Battles in Donbas will look like World War Two, says Ukraine

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

A fire broke out at a villa belonging to Russian state TV host Vladimir Soloviev in Lake Como, in northern Italy, early on Wednesday morning.

The fire was quickly put out and caused limited damage, firefighters said.

A second villa near the lake, also owned by Soloviev, was covered in spray paint and paint was poured into the swimming pool, reports Reuters.

The fire is currently being investigated as arson.

The uninhabited villa had been previously seized by Italian authorities as part of the EU sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

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UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is expected to tell Nato colleagues that "the age of engagement with Russia is over".

At a working dinner with Nato foreign ministers, Ms Truss will say that there is no time for "false comfort" as Russia is not retreating by moving troops away from the capital Kyiv.

Instead, she will say, Moscow is "regrouping and repositioning to push harder" in the east and south of Ukraine.

Ms Truss will say that this is the time for Nato to toughen its response and take strategic action.

“We need a new approach to security in Europe based on resilience, defence and deterrence."

Ms Truss believes the Nato-Russia Founding Act, signed in 1997 and regarded as a roadmap for future cooperation, is dead.

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The US and UK have both announced new sanctions aimed at thwarting Russia's invasion of Ukraine - but the European Union is yet to follow suit.

The EU has spent the day debating cutting off Russian coal imports, among various other proposals put forward last night.

Josep Borrell, the EU's chief diplomat, acknowledged earlier that the one billion euros ($1.09bn or £833m) Europe has sent to Ukraine in military assistance since the start of the invasion is overshadowed by the fact that one billion euros is spent on Russian energy every day.

However, the sanctions have to be agreed by all 27 member states, and banning Russian coal would have a huge impact on European member states that are heavily reliant on Russian energy – such as Germany.

Berlin, which has blocked previous attempts to ban Russian coal, wants clarification on whether a ban would affect existing contracts or only future contracts, sources told Reuters. If the ban were applied only to new contracts, Russia would still be able to export coal to the EU for a long period.

The talks will continue tomorrow.

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Attacks on civilians by Russian forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha “appear to be premeditated”, a US senior defence official has said.

“Just looking at the imagery – when you see individuals with their hands tied behind their backs and evidence of being shot in the head, that certainly appears to be premeditated,” said the White House official.

“It appears to be planned. It certainly appears to be very, very deliberate.”

Moscow has denied involvement and described reports as fake news.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said what happened does not “look far short of genocide”.

The Biden administration also confirmed on Wednesday that Russian forces have completely withdrawn from areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv.

The bosses of some of the world's biggest energy firms vowed to increase production this year as they defended themselves from accusations of profiteering from the war in Ukraine.

Chiefs at ExxonMobil, Chevron and others testified in Washington DC that they had little power over oil prices, which soared after Russia's invasion.

Prices remain more than 15% higher than they were at the end of January. The increase has raised costs for households around the world.

At the hearing, US Democrats and Republicans tussled over whom to blame for the increase - and the best way to respond.

Democrats said oil firms were "lining their own pockets" as petrol prices have not fallen as rapidly as oil.

• Five reasons bills are going up

They said the energy crisis should spur a faster turn to greener energy sources.

Republicans said Democrats were trying to blame Vladimir Putin and oil firms for problems driven by their policies.

They accused Mr Biden of an "assault" on the US energy industry citing actions such as halting oil and gas leases on public lands.

"High gas prices are a feature of President Biden's policies, not a bug," said Rep Cathy Morris, Republican from Washington. "Why? They want to usher in a green revolution."

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Former England footballer Matt Le Tissier has stepped down from an ambassador role at his ex-club Southampton, after a backlash over a controversial tweet about Ukraine.

Le Tissier had shared a post which appeared to suggest there could have been media manipulation in the reporting of the war.

He later deleted the tweet, and claimed people were "missing the point" of his post. He also clarified that he did not advocate war in any form.

Nonetheless he said he was stepping down to "avoid any confusion".

Le Tissier is Southampton's all-time top scorer in the Premier League.

Read more about the story here.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that a blanket ban on Russian oil exports would cause energy prices to spike in Europe.

"The issue with blocking oil exports from Russia is that many countries, especially in Europe, are very dependent on that oil," she told a congressional committee in Washington.

"And we're likely going to see skyrocketing prices if we did put a complete ban on oil."

She added that she hopes oil companies around the world ramp up production, in order to allow for further sanctions against Russia.

"We are witnessing the vulnerability that comes from relying on one fuel source or one trade partner," Yellen added.

She also described the "enormous economic repercussions in Ukraine and beyond" that have been caused by the invasion, including a sharp global rise in food prices.

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The US has imposed sanctions against President Putin's adult daughters, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova.

