Fighting in Bakhmut’s streets but Russia has not taken city, says Ukraine, as civilian casualties rise; families evacuated from Kupiansk amid shelling

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The Ukraine military said Russian troops were trying but failing to surround Bakhmut. Defenders had repelled numerous attacks in and around the besieged city in eastern Ukraine, the armed forces’ general staff added in its Facebook post late on Saturday.

There is fighting in Bakhmut’s streets but Russian forces “still haven’t taken control over the city”, its deputy mayor, Oleksandr Marchenko, told BBC Radio.

A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded in Bakhmut by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of the city on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops assisting them.

Russian artillery is reported to be pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out and complete an encirclement of the city. The UK Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian resupply routes there were becoming “increasingly limited”.

The death toll has risen to 11 from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-storey apartment block in southern Ukraine on Thursday, Ukraine’s emergency services said on Saturday.

Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.

Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, has urged speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine to give the Ukrainians “the tools they need to do the job”,

The Russian defence minister paid a rare visit to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine. In a statement on Telegram, Russia’s defence ministry said Sergei Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the south Donetsk direction”.

The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday. She was “hopeful” the talks could starts this year, she said.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s description of the Russian invasion as “the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people” was met with laughter at an event in New Delhi, India.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, saying President Joe Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”.

Regular army and Wagner units advancing into northern suburbs of north-east Donetsk city, MoD reports

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Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, according to British military intelligence, with intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city.

Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while the regular Russian army and forces of the Russian private military Wagner group have made further advances into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence bulletin on Twitter.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, says Russian ‘pincers are getting tighter’ around contested city

• What we know on day 373 of the invasion

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Russia “will not let the west blow up gas pipelines again” and said that Moscow would no longer rely on the west as an energy partner.

Reuters reports Lavrov was speaking at an event in India a day after attending a meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

Anti-Putin émigré group claims its fighters crossed into Russia after Kyiv dismisses reports as ‘false flag’ attack

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The Kremlin has claimed Russia has been attacked by “terrorists” after conflicting reports of firefights emerged from the Bryansk and Kursk regions, which Russian media blamed on Ukrainian “sabotage groups” and Ukrainian sources called a “provocation”.

The reports of fighting in Russia near the Ukrainian border began on Thursday morning. The head of the Bryansk region claimed that a “sabotage group opened fire on a moving automobile. As a result, one resident was killed; a 10-year-old child was injured.”

US secretary of state speaks to Russian foreign minister in what is believed to be their first one-on-one conversation since invasion of Ukraine. This live blog is closed

Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, has tweeted about the overnight attack on Zaporizhzhia, writing:

Zaporizhzhia bravely resists the Russian aggressor. In retaliation, it attacks civilians. A high-rise building was deliberately hit last night. Three floors are completely destroyed. People died. We continue to search under the rubble. My condolences to the victims. We will not forgive this.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

Investigators say sites set up during occupation of Ukrainian city were part of ‘calculated plan to terrorise’ locals

Evidence collected from Kherson in southern Ukraine shows Russian torture centres were not “random” but instead planned and directly financed by the Russian state, according to a team of Ukrainian and international lawyers headed by a UK barrister.

The city was under Russian control for eight months, from 2 March last year until Ukrainian forces entered the city on 11 November.

Alexei Moskalyov charged with ‘discrediting Russian army’, while daughter taken into care

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A Russian man has been detained for making anti-war statements and his 12-year-old daughter temporarily taken into state care after the family faced pressure from authorities for drawings the girl made at school depicting Russia bombing a family in Ukraine.

Alexei Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, has been arrested for making anti-war statements on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social network.

Pentagon official says war now a ‘grinding slog’; Belarus president to meet Xi Jinping

• What we know on day 370 of the invasion

The regional government in Sumy, in Ukraine’s north-east, recorded 36 strikes on its territory in overnight Russian shelling, according to reports from Ukraine’s state broadcaster, Suspilne.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Tuesday pledged support for Kazakhstan’s independence on a trip to boost influence in central Asia, which has been rattled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London from my colleague Samantha Lock in Sydney. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com