UK foreign secretary and US secretary of state have urged Russia not to use global hunger as a tool of war. This live blog is closed

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said Russia “will prevail” in its fight against what he described as “imperialists”, the state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday, in remarks seen to be aimed at Ukraine and its western supporters such as the US.

North Korea has forged closer ties with the Kremlin and backed Moscow after it invaded Ukraine last year, including its proclamation later of having annexed parts of Ukraine, which most UN members condemned as illegal.

Drone attacks launched on Kyiv with explosions also reported in Odesa and Kherson; Ukrainian general says ‘meat assaults’ have led to high casualties.

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More from that ISW report I mentioned earlier: the analysis suggests that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was happy to help Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “blackmail” the Russian defence ministry in order to reestablish his position within the circle of power in the Kremlin. The think tank writes:

Kadyrov had previously held an influential position within … Putin’s close circle … until apparently losing favor recently, likely because his forces played a limited role in active combat operations in Ukraine throughout late fall of 2022 and winter of 2023.

Putin belittled Kadyrov during their meeting on March 13 where Kadyrov appeared visibly nervous when reporting on the Chechen fighters’ role in Ukraine.

Hundreds of children among evacuees as Ukraine expected to start long-anticipated counteroffensive

Russian forces are evacuating residents from the area near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, with more than 1,600 people, including 660 children, evacuated so far, a Moscow-installed official in the region has said.

The head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog warned on Saturday that the situation around the plant had become “potentially dangerous”. Ukraine is soon expected to start a much-anticipated counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including in the Zaporizhzhia region

Yevgeny Prigozhin drops plans to withdraw from devastated city after receiving promises of extra arms

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

The head of Russia’s Wagner group appears to have ditched plans to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, after receiving promises overnight that they would get all the arms needed to capture the devastated city.

Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on Friday that his fighters, who have spearheaded the months-long assault on Bakhmut, would pull out because he said his men had been starved of ammunition and taken “useless and unjustified” losses as a result.

One person killed in incident in Nizhny Novgorod region, according to Russia’s interior ministry

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

A prominent Russian nationalist writer has been wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver, an attack that Russia immediately blamed on Ukraine and the west.

Zakhar Prilepin’s Audi Q7 was blown up in a village in the Nizny Novgorod region, about 250 miles (400km) east of Moscow, said the state investigative committee, which is treating the incident as an act of terrorism. It said Prilepin had been taken to hospital.

Wagner chief says his forces will pull out of Bakhmut while Ukraine says they are reinforcing positions; Zaporizhzhia villages near frontline evacuated

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The leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force has said that his forces will leave Bakhmut, which they have been trying to capture since last summer. Yevgeny Prigozhin said they would pull back on Wednesday 10 May – ending their involvement in the war’s longest battle – because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies and asked defence chiefs to put regular army troops in their place. But Ukraine said Wagner fighters were reinforcing positions to try to seize the eastern city before that date.

Prigozhin earlier released a video showing him standing in a field of Russian corpses and blaming defence chiefs for the losses suffered by his fighters in Ukraine, appearing to reignite his simmering feud with Russian top brass.

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has carried out an inspection of troop readiness for forces engaged in the war, in an apparent coded response to Prigozhin’s criticism.

Ukraine said two people have been killed and nine wounded in the eastern Donetsk region and electricity distribution networks have been damaged by shelling in the Donetsk and the Kherson regions.

Some residents left Kherson city in cars and buses on Friday, and others stocked up on groceries, ahead of a 56-hour curfew due to begin on Friday evening. The announcement of the curfew prompted speculation in Kherson that the city is about to be used as a launch point for the long-anticipated Ukrainian counterattack.

Authorities in the Russian-occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia have begun evacuating villages near the frontline. The Russian-installed governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, announced the move in anticipation of a Ukrainian offensive aimed at retaking the area, claiming Kyiv’s forces had “stepped up shelling of settlements close to the frontline” in the past few days.

Engineers have reduced the risk of a dam bursting and damaging the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, a senior Russian official was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying on Friday. Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the general director of energy engineering firm Rosenergoatom, said specialists had begun discharging water from the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine.

A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of a theatre director and a playwright on charges of “justifying terrorism” over an award-winning play about Russian women recruited online to marry radical Islamists in Syria. Director Yevgeniya Berkovich and author Svetlana Petriychuk were placed in custody until 4 July, Russian news agencies reported.

Ukraine’s air force said it downed one of its own drones after it lost control over Kyiv. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine presidential chief of staff, initially said an enemy drone that had been shot down, but the air force later clarified it was Ukrainian and had been destroyed on Thursday.

The White House has dismissed as “ludicrous” claims by Russia that Washington orchestrated drone strikes on Moscow, saying the US was not involved in Wednesday’s incident and accusing Russia of lying.

Finnish power utility Fortum has notified the Kremlin it strongly objects to what it said was Russia’s “unlawful” seizure of its subsidiary in the country. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the seizure was in accordance with Russian legislation.

Bill Clinton has said he knew in 2011 it was just “a matter of time” before the Russian president attacked Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 – three years before he took Crimea – that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,” the former US president recalled. “He said … ‘I don’t agree with it. And I do not support it. And I am not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day forward it was just a matter of time.”

In extraordinary video tirade, Yevgeny Prigozhin attacks defence minister and chief of armed forces

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group has brought escalating tensions with the Kremlin military leadership dramatically into the open after he recorded an expletive-ridden video in a field littered with corpses and blamed Russia’s top defence chiefs for the losses.

“These are Wagner lads who died today. The blood is still fresh,” Yevgeny Prigozhin says in the extraordinary clip, pointing to roughly three-dozen bodies that he says are those of the Wagner fighters. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices.”

White House says: ‘We had nothing to do with this’; Ukraine’s president says ‘whoever brings war must receive judgement’ in speech to ICC

Here is more on the oil refinery attack from Tass and Reuters.

Part of an oil refinery in southern Russia is on fire after it was hit by a drone attack, Tass news agency cited local emergency services as saying early on Thursday.

Tass said the incident occurred at the Ilsky refinery near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It cited a source as saying a fuel reservoir was on fire but gave no details.

Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for what Moscow says are frequent drone strikes against infrastructure and military targets, particularly in regions close to Russia.

Last June the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, bordering Ukraine, suspended operations after two unmanned aerial vehicles attacked its facilities.

Citizens of Kherson stock up on food and water ahead of curfew, with some saying they are expecting ‘something big’ in days

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Residents of the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson are stocking up on food and water after another night of heavy Russian shelling and before an announced 56-hour curfew due to begin on Friday evening.

A number said they planned to stay indoors before the curfew and planned closure of the city, adding that they had slept in their clothes or gone to shelters because of the intensity of the Russian attack.