Russia-Ukraine war: Mariupol evacuations set to continue; explosions reported in Russian city of Belgorod – live | Russia

The European Commission may spare Hungary and Slovakia from an expected embargo on buying Russian oil, wary of how dependent the two countries are on Russian crude, Reuters quotes two EU officials as saying.

The commission is expected to finalise work on the sixth package of EU sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine, which s expected to include a ban on buying Russian oil – a major source of Moscow’s revenue.

Hungary, heavily dependent on Russian oil, has repeatedly said it would not sign up to sanctions involving energy. Slovakia is also one of the EU countries most reliant on Russian fossil fuels.

To keep the 27-nation bloc united, the commission might offer Slovakia and Hungary “an exemption or a long transition period”, one of the officials said.

The oil embargo is likely to be phased in anyway, most likely only taking full effect from the start of next year, officials said. The package is to be presented to ambassadors of EU governments on Wednesday.

Denmark will reopen its embassy in Ukraine on Monday, following its closure immediately after the Russian invasion, the Danish foreign minister Jeppe Kofod has said. He told the local broadcaster DR:

It’s a very strong symbol of the Danish support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people that today we are reopening the doors to the Danish embassy.

Several other countries, including France, the US and the UK, recently announced they were moving their embassies back to Kyiv.

The Finnish consortium Fennovoima has terminated its contract with Russia’s state-owned nuclear power supplier Rosatom for the delivery of a planned nuclear power plant in Finland, it has said.

The planned Hanhikivi plant was commissioned by Fennovoima, a Finnish-Russian consortium; in which Finnish stakeholders including Outokumpu, Fortum and SSAB own two-thirds and Rosatom’s subsidiary RAOS Voima holds the rest.

The plant’s future has been unclear since Russia’s attack on Ukraine forced the Finnish government to rethink the project; the final construction permit for which was set to be granted by the end of 2022.

The minister of economic affairs Mika Lintilä has repeatedly said it would now be “absolutely impossible” for the government to grant the permit.

Regardless, Rosatom’s Finnish unit RAOS Project, which is in charge of the construction, has insisted on proceeding. On Monday, following Fennovoima’s announcement, Lintila tweeted:

Fennovoima’s decision is clear. There’s reason to be satisfied with the owners’ decision. It would have been practically impossible to carry on with the project.

Fennovoima said the termination was due to significant delays and incapability by RAOS to deliver the project.

In recent years, the significant delays of the supplier have continued and grown. The war in Ukraine has worsened the risks of the project that RAOS Project has not been able to prevent.

It said its cooperation with RAOS Project would end with immediate effect.

Russia resumed shelling of the Azovstal steel works in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol as soon as buses evacuating civilians from the plant had left on Sunday, Petro Andryushchenko – an aide to the city’s mayor – has said.

Mariupol, scene of the heaviest fighting of the war in Ukraine so far, is largely in Russian hands. An unknown number of civilians and fighters remain trapped at Azovstal, whose network of bunkers and tunnels has provided shelter from weeks of Russian bombardment.

Moscow claims to have shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet near Sloviansk, in the east of Ukraine.

Russia’s defence ministry has said it has hit 38 military targets in Ukraine, including ammunition depots and control centres. Reuters reports that it has not been possible to independently confirm the information given in the Russian briefing.

Ukraine refugee total passes 5.5 million – UN

A Ukrainian Bayraktar drone destroyed two Russian Raptor-class patrol ships in the Black Sea on Monday, Reuters reports, citing Ukraine’s military leader. The chief of general staff Valeriy Zaluzhniy wrote on the Telegram messaging app:

Two Russian Raptor-class boats were destroyed at dawn today near Zmiinyi (Snake) Island.

There has been no immediate reaction from Moscow.

Finland will decide to apply for Nato membership on 12 May, according to a local media report.

Citing anonymous government sources, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reports the decision to join will come in two steps on that day, with the nation’s president Sauli Niinistö first announcing his approval for the Nordic neighbour of Russia to join the western defence alliance, followed by parliamentary groups giving their approval for the application.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Finland and Sweden to the verge of applying for Nato membership and abandoning a belief held for decades that peace was best kept by not publicly choosing sides.

