Live updates | Student dies in shelling on Russian village

13/5/2022 6:04

        A student of a local construction college died as a result of a shelling attack on the Russian village of Solokhi near the Ukrainian border, a teacher at the college told the Interfax news agency Thursday.
        
        “Russian Nifodyov died as a result of the shelling of the peaceful village of Solokhi by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Nikolai Ignatenko was cited as saying.
        
        Earlier on Thursday, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, where Solokhi is located, said that at least one civilian had been killed in the shelling, while six more were injured. While governor Vyacheslav Gladkov likewise blamed the attack on Kyiv’s forces, it was not immediately clear whether the slain civilian he referred to was Nifodyov.
        
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        KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
        
        — Finland’s leaders in favor of applying for NATO membership
        
        — ' This tears my soul apart ’: A Ukrainian boy and a killing
        
        — Protesters vent fury at French company for staying in Russia
        
        — Ukrainian circus comes to town, and stays in Italy, amid war
        
        Follow all AP stories on Russia’s war on Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
        
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        OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
        
        KYIV, Ukraine — Four civilians were reported dead and five more were injured in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Thursday, the regional governor said that same day.
        
        “On May 12, the Russians killed four more civilians of the Donbas: two in Novoselivka, one in Avdiivka and one in Lyman. Five more people were injured,” Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post, referring to a village and two cities in the Donetsk region, one of two which make up the Donbas.
        
        His claims could not be immediately verified.
        
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        ROME — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that he’s ready to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that “we must find an agreement,’’ but with no ultimatum as a condition.
        
        Zelenskyy also told Italian RAI state TV in an interview scheduled to be broadcast on Thursday night that Ukraine will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia, which annexed that part of southern Ukraine in 2014.
        
        “Crimea has always had its autonomy, it has its parliament, but on the inside of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said, in excerpts of the interview that RAI released earlier on Thursday.
        
        The interviewer asked the Ukrainian leader about a comment by French President Emmanuel Macron cautioning against any humiliation of Putin.
        
        “We want the Russian army to leave our land, we aren’t on Russian soil,’’ Zelenskyy replied. “We won’t save Putin’s face by paying with our territory. That would be unjust.”
        
        In another comment, Zelenskyy sounded a forward-looking note. “We have to think of the future of Russia. I, as president of Ukraine, say these are our neighbors. There will be other presidents, other presidents and other generations” of Russia, Zelenskyy said.
        
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        KYIV, Ukraine — At least three people died following a Russian airstrike on a city in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, while 12 more were injured, Ukrainian military officials said Thursday.
        
        In the early hours of Thursday, Russian troops fired multiple rockets at a school and student accommodation complex in the city of Novhorod-Siversky, the Ukrainian Operational Command “North” said in a Facebook post.
        
        It added that nearby buildings housing local administration offices, college dormitories, and private houses also suffered varying degrees of damage.
        
        The accuracy of these claims could not be immediately verified.
        
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        KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian ministry officials said Thursday that Russian troops were trying to block Kyiv’s forces from advancing as far as the Ukrainian-Russian border in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
        
        “In the direction of Kharkiv, Russian army units are regrouping and trying to prevent the further advance of our troops in the direction of the state border of Ukraine,” defense ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said in his regular media briefing.
        
        “To this end, the occupiers launch unceasing artillery attacks on our troop units in order to inflict human losses, as well as to damage weapons and military equipment,” Motuzyanyk added.
        
        He did not clarify how close Ukrainian forces were to the border.
        
        According to the defense ministry briefing, Moscow’s troops were opening fire “along the entire line of confrontation” in Ukraine’s east, and attempting to penetrate Ukrainian defenses.
        
        Also on Thursday, the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said in its daily operational statement that Russian forces continued their attempts to storm several cities in Ukraine’s industrial heartland of Donbas that day, but had no success.
        
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        A senior Russian U.N. envoy said Thursday that Finland and Sweden’s decision to join NATO would instantly turn them from neutral into hostile countries and potential targets for Russia.
        
        Dmitry Polansky, First Deputy Representative of Russia to the U.N., said in an interview with the British conservative magazine UnHerd, that Helsinki and Stockholm know that “the moment they become members of NATO it will imply certain mirror moves on the Russian side.”
        
        “If there are NATO detachments in those territories, these territories would become a target - or possible target - for a strike,” Polansky added. “NATO is a very unfriendly bloc to us — it is an enemy and NATO itself admitted that Russia is the enemy. It means that Finland and Sweden all of a sudden, instead of neutral countries, become part of the enemy and they bear all the risks.”
        
