As the conflict enters its 418th day, we review key developments.
This is the situation on Monday, April 17, 2023:
To fight
- Russia’s Wagner Group sent more than 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war back to Ukraine to celebrate Orthodox Easter, according to a video posted by the group’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
- Russia’s defense ministry said Wagner units captured two more city blocks in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the devastated eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut.
- The Ukrainian army said its troops and Russian troops fought extraordinarily bloody battles in Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces still held on.
- The death toll from a Russian missile attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk has risen to eleven.
- Russian shelling in Kherson killed two women on Saturday, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
- Denis Pushilin, the Russian politician and head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed four people were killed and 10 injured in Ukrainian shelling of a town in Russian-controlled Donetsk. A seven-year-old girl was among those injured in Yasynuvata, he added.
- Russia used drones to attack Ukrainian police in Kherson, the regional police said. It said a police car was attacked in the Korabel area, injuring two officers and damaging the car. In Beryslav, an officer was injured and cars were damaged.
- Russia’s regular military conscription campaign is progressing as planned, and there are no plans to send mass electronic messages under a new system just signed by President Vladimir Putin, a top official, Colonel Andrei Biryukov said Saturday.
Diplomacy
- Unilateral trade measures by European Union member states are unacceptable, the bloc’s executive said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect their local agricultural sectors.
- Bulgaria also said it is considering banning grain imports from Ukraine to protect its own agricultural sector.
- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the creation of a group of countries not involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine to bring about peace.
- Thousands of people gathered for a demonstration in Prague on Sunday, chanting “resignation” and “shame” as protesters called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine and urged the Czech Republic to leave NATO.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday. In two tweets, Zelenskyy said they had discussed Macron’s recent visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will visit Baghdad on Monday, on his first trip to Iraq since Russia invaded Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s national ice hockey players have been forced to train with air raid sirens interrupting practice and sending them underground for cover. Coach Konstantin Simchuk said: “We have to play hockey and we should probably show the whole world that we are alive.”