Ukraine latest updates: Zelenskyy says ready for grain exports

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is seeking access to the site of a deadly attack on a facility holding Ukrainian prisoners of war and has offered to help evacuate the wounded, it has said.

“The ICRC has offered its support in the evacuation of the wounded and to donate medical supplies, protective equipment and forensic material. Our priority right now is making sure that the wounded receive life-saving treatment and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are dealt with in a dignified manner,” it said in a statement.

“We have requested access to determine the health and condition of all the people present on-site at the time of the attack. We are also in contact with families, taking their requests and inquiries.”

Siemens failed to return the Nord Stream gas turbine to Russia on time after a mandatory repair, Gazprom deputy CEO Vitaly Markelov has said.

“We expected to get it back in May. This engine has not returned to Russia so far. Due to anti-Russian sanctions and without the consent of Gazprom, it was sent from Canada not to Russia, but to Germany,” Markelov said.

Only one of six main gas pumping units at the Portovaya compressor station are currently operational, he said.

“At the moment, the Portovaya compressor station can supply no more than 33 million cubic metres of gas per day to the Nord Stream gas pipeline due to technical reasons.”

Ukraine’s security agencies have demanded the United Nations and Red Cross to immediately react to the killing of prisoners of war in a Russian-held jail, noting the two bodies had given guarantees the detainees would be well treated.

In a joint statement issued after a meeting called by Zelenskyy, the agencies said the UN and Red Cross should send investigative teams to probe the deaths.

Japanese foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has said that Russian aggression needs to go down in history as a “clear failure” otherwise other countries will attempt to change the status quo by force.

He said the “logic of brute force” is gaining more traction over the “rule of law” in the Indo-Pacific.

China has accused the US of double standards at the UN for challenging Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan while emphasising the principle of sovereignty for Ukraine after Russian forces invaded.

A day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned US President Joe Biden in a phone call against playing with fire over Taiwan, Deputy UN Ambassador Geng Shuang reinforced the message during a meeting on Ukraine at the 15-member UN Security Council.

“While some country has repeatedly emphasised the principle of sovereignty over the issue of Ukraine, it has incessantly challenged the sovereignty of China over Taiwan, and even deliberately created tension in the Taiwan Strait,” Geng said, a clear reference to the US without naming it.

NATO’s newest member North Macedonia is handing over several Soviet battle tanks to Ukraine as it prepares to modernise its defences in line with Alliance standards, the defence ministry has said.

North Macedonia would otherwise have discarded the tanks, but Ukraine needs them, the ministry statement said.

North Macedonia still has about 30 Soviet T-72 main battle tanks, but the number being given to Ukraine was not specified. A video published by the Makfax news agency showed several of the vehicles on transport trucks as they drove through the village of Kriva Palanka near the Bulgarian border.

Russia is preventing humanitarian aid being brought to the occupied regions of Ukraine, United Nations representatives have said at a briefing in Kyiv.

Saviano Abreu, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that humanitarian access to areas of Ukraine not controlled by the Ukrainian government is “extremely difficult,” if not impossible.

“People in these regions, in the Donbas, in the south of Ukraine, they are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance,” he said.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has told Blinken that Washington is not living up to promises regarding the exemption from sanctions for the supply of food from Russia, Moscow has said.

A Russian foreign ministry read-out of the call also said Lavrov told Blinken that Russia would achieve all the goals of its “special military operation” in Ukraine and said Western arms supplies would only drag out the conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he had a “frank and direct” conversation with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and told his counterpart that Russia must fulfil commitments it made as part of the deal on the export of grain from Ukraine.

Blinken said he also told Lavrov that “the world will never recognise annexation” of parts of Ukraine seized by Russian troops and that Russia would face additional costs.

The Ukrainian embassy in Beirut has said that a judge in Ukraine has issued a ruling to seize a Syrian vessel docked in Lebanon and the cargo on board after an investigation.

In a statement to Reuters, the embassy added that in the case of confiscation of the cargo of the ship, Ukraine is ready to negotiate with Lebanon regarding the terms of its transfer to Lebanon.

Ukrainian intelligence services say a deadly attack on a prisoner of war camp in eastern Ukraine was a targeted explosion by Russian forces.

“The explosions occurred in a newly constructed building specially prepared for the Azovstal prisoners,” the Ukrainian side claimed in a statement.

Azovstal is the steelworks in Mariupol where Ukrainian soldiers had holed up before submitting to Russian captivity.

Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar and Ukrainian infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov have discussed over phone the latest developments on grain shipments.

Akar and Kubrakov said technical work is nearing completion and shipment is expected to start at the earliest, the Turkish Ministry of National Defence said in a statement.

Gazprom’s senior manager has said that the delivery of the Nord Stream 1 gas turbine to Germany from Canada after maintenance was not in line with the contract.

Vitaly Markelov, Gazprom’s deputy chief executive, also said that Siemens Energy, which is servicing the Nord Stream 1 equipment, succeeded in fixing only a quarter of the faults found.

Ukraine has completed all necessary preparations to restart grain exports from two ports, the country’s infrastructure minister has said, adding that the first shipments could be on its way by the end of the week.

Oleksandr Kubrakov made the announcement at a news conference in the Black Sea port of Odesa along with representatives of various countries as well as the UN.

“Odesa and Chernomorsk are ready to begin shipments,” Kubrakov said, adding that Yuzhny port will be ready by next weekend. “Today, we have started loading another ship in Chernomorsk. We agreed on almost all technical issues,” he said.

The deputy chief of staff to Zelenskyy has said there are already 17 ships ready to move goods from ports in Odesa.

Kirill Tymoshenko said 16 of the ships were loaded with a total of 580 tonnes of grain.

The US has imposed new sanctions on two Russian individuals and four Russian entities, the Treasury Department’s website has shown.

The sanctions were issued under a US executive order related to interference in foreign elections and malicious cyber activity, according to the website.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned an attack on a prison in territory held by Russian-backed separatists and appealed to the International Criminal Court over what it said were Russian war crimes.

“We call on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to urgently draw attention to the atrocities of Russian servicemen in the context of the investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by citizens of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Such alleged crimes, it said, coincided with “another war crime by Russia – shelling of penal institutions in occupied Olenivka, where it is believed that Ukrainians were held prisoners of war”.

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The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a pre-trial investigation into an attack that killed about 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war.

It said “the occupying state struck the territory of correctional colony No. 120” in an attack that also injured 130 people.

An official at a Turkey-based grains trading company has denied that barley and flour on board a ship docked in a Lebanese port had been stolen from Ukraine, saying the source of the flour was Russia.

The official at Loyal Agro Co LTD, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that the company had sought to import 5,000 tonnes of the flour on the ship to Lebanon to sell to private buyers, not to the Lebanese government.

Reuters could not immediately reach Lebanese government officials for comment.

Egypt will consider sending agricultural inspectors to Ukrainian ports to inspect wheat cargoes bound for Egypt, the head of the Egyptian agricultural quarantine, Ahmed el-Attar, has told Reuters.

Egypt has cancelled contracts for a total of 240,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat that were booked by its state grains buyer for February and March delivery but never loaded due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The country typically sends inspectors from the quarantine to check cargoes at their port of origin before ships set sail.