        Elsewhere in the interview, Polansky downplayed the impact of the possible NATO enlargement on Europe’s security landscape, saying that Russia “is ready to face NATO threats and has made the necessary precautions for this.”
        
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        BERLIN — The U.N.’s top human rights body has overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on its investigators to specifically look into possible rights abuses and violations in northern Ukraine shortly after Russia’s invasion.
        
        In a 33-2 vote, with 12 abstentions, the Human Rights Council concluded a special session Thursday on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also by calling on Russia to grant international human rights groups “unhindered, timely, immediate, unrestricted and safe access” to people who have been transferred from Ukraine to Russia or areas controlled by Russian forces or affiliates.
        
        Only China and Eritrea voted against the measure, which also urged the U.N. human rights office to report on events in Mariupol, a besieged southeastern port city where thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed. Access to the city has been virtually nonexistent for international human rights during recent fighting there.
        
        The council called on a team of investigators known as a Commission of Inquiry to look specifically into the “events” in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine in late February and early March after Russia’s invasion “with a view to holding those responsible to account.” The commission was already created to investigate rights abuses and violations generally in Ukraine.
        
        Many atrocities in the war came to light last month after Moscow’s forces aborted their bid to capture Kyiv and withdrew from around the capital.
        
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        KYIV, Ukraine — Between 8 and 12 Russian missiles hit the oil refinery and other infrastructure in the Ukrainian industrial hub of Kremenchuk Thursday, the acting governor of the central Poltava region said that same day.
        
        In a Telegram post, Dmytro Lunin urged residents to remain in underground shelters, citing the “persistent” threat of airstrikes.
        
        In early April, Lunin had said that the Kremenchuk refinery - Ukraine’s only remaining fully functional facility of its kind at the time — was no longer operational following a Russian attack. Moscow claimed to have targeted the refinery again at the end of the month, and to have destroyed further fuel production and storage facilities.
        
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        BERLIN — The U.N. refugee agency is reporting that more than 6 million people have now fled Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
        
        Geneva-based UNHCR also said Thursday that the number of refugees who have returned back to Ukraine, either partially or fully, has reached more than 1.6 million. It says that number reflects cross-border movements, and doesn’t necessarily indicate “sustainable” returns. The agency says it’s too early to draw conclusions about “definitive trends” on returns.
        
        Matthew Saltmarsh, an agency spokesman, also said Thursday that a total of 2.4 million people who have left Ukraine have moved beyond Ukraine’s immediate border countries which have taken in the lion’s share of refugees from the country. Poland alone has registered more than 3.2 million people who fled Ukraine. It and other European Union member countries have open borders, making tracking where people go a complex endeavor.
        
        On Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, tweeted that the number of refugees from Ukraine had reached the same 5.7 million figure as the tally from Syria’s 11-year war, which previously was the source of the world’s biggest refugee crisis.
        
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        UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. children’s agency says the war in Ukraine is a “child rights crisis” where education is under attack and nearly 100 youngsters have been killed in just the last month.
        
        UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi told the U.N. Security Council Thursday that more children have been injured, millions have been displaced and schools continue to be attacked and used for military purposes.
        
        The school year came to a standstill after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and as of last week at least 15 of 89 UNICEF-supported schools in the country’s east have been damaged or destroyed in the fighting, he said.
        
        In mid-March, over 15,000 schools resumed education in Ukraine mostly through remote learning or in-person hybrid options, he said.
        
        “It is estimated that 3.7 million children in Ukraine and abroad are using online and distance learning options,” Abdi said.
        
        But he stressed that there are still “enormous obstacles” to education including availability for learning, resources, language barriers and movements of children and their families.
        
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        KYIV, Ukraine — Talks are underway between Kyiv and Moscow on the possible evacuation of 38 “severely wounded” Ukrainian troops from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, Ukraine’s deputy PM said Thursday afternoon.
        
        The steel mill is the only remaining stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the ruined port city, and is now surrounded by Russian forces.
        
        “We are working step by step,” Iryna Vereshchuk wrote in a public post on the Telegram messenger app.
        
        She said that Kyiv hoped to exchange the soldiers for 38 “significant” Russian prisoners of war, before moving on to the next stage of the negotiations. She did not specify what this next stage would concern, but said that there were no negotiations “on the exchange of 500 or 600 people.”
        
        Earlier on Thursday, an official at the Ukrainian President’s Office said that Kyiv hoped to extract “half a thousand” wounded Ukrainian fighters from Azovstal.
        
