ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, April 2 (Reuters) – A Red Cross convoy travelling to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol will make another attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged port on Saturday as Russian forces looked to be regrouping for new attacks in the southeast.

Mariupol, encircled since the early days of Russia’s five-week-old invasion, has been Moscow’s main target in Ukraine’s southeastern region of Donbas. Tens of thousands there are trapped with scant access to food and water.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a team on Friday to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and other private vehicles out of the city, but they turned back, saying conditions made it impossible to proceed. read more

“They will try again on Saturday to facilitate the safe passage of civilians,” the ICRC said in a statement. A previous Red Cross evacuation attempt in early March failed because the route was found to be unsafe.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to humanitarian corridors during the war that have facilitated the evacuation of thousands of civilians.

The ICRC says its Mariupol operation has been approved by both sides, but major details were still being worked out such as the exact timing and destination of the convoy, which would be an undetermined location in Ukraine.

In an early morning video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian troops have moved toward the Donbas region and northeast in the direction of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where previous Russian strikes badly damaged urban areas.

“I hope there may still be solutions for the situation in Mariupol,” Zelenskiy said. “The whole world has to react to this humanitarian catastrophe.”

SHIFT FROM KYIV

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a “special operation” to demilitarise Ukraine.

The West calls it an unprovoked war of aggression that has killed thousands, uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population and brought tensions between Russia and the United States to their worst point since the Cold War.

Aiming to lower nuclear tensions with Russia, the U.S. military has canceled an intercontinental ballistic missile test that it had initially aimed only to delay, the Air Force told Reuters. read more

But the United States and its European allies have sent Ukraine military assistance, including an additional $300 million dollars in aid announced by the Pentagon late on Friday. The new aid includes laser-guided rocket and anti-drone systems.

Citing a U.S. official, the New York Times reported that the United States would work with allies to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine to bolster its defenses in the Donbas region. read more

At peace talks this week, Russia said Donbas, where it has backed separatists since 2014, would now be the focus of its war efforts. Russian troops left behind shattered villages and their own abandoned tanks as they moved away from the capital Kyiv. read more

“You see that (the) enemy overestimates its potential around Kyiv at least. And we keep going forward liberating our cities and evacuating our people,” said Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin.

After failing to capture a single major city, Russia has painted its draw-down of forces near Kyiv as a goodwill gesture in the peace negotiations.

Ukraine and its allies say Russian forces have been forced to regroup after suffering heavy losses due to determined Ukrainian resistance.

Across the border from Kharkiv in the Russian city of Belgorod, Moscow said Ukrainian helicopters struck a fuel depot on Friday, causing a huge fire. Ukraine denied responsibility for the incident, the first of its kind in the war.

The fire destroyed several oil tanks and will likely add short-term strain to Russia’s already stretched logistics chains, particularly operations in Kharkiv, Britain’s defence ministry said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the incident could jeopardise the peace talks. Russia will strengthen its western borders so it won’t “cross anyone’s mind to attack,” Peskov said later. read more

ODESA STRIKES

As Ukrainian forces recaptured more territory around Kyiv on Friday, officials in the Black Sea port of Odesa said anti-air defences thwarted an attempted attack on critical infrastructure in the city. Reuters could not immediately verify the account.

Odesa’s governor, Maksym Marchenko, said three missiles had hit a residential district, causing casualties. He said the missiles were fired from an Iskander missile system in Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Russia denies targeting civilians. Odesa and Mariupol straddle the Black Sea and have been primary targets of Russia due in part to their strategic location.

Facing unprecedented sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia had threatened to cut off gas supplies to Europe unless buyers paid with roubles. Europe vowed to stay united against Russia’s demand, and Moscow said it would not halt supplies until new payments are due later in April. read more

Mediators from Turkey, where the most recent round of face-to-face peace talks were held, and the United Nations have been pressing for a pause in fighting.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths will travel to Moscow on Sunday and then to Kyiv as the U.N. pursues a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

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DMYTRIVKA, Ukraine, April 1 (Reuters) – Ukraine recaptured more territory around Kyiv from Russian soldiers who left shattered villages and their own abandoned tanks as they moved away from the capital, while a disputed cross-border strike in Russia complicated peace talks on Friday.

