Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said tonight that Russian forces had begun the "battle for Donbass" after senior officials said Moscow had launched a new offensive along much of Ukraine's eastern flank.
"Now we can say that Russian forces have started the battle in Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time," he said in a video address, according to Reuters.
The chief of staff of the president of Ukraine said this evening that "the second phase of the war has begun", referring to Russia's new attack on eastern Ukraine.
His words confirm the allegations of a senior Ukrainian security official, who said earlier today that Russia began its new offensive on Monday morning.
"Believe in our army, it is very strong," Chief of the General Staff Andriy Jermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app, assuring Ukrainians that Ukrainian forces could halt the offensive.
The governor of the Donetsk region said that four civilians were killed in today's shelling of the region, Reuters reported.
The mayor of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol said about 40.000 civilians had been forcibly relocated to Russia or regions of Ukraine under Russian control.
"Unfortunately, I have to state that from today they are forcibly deporting residents," Vadim Boychenko told Ukrainian television.
"We checked through the municipal register that they have already deported over 40.000 people," he added.
Reuters could not independently confirm the claims.
Russia has denied that it targeted civilians in Ukraine.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russia carried out an air attack on the logistics center of the Ukrainian army near Lviv and that it destroyed the foreign-made weapons stored there, the Tass agency reports, as reported by Reuters.
Ukrainian armed forces have seen signs that Russia is starting a new offensive in the east of the country, increasing the intensity of attacks in parts of the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, reports Reuters.
In a Facebook post, the armed forces command also said that Russia's main military forces are concentrating on taking control of the entire Donetsk and Luhansk region.
Fighting is said to be underway in Mariupol, where Russia is attempting to attack the city's port.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that the country's fighters are still engaged in Marijupol, reports Reuters.
The war in Ukraine has been going on for almost two months, during the previous period the bombs did not even bypass the capital Kyiv, but in recent days life in the capital is slowly returning to some kind of normality.
Related Articles
Two people were killed in today's shelling of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the local prosecutor's office announced, as reported by Reuters.
Reuters adds that it could not independently verify this information.
Ukraine has called on Russia to provide a humanitarian corridor for evacuees from the besieged port city of Mariupol and a corridor from the steel mill, the last significant area of Ukrainian resistance.
"We demand an urgent humanitarian corridor from the territory of the Azovstal factory for women, children and other civilians," said Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk in a post on the Telegram messaging service.
The situation in the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine is "extremely difficult," but Russian forces have not taken the city under complete control, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said today.
Speaking at a media briefing, spokesman Oleksandr Motuzhanik also said that bombings by Russian military aircraft have recently increased by over 50 percent and that Ukrainian infrastructure has become subject to increased targeting.
The Reuters agency published today photos from Mariupol stating that smoke is rising above the iron and steel factory "Azovstal" and buildings damaged during the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.
The Russian army warned yesterday that Ukrainian troops in Azovstal who refuse to surrender will be destroyed, after calling on them to surrender and promising to spare their lives.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced at the time that the Ukrainian military command had forbidden its soldiers to surrender and warned that "all those who continue to resist will be destroyed."
The announcement states that along with Ukrainian troops in Azovstal, around 400 foreign mercenaries, mostly from European countries and Canada, who communicate in six languages, are surrounded.
The Ministry of Defense stated that it obtained the information by intercepting the communication flow of Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal said afterward that the remaining Ukrainian forces in Mariupol were still fighting and continuing to defy Russia's demand that they surrender.
"The city still hasn't fallen," Shmihal told ABC's "This Sunday" program yesterday, adding that Ukrainian soldiers continue to control some parts of the city.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also said yesterday that there have been no recent diplomatic communications between Russia and Ukraine at the level of their foreign ministries and that the situation in the port of Mariupol, which he described as "terrible," could be a "red line." on the way to negotiations.
"Mariupol may be a red line," he told CBS News in an interview yesterday.
Russia plans to take legal action to block gold, currency and property belonging to Russian residents, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiulina said, adding that such a step would have to be carefully considered and legally justified, reports Reuters.
Foreign sanctions froze about $300 billion of the roughly $640 billion Russia had in gold and foreign exchange reserves when it launched what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine on February 24.
Ukraine's security service released a video on Monday showing arrested pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk demanding to be exchanged for Ukrainian troops and civilians in the besieged city of Mariupol.