        Members of the Azov Regiment holed up inside the plant have repeatedly refused to surrender, citing fears of being killed or tortured. On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said that “more than a thousand” Ukrainian troops, many of them injured, remained at Azovstal.
        
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        VIENNA — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto Thursday, the same day Finland’s leaders announced the country plans to apply for NATO membership, the German chancellery said Thursday afternoon.
        
        “Chancellor Scholz welcomed today’s statements by the President and Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin, in which both advocate their country’s immediate accession to NATO, and assured Finland of the Federal Government’s full support on this path,” Scholz’s office said in a statement.
        
        Finland’s announcement paves the way for a historic expansion of the alliance that could deal a serious blow to Russia as its military struggles with its war in Ukraine.
        
        Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) land border with Russia.
        
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        KYIV, Ukraine — About 3,000 Mariupol civilians are being detained in prisons controlled by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s industrial east, the country’s human rights chief says.
        
        Lyudmyla Denysova claimed on social media Thursday that Kyiv is aware of at least two prisons set up in the eastern Donetsk region, one in the regional capital of Donetsk and another in Olenivka, a suburb 20 kilometers southwest of the city center.
        
        She claimed that authorities in Kyiv had received reports of people being “tortured, interrogated, threatened with execution and forced to cooperate,” and others disappearing after interrogations.
        
        She also alleged that detainees were being kept in “inhuman conditions,” with inadequate access to bathrooms and no space to lie down.
        
        She claimed that some captives had been released after 36 days, after signing unspecified documents, but did not provide more details. Ukrainian authorities are calling on the U.N. to intervene.
        
        More than 100,000 civilians remain in the ruined port city of Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of about half a million. Ukrainian authorities have previously claimed that “thousands of Ukrainians” had been forcibly taken to Russia.
        
        Troops from Ukraine’s Azov Regiment continue to hold out at the Azovstal steelworks, the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in the city.
        
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        MOSCOW — Russia has warned that it will have to take unspecified “military-technical” steps in response to Finland’s decision to join NATO.
        
        The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Finland’s accession to NATO will “inflict serious damage on Russian-Finnish relations, as well as stability and security in Northern Europe.”
        
        It said in a statement that “Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps of military-technical and other characteristics in order to counter the emerging threats to its national security.”
        
        The statement noted that while it’s up to Finland to decide on ways to ensure its security, “Helsinki must be aware of its responsibility and the consequences of such a move.” The ministry charged that Finland’s move also violated past agreements with Russia.
        
        “History will determine why Finland needed to turn its territory into a bulwark of military face-off with Russia while losing independence in making its own decisions,” it added.
        
        The ministry’s statement follows Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s comment earlier Thursday that Finland’s decision wouldn’t help stability and security in Europe. Peskov said that Russia’ response will depend on NATO’s moves to expand its infrastructure closer to the Russian borders.
        
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        MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin says Western sanctions against Russia are provoking a global economic crisis.
        
        Speaking during a Thursday meeting on economic issues, Putin said Western nations were “driven by oversized political ambitions and Russophobia” to introduce sanctions that “hurt their own economies and well-being of their citizens.”
        
        Putin charged that the “sanctions are provoking a global crisis” and will lead to “grave consequences for the EU and also some of the poorest countries of the world that are already facing the risks of hunger.”
        
        He alleged that the “Western elites are ready to sacrifice the rest of the world to preserve their global domination.”
        
        The Russian leader insisted the Russian economy has successfully withstood the blow from Western sanctions and that Russian companies will fill the niche left by the withdrawal of Western enterprises.
        
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        LVIV — Russia has used cluster bombs and phosphorus munitions in the southern Ukrainian region of Kryvyi Rih, according to the regional military chief.
        
        It’s the first time use of the weapons has been reported in the area. The claim could not immediately be verified.
        
        “The occupiers are firing, including with the use of prohibited phosphorus and cluster munitions,” regional military governor Oleksandr Vilkul said Thursday on Ukrainian TV channels. He didn’t detail where and when they allegedly were used.
        
        He said one person was killed and one wounded over the past day.
        
        Russian troops have been pressing an offensive toward the city of Kryvih Rih, the capital of the region. It is north of the Russian-held Black Sea port city of Kherson, and is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown.
        
        The Ukrainian military previously accused Russian forces of using phosphorus and cluster munitions in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian authorities have launched investigations into their use, whch dozens of countries have agreed to ban under an international treaty.