopters, regional officials said.

Zaporizhzhia: Two people received shrapnel wounds after Russian troops fired artillery on residential homes in the Polohy district, the Zaporizhzhia Military Administration said.

Northeast Ukraine: Russia’s main efforts in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, were “focused on maintaining the occupied borders,” the military said. Regional officials said one woman was found dead under the rubble of a school after shelling overnight; one man was also injured. Six other civilians were also injured after shelling to two areas southeast and northeast of Kharkiv.

Russian forces retreated from the city in May, leaving behind evidence of potential atrocities.

Three civilians in Sumy, a city northwest of Kharkiv, were injured after a Russian plane “fired three missiles” around midnight during an air raid, destroying one house and damaging several others.

Western Ukraine: In Lviv, the city in western Ukraine that is housing countless internally displaced Ukrainians, five people were injured after Russia carried out a missile strike on Wednesday night, targeting railways. Train services have been impacted.

Ukraine's mens national football team is just one game away from qualifying for the World Cup after beating Scotland on Wednesday night.

If Ukraine can beat Wales in Cardiff on Sunday the team will make it to the tournament in Qatar, which is scheduled to start on November 21.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky celebrated the 3-1 win against Scotland in an Instagram post.

“There are times when you don't need many words! Pride is enough! Simply thanks to you guys!” he wrote. 

“We are all fighting, everyone on their own front, for this. For our blue and yellow flag, for our coat of arms on our hearts, for 'Ukraine is not dead yet…', which cannot be silenced,'” he said.

Wednesday's playoff had originally been scheduled to take place in March, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine forced the match's postponement.

Given that staying in Ukraine was too dangerous, the squad went to a training camp in Slovenia on May 1 to prepare for the game.

Prior to playing Scotland, Ukraine's last competitive game had been in November.

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The Biden administration is working to get temporary storage containers for Ukrainian grain into the country, a stopgap measure as it seeks to mitigate a growing food crisis caused by Russia's months-long blockade of Ukrainian ports, administration officials told CNN.

These storage containers -- such as bags or boxes -- could help salvage some of the more than 20 million tons of grain that are currently stuck inside Ukraine. They could also help Ukraine load the grain onto trains or trucks out of the country once overland routes are established, a senior administration official explained.

Still, as these efforts are underway, the US and its international partners are no closer to finding a quick and absolute solution to lifting the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports that's raised global food prices and threatened to cause a catastrophic food shortage in parts of the world.

The work that the US is doing to open up overland routes for the grain to get into neighboring countries, get containers into the country, and implement long-term changes meant to drive down global reliance on Ukrainian grain could collectively have an impact on the crisis.

But many view the efforts as marginal fixes to a much larger problem that can't be completely resolved until Russia eases its blockade, particularly of Ukraine's biggest port in Odessa, which has been surrounded by Russian warships for months.

UN and Turkish officials are preparing for separate rounds of diplomatic talks with Moscow coalescing around a new plan to try to open up sea routes for Ukrainian grains, sources say.

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Ukraine's army has carried a series of counterattacks in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, but Russian forces still control "most" of the city, a regional Ukrainian military official said.

Severodonetsk is one of the last remaining strongholds held by Ukraine in the eastern region of Luhansk.

The head of the Luhansk Military Administration, Serhiy Hayday, said that the Kremlin's forces did not make any headway Wednesday night in their attempt to capture Severodonetsk, despite Russian claims that the they have taken the whole city.

Hayday has previously said that 10,000 Russian-controlled troops are fighting to take the city.

The counteroffensives by Ukrainian troops managed to move enemy forces away from some streets and allowed them to capture some prisoners of war, according to Hayday.

"They don’t control the whole city, fighting is going on,” Hayday said.

On Wednesday, Hayday said that Russians control 80% of the city.

Why Severodonetsk matters: Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk together make up Ukraine's Donbas region, an industrial heartland dotted with factories and coal fields that has been home to sporadic fighting since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized control of two territories there -- the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic.

Severodonetsk and sister city Lysychansk are two of the last cities in Luhansk housing Ukrainian troops. Russian forces have spent days attempting to encircle Severodonetsk, advancing in several directions and pushing Ukrainian forces out of the city.

Capturing the region would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory. A key goal of Russia's so-called "special military operation" -- the Kremlin's official euphemism for the invasion of Ukraine -- was to take control of the Donbas region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of pursuing a “consistent criminal policy of deporting our people” into mostly remote areas of Russia.

During his daily address on Wednesday, Zelensky said more than 200,000 children have been deported so far.

He also said that so far, at least 243 children have died during the war, 446 have been injured, and another 139 are missing.

CNN cannot independently verify the numbers of deportations or casualties.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has publicly thanked US President Joe Biden and the US military for including HIMARS rocket systems in the next round of security assistance to Ukraine.

“I was pleased to see in the 11th package of military aid to Ukraine the six letters for which the whole country has been waiting: HIMARS," Reznikov said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

"Our cooperation is stronger than ever! Thank you."

In a statement on Wednesday, Biden formally announced the inclusion of the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) as part of the package to Ukraine.

The systems will have a range of about 70 kilometers (44 miles), a US defense official told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday, which is further than anything Ukraine has been sent to date. Ukraine had sought longer range weapons, but the US resisted due to concerns they would be capable of striking Russian territory, thereby potentially escalating the war.