Russia moving nuclear weapons to Belarus; Wagner begins withdrawing forces from Bakhmut

Russia has moved ahead with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, claimed on Thursday that the relocation of some of the weapons from Russia to Belarus had already started, according to reports.

Dutch prosecutors have seized a plot of land near Amsterdam that belongs to Vladimir Putin’s former son-in-law, a joint investigation by the Guardian and two other media organisations revealed. The plot of land in Duivendrecht is owned by Jorrit Faassen, a Dutch businessman who was married to Maria Vorontsova, the Russian president’s elder daughter.

Britain is likely to keep Russian state assets immobilised for some time after the war in Ukraine ends, and certainly until Moscow has agreed to pay compensation for the damage it has inflicted, British officials have confirmed. The Council of Europe summit last week established a digital register of damage for Ukraine as the first step towards an international compensation mechanism for victims of Russian aggression.

The United States has long asked Ukraine not to use US-provided military equipment to carry out attacks inside Russian territory, the top US general said on Thursday, following accusations by Russia that pro-Ukrainian militia had used US armoured vehicles.

Russia has signalled that if demands to improve its grain and fertiliser exports are not met then it will not extend the Black Sea grain deal before 17 July. It made the same threat and demands in March, then agreed last week to renew the export pact for 60 days.

Unverified footage appears to show a drone speedboat attack on the Russian naval vessel the Ivan Khurs in the Black Sea on Wednesday. The video appears to show at least one of the drones getting extremely close to the ship, though it remains unclear whether or not any damage was done.

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has begun withdrawing its forces from the devastated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and transferring its positions there to regular Russian troops, according to its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The US has said the Wagner Group may be working through Mali and other countries to hide its efforts to acquire military equipment for use in Ukraine, and accused it of supplying a Sudanese paramilitary with surface-to-air missiles.

Ukraine secured the release of 106 captured soldiers in a prisoner exchange with Russia on Thursday, according to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff. The soldiers, including eight officers, were reportedly said to have been captured fighting in Bakhmut.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the ambassadors of Germany, Sweden and Denmark over what it described as the “complete lack of results” in the Nord Stream investigation. Several unexplained underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea in September 2022. The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark and both countries say they were deliberate, but have yet to determine who was responsible. Germany is also investigating.

Ukraine said on Thursday it had shot down all 36 Iranian-made drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks it claims likely targeted key infrastructure and military facilities.

Russia has denied a fire broke out at the ministry of defence in Moscow, after social media users and reports in the state-owned Tass news agency said emergency services had been called to the building. Tass initially reported on a fire at the ministry early on Thursday morning, but later reported the ministry saying there was none.

Anti-corruption campaigner says he was asked bizarre questions on call apparently with former Ukrainian president

The Kremlin critic Bill Browder has said he was targeted by a deepfake hoax when he participated in a bizarre video call this week with somebody impersonating the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

The anti-corruption campaigner was invited to discuss “anti-Russian sanctions,” but ended up being asked if he favoured lifting sanctions on Kremlin oligarchs, and even to perform a salute to a rap song performed by the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

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Overnight the New York Times has reported that US intelligence officials believe that Ukraine was responsible for the drone attack which slightly damaged the Kremlin, and which Russia labelled an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin, despite the Russian president not being in the building at the time.

It writes:

US officials said the drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month was likely orchestrated by one of Ukraine’s special military or intelligence units, the latest in a series of covert actions against Russian targets that have unnerved the Biden administration.

US intelligence agencies do not know which unit carried out the attack and it was unclear whether President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine or his top officials were aware of the operation.

US officials say their level of confidence that the Ukrainian government directly authorised the Kremlin drone attack is “low” but that is because intelligence agencies do not yet have specific evidence identifying which government officials, Ukrainian units or operatives were involved.

The attack appeared to be part of a series of operations that have made officials in the US – Ukraine’s biggest supplier of military equipment – uncomfortable. The Biden administration is concerned about the risk that Russia will blame US officials and retaliate by expanding the war beyond Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin announces ruined Ukrainian city will be handed over to Russian military by 1 June

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

The head of the Wagner group said his Russian paramilitary organisation had begun to withdraw from the city of Bakhmut and would hand all its positions over to the regular Russian army by 1 June.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Vladimir Putin, made the announcement during a visit to the ruined city, telling tank crews and other commanders that they would receive new orders soon and should withdraw to the rear.

Yevgeny Prigozhin says children of Russian elite ‘shook their arses’ in sun while sons of poor returned in coffins

The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership does not improve its handling of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

Washington has been clear with Kyiv it does not support use of US-made equipment outside Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby says. This live blog is closed

• What we know on day 455 of the invasion

Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting some quotes from Denis Pushilin, who has said that the situation for Russian forces on the flanks of Bakhmut has stabilised.

Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader in occupied Donetsk, which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed, is quoted as saying on the Solovyov Live TV channel:

The peak of anxiety, when there was the most active phase, when the enemy tried to attack on the flanks and surround the guys in Bakhmut itself, has passed, according to my information.

I was talking with the guys who are there, including with Wagner, and they also say that combat-ready units have approached there, and this work is being done.

The night was not entirely peaceful. There have been a large number of drone attacks. Most of the air defence systems coped, but there are damages in Belgorod: cars, private houses, office buildings. The most important thing is that there are no casualties at all.