The two are the daughters of Putin and his ex-wife Lyudmila. The couple split in 2013.

Maria Vorontsova, 36, "leads state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin toward genetics research and are personally overseen by Putin", says the US.

Mrs Vorontsova is an academic, specialising in the endocrine system.

While her sister, Katerina Tikhonova, 35, has been described by the White House as a "a tech executive whose work supports the GoR [Russian government] and defense industry".

Who are Putin's daughters?

Ms Tikhonova is also a rock 'n' roll dancer who has entered international competitions.

Putin is very guarded about his family and has previously said: "[I] never discuss my family with anyone."

Why are Putin's daughters being sanctioned?

Asked why the pair were being targeted, a senior official in the Biden administration said the US thought the women could be in control of some of their father's assets.

"We have reason to believe that Putin, and many of his cronies, and the oligarchs, hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members that place their assets and their wealth in the US financial system, and also many other parts of the world," the official said.

Here's some more on the situation in Borodyanka, a commuter town to the north-west of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Before the invasion, resident Olga worked in marketing in the capital. The mum of two daughters, 5 and 8, said she had an "absolutely normal life" before Russia attacked Borodyanka, where she lived with her husband, who is in Ukraine’s territorial defence.

Olga tells BBC World Service radio: “It all started unexpectedly. My children and I prepared our cellar like a bomb shelter. It was very cold, we prepared blankets and warm clothes.

"We spent two days with the hope that everything would end soon.

“On the third day of the war, Russian troops had gone down in the city and it was scary. It was terrible but Borodyanka fought back.

“The next day we moved to the outskirts to the house of our friends. My older daughter was so scared and hardly spoke.”

“After that was the first air attack. We only lived because we ran away from our house.

“I lay on the cold floor, covered the children by myself and couldn’t breathe from horror.

“I saw the destroyed city the next day. I burst into tears. I saw a burning and smoking city, absolutely destroyed. I felt like I was on the set of a movie, I couldn’t realise what had happened to me and my children.

"Now I’m exhausted, but I believe in Ukraine and our victory.”

Read more from our correspondent Jeremy Bowen in Borodyanka here.

More now on those fresh sanctions against Moscow announced by the US, which target Russia's biggest financial institution and its biggest private lender.

President Joe Biden said the measures would "raise the economic pressure on Putin".

"First the United States will impose full blocking sanctions on Sberbank, by far the largest financial institution in Russia and Alfa Bank, its largest private bank," he said.

"We're locking down any accounts, any funds that those banks hold in the United States. They'll not be able to touch any of their money, they'll not be able to do any business here.

"And second, I'm going to sign an executive order, going to ban any new US investment in Russia, more than 600 private sector companies."

The two targeted banks said the sanctions would not have a big impact on their operations.

The US is co-ordinating increasingly severe sanctions with the G7 group of wealthy nations and the EU.

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Earlier we reported that Ukraine's deputy prime minister had warned people in three regions in eastern Ukraine to evacuate while it's still possible.

She said military leaders in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk were trying to help people leave "in an organised way".

But now we're heard from the head of the Kharkiv regional administration, who says "we are not carrying out any centralised evacuation measures in Kharkiv".

“We know that the enemy hasn’t changed its plans, but we believe in our Ukrainian armed forces, in the strength of our defences," Oleh Sinehubov said in a Telegram post.

But he said two towns close to the Donetsk region - Barvenkove and Lozoviy - should be evacuated.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

As we’ve been reporting, the US and UK have today ramped up their sanctions against Russia in response to its forces' actions in Ukraine.

The measures are designed to harm the Russian economy and pressurise President Putin to end the war. Here's a snapshot of what’s been announced:

• Both countries have moved to block the activities of top Russian financial institutions - including the country’s largest bank, Sberbank
• Businesses in both the US and UK have also been banned from investing in Russia
• The UK has committed to ending its dependency on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year – and to halt gas imports "as soon as possible thereafter"
• High-profile Russians have also been targeted - with the US sanctioning President Putin's adult children and the family of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov

American President Joe Biden said Russia was paying a "severe and immediate price" for its alleged atrocities in Bucha - atrocities that Moscow denies.

The EU is expected to confirm its own response to the alleged war crimes, although Reuters reports that there's been a delay amid concerns from Germany over fuel import bans.

You can read more about what sanctions are and what they try to achieve in our updated explainer article here.

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The destruction in the centre of Borodyanka is the worst for its size I have seen in any of the towns around Kyiv, including Irpin and Bucha.

Destroyed and burnt-out buildings, homes turned to rubble, the twisted wreckage of cars, and then more collapsed buildings.

Borodyanka, which is not far from the border with Belarus and was on the main axis of the Russian advance on Kyiv, has been very heavily shelled.

It is not the kind of shelling that happens in a couple of bombardments. This takes application.

Several witnesses told the BBC that Russian troops stopped attempts to dig survivors out of wrecked buildings, threatening people who wanted to do so at gunpoint.

Ukrainian officials say that the Russians may have committed worse atrocities in Borodyanka than in Bucha.

At the moment, though, the extent of what was done to civilians in Borodyanka during the Russian occupation is not yet clear.

Read more about the situation in Borodyanka.

ICRCCopyright: ICRC

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has escorted a convoy fleeing the besieged city of Mariupol and other areas to safety in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

On Monday, the ICRC said the team it dispatched several days earlier to help evacuate civilians from Mariupol was being held by police in Russian-controlled territory.

But today the ICRC ended up leading a convoy of private vehicle of people who had managed to leave Mariupol and other nearby areas without ICRC support.

Other private cars and buses joined the convoy on its journey, the ICRC said, meaning more than 1,000 people ended up reaching Zaporizhzhia.

Repeated attempts to evacuate residents from the city have collapsed, though some have made the dangerous dash to safety alone.

Earlier this week Mariupol's mayor estimated that around 90% of the city has been completely destroyed as a result of the war.

A security guard at the British embassy in Berlin who is accused of spying for Russia has been charged with nine offences under the Official Secrets Act, the UK's Met Police have said.

David Smith, 57, a British national, was extradited from Germany to the UK on Wednesday and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' court on Thursday, Scotland Yard said.

Smith, who had been living in Potsdam, Germany, is accused of seven offences of collecting information with the intent of sending it to the Russian authorities, one of attempting communication and one of providing information to a person he believed was a member of the Russian authorities.

The alleged offences were committed between October 2020 and August 2021.

The Met said its investigation was being led by its Counter Terrorism Command.

EPACopyright: EPA

The United Nations will hold a vote in New York on Thursday on whether to expel Russia from its Human Rights Council.

Yesterday, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a UN meeting that the Kremlin’s troops had killed Ukrainians “for pleasure”. The Russian ambassador denied accusations of war crimes by his country.

The council is formed of 47 member states, and works to promote and protect human rights around the world.

The proposal to kick out Russia – made by the US and UK – would need the support of two-thirds of the UN’s 193 members to be passed on Thursday.

An earlier UN resolution to denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine met the approval of 141 countries last month.

Western officials say Russia has "absolutely lost the initiative" in its military operations in Ukraine and that Moscow may now be in the process of redefining what success means.

They say that they have yet to see the mass redeployment of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, suggesting that a Russian offensive in the Donbas – comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - is at least a week away, and possibly "a number of weeks" away.

They say the threat to Kyiv "is limited for the foreseeable future", but note that missiles and air strikes could still pose a danger.

The forces withdrawn from Kyiv are currently in Belarus and are in pretty bad shape. But until they are withdrawn completely, Kyiv is not out of danger, officials say.

Officials say Vladimir Putin may want to be able to mark some kind of "victory" on 9 May - Victory Day, which is traditionally marked with a military parade in Moscow. But since that is only a month away, this could introduce an element of tension between political imperatives and what's manageable on the battlefield.

When the assault on the Donbas begins, they expect the Russians to take advantage of their shorter supply lines and lessons learned in the first weeks of the war, and perhaps fight more effectively.

But they say the Ukrainian forces stationed in the Donbas are the best trained and equipped Ukrainian units, with defensive positions developed over eight years of war.

Ukraine's prime minister has accused Russia of carrying out genocide against Ukrainians during the war.

Speaking to the BBC's Clive Myrie, Denys Shmyhal said he was "absolutely sure this is genocide against the Ukrainian nation from Russia side".

The sight of tied bodies shot at close range in the Ukrainian streets of Bucha has triggered a global outcry and pledges of further sanctions against Russia from the West.

Shmyhal also called on the West to stop buying Russian oil and gas, saying the money was being used to "finance this genocide" and crimes by Russia.

Shmyhal added: "Russian budget is budget of terrorism and not only against Ukraine, against all the civilised world.

"It's blood money because they use this money to buy weapons from which they kill Ukrainians."

Russia has denied that its forces have carried out atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere.

The Kremlin has now given its take on Hungarian PM Viktor Orban's conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this afternoon.

It said the two leaders had discussed the events in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, which Mr Putin described as a "crude and cynical provocation".

Ukrainian officials blame Russian troops for the deaths of hundreds of civilians in the town north of the capital Kyiv.

Russia maintains that the scenes have been faked, but satellite images showing bodies in the streets of the town during the Russian occupation contradict those claims.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also addressed the issue, saying that the scenes in Bucha were designed to justify more sanctions against Russia and sabotage peace talks.