Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

(Reuters) – Russian troops were engaged in heavy fighting supported by widespread artillery fire as they launch a major offensive for Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials said, a day after Moscow declared victory in the neighbouring province of Luhansk.

FIGHTING

* Lysychansk was once a city of a 100,000 people in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, but it now lies in ruins after its fall to Russian forces with many residents still living in bomb shelters and basements.

* Russian forces struck a market and a residential area in the city of Sloviansk near front lines in Donetsk, killing at least two people and injuring seven, according to officials.

* Russian-backed separatists have seized two foreign-flagged ships in the southeast Ukrainian port of Mariupol, saying they are now “state property”, in the first such moves against commercial shipping, letters seen by Reuters showed.

* Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

* The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament said Ukraine had become a “terrorist state” and was doing everything to ensure that Russia did not stop at the borders of the Donbas region.

DIPLOMACY AND ECONOMY

* Ukrainian President Zelenskiy renewed his appeal for security guarantees while addressing a conference hosted by the Economist. Europe needs to understand, he said, that the war in Ukraine is about Europe’s safety and Ukraine is the “fence” protecting it.

* An international conference in Lugano, Switzerland, to support Ukraine has outlined a series of principles to steer Kyiv’s recovery and condemned Moscow’s actions.

* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will call on G20 nations this week to put pressure on Russia to support U.N. efforts to reopen sea lanes blocked by the Ukraine conflict and repeat warnings to China not to support Moscow’s war effort.

* Russian former president Medvedev said a reported proposal from Japan to cap the price of Russian oil at around half its current price would lead to a market shortage that could push prices above $300-400 a barrel.

Story continues

HUMAN RIGHTS

* Arbitrary detention of civilians has become widespread in parts of Ukraine held by Russia’s military and affiliated armed groups, with 270 cases documented, the U.N. human rights chief said.

QUOTES

* “The city doesn’t exist anymore,” said Nina, a young mother who fled Lysychansk in Luhansk province to take refuge in the central city of Dnipro. “It has practically been wiped off the face of the Earth.”

(Compiled by Mark Heinrich & Simon Cameron-Moore)