In the hamlet of Dmytrivka to the west of the capital, smoke was still rising from the wrecks of armored vehicles and the bodies of at least eight Russian soldiers lay in the streets, Reuters correspondents saw. read more

“From one side we were hearing the tanks shooting at us, and from the area of Bucha was a massive mortar shelling,” said resident Leonid Vereshchagin, a business executive, referring to a town to the north.

Ukrainian forces went on to take back Bucha, its mayor said on Friday in a video that appeared to be filmed outside the town hall. The advances followed several days of Ukrainian gains around Kyiv and in the north.

In southwest Ukraine, anti-air defences thwarted an attempted attack on critical infrastructure in the Black Sea port of Odesa, the Ukrainian military said. Reuters could not immediately verify the account. read more

Odesa’s governor, Maksym Marchenko, said three missiles had hit a residential district, causing casualties. He said the missiles were fired from an Iskander missile system in Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Russia denies targeting civilians.

‘CONSTANT EXPLOSIONS’

President Vladimir Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a “special operation” to demilitarise Ukraine.

The West calls it an unprovoked war of aggression that has killed thousands, uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population and brought Russian-U.S. relations to their worst point since the Cold War.

Aiming to lower nuclear tensions with Russia, the U.S. military has canceled an intercontinental ballistic missile test that it had initially aimed only to delay, the Air Force told Reuters. read more

In the Russian border city of Belgorod, a logistics hub for its war effort, Moscow said Ukrainian helicopters struck a fuel depot, causing a huge fire. Ukraine denied responsibility for the incident, the first of its kind in the five-week-old war.

The fire destroyed several oil tanks and will likely add short-term strain to Russia’s already stretched logistics chains, Britain’s defence ministry said. read more

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the incident could jeopardise Ukrainian-Russian peace talks, which resumed on Friday by video link. Russia will strengthen its western borders so it won’t “cross anyone’s mind to attack,” Peskov said later. read more

Hours after the blaze began at the oil depot, an eyewitness reached by telephone in Belgorod, who asked not to be identified, said aircraft were flying overhead and there were continuous explosions from the direction of the border.

“Something is happening. There are planes and constant explosions in the distance.” Security camera footage showed an explosion following what appeared to be the flash of a missile. read more

Ukraine’s top security official said Russia’s accusations were not correct. Ukraine’s defence ministry earlier had declined to confirm or deny involvement.

“Ukraine is currently conducting a defensive operation against Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine, and this does not mean that Ukraine is responsible for every catastrophe on Russia’s territory,” said ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk.

A Russian threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe unless buyers paid with roubles by Friday was averted for now, with Moscow saying it would not halt supplies until new payments are due later in April. read more

EVACUATION THWARTED

Russia says the southeastern region of Donbas, where it has backed separatists since 2014, is now the focus of its war efforts. The besieged and bombarded Azov Sea port city of Mariupol has been its main target there.

Conditions on Friday made it impossible to go ahead with a plan to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, where tens of thousands are trapped, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths will travel to Moscow on Sunday and then to Kyiv as the U.N. pursues a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

A total of 6,266 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Friday, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office.

After failing to capture a single major city, Russia has painted its draw-down of forces near Kyiv as a goodwill gesture in peace talks. The negotiations led to a prisoner exchange on Friday, Tymoshenko said, with the release of 86 Ukrainian troops.

Tymoshenko did not say how many Russian soldiers were released.

Ukraine and its allies say Russian forces have been forced to regroup after suffering heavy losses due to determined Ukrainian resistance.

Regional governors in Kyiv and Chernihiv said Russians were pulling out of areas in both those provinces, some heading back across borders to Belarus and Russia.

In Irpin, a commuter suburb northwest of Kyiv that had been one of the main battlegrounds for weeks, now firmly back in Ukrainian hands, volunteers and emergency workers carried the dead on stretchers out of the rubble.

Lilia Ristich was sitting on a metal playground swing with her young son Artur. Most people had fled; they had stayed.

She listed neighbours who had been killed – the man “buried there, on the lawn”; the couple with their 12-year-old child, all burned alive.

“I pray for all this to end and for them never to come back,” she said. “When you hold a child in your arms it is an everlasting fear.”

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TROSTYANETS/LVIV, Ukraine, April 1 (Reuters) – European buyers of Russian gas faced a deadline to start paying in roubles on Friday, while negotiations aimed at ending the five-week war were set to resume even as Ukraine braced for further attacks in the south and east.

Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour has killed thousands, sent millions fleeing and galvanised the United States and allies around the world to impose punishing penalties on Russian government entities, businesses and oligarchs.

Russia will respond to European Union sanctions, the RIA news agency quoted a senior foreign ministry official on Friday.

“The actions of the EU will not remain unanswered … the irresponsible sanctions by Brussels are already negatively affecting the daily lives of ordinary Europeans,” Nikolai Kobrinets told the news agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin played one of his biggest cards on Thursday, demanding European energy buyers start paying in roubles from Friday or have existing contracts halted. (Full Story)

European governments rejected Putin’s ultimatum, with the continent’s biggest recipient of Russian gas, Germany, calling it “blackmail”.

The energy showdown has huge ramifications for Europe as U.S. officials circle the globe to keep pressure on Putin to stop an invasion that has uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people. (Full Story)

The International Energy Agency will hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss a new release of strategic oil reserves alongside a U.S. plan to pump massive supplies starting in May to cool oil prices that had soared more than 30% this year largely as a result of the Ukraine war.

The war also threatens to disrupt global food supplies, with a U.S. government official sharing images of what they said was damage to grain storage facilities in Ukraine, a major grain exporter.

‘BATTLES AHEAD’

Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine. Western countries say Putin’s real aim was to topple Ukraine’s government.

At talks this week, Moscow said it would reduce offensives near the capital Kyiv and in the north as a goodwill gesture and focus on “liberating” the southeastern Donbas region.

Kyiv and its allies say Russia is instead trying to regroup after taking losses from a Ukrainian counter-offensive that has recaptured suburbs of the capital plus strategic areas in the northeast and southwest.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian troops have started a partial withdrawal from the Kyiv region towards Belarus and were taking looted vehicles with them.

Video footage from Irpin, on the western fringe of Kyiv, showed destroyed Russian tanks amid bombed out buildings and Ukrainian authorities removing victims in body bags.

“We knew they (Russians) were being pushed out but when our army came then I fully understood we have been liberated. It was happiness beyond imagination,” said Irpin resident Lilia Ristich.

In a fresh development, a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukraine border was on fire and the regional governor said it had been attacked by two Ukrainian military helicopters. If confirmed, it would be the first Ukrainian airstrike on Russian soil.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned of “battles ahead” in Donbas and the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.

“We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want,” Zelenskiy said.

Peace negotiations are set to resume by video conference on Friday. Seeking to bolster its position, Moscow is redeploying forces from Russian-backed breakaway regions in Georgia to Ukraine, Britain’s defence ministry wrote on Twitter.

The reinforcements indicated Russia had sustained unexpected losses, it said.

U.S. and European officials say Putin has been misled by generals about his military’s dire performance.

HUMANITARIAN HOPES

Ukrainian authorities were hoping to evacuate more residents from Mariupol after Russia agreed to open a humanitarian corridor on Friday, but several previous deals have collapsed amid mutual recriminations.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 45 buses sent to evacuate people from Mariupol had been stopped on Thursday by Russian forces outside Berdyansk, about 75 km to the west.

“Tomorrow we will continue trying to push through a humanitarian corridor to Mariupol so as not to leave our people on their own,” she said in an online post.

In a Facebook post, the general staff said Ukrainian forces were still holding Mariupol, a gateway to the Black Sea which links a strategic corridor between Donbas and the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.

The mayor’s office estimates 5,000 people have died.

Tens of thousands have been trapped for weeks with scant food, water and other supplies in the city that was once home to 400,000 people but has been pulverised by bombardment.

Elsewhere, there was evidence of Ukraine’s successful counter-attack in Trostyanets, an eastern town. Burned-out Russian tanks and abandoned ammunition littered muddy roads.

“We spent 30 days in the basement with small children. The children are shaking, even still,” said a woman named Larisa.

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