Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the smashed eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military said on Saturday.
GRAIN IMPORTS
* Unilateral action on trade by European Union member states is unacceptable, a European Commission spokesperson said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector.
PRISONERS RELEASED
* Russia’s most powerful mercenary group, Wagner, sent at least 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war back to Ukrainian forces to mark Orthodox Easter, according to a video posted by the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on Sunday.
FIGHTING
* Russia’s defence ministry on Sunday said that Wagner mercenary units captured two more city blocks in the northwest and southeastern parts of Ukraine’s Bakhmut.
* Russian missiles hit residential buildings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, killing 11 people, wounding 21 and reducing parts of apartment blocks to a tangled mess of metal and concrete.
* Four were killed and 10 wounded by Ukrainian shelling of a residential area in the Russian-controlled town of Yasynuvata south of Sloviansk, the top Russian-installed official in the region said.
* A mother and her daughter were killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday by a Russian artillery strike, the regional administration said.
* Russia’s regular spring military draft is proceeding as scheduled and there are no plans to send out mass electronic notices under a system just signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, a top official said on Saturday.
Ukrainian servicemen return from heavy fighting near Bakhmut
Reuters
