Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 456

By William On May 25, 2023

This is the state of affairs on Thursday, May 25, 2023.

To fight

Moscow said its troops killed 70 members of Russia’s anti-Kremlin groups attempting to attack Russia’s Belgorod region from Ukraine.
Ilya Ponomarev, a representative of the Legion of Freedom of Russia accused of being part of the Belgorod raids, told Al Jazeera that his fighters received some support from the Ukrainian army.
According to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Russian mercenaries, about 20,000 Wagner Group fighters were killed in the battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
The British Ministry of Defense said the Russian army “has struggled to enforce discipline in its ranks during its operations in Ukraine, but problems have most likely worsened following the forced mobilization of reservists since October 2022”.
Russia said it scrambled a Su-27 fighter jet to “prevent state border violations” by two U.S. Air Force strategic bombers flying over the Baltic Sea.
The United Nations said civilian deaths in armed conflicts and their humanitarian aftershocks have skyrocketed, with nearly 17,000 killed in war zones last year, including nearly 8,000 people in Ukraine alone.
The intelligence unit of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Russian forces are still using three units of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as a military base.

The United States said it was “deeply concerned” about a meeting between a senior UN official on children and the Russian ombudsman for children’s rights, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged African countries to abandon their neutral stance in the face of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said “sensational pressure” from the West took Russia-China ties to an “unprecedented high” as officials from the two countries signed a series of trade and sports cooperation agreements.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said that while Tbilisi supports Ukraine, further sanctions against Russia would destroy the economy and harm the interests of the people of his country.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace made a surprise visit to Kiev to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov.
According to Jens Stoltenberg, leader of the world’s largest military alliance, Ukraine will not be able to join NATO as long as the war continues.
A court in Russia has extended the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich by three months, until August 30.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church said it would switch to the “revised” Julian calendar from September 1, in an attempt to distance itself from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will deal a major blow to Russia and the sooner a decision is made on the planes the better, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the West is ready to support Ukraine “for years”. His comments came after the US and other European Union countries pledged to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense systems and train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets.