KYIV, Ukraine — A regional governor in eastern Ukraine says five civilians have been killed by Russian shelling.
Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Synyehubov said Tuesday that another 17 residents were wounded in the Russian rocket barrage of the center of Kharkiv and its outskirts.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has faced Russian attacks since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.
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STOCKHOLM — The Swedish government wants to allocate 9.8 billion kronor ($1 billion) to the Swedish Migration Board for increased costs for receiving people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Sweden’s Finance Minister Mikael Damberg presented the budget for 2022 on Tuesday.
The Swedish government repeatedly has said that Sweden will take its share of refugees from Ukraine but not as many as it did in 2015 when it took in a record 163,000 migrants— the highest per capita of any European country.
The government largely wants to take the money for the Ukraine refugees from development aid.
The budget proposal also includes a previously announced increase of non-NATO member Sweden’s military spending in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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MOSCOW — The Russian military has made a new demand to the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol to lay down their arms.
Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev gave the Ukrainian troops holed up at the giant Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol until midday (0900 GMT) Tuesday to surrender.
He said that those who surrender will “keep their lives.”
Ukrainian troops who have defended the city for seven weeks have ignored such previous offers. The Azovstal plant, which covers the territory of about 11 square kilometers (over 4 square miles) is the last major Ukrainian pocket of resistance in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov.
Earlier Tuesday, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas region, said that assault groups had moved into Azovstal in a bid to uproot the Ukrainian troops following bombing and artillery barrage.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Danes need to be independent of Russian gas “as quickly as possible,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday, adding the Scandinavian country “must develop as much renewable energy as can be done.”
“Putin, he must be stopped. The war in Ukraine affects us all,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark is relatively self-sufficient and has other energy sources — onshore and offshore windmill parks, bioenergy, among others, and depend little on the import of Russian gas. Roughly 40% of EU gas imports come from Russia, and Denmark gets around 15% of its total energy from natural gas.
Copenhagen-based Ørsted, where the Danish government owns 50.1% of the stakes, has come under pressure to extricate itself from its 2006 contract with Gazprom that provides Russian gas. It has said that it would remain tied to the Russian company until when the contract expires in 2030 but has chosen not to extend the current deal.
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ATHENS, Greece — Greek authorities say they have seized a Russian tanker in the Aegean Sea as part of European Union sanctions imposed against Russia.
The Greek coast guard said the Russian-flagged Pegas, an oil tanker with 19 Russian crew members on board, was seized April 15 and is currently anchored in the bay of Karystos, on the southern coast of the island of Evia. The coast guard said the seizure order concerned the ship itself, and not its cargo.
The European Union, of which Greece is a member, has adopted a wide range of sanctions against Russia over the latter’s invasion of Ukraine, designed to pressure the Russian economy and the government of President Vladimir Putin.
The sanctions include import and export bans for a wide variety of goods, and a ban on access to EU ports by Russian-flagged ships.
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TOKYO — Japan will send gas masks, hazmat suits and drones to Ukraine to help defend the country against Russia’s invasion amid growing concern of chemical weapons use by the Russian military.
Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Tuesday that Japan is sending the anti-chemical-warfare equipment at the request of the Ukrainian government.
Japan last month provided bulletproof vests, helmets and other nonlethal arms equipment to Ukraine as an exception to Tokyo’s ban on arms exports to countries in conflict, saying Ukraine is being invaded. The shipment has raised controversy in Japan, whose pacifist Constitution renounces war.
“Banding together with the international community and firmly taking action against Russia’s invasion, which violates international law, is extremely important from the viewpoint of our own national security as well,” Kishi said.
The government has revised its operational guideline of arms transfer to allow provisions of nonlethal equipment to Ukraine and says the new rule covers gas masks and protective gear. Japan is also sending commercially available drones that are not considered arms equipment.
Japan has been quick in joining the United States and European Union in imposing sanctions against Russia and supporting Ukraine and its people because Tokyo fears the impact its invasion could have on East Asia, where China has been increasingly pushing its own territorial claims.
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KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said Tuesday that Russian forces are focusing their efforts on taking full control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.
It noted that a “new phase of war” began Monday when “the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.”
It said in a statement issued early Tuesday that “the Russian military has continued to blockade and shell Mariupol and to deal missile strikes on other cities.”
KVIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian military official said street battles have begun and evacuation is impossible in the town of Kreminna. That's one of only two spots where the Ukrainians said the Russians managed to break through on Monday along a front stretching for hundreds of miles.
Luhansk regional military administrator Serhiy Haidai said the town came under heavy artillery overnight, setting seven residential buildings on fire, and that the Olympus sports complex where the nation's Olympic team trains was targeted.
Haidai later said on Ukrainian TV that Russians took control of the city after “leveling everything to the ground,” so his guys retreated to regroup and keep on fighting. “It simply makes no sense to stand in one place, to die for everyone, without causing significant damage to the enemy,” he said.
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KVIV, Ukraine — Russian forces are attacking along a broad front, over 300 miles (480 kilometers) long, Ukrainian officials said Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces were increasing assaults in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions — both of which are part of the Donbas — as well as in the area of Zaporizhzhia, they said.
“The occupiers attempted to break through our defenses,” said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council. “Fortunately, our military is holding out. They passed through only two cities — this is Kreminna and another small town.”
He added: “We are not giving up any of our territories.”
Russia also bombarded the relative safe haven of Lviv and a multitude of other targets across Ukraine in what appeared to be an intensified bid to grind down the country’s defenses.
Moscow said its missiles struck more than 20 military targets, including ammunition depots, command headquarters and groups of troops and vehicles, while its artillery hit an additional 315 targets and its warplanes conducted 108 strikes. The claims could not be independently verified.
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KVIV, Ukraine — Russia has begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on a Mariupol steel plant where Ukrainians are refusing to surrender, the commander of the Azov Regiment of the National Guard said Monday.
Denys Prokopenko, whose soldiers have been holding out against Russian forces in the key southern port city, said in a video message that the bombs are dropping even though civilians are sheltering in the plant’s tunnels.
“Russian occupational forces, and their proxy ... know about the civilians, and they keep willingly firing on the factory,” he said.
Russia estimated that 2,500 Ukrainian troops and about 400 foreign mercenaries were dug in. The U.S. said nearly a dozen Russian battalion tactical groups have been tied up trying to defeat them.
The head of the city’s patrol police, Mikhail Vershinin, told Mariupol television on Sunday that many civilians including children are hiding in the plant, seeking shelter from Russian shelling and forces occupying other parts of the city.
Ukraine estimates that 21,000 people have been killed in Mariupol. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned Russia on social media that refusing to open humanitarian corridors will justify war crimes trials. The Russians, for their part, said “neo-Nazi nationalists” have hampered evacuations.
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KVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia has launched its long-feared, full-scale offensive to take control of Ukraine’s east,
“Now we can already state that the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas,” he said in a video address. Zelenskyy said a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.”
The Donbas is Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics recognized by Russia.
The Kremlin declared the capture of the Donbas its main goal of the war after failing to storm. After withdrawing from the capital, it began regrouping and reinforcing its ground troops in the east for what could be a climactic battle.
“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves. We will do it every day.”
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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations’ humanitarian chief said it seems “the time is not quite ripe yet” to establish a cease fire to get humanitarian aid into Ukraine, but he held out hope as the Orthodox Easter holiday approaches this weekend.
“Maybe there will be some ripeness,” Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths said at a news conference on Monday.
After traveling to Kviv and Moscow for high-level meetings with Ukrainian and Russian officials this month, Griffiths told The Associated Press he had sensed little trust between the adversaries and was “not optimistic.”
Griffiths called for Russia and Ukraine to return to talks aimed at ending the war and for “much, much more willing acceptance, primarily of the Russian federation, to allow convoys in and convoys out.”
“For now, let’s get aid to people where they need it,” Griffiths said.
The U.N. says 12 million people have been uprooted by the war, with about 5 million of them pouring across borders and the rest seeking safety elsewhere in Ukraine.
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BERLIN — Germany’s employers and unions have joined together in opposing an immediate European Union ban on natural gas imports from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. They say a boycott would lead to factory shutdowns and job losses in the bloc’s largest economy.
“A rapid gas embargo would lead to loss of production, shutdowns, a further de-industrialization and the long-term loss of work positions in Germany,” said Rainer Dulger, chairman of the BDA employer’s group, and Reiner Hoffmann, chairman of the DGB trade union confederation.
Their joint statement Monday to Germany’s dpa news agency comes as European leaders discuss possible new energy sanctions against Russian oil, following a decision April 7 to ban Russian coal imports beginning in August.
Ukraine’s leaders say revenues from Russia’s energy exports are financing Moscow’s destructive war on Ukraine and must be ended.
That won’t be easy to do. The EU’s 27 nations get around 40% of their natural gas from Russia and around 25% of their oil.
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Ukraine rejected as baseless and false the accusations made by Serbia’s president that Ukraine’s secret service is behind a series of hoax bomb threats against Air Serbia flights to Russia.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has claimed that the foreign intelligence services of Ukraine and an unidentified European Union nation are responsible.
The pro-Russian Serbian leader did not provide evidence for his claim. Other Serbian officials alleged that the threats were being sent from Ukraine or Poland. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nilolenko on Monday called the allegations false.
The Serbian national carrier is the only European airline besides Turkish air companies that has not joined EU flight sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union’s top diplomat condemned Russia’s “indiscriminate and illegal” attacks on Ukraine on Monday as the country experienced the most intense missile strikes in weeks.
Josep Borrell, the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a statement that the EU supports the work of the International Criminal Court and other efforts to ensure accountability for human rights violations.
“There can be no impunity for war crimes,” said Borrell, who called for Russia to immediately cease hostilities and withdraw forces from Ukraine.
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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says Russia has added artillery, ground combat forces and other capabilities in recent days ahead of a new ground offensive in the Donbas region in Ukraine.
A senior U.S. defense official said the number of combat units known as battalion tactical groups in eastern and southern Ukraine has grown to 76 from 65 last week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments of the war.
It’s difficult to know at this stage of the war, but that could add up to 50,000 to 60,000 Russian troops, depending on how developed the groups are.
The official said that if Russian forces succeed in fully controlling the southern port of Mariupol it could free up nearly a dozen battalion tactical groups for use elsewhere in the Donbas region.
The official also said that four U.S. cargo flights arrived in Europe on Sunday with weapons and other materials, part of $800 million in assistance announced last week.
The official said training of Ukrainian personnel on U.S. Army and Marine Corps 155mm howitzers is set to begin at an undisclosed location outside of Ukraine in the next several days. The U.S. pledged 18 howitzers to bolster Ukrainian forces in the Donbas fight, and these trainees can in turn train more soldiers inside Ukraine.
— AP Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
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KVIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has formally submitted Ukraine’s answers to a questionnaire from the European Union, the first step in his campaign to obtain accelerated EU membership.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said when presenting the questions to Zelenskyy in early April that a preliminary decision on Ukraine’s candidacy could come in weeks.
Ukraine’s drive to join the bloc has been a provocative issue with Russia for years.
“The people of Ukraine are united by this goal -- to feel they are an equal part of Europe,” Zelenskyy said Monday as he handed two thick binders of Ukrainian responses to Matti Maasikas, the EU’s envoy for Ukraine.
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SARAJEVO, Bosnia — Survivors of war crimes committed during Bosnia’s war 30 years ago say the victims of human rights abuses in Ukraine can learn from their experience, which was lengthy and painful.
It took decades to arrest and try the wartime Bosnian Serb leaders, and more than 7,000 people still remain unaccounted-for. But the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia eventually convicted 83 high-ranking political and military officials and transferred a mountain of evidence against lower-ranking suspects to their home countries for prosecution.
The guilty were collectively sentenced to over 700 years in prison.
Munira Subasic helped create Mothers of Srebrenica to demand that bodies be identified and those responsible brought to justice. To date, almost 90 percent of those reported missing from the fall of Srebrenica have been accounted for.
“Russia’s denials of massacres its soldiers are now obviously committing in Ukraine sound to me the same as Srebrenica genocide denial,” Subasic said. “But if survivors are persistent, the truth will prevail.”
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BEIRUT — Kremlin officials boasted early in their war on Ukraine that thousands of experienced fighters from the Middle East would join Russian forces. Military analysts say only a small number appears to have arrived in Russia for training before being deployed to the front lines, but they say that could change as Russia prepares for a full-scale offensive.
U.S. officials and activists monitoring Syria say the Russians have been actively recruiting. Rami Abdurrahman leads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He reported that about 40,000 people have registered so far with the Russian military and with Wagner Group, which is a Russian private contractor.
Rayan Maarouf of Suwayda24, an activist collective that covers IS activities in the Syrian desert, said fighters were promised no less than $600 a month. That’s a huge sum of money amid widespread unemployment in Syria.
Analysts say fighters from Syria are more likely to be deployed in coming weeks, especially after Gen. Alexander Dvornikov was named war commander. Dvornikov is well acquainted with the paramilitary forces Russia trained in Syria. Though some question how effective Syrian fighters would be in Ukraine, they could be brought in if more forces are needed to besiege cities or to make up for rising casualties.