Russia-Ukraine War Live: Putin Visits Crimea To Mark Anniversary Of Annexation

We have reached the conclusion of today’s Ukraine blog. Thank you for following along. It is just past 9 p.m. in Kyiv. Here is a summary of today’s events:

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• The Black Sea grain deal was renewed, according to parties to the agreement. Turkey and the UN announced the initiative was extended, but did not say for how long. A spokeswoman for Russia’s defence ministry said it has notified other parties that the deal was extended for 60 days, while a Ukrainian minister said the deal was extended for 120 days.

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• Russia launched a series of attacks on Friday, according to the Ukrainian armed forces. Seven homes in the village of Veletenske in the Kherson region were destroyed and a nursery was damaged, but no one was injured, it said. The update, which the Guardian has not verified, also said ten Iranian-made Shahed drones had been shot down, and that Ukrainian forces had “repelled more than 100 enemy attacks”.

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• Ukraine said some of the overnight drone attacks hit the relatively peaceful western region of Lviv. Dnipro was also targeted, as was Kyiv, where air defences shot down all attacking drones. Ukraine’s air force said 11 out of 16 drones were “destroyed”.

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• Another 880 Russian soldiers were reportedly killed on Friday, according to unverified totals published by the Ukrainian army. Its general staff said that it meant more than 164,000 Russian service personnel had been killed since the outbreak of war in February last year. In an update posted on Facebook, it said another five tanks, seven armoured combat vehicles and eight artillery systems were disabled by Ukrainian forces.

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• Russia’s Wagner mercenary group plans to recruit approximately 30,000 new fighters by the middle of May, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday. In an audio Telegram message, Prigozhin said that Wagner recruitment centres, which he said last week had opened in 42 Russian cities, were hiring on average 500 to 800 people a day.

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• Russia will probably introduce wider conscription to boost its military requirements, the UK Ministry of Defence said. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said that Russian Duma deputies introduced a bill to change the conscription age for men from the current 18-27 to 21-30. The law would likely be passed, it said, and come into force in January 2024.

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• Senior Ukrainian and US security officials met via video link on Saturday, with representatives of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government asking for further assistance, including more equipment, weapons and ammunition. Zelenskiy joined the call at the end of the meeting and discussed his forces’ hopes to retake areas that Russia has captured.

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• US president Joe Biden said the international criminal court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “justified”. “But the question is – it’s not recognised internationally by us either,” Biden said, referring to the US not being a member of the ICC. “But I think it makes a very strong point.”

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• German chancellor Olaf Scholz has also welcomed the ICC’s decision. “The international criminal court is the right institution to investigate war crimes … The fact is nobody is above the law and that’s what’s becoming clear right now,” Scholz told reporters.

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• Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the annexed peninsula of Crimea to mark nine years since Russia seized it. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said Putin visited an art school and a children’s centre. These locations appear to have been chosen in response to the ICC’s arrest warrant, which accuses Putin of being responsible for the abduction of children.

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Russia has notified all participants in the Black Sea grain initiative that the deal has been extended for 60 days, Russian media outlet RBC reported on Saturday, citing foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

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The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, previously announced the agreement had been extended. The United Nations has also confirmed the extension. Neither specified a time frame.

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Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, however, said the grain deal had been extended for 120 days.

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The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has claimed that the deal allowing grain to be exported by ship through the Black Sea has been extended.

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Erdoğan did not say how long the extension had been for. The proposed length has differed between Russia, who called for it to be 60 days and Ukraine who wanted it to be renewed for twice that length.

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Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said the deal had been extended for 120 days.

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The current agreement had been due to expire on Saturday. It was agreed in July 2022, as billions of tonnes of grain was building up in Ukraine, once known as the “breadbasket of Europe”, because it could not be exported because of the risks of it being carried by rail, and a Russian blockade in place in the Black Sea.

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Eventually a deal was agreed which has been extended since, although Russia briefly suspended its participation in October.

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“The deal for the grain corridor was due to expire today. As a result of our talks with the two sides, we have secured an extension to this deal,” Erdoğan said in a speech in the western city of Çanakkale, Reuters reports.

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Putin has arrived in occupied Crimea on the ninth anniversary of its annexation.”,”caption”:”Vladimir Putin has arrived in occupied Crimea on the ninth anniversary of its annexation.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Jason Jay 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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has visited the annexed peninsula of Crimea to mark nine years since Russia seized it.

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Russian state TV showed a brief clip of a casually dressed Putin walking with a group of officials, and promised further details shortly, Reuters reports.

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Russia seized Crimea in 2014, eight years before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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Ukraine says it will fight to expel Russia from Crimea and all other territory that Russia has occupied in the year-long war.

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Russia will probably introduce wider conscription to boost its military requirements, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

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In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said that deputies in the Russian Duma on Monday introduced a bill