Medvedchuk addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in the video.
It was not clear how freely Medvedchuk spoke in the video, reports Reuters.
Two British fighters captured by Russian forces in Ukraine appeared on Russian state television on Monday and asked to be exchanged for a pro-Russian politician being held by Ukrainian authorities, Reuters reports.
It was unclear how freely the two men - Sean Pinner and Aiden Aslin - could talk. Both spoke after being directed to do so by an unknown man.
Both asked British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to help them return home in exchange for Ukraine releasing pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
The Kremlin announced that there is still time for the so-called "enemy" countries to switch to paying for gas in rubles, reports Reuters.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to disclose information on how many countries have agreed.
In late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree requiring foreign customers to pay for gas in Russian currency or face cuts in supplies, which European capitals rejected and which Germany said amounted to "blackmail".
The website of the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch is unavailable in Russia as of today, at the request of the State Prosecutor's Office of Russia and the decision of the Ministry of Justice.
On April 8, the Ministry of Justice of Russia excluded HRW from the list of representatives of international non-governmental organizations due to "violation of legislation", as well as Amnesty International, which a day later announced that it would continue to work in Russia anyway.
At the time, HRW stated in a statement that it had been working in Russia for 30 years, and assessed the decision of the Ministry of Justice as "a new iron curtain".
That NGO stated that it was a multi-year intention of the authorities to stifle critical voices in Russia.
"After the total invasion of Ukraine, that process was accelerated," according to HRW.
The Ministry of Justice of Russia removed the Carnegie Fund, AI, HRW and 12 other organizations from the list of representatives of international organizations and registered non-governmental organizations, with the explanation that they "violated Russian legislation".
The death toll in today's attacks on Lviv has risen to seven, Lviv regional chief Maksim Kozicki said at a briefing, reports the BBC.
He said four rockets were fired: three hit warehouses and one hit a garage that maintained cars.
Kozicki also said that according to preliminary information, the rockets were fired from the Caspian Sea.
The mayor of Lviv, Andrij Sadovij, accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians, the BBC reports.
"This is genocide, this is the deliberate destruction of Ukrainians," he told Ukrainian TV channel 1+1.
He said that six people were killed and 11 injured - including a child in today's attack on Lviv.
The BBC states that they first heard from the regional governor that a child was among the dead.
Two of the wounded are in critical condition.
About 40 vehicles were damaged.
Genocide is widely considered the most serious crime against humanity and is defined under international law as the mass extermination of a specific group of people, according to the BBC.
Russian forces may have withdrawn from parts of Ukraine more than a week ago, but territorial defense forces in the northern Sumy region are training and preparing for further attacks, Reuters reports.
Shortly after Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a "special military operation," they crossed the border into Sumy, fighting in the city's streets as they moved toward the capital, Kiev.
Dmitro Živicki, the head of the regional and military administration in Sumy, said that at that time there were almost no regular military troops, but that the locals took whatever weapons they could find, such as Molotov cocktails.
"According to the Russians, they had plans (to take over Suma) in three to five days," Zivitsky told Reuters on Thursday.
"They obviously knew that at that time there were almost no regular (army) troops on the territory of the Sumy region, but there was only territorial defense. On April 8, Ukrainian forces retook control over the northeastern region," said Živicki.
"I think the probability of (a new) attack is high. They are determined and we understand that the number of people in Russia is around 150 million," he said.
"Until they run out of tanks and people, they'll keep sending people here."
Reuters says Russia's invasion left a trail of death and destruction that drew worldwide condemnation and raised concerns about Putin's wider ambitions.
Russia has dismissed accusations that its troops committed war crimes in Ukraine as fake news.
Western countries say that Russia is now reinforcing and replenishing its troops for an increased offensive in eastern Ukraine.
It is not clear whether the Kremlin plans to attack the Sumy region again.
But local territorial defense forces are gearing up, and members say the volunteer militia now numbers more than 1.000.
Local authorities would not say how many regular troops were in Sumi.
Ihor Hanenko, a former youth worker who became a member of the Territorial Defense, joined on the first day of the war.
Hanenko and several members of his brigade carried out communication exercises on Friday, holding training simulations for an attack on an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city.
"There were many situations when we would go on a mission, and they called us and said that there were no Russian columns there because someone had already destroyed them," said the 28-year-old.
"We didn't even know who did it."
Bonus video:
