BOSTON -- S&P Global Ratings has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling increased prospects that Moscow will soon default on such loans for the first time in more than a century.
The credit ratings agency issued the downgrade to “selective default” Friday night after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles last week when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within a 30-day grace period.
S&P said it believes sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine are likely to increase, impeding its willingness and ability to honor its obligations to foreign debtholders.
The Kremlin has signaled it’s willing to pay its debts but warned it would do so in rubles if its overseas accounts in foreign currencies remain frozen.
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KYIV, Ukraine — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has traveled to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in show of solidarity.
The two leaders meeting Saturday discussed the “U.K.’s long term support to Ukraine’’ including a new package of financial and military aid, the prime minister’s office said. The visit was not announced in advance. An image of the two leaders at a conference table was posted online by the Ukrainian Embassy in London. The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andrij Sybiha, said they were meeting in Kyiv.
The visit comes a day after Johnson pledged another 100 million pounds ($130 million) in high-grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wants to help Ukraine defend itself from continuing Russian assaults.
Speaking Friday at a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Johnson said he would give Ukraine’s military more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.
Johnson also promised more helmets, night vision and body armor. The items were in addition to 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment from the UK that had already been promised.
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WARSAW, Poland – The head of the European Union’s executive branch says 10.1 billion euros ($11 billion) have been raised globally in a fundraising event for Ukraine and people who have fled the country invaded by Russia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was joined at the event in Warsaw by Polish President Andrzej Duda and -- remotely -- by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
At the end of the 90-minute event, a smiling von der Leyen said the donations will go to help refugees, both outside and inside Ukraine.
“We will continue providing support. And once the bombs have stopped falling, we will help the people of Ukraine rebuild their country,” von der Leyen said.
Saturday’s pledging event was held in Warsaw because more than 2.5 million of the 4.4 million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Feb. 24 have entered Poland. Many have stayed, though some have moved on to other countries. The event aimed to prompt political leaders and global celebrities to provide funding and other donations for the people of Ukraine.
It ended with Julian Lennon singing his father John Lennon’s peace song “Imagine.”
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MOSCOW -- YouTube has banned the channel of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, prompting government officials to renew longtime threats against the platform.
The Duma TV channel reported the ban on the messaging app Telegram, noting that it had 145,000 subscribers and over 100,000 million total views. In comments to the Russian news agency Interfax, Google didn’t give an exact reason for the move, but said the company follows “all applicable sanction and trade compliance laws.”
Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor demanded that YouTube unblock the channel. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Saturday that the service “has handed itself a sentence” and urged its users to “download content, transfer it onto Russian platforms. And fast.”
State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called the move against the parliament’s YouTube channel “another proof of violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens by Washington.”
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MILAN -- Italy’s foreign minister has reportedly told staff that Italy will reopen its embassy in the Ukrainian capital after Easter.
News agency ANSA quoted Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio on Saturday as telling his ministry’s crisis unit that Italy “will be among the first to return” to Kyiv.
He called it “another gesture to demonstrate support for the Ukrainian population, a concrete way to affirm that diplomacy must prevail.”
Di Maio said the return would be coordinated with other European Union nations.
The EU itself announced the return of its ambassador on Friday. On Saturday, EU ambassador Matti Maasikas tweeted a picture of an EU flag atop a flagpole with the words “First things first.”
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KYIV, Ukraine -- Austria’s leader says he expects more European Union sanctions against Russia but is defending his country’s opposition so far to cutting off deliveries of Russian gas.
Chancellor Karl Nehammer spoke Saturday after becoming the latest of several European leaders to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
Nehammer said at a news conference that “we will continue to ratchet up sanctions inside the European Union until the war stops” and that a package of sanctions imposed this week “won’t be the last one.” He acknowledged that “as long as people are dying, every sanction is still insufficient.”