A gas pipeline was damaged in the Grayvoron District, a small fire is going on. Also, the restoration of electrical networks, which were damaged during the entry of the sabotage and reconnaissance group, is under way. All work to restore power supply in the Grayvoron district will be completed today. After that, water supply and cellular communications will be restored.

The paramilitaries who raided Belgorod include guerrillas with far-right connections, anti-Kremlin veterans and former members of Russia’s security services

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

As Russian militias opposing the Kremlin readied a daring cross-border raid into the Belgorod region this week, a man with slicked-down hair, in full camouflage and holding an automatic rifle stared into a camera lens.

“We are Russians just like you,” the man said in the video, later posted online. “We are people just like you. We want our children to grow up in peace and be free people so they can travel, study and were just happy in a free country. But this has no place in modern Putin’s Russia, rotten through and through from corruption, lies, censorship, restrictions on freedoms and repression.”

Members of militias, however, insist their operations in Belgorod are ongoing

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Moscow has claimed it repelled an attack on Russian soil led by Ukraine-aligned militias, who have insisted their campaign is continuing.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, announced on Tuesday evening that he was cancelling a “counter-terrorism regime” that introduced restrictions tantamount to martial law, while claiming Russia’s defence ministry and security agencies were still engaged in a “mopping up” campaign.

Russia claims it killed 70 attackers in repelling cross-border raid into Belgorod; Zelenskiy visits frontline marines in Donetsk region

Moscow claims to have pushed back the fighters it says launched a cross-border attack from Ukraine into the Belgorod region. There has been little clarity about who ordered the attack. Russia has claimed it was carried out by “Ukrainian militants”, dismissing reports they had self-identified as an ethnic Russian, anti-Kremlin militia. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said there were many ethnic Russians inside Ukraine, but that this did not mean they were not Ukrainian militants. Kyiv has disavowed any connection to the Russian partisan fighters, saying they act independently and are not subject to military control.

Russia’s defence ministry claims that remnants of the units it blamed for the attack have now been forced back into Ukrainian territory. In its daily briefing, the ministry said more than 70 attackers were killed. Russia’s investigative committee has opened an investigation into terrorism over the incident.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov had earlier warned residents against returning to their homes, saying that “The cleaning of the territory by the ministry of defence together with law enforcement agencies continues”. He confirmed that residents of nine settlements had been resettled as a result of the fighting.

Video footage posted online by one of the groups of Russian “partisans” appeared to show US manufactured military vehicles were involved in the raid including Humvees and what appeared to be International Maxxpro 1224 mine resistant vehicles. On Monday a US state department official reiterated the US policy that it did not support military action by Ukraine beyond Ukraine’s borders. The events of the past 48 hours appear to confirm assessments in US intelligence documents – leaked by US airman Jack Teixeira to Discord – that Ukraine has trained and armed Russian volunteers with Nato equipment.

Ukrainian forces still control the south-western edge of the city of Bakhmut and fighting in the city itself has decreased, deputy Ukrainian defence minister Hanna Maliar claimed on Tuesday. She wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Kyiv’s forces had made some progress “on the flanks to the north and south of Bakhmut” and that Russian forces, which say they have taken the city itself, were continuing to clear areas they control.

The Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi has halted operations because Russia is not allowing ships to enter it, in effect cutting it out of a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a Ukrainian official said on Tuesday. Ukrainian deputy renovation minister Yuriy Vaskov said that Tuesday’s inspections plan showed Russia had included only three of the 13 ships that had been submitted. All ships bound for Pivdenniy had been excluded, he said, as well as some meant to go to Odesa and Chornomorsk, calling it a “gross violation” of the Black Sea grain initiative.

Belarus has taken part in the illegal deportation of children from Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, according to a preliminary report compiled by exiled Belarusian opposition leaders. The National Anti-Crisis Management, a group of political opponents to the government of Alexander Lukashenko, said 2,150 Ukrainian children – including orphans aged six to 15 – were taken to so-called recreation camps and sanatoriums on Belarusian territory.

The training of Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 jets has begun in Poland, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said, after the US gave its green light.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited marines on Tuesday on the Vuhledar-Maryinka defence line in the Donetsk region, as part of celebrations for the national day of Ukrainian marines.

Kyiv says Russia carrying out airstrikes on Bakhmut; Russian state-owned media says Putin informed of claim Ukrainian forces attempted to infiltrate Belgorod region. This live blog is now closed

• What we know on day 453 of the invasion

A picture is worth a thousand words and the images from the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend were a good example of that. Volodymyr Zelenskiy was pictured at the centre of a “family portrait” with G7 leaders at the weekend, symbolising their support for the Ukrainian president.

Just less than 10 years ago the G7 was the G8 – when Russia was a member of the group and president Vladimir Putin attended summits. Moscow was kicked out in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea.

‘Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing ... just ruins and dead Russians,’ says Ukraine’s president

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukraine has rejected Russian claims to have captured Bakhmut, insisting its forces still have a foothold in the Donbas city and are steadily encircling the Russian mercenaries holding the ruined town centre.

It was impossible to verify the conflicting claims in a battle of attrition for a devastated city, which has assumed symbolic importance as a measure of which side has the resilience to prevail in the war overall, as Kyiv prepares to unleash a broader counteroffensive against Putin’s occupation forces.