US Justice Department launches probe into possible leak of classified military papers; WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich charged with espionage in Russia but denies accusation

The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into the possible release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites including Twitter and appear to detail US and Nato aid to Ukraine, but may have been altered or used as part of a misinformation campaign. Associated Press reported that the documents were labelled secret and resembled routine updates the US military would produce daily. Reuters reported three unnamed US officials said Russia or pro-Russian elements were likely behind the leak and that the documents provided a month-old snapshot of the war and appeared to have been doctored to play down Russian losses.

Three civilians were killed and 17 wounded over the past 24 hours in Russian artillery, missile and aerial attacks on 114 settlements in nine regions, the Ukrainian defence ministry said on Friday. Authorities in Russian-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine said seven civilians were killed on Thursday in two Ukrainian artillery strikes. Both sides deny targeting civilians.

Russian Federal Security Service investigators formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage but the Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, Russian news agencies reported on Friday. Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war.

The Ukrainian military said it had downed a Russian Su-25 ground attack jet near Marinka. A video showed a big explosion as the plane slammed into the ground, with its pilot descending on a parachute. The Russian military did not confirm the plane’s downing, AP reported.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has threatened to abandon a landmark grain deal with Ukraine if obstacles to Moscow’s exports remained. The agreement last July allows Ukraine to export grain through a safe corridor in the Black Sea. “If there is no further progress in removing barriers to the export of Russian fertilisers and grain, we will think about whether this deal is necessary,” Lavrov told a news conference in Ankara alongside his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Friday.

Ukraine can resume exporting electricity after a six-month gap, given the success of repairs carried out after repeated Russian attacks, the energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said on Friday. Last October, Ukraine halted exports of electricity to the European Union – its main export market for energy since the war began – following Russia strikes on energy infrastructure. “The most difficult winter has passed,” Halushchenko said.

Ukraine has said Russia is concentrating all its efforts on capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, where it described the situation as “difficult” but said it was holding out. The UK Ministry of Defence said earlier that Russian forces had “highly likely” advanced into Bakhmut’s town centre and seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River, severely threatening Ukraine’s key supply route to the west.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday criticised Russia’s treatment of the Muslim-minority Tatar community in Kremlin-controlled Crimea and vowed to recapture the peninsula from Russia during a first official state iftar. Speaking outside the centre of the capital, Zelenskiy announced Ukraine was beginning a new tradition of hosting an official iftar, the meal breaking the daily fast during the month of Ramadan.
Reuters, Agence-France Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report

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Overnight news broke that the Russian girl sent to an orphanage after drawing an anti-war sketch at school has been taken from the facility by her mother.

Reuters is carrying quotes from Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova about the situation. It quotes her saying:

Masha did not want to go to her mother at first, and her opinion is legally required to be taken into account. Now her position has changed – she told me this herself on the phone.

Olga has already taken Masha from the social rehabilitation centre. Let’s hope that everything will work out for mum and daughter. I am glad about the beginning of the reunion of daughter and mother.

As claimed on Russian social media, the Russian MoD has highly likely dismissed Colonel-General Rustam Muradov as commander of the Eastern Group of Forces (EGF) in Ukraine.

The EGF under Muradov has suffered exceptionally heavy casualties in recent months as its poorly conceived assaults repeatedly failed to capture the Donetsk Oblast town of Vuhledar.

Macron says he counts on Xi to bring Russia to reason; Swedish prosecutor says actors behind Nord Stream sabotage still unclear

Country joins alliance in move Moscow says is an ‘encroachment on Russia’s security’

• Russia-Ukraine war at a glance

Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency has reported that the number of people injured in the St Petersburg cafe explosion that killed the prominent military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has risen to 40. It quotes a statement from the press service of the Russian health ministry:

According to operational data, as a result of an incident in a cafe in St. Petersburg, 40 people sought medical help, including three minors.

At night, the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine from the south with 17 “Shahed” drones: 14 of them were destroyed by air defence forces. In the Odesa region, a business was hit, there were no casualties.