Austria, which gets most of its gas from Russia, is one of the countries that have been resisting a halt to deliveries. Questioned about that Saturday, Nehammer said that EU sanctions are becoming increasingly “accurate” but that “sanctions are effective when they hit those they are directed against, and don’t weaken those imposing sanctions against the one who is conducting war.”
Austria is militarily neutral and not a member of NATO.
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LONDON — Britain’s Ministry of Defense says Russian naval forces are launching cruise missiles into Ukraine to support military operations in the eastern Donbas region and around the cities of Mariupol and Mykolaiv.
In its Saturday morning briefing, the ministry said Russia’s air forces are expected to increase activity in the south and east of Ukraine to further support these operations.
The ministry said these actions come as attempts to establish a land corridor between Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas region “continue to be thwarted by Ukrainian resistance.”
U.K. officials also say Russia is continuing to attack non-combatants, such as those killed at the Kramatorsk railway station in a rocket strike on Friday.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s railway operator says operations are halted at the train station in Kramatorsk, which was damaged in a missile strike Friday, but evacuations of civilians will continue through other stations in eastern Ukraine.
The company said Saturday that evacutions will continue from the stations in Slovyansk and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region and Novozolotarivka in the Luhansk region.
The statement on the messaging app Telegram said that “the railways do not stop the task of taking everyone to safety.”
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ten humanitarian corridors for civilian evacuations are to open in Ukraine’s east on Saturday, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The corridors will allow residents to leave a number cities in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Those in Mariupol, Enerhodar, Tokmak, Berdyansk and Melitopol will be able to evacuate to the city of Zaporizhzhia, while those in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Girske and Rubizhne can evacuate to the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
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WASHINGTON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s security service has intercepted communications of Russian troops that provide evidence of war crimes.
“There are soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of prisoners of war who admitted killing people,” Zelenskyy said in an excerpt of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday.
“There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead,” he said in a translation provided by CBS.
Zelenskyy said “everyone who made a decision, who issued an order, who fulfilled an order” is guilty of a war crime. Asked whether he held Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible, he said: “I do believe that he’s one of them.”
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the missile strike on an eastern train station as another Russian war crime and said Ukraine expects a tough global response.
“Like the massacres in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile attack on Kramatorsk should be one of the charges at the tribunal that must be held,” he said during his nightly video address to the nation Friday.
The president told Ukrainians that great efforts would be taken “to establish every minute of who did what,” so that those behind the attack would be held responsible.
Zelenskyy said he spoke with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Friday and urged the EU to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and gas.
“It is energy exports that provide the lion’s share of Russia’s income and allow the Russian leadership to believe in their impunity,” Zelenskyy said.
WASHINGTON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s security service has intercepted communications of Russian troops that provide evidence of war crimes.
“There are soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of prisoners of war who admitted killing people,” Zelenskyy said in an excerpt of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday.
“There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead,” he said in a translation provided by CBS.
Zelenskyy said “everyone who made a decision, who issued an order, who fulfilled an order” is guilty of a war crime. Asked whether he held Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible, he said: “I do believe that he’s one of them.”
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the missile strike on an eastern train station as another Russian war crime and said Ukraine expects a tough global response.
“Like the massacres in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile attack on Kramatorsk should be one of the charges at the tribunal that must be held,” he said during his nightly video address to the nation Friday.
The president told Ukrainians that great efforts would be taken “to establish every minute of who did what,” so that those behind the attack would be held responsible.
Zelenskyy said he spoke with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Friday and urged the EU to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and gas.
“It is energy exports that provide the lion’s share of Russia’s income and allow the Russian leadership to believe in their impunity,” Zelenskyy said.
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WASHINGTON -- A senior U.S. defense official says the Pentagon has determined that some of the Russian combat units that retreated from the Kyiv area in recent days are so heavily damaged and depleted that their combat utility is in question.
The official described these units as “for all intents and purposes eradicated,” with only a small number of functioning troops and weapons remaining. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments, did not say how many units sustained such extensive damage.
The official said some combat units that withdrew from the Kyiv area are beginning to move toward the Russian towns of Belgorod and Valuyki for refitting and resupplying before likely deploying to the Donbas region of Ukraine. The official also said the U.S. has seen thousands of additional Russian troops added to the combat force that Moscow has been using in and around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The official says that the U.S. believes Russia has lost 15 to 20 percent of the combat power it had assembled along Ukraine’s borders before launching its invasion Feb. 24.
---Reporting by Robert Burns.
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WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden’s chief spokesperson on Friday called the Russian missile attack on a train station in eastern Ukraine “another horrific atrocity” by Russian forces but stopped short of calling the action a war crime.
“Where we are now is we’re going to support efforts to investigate the attack as we document Russia’s actions, hold them accountable,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
Biden has already accused Russian forces of committing war crimes outside of Kyiv, including in the town of Bucha.
Psaki added that “the targeting of civilians would certainly be a war crime” and that the U.S. would support “efforts to investigate exactly what happened.”
At least 52 people were killed in the attack and about 4,000 civilians were in and around the station at the time of the strike, according to the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said. Most were women and children heeding calls to leave the area before Russia is anticipated to launch a full-scale offensive in the country’s east.
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BUCHA, Ukraine – The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office says approximately 67 bodies were buried in a mass grave near a church in Bucha, a northern Kyiv suburb where journalists and returning Ukrainians discovered scores of bodies on streets and elsewhere after Russian troops withdrew.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said Friday that 18 bodies had been located so far, 16 with bullet wounds and two with bullet and shrapnel wounds. Two were women and the rest were men, she said.
“This means that they killed civilians, shot them,” Venediktova said, speaking as workers pulled corpses out under spitting rain. Black body bags were laid in rows in the mud.
The prosecutor general’s office is investigating the deaths, and other mass casualties involving civilians, as possible war crimes. Venediktova said the European Union is involved in the investigation and “we are coordinating our actions.”
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LONDON -- The board chairman of Russian metals company Rusal has called for an investigation into events in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where Ukrainian forces and journalists discovered scores of bodies after Russian troops withdrew.
Rusal Chairman Bernard Zonneveld, an independent non-executive director, didn’t address who was responsible or even directly say anyone was killed in Bucha. But he said in a statement this week that the reports “shocked us” and that “we support an objective and impartial investigation of this crime.”
The statement stood out because Russian companies have generally remained silent about the war amid rigorous suppression of opposition by Russian authorities and state-controlled media narratives.
Zonneveld said the company was “interested in putting an end to the conflict in this European country as soon as possible.”
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BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia is seeking explanations from NATO on why its jets have allegedly shadowed Serbian passenger planes flying back from Russia.
Serbian officials said that on Wednesday a NATO jet flew close to an Air Serbia flight from Moscow to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, near the Latvian border.
A similar incident was reported by Serbian media on Friday when reportedly a NATO Belgian Air Force fighter jet “escorted” another Air Serbia plane flying from St. Petersburg to Belgrade.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said such actions “endanger civil aviation and lives of passengers.”
Besides Turkish carriers, Air Serbia remains the only European airline to maintain its regular flights to Russia after an international flight ban was imposed.
Serbia has voted in favor of UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine but has refused to join international sanctions against its ally Moscow.
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LONDON - U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged another 100 million pounds ($130 million) in high grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wants to help Ukraine defend itself.
Speaking Friday at a news conference with Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Johnson said he would give Ukraine’s military more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.
He also promised more helmets, night vision and body armor. The items were in addition to some 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment from the UK that had already been promised.
The pledge of new weaponry came as Johnson condemned the attack on train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk earlier Friday. Women and children gathering on a train platform perished in the blast.
Johnson said both the U.K. and Germany shared the “revulsion at the brutality being unleashed, including the unconscionable bombing of refugees fleeing their homes,’’ adding that the train station attack “shows the depths to which Putin’s vaunted army has sunk.’’
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KYIV, Ukraine - Ukrainian prosecutors say a war crimes investigation has begun after one utilities worker was killed and two injured by a mine that retreating Russian forces left behind.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office said Friday the incident happened near Trostianets, a town in northeastern Ukraine which was occupied by Russian troops for around a month until they withdrew in late March.
It said the workers were traveling Thursday to restore electricity to the area when their vehicle struck the mine outside the village of Bilka.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned of the dangers of mines and explosive traps left by Russian forces in formerly occupied areas.
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LONDON - A military expert has rejected Russia’s effort to deny responsibility for the missile strike on a Ukrainian railway station, saying the denial follows a standard formula the Kremlin uses to “muddy the waters” after attacks on civilian targets.
Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Friday that railroads in eastern Ukraine are a significant military target for Russia because destroying this kind of infrastructure makes it more difficult for Ukraine to reinforce its forces in the region. He added that Ukraine has little incentive to deliberately kill its own people during a war of attrition.
Bronk told the Associated Press that the strike was entirely in line with how Russian forces operate by terrorizing civilians to try and increase pressure on the Ukrainian government to agree a cease fire. He added this would allow them to consolidate their gains and try and stabilize their military position, “which is not great.”
Russia’s defense ministry rejected claims that Russia was responsible for the attack, saying it no longer uses the type of missile that hit the railway station.
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BERLIN - Officials say 40 Russian diplomats declared ‘persona non grata’ by Germany earlier this week have left the country.
The diplomats were picked up Friday by a Russian government plane that had received special permission to land at Berlin’s Schoenefeld Airport despite a ban on flights from Russia in the European Union.
Germany’s top security official had said earlier this week that the diplomats were chosen because they were linked to Russian intelligence agencies.
Germany ordered the expulsion after dozens of civilians were found killed in the Ukrainian town of Buch following the withdrawal of Russian troops there.
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Slovakia’s Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad says the United States will deploy a Patriot air defense system in his country next week.
Friday’s announcement came shortly after Slovakia donated its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine at its request. Nad previously said his country was willing to provide its S-300 long-range air defense missile system to Ukraine on condition it has a proper replacement.
Additionally, Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to send troops armed with Patriot missiles to Slovakia as part of 2,100-strong force made up of soldiers from several NATO members states, including the US. The force will form a battlegroup on Slovak territory to boost NATO defenses on the alliance's eastern flank.
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LONDON - Russia’s central bank says it’s lowering a key interest rate, and said more cuts could be on the way.
The decision indicates the bank thinks strict capital controls and other severe measures are stabilizing Russia’s currency and financial system despite intense pressure from Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
The bank said Friday it lowered its benchmark rate from 20% to 17%, effective Monday. It had raised the rate from 9.5% on Feb. 28 -- four days after the invasion -- as a way to support the ruble’s plunging exchange rate.
A currency collapse would worsen already high inflation for Russian shoppers by ballooning the cost of imported goods.
The rate increase shows how the central bank has managed to stabilize key aspects of the economy with severe controls, artificially propping up the ruble to allow it to rebound to levels seen before the invasion of Ukraine — even as the West piles on more sanctions.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A shipment of valuable art destined for Russian museums that was seized on the Finnish-Russian border can be released under an amendment to sanctions that went into effect on Friday, Finnish customs officials said.
The artwork and artifacts — which were returning to Russia from Italy and Japan, where they were on loan — have a total insured value of around 42 million euros ($46 million).
They were seized at the Vaalimaa border crossing on April 1-2 under European Union sanctions imposed on Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine.
The amendment to the sanctions makes it possible to grant an exceptional permit for transports between museums. Finland’s customs agency said the Foreign Ministry can grant a permit enabling the release of works of art.
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LVIV, Ukraine — The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region says the death toll from a missile strike on a rail station in the eastern town of Kramatorsk has risen to 50, including five children.
Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on social media that 38 people had died at the scene, and another 12 in hospital.
Ukrainian officials have said as many as 4,000 people were at the station, where trains were evacuating civilians westward from the Ukraine-held town ahead of an expected Russian offensive.
Scores of people were injured in the strike, and local hospitals were overwhelmed in dealing with the influx of patients.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian leaders have accused Russia’s military of deliberately targeting a location where only civilians were assembled. Russia’s Defense Ministry denied any Russian role in the attack.
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TOKYO — Japan is expelling eight Russian diplomats and trade officials and will phase out imports of Russian coal and oil.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that Moscow must be held accountable for “war crimes” in Ukraine and pointed to a “critical moment” now in efforts to get Russia’s government to end its invasion of Ukraine.
He said Japan will also ban imports of Russian lumber, vodka and other goods, and will prohibit new Japanese investment in Russia. It will also step up sanctions against Russian banks and freeze assets of about 400 more individuals and groups.
Reduction of Russian fossil fuel imports is a difficult choice for resource-poor Japan, and could mean a shift for its energy policy toward more renewables and nuclear power. Russia accounts for about 11% of Japanese coal imports.
Earlier Friday, Japan’s Foreign Ministry announced it was expelling eight Russian diplomats and trade officials, joining similar moves in European countries.
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ROME — The United Nations says prices for world food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever last month due to fallout from the war in Ukraine.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, recorded a double-digit percentage-point increase in March from the record level already set the previous month.
FAO said the index came in at 159.3 points last month, up 12.6% from February’s all-time high since the index was created in 1990.
The Rome-based agency says the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1% rise in prices for cereals, including wheat and all coarse grains. Russia and Ukraine together account for around 30% and 20% respectively of global wheat and maize exports.
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LONDON — Britain has added two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin to its sanctions list, following similar moves by the U.S. and the European Union.
The government said Friday it is imposing asset freezes and travel bans on Putin’s daughters Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, as well as Yekaterina Vinokurova, daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Britain says it has sanctioned more than 1,200 Russian individuals and businesses since the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, including 76 oligarchs and 16 banks.
It says Western nations have collectively frozen 275 billion pounds ($360 billion), amounting to 60% of Russian foreign currency reserves.
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KYIV, Ukraine — The regional governor of Ukraine’s Sumy region that borders Russia is urging local residents to avoid using forest roads, walking on roadsides, or approaching destroyed military equipment after Russian troops pulled out of the region.
Dmytro Zhyvytskyy warned Friday on the messaging app Telegram that locals are still in danger because of mines and other ammunition that the Russian forces left behind.
In a message apparently directed to local residents, Zhyvytskyy said any explosions in the area in the short term were likely to be sounds of rescuers and mine-clearing specialists at work deactivating the ammunition and other explosives.
He had said earlier this week that Russia no longer controlled any settlements in the region.
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BRUSSELS — Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger and two top European Union officials are in Kyiv looking to shore up the bloc’s support for war-torn Ukraine.
Heger said in a tweet Friday that he, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief have come with trade and humanitarian aid proposals for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government.
Part of that, Heger says is “to offer options for transporting grains, including wheat.” Ukraine is a major world wheat supplier and Russia’s war on Ukraine is creating shortages, notably in the Middle East.
He adds that the three want to help Ukraine on its path toward closer ties with the EU by “creating a ReformTeam.” Ukraine has applied to join the EU, but was already sorely in need of reforms, notably to root out rampant corruption, years before Russian troops invaded in February.
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MOSCOW — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged that Russia has suffered “significant losses of troops” during its military operation in Ukraine.
Peskov said: “Yes, we have significant losses of troops and it is a huge tragedy for us.”
Speaking in an exclusive interview with British broadcaster Sky on Thursday, Peskov also hinted that the operation might be over “in the foreseeable future.” He said that Russian forces were “doing their best to bring an end to that operation.”
He said: “And we do hope that in coming days, in the foreseeable future, this operation will reach its goals, or we’ll finish it by the negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations.”