April 1, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukraine has recaptured the town of Bucha near the capital of Kyiv Thursday, according to Bucha's Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk.

A number of Ukrainian officials have been referring to Russian forces as "orcs" — the evil, monstrous army in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."

"This day constitutes a day of joy and victory of our Armed Forces of Ukraine. And we expect such victories throughout all of Ukraine," Fedoruk added.

Beginning next week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will start assisting Ukraine in preserving the safety of nuclear installations, including Chernobyl, Director-General of IAEA Rafael Grossi told CNN.

Returning from a trip to Ukraine and Russia, where he visited the closest nuclear reactors to the war zone, Grossi said the operations continue in a “satisfactory way.”

An attack on a nuclear reactor is “not a probable scenario,” and “nuclear facilities have not been targeted," he said Friday.

The Director-General said there was an occurrence in sight of a nuclear reactor, which was “quite concerning,” adding it was an exchange of fire, probably shelling, that targeted an administrative building. 

On the reports of Russian troops being exposed to radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Grossi said the agency has contacted its Russian counterparts for more information.

"In general terms, I would say that the radiation levels around the Chernobyl site are low. At the beginning when the Russian troops occupied the site because of the movement of heavy armored vehicles approaching the site, some areas, the moving of the ground released some radiation there, and there was a slight increase in the levels," he said.

“It is probably that the same thing happened when the same vehicles or similar ones were on their way out, that there was dust in the air that contained some radiation that was lying on the ground,” he added.

While Ukrainian forces have been able to retake Irpin from the Russians, the city outside Kyiv has been left in ruins.

According to local authorities, around 50% of the critical infrastructure was destroyed.

Officials are now in the process of recovering bodies of those killed in previous weeks.

"Some have been laying in the streets for weeks and can only now be removed," CNN's Fred Pleitgen reported.

Read more about CNN's reporting from Irpin here and watch video from the scene below:

Russia’s economy is getting devastated by Western sanctions and the ruble’s swift recovery has only been made possible by Moscow’s efforts to prop the currency up, a senior official of the US Department of the Treasury said Friday.

The comments come after some argued the rapid recovery of the ruble from its initial crash is a sign that Western sanctions have not gone far enough to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

During a call with reporters, the senior Treasury official said Russia’s economy is plunging into recession and getting crushed by crippling inflation.

Although the ruble has bounced back to pre-invasion levels, the Treasury official argued the currency’s purchasing power has been decimated by skyrocketing prices in Russia.

As CNN has previously reported, officials in Russia have sought to prop the ruble up, in part by ordering exporters to swap 80% of their foreign currency revenue for rubles, banning Russian brokers from selling securities, forbidding Russian residents from making bank transfers outside of Russia and other steps. The steps have artificially boosted demand for the ruble.

In a sign of the ruble’s underlying weakness, a black market has emerged in recent weeks for the exchange of the ruble for foreign currency, the senior Treasury official said, adding that the ruble is significantly depreciated in this black market. 

Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, declined to comment on Russian allegations of a strike by Ukrainian helicopters on a fuel base in the southern Russian city of Belgorod.  

"I would like to emphasize that Ukraine is performing a defensive operation against Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine," he said in a televised statement Friday. "That doesn’t mean Ukraine has to be responsible for every miscalculation or event or catastrophe that occurred on the territory of the Russian Federation. This is not the first time we are witnessing such accusations. Therefore, I will neither confirm nor deny this information." 

A fire broke out at a fuel depot in Belgorod, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel Friday morning. He accused Ukraine of being behind the blaze without providing further evidence.

CNN is unable to verify this claim. 

About 16,000 cubic meters (3.52 million gallons) of fuel are on fire at the depot, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported on Friday, citing the Russian emergency services ministry. 

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Friday that two Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters carried out an attack on a fuel storage facility in southern Russia.

"On April 1, at about 5:00 a.m. Moscow time, two Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters entered the airspace of the Russian Federation at extremely low altitude. Ukrainian helicopters launched a missile attack on a civilian oil storage facility located on the outskirts of Belgorod. As a result of the missile hit, individual tanks were damaged and caught fire," Russian MOD spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

Konashenkov added that "only civil transport was supplied with fuel from this facility. The tank farm has nothing to do with the Russian armed forces."

Russian energy giant Gazprom announced Friday it has separated from its German subsidiary Gazprom Germania, the company said in a statement.

