Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
The Ukrainian soldiers training to retake Bakhmut
Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade is preparing to retake the town of Bakhmut, which fell 10 days ago following the bloodiest battle of the war so far. Among them is a recruit who identified herself by her call sign, Heavy, chosen for her taste in rock music.
Heavy is from a village in Sumy region that was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of the war. She lost people close to her. She has already been in combat once. Asked why she had volunteered for a combat unit, Heavy said she thought it would be “interesting”.
“Assault units are going to be the first ones to liberate our citizens, so I want to be part of it,” she told Julian Borger and Artem Mazhulin. Heavy said her platoon leader likes to tell her: “Fear is contagious, but so is courage.”
Preliminary operations have already begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said. “It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said. “It’s an ongoing process of de-occupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines.”
The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny, also raised expectations that a major operation could be imminent by declaring on social media: “The time has come to take back what’s ours.”
Three die, including a child, in Kyiv attack
Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities, Julian Borger reported.
The attack, on what is International Children’s Day in many post-Soviet countries, reportedly involved 10 Iskander short-range missiles, and there was a warning of only a few minutes before they hit. Most of the damage appeared to be from falling debris after the incoming missiles were intercepted by the capital’s air defences.
Witnesses said the three victims were killed after the air raid shelter they rushed to failed to open. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed frustration at the miscue and said if local officials were unable to provide protection, they could be prosecuted.
His comments appeared aimed at Kyiv city authorities and Mayor Vitali Klitschko, with whom he has periodically clashed during the war, Reuters reported.
Nearly 500 children have been killed in military attacks in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Moscow hit by large-scale drone attack
The Russian capital was this week hit by a large-scale drone attack for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer reported. Two people were injured in the raid and several residential buildings suffered minor damage.
But the significance of the attack lay more in highlighting how, in stark contrast to Kyiv, Moscow has so far been shielded from the devastation that Putin’s invasion has inflicted.
Polls have shown that many in the capital have stopped paying attention to the war, as restaurants and bars remain jammed with Muscovites eager to enjoy the warm weather.
Recently there has been an apparent pattern of efforts by Kyiv to hit targets deep inside Russia with drones, according to Peter Beaumont, in attacks designed to bring the war home to Russia’s capital, underlining both the fact that Ukraine is capable of skirting Russian air defences repeatedly and that it has the capacity to strike far inside Russian territory.
Anti-Putin partisans shell Russian town
Russian anti-Putin partisans said they were conducting a raid on the town of Shebekino a little over four miles across the Ukrainian border in Belgorod province, the second partisan attack inside Russia in less than two weeks.
The Russian Volunteer Corps, based in Ukraine, said it had shelled the local Russian administrative building, while dramatic footage of a large block with multiple fires on the roof was posted in a local Telegram messenger channel.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Russian governor of Belgorod oblast, said 12 Russians had been wounded in the fighting while 29 buildings, including a kindergarten, had been damaged amid “numerous artillery shelling” since Wednesday.
The Russian Volunteer Corps, which is led by a prominent nationalist, said it had allowed Russian forces to retreat to the administrative building before targeting it with Grad rockets. A spokesperson for the group added: “Very soon we will see the outskirts of Shebekino.” Dan Sabbagh, Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour reported this story.
Ukrainian children taken to Russia for financial gain
Thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Peter Beaumont reports, and it has now become clear that some were taken by friends, or even relatives, for mercenary reasons.
One such child was Alina, whose best friend’s mother told her that having accepted Russian food aid during the Russian occupation of Kherson, she would be a target for Ukrainian forces when they retook the area. In fact, the woman saw caring for Alina as a way to get money and a better apartment from social services in Russia. Once across the border, she became abusive.
Although Alina is one of just hundreds of Ukrainian children to be returned to Ukraine, another story by Peter Beaumont and Pjotr Sauer highlighted the difficulties faced by Ukrainians trying to reclaim their children.
Olga Guruli, who travelled to Russia hoping to arrange the repatriation of her godson and his brother from Russian-occupied Kherson province, was arrested, interrogated for two days and threatened with being sent to a penal colony before being deported to Belarus.
Zelenskiy hails ‘powerful support’ at Moldova summit
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had received “powerful support” from allies attending a summit in Moldova as it emerged F-16 fighter jets could be made available to Ukraine within six months, Lisa O’Carroll reported.
Closing the conference of 46 European leaders held at a castle 12 miles (19km) from the border with Ukraine, the country’s president spoke of the importance of overturning Russian’s supremacy in the air with a “sky shield” involving a combination of Patriot missiles and F-16s.
He also won support from Rishi Sunak in his battle for accelerated membership of Nato.
Ukraine built more onshore wind turbines in past year than England
Ukraine has completed more onshore wind turbines than England since the invasion – despite the UK government’s promise to relax restrictions on onshore windfarms, Jillian Ambrose reported.
Only two onshore wind turbines have been installed in England since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, generating 1 megawatt (MW) of electricity in the Staffordshire village of Keele.
Ukraine’s Tyligulska wind power plant, meanwhile, the first to be built in a conflict zone, has begun generating enough clean electricity to power about 200,000 homes just 60 miles from the frontline in the southern region of Mykolaiv, with 19 turbines providing an installed capacity of 114MW.
Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, said: “This extraordinary revelation is a terrible indictment of Rishi Sunak and his staggering failure to end the onshore wind ban.
