Foreign ministry warns US not to place Russia on its list of state sponsors of terrorism

Ukrainian president Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Saturday the war could only end with the return of the Crimea peninsula and the punishment of the Russian leaders who ordered the military invasion, saying on Twitter:

The Kyiv Independent reports that the Ukrainian military has shot down a Russian fighter jet, as well as four Russian drones.

Hundreds of thousands ‘must evacuate Donetsk’ to avoid falling into enemy hands, says Ukrainian president

Russia has said it has invited United Nations and Red Cross experts to investigate the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Moscow-backed separatists, Reuters reports.

At least 50 prisoners of war were killed in an attack on a jail in Olenivka, in Russian-occupied Donetsk, on Friday. Both sides in the war have blamed the blast on each other.

We are now pausing our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. We will return in a few hours to bring you all the latest developments.

Three people were killed as 13 Russian missiles hit a military airfield and railway infrastructure in Ukraine’s central Kirovohrad region on Saturday, the local governor said.

Reuters reports that speaking on television, governor Andriy Raikovych said two security guards at an electricity substation had been killed. He also said that one Ukrainian soldier had been killed and nine more wounded.

Russian forces are using artillery fire along the Ingulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

“Supply lines of the Russian forces west of the river are increasingly at risk,” the ministry said in an intelligence update.

This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Today is the anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Donetsk in 2014, which killed 298 people onboard, including 196 Dutch nationals and 38 Australians.

With the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year’s anniversary has hit the international community even harder. Russia denied involvement in the downing of MH17, despite the findings of an international investigation that found multiple witnesses who saw an anti-aircraft missile launcher that had secretly crossed into Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it shot down the commercial flight.

Ruling on an attack on a nursing home early in the conflict, UN says no war crimes committed but both sides partially responsible

Earlier we reported on Ukrainian soldiers arriving in UK for training. About 1,050 UK service personnel are running the programme, which will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months.

The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who visited the training this week, said:

This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the armed forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British army, we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.