Reuters reports it has not immediately been able to verify the details provided by Iltalehti.

Under the Finnish constitution, the president leads Finland’s foreign and security policy in cooperation with the government.

The decision will be confirmed in a meeting between the president and the government’s key ministers after the president and parliament’s initial announcements, Iltalehti reports.

Russia, with which Finland shares an 810-mile (1,300km) border and a pre-1945 history of conflict, has warned it will deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in its Baltic coast enclave of Kaliningrad if Finland and Sweden decide to join the alliance.

Hungary is still opposed to any EU embargo on Russian oil and gas imports, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács has said.

“The Hungarian stance regarding any oil and gas embargo has not changed: we do not support them,” Kovács told Reuters.

The EU is set to propose a phased ban of Russian oil imports as part of new sanctions package under discussion this week.

Several diplomats said the ban on oil was made possible after a U-turn by Germany, which had said the measure would do too much harm to its economy, AFP reported earlier. However, the ban would require unanimous backing from member states.

Millions of dollars-worth of farm equipment stolen by Russian troops from Ukraine and shipped to Chechnya has proven useless after it was locked remotely, CNN has reported.

The equipment, comprising 27 pieces of machinery including combine harvesters, was taken over a period of weeks from a John Deere dealership in the occupied city of Melitopol and was worth a total $5m.

A contact in Melitopol told the US broadcaster there were “rival groups” of Russian troops stealing the machinery, with some coming in the morning and others in the evening.

Some equipment was taken to a nearby village but other machinery was taken nearly 700 miles away to Chechnya, where it is apparently languishing on a farm outside Grozny, according to GPS trackers on the equipment.

“When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realised that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely,” the contact said.

Units from the armed forces of Belarus have been identified in the Ukrainian border regions of Volyn and Polissya, Ukraine’s general staff has said in its morning update, adding: “The threat of missile strikes on military and civilian infrastructure from the territory of the republic of Belarus by the Russian enemy remains.”

In a Facebook post, it also claimed Ukrainian forces had repulsed 10 Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, destroying equipment including two tanks, 17 artillery systems and 38 armoured combat vehicles.

About 100 civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on Sunday. “I can’t believe it,” evacuee Natalia Usmanova told Reuters:

Two months of darkness. When we were on the evacuation bus I told my husband, ‘Vasya, we won’t have to go to the toilet with a flashlight?’

The founder of one of Russia’s biggest banks, Oleg Tinkov, has denounced president Vladimir Putin in his first interview since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, and said he could be in physical danger.

“I’ve realised that Russia, as a country, no longer exists,” Tinkov told the New York Times from an undisclosed location, but predicted that Putin would stay in power a long time. “I believed that the Putin regime was bad. But of course, I had no idea that it would take on such catastrophic scale.

The 54-year-old made headlines in April when he offered some of the strongest criticism by a prominent Russian of the Kremlin’s military action, writing in an Instagram post that 90% of Russians were “against this war” and calling Russia’s forces a “shit army”.

“And how will the army be good, if everything else in the country is shit and mired in nepotism, sycophancy and servility?” he wrote.

In Sunday’s interview, he said that many of his acquaintances in the business and government elite had told him privately that they agreed with him, “but they are all afraid”.

He also said that he had been forced by the Kremlin to sell his 35% stake in the bank he founded, Tinkoff, to a Russian mining billionaire for a fraction of what it was worth. The “fire sale” took place last week, said Tinkov. “It was like a hostage – you take what you are offered.”

Tinkoff denied his characterisation of events.

Tinkov also said he had hired bodyguards after friends with contacts in the Russian security services told him he should fear for his life.

Explosions heard in Russian city of Belgorod, governor says

Evacuation of civilians from Mariupol set to continue

More than a quarter of the units dedicated to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have likely since been rendered “combat ineffective”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update on the conflict.

Some of the country’s most elite units had suffered the highest attrition rates, it continued, adding: “It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.”

The update in full:

At the start of the conflict, Russia committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, approximately 65% of its entire ground combat strength.

It is likely that more than a quarter of these units have now been rendered combat ineffective.

Some of Russia’s most elite units, including the VDV Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition. It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.

Summary