This blog has now closed. You can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war in our new live blog

As Vladimir Putin wages a bloody and unrelenting war in Ukraine, Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding has examined Putin’s unlikely path to the Russian presidency.

From his humble beginnings in St Petersburg to his mysterious and “mediocre” career in the KGB, in this video report we chronicle how Putin deftly manoeuvred himself to become one of the most powerful autocrats in modern history:

Chinese exports to Russia fell in April for the second month as China’s northern neighbour grappled with economic sanctions, while Russian shipments to China surged, a balm to hard-hit Russian firms facing international economic isolation.

Shipments to Russia fell 25.9% in April from a year earlier in dollar terms, worsening from a 7.7% decline the previous month, according to Reuters calculations based on customs data on Monday.

Two thousand Ukrainian troops thought to be trapped inside steelworks after civilian evacuation

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion trapped inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant have said they fear they will be killed if captured by Russian forces, as they pleaded with Ukrainian authorities to help arrange their extraction.

Speaking to the media from inside the besieged steelworks, an Azov commander and lieutenant, looking gaunt and pale, said they had defended the city for the people of Ukraine and the rest of the world and needed a third party to negotiate their exit whether by land or sea.

Rescue attempts impossible due to constant shelling in Bilohorivka, says Luhansk governor

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates

Sixty people are feared to have been killed after a village school in eastern Ukraine took a direct hit in a Russian air raid, with rescue attempts said by the regional governor to be impossible due to constant shelling.

Russian attacks in the east and south intensified at the weekend ahead of Monday’s symbolic Victory Day celebrations, with the Black Sea city of Odesa coming under repeated missile strikes and the remaining Ukrainian fighters in the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged port city of Mariupol staging a press conference on Sunday saying they had been “abandoned” by the government as Russian attacks continued

Drone attack at Snake Island results in apparent destruction of landing craft as counter-offensive in north gathers pace

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

The Ukrainian port city of Odesa was hit by renewed Russian missile strikes on Saturday, as military authorities in Kyiv claimed one of their drones had sunk a second Russian ship in the Black Sea.

A counter-offensive against Russia also appeared to be gathering pace in the north, where analysts said that Ukraine’s military may be able to push Russian forces out of artillery range of the country’s second city of Kharkiv in the coming days.

This blog has now closed. You can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war in our new live blog

Russia’s defence ministry said that its missiles destroyed a large ammunition depot in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.

Reuters reports it also said its air defences shot down two Ukrainian warplanes, an Su-25 and a MiG-29, in the eastern Luhansk region.

Israeli PM says he has accepted Putin’s apology, after Russia’s foreign minister said Adolf Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’

• The Ukrainian children at the mercy of UK’s refugee scheme
• US intelligence helping Ukraine kill Russian generals – report
• Russia opens artillery barrages in south and east Ukraine
• Kharkiv catalogues war’s toll on its architectural gems
• Long read: Putin’s invasion returns Nato to centre stage

Russia’s RIA news agency is carrying additional details from Moldova’s unrecognised breakaway Transnistria region, which claimed earlier this week to have foiled a drone attack it says originated within Ukraine. Transnistria borders Ukraine to the west.

The report quotes Transnistria’s foreign minister Vitaly Ignatiev saying:

The red increased terrorist threat code remains. We managed to neutralise the drone that flew with explosives in the direction of the Mayak radio and television centre. We minimised this threat, but the danger of terrorist attacks remains

The drone that was neutralized, we were able to track the tracking of its movements, and everything suggests that it was launched from the territory of Ukraine , six kilometres from the border of Transnistria