“On March 31, the Gazprom Group terminated its participation in the German company GAZPROM Germania GmbH and all its assets, including Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd.,” Gazprom said via its telegram channel.

Gazprom Germania will provide a comment on the matter on Monday, an employee told CNN.

Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which is the country’s utility regulatory office said on its website that “gas supply is stable in Germany" and that “no disturbances of gas deliveries to Germany were recorded. The operators of the gas networks do not report any extraordinary events.”

Filling levels are comparable to those of 2021 and 2017, according to the statement. 

Germany issued an "early warning" of possible natural gas shortages on Wednesday over a payments dispute with Russia that could lead to energy rationing in Europe's biggest economy.

Moscow said last week that it wanted to be paid in rubles, rather than US dollars or euros as per existing gas supply contracts, and threatened to cut off supplies if that didn't happen. The Kremlin's demand has been rejected by Germany and the G7 group of leading developed economies.

The German government said Wednesday that the country had enough gas for now, but it urged all consumers — from companies to hospitals and households — to reduce their use as far as possible with immediate effect.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told CNN that the responsibility for ending the war in Ukraine lays firmly at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It’s in Putin’s hands. He’s the one who started the war without any reason. It is now his responsibility to end the war,” Baerbock told CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview. 

“The brutal reality is that Putin himself has chosen … to fight a war against civilians and to fight a war against the European peace order,” she said. 

Germany has approved the delivery of 56 type Pbv 501 combat tanks to Ukraine, according to a German defense ministry spokesperson Friday. Germany’s increased defense spending has marked a historic shift in the country’s foreign policy. 

Baerbock said that Germany is offering increased military assistance to the Ukrainian government as “we are in situation where NATO is standing there in solidarity with Ukraine and on the other hand, there is Russia which has made clear that there is no red lines for themselves.”

“We had to change our course in Germany by 180 degrees because Ukraine needed our military support; we tried everything to avoid this war, but it was Putin’s decision to do the opposite and that’s why now we are also delivering weapons to Ukraine,” she said.

The foreign minister said that sanctions have been effective in leaving Putin “totally isolated,” but said that there are still strong energy links between Russia and Europe that needed severing. “The question we are raising about fossil fuels, oil, and energy, Europe is connected with Russia. Therefore we are working every day to phase out our fossil fuel dependency on Russia,” she told CNN. 

When asked by Amanpour as to what Putin is saying in diplomatic talks, Baerbock stated that the Russian president had “entered into this war with a false narrative, with lies. … This wrong narrative he has been telling to the world is obviously also something he believes himself.”

“When my chancellor, when others like the president of France are speaking to Putin, obviously they are telling him that he started this war with lies, that he broke with international law… but he is obviously not listening to my chancellor, and to other international partners,” she said.

“The few people that are left behind him or around him who can actually speak to him do not dare to tell him the truth about the reality in Ukraine, that his troops are not being as successful as they obviously thought in the past,” she added. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced Friday following an emergency meeting that its member countries will release additional oil from emergency reserves to cushion the blow caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, the IEA did not disclose key details on the size and timing of this additional emergency action, which would be in addition to the historic released announced by the White House on Thursday. 

The IEA said details will be made public early next week. The latest steps from the IEA mark just the fifth time in the agency’s history that it has coordinated a release of emergency stockpiles. 

In a statement, the IEA said energy ministers from its 31 member countries “reiterate their concerns about the energy security impacts of the egregious actions by Russia and voiced support for sanctions imposed by the international community in response.”

IEA members include the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.

More background: After announcing a record release of 180 million barrels of oil, US President Joe Biden said Thursday other countries could release as many as 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil. That would be in addition to the historic US release.

“The higher the number, the more likely the prices come down,” Biden told reporters.

In early March, the IEA announced the coordinated release of 60 million barrels from emergency reserves of member nations, including 30 million from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

In addition to the reserve releases, the IEA said its governing board recommends governments and consumers “maintain and intensify conservation efforts and energy savings.”

Russia exports about 5 million barrels a day of crude oil, representing roughly 12% of global trade, according to the IEA.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would like to bring him together with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Turkish Presidency said. 

Erdoğan underlined the importance of “acting with common sense and maintaining dialogue,” according to a statement. 

“President Erdoğan expressed Turkey’s desire to crown the peace efforts by bringing together President Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine,” it continued.

“President Putin of Russia for his part thanked President Erdoğan for having hosted the meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiation delegations in Istanbul,” the statement added.