In the morning, Russian troops shelled Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. As a result of the impact, an economic building caught fire, the state emergency service reported. On 3 April, one man was injured as a result of shelling in the Chuhuiv district.

Local news reports say bomb was hidden in bust of blogger gifted to him by suspect moments before blast

Russian police have arrested a woman suspected of delivering a bomb that killed a prominent pro-war Russian military blogger in a blast in a cafe in central St Petersburg on Sunday, as authorities blamed Ukraine for the attack.

Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed by a bomb blast as he was hosting a discussion with other pro-war commentators at a cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of St Petersburg.

Influential supporter of war in Ukraine had criticised military leadership and called for generals to be prosecuted

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Many people could have wanted to kill Vladlen Tatarsky, the pro-war Russian blogger who died in a bomb blast in a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday.

Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was notorious for his vehement support for the invasion of Ukraine, where he regularly called for Russia to commit to a total war and advocated for extreme violence that included war crimes. “We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll loot whoever we need to, and everything will be just as we like it,” he said last year on camera after a Kremlin ceremony confirming the “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions.

Ukrainian forces say they still hold Bakhmut despite Wagner claims; suspect arrested after Russian military blogger killed in cafe explosion

Ukraine has said Russian forces are “very far” from capturing the eastern town of Bakhmut and that fighting raged around the city administration building where the Wagner mercenary group claims to have raised the Russian flag. “Bakhmut is Ukrainian, and they have not captured anything and are very far from doing that to put it mildly,” Serhiy Cherevatiy, a spokesperson for the eastern military command said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said overnight the fighting in the heavily fought over city in Ukraine’s Donbas region is “especially hot”. His comments came as Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said his troops had raised a Russian flag on the city’s administrative building. However, there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut had fallen into Russian hands and Prigozhin has previously made claims about Wagner’s military progress in the city that were premature.

Russian police have arrested a woman suspected of delivering a bomb that killed a prominent pro-war Russian military blogger in a blast in a cafe in central St Petersburg on Sunday. Russian authorities say Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed by a bomb blast as he was hosting a discussion with other pro-war commentators at a cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of St Petersburg.

Russian police said they had identified a woman called Darya Trepova as the suspect, adding that she was arrested in an apartment in St Petersburg after a search on Monday morning. Sources in the country’s interior ministry told the RBK news outlet that the attack was “carefully planned in advance by several people”.

Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be moved close to Belarus’ borders with its Nato neighbours, the Russian ambassador to Belarus has said amid tensions between Russia and the west over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that in the last 24 hours “the Russian army carried out 29 strikes on 12 populated areas of Donetsk region”. It adds “46 residential buildings, a kindergarten, an administrative building, factory workshops, power lines, gas pipelines and cars were destroyed and damaged.”

The Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting an explosion in occupied Melitopol. It reports the city administration said a car was blown up in the city centre, and that one person was injured. The Telegram channel of the Russian-imposed authority in the city has named the injured person as Maxim Zubarev, the head of the occupying authority in the Yakymivka settlement in the region.

Finland will officially become a member of the Nato military alliance on Tuesday. The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said it “will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for Nato as a whole”. He added that Nato’s position on Ukraine’s bid “remains unchanged” and that is that “Ukraine will become a member of the alliance”.

Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has arrived in Ukraine on a surprise visit, the German energy and economy ministry has said, in his first trip to the country since the outbreak of war.

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said he expects Zelenskiy, to visit on 5 April. Zelenskiy will be accompanied by his wife, Olena Zelenska. Talks between Duda and Zelenskiy are expected to cover security issues, regional politics, and economic cooperation, as well as the transit of Ukrainian grain and other farm produce through Poland. The visit would coincide with the next summit of Nato foreign ministers, which is taking place in Brussels, and which the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is expected to attend.

Poland has already delivered the first batch of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to the Polish presidential office’s head of international policy, Marcin Przydacz. He did not specify how many jets had been transferred. Poland’s president last month said Warsaw would hand over the first four MiG-29 to Ukraine.