Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Tajikistan’s foreign ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador on Monday to protest over what it described as unfair treatment of its citizens by Moscow, in a rare dispute between post-Soviet allies.

It said it was seriously concerned with frequent cases where Tajik citizens were treated in a deliberately negative way.

The ministry made no mention of Russia’s arrest of several men that Moscow said were from Tajikistan following a deadly attack on a concert hall on the edge of the capital on March 22.

The Tajik ministry said in a separate statement on Sunday almost 1,000 of its citizens trying to enter Russia had been stranded in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport since April 27 “without appropriate sanitary conditions being provided to them”.

It said 27 Tajiks have been deported and 306 more have been put on a list of people to be deported from Russia.

— Reuters

Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed Monday that its forces had captured the village of Semenivka (named “Semenovka” by Russia) in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

The village was one of three that Ukraine’s army chief said he had withdrawn his forces from on Sunday in order to reduce the number of casualties in intense battles in the area to the west of Avdiivka, a town captured by Russian forces in February.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Monday that its central group of forces took control of the village by defeating “the formations of the 68th Infantry, 23rd, 115th Mechanized Brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 109th Terrorist Defense Brigade and the Foreign Legion mercenaries,” news agency Interfax reported.

The ministry claimed Ukraine lost up to 370 military personnel, two armored personnel carriers and an array of artillery in the process.

CNBC was unable to verify the claims and Ukraine has not commented on the report.

Nonetheless, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Telegram Sunday that he had moved his forces “to new frontiers” west of the villages of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka in a bid to prevent casualties. He described the situation on the front line in eastern Ukraine as having “worsened.”

Ukraine’s president said Sunday that the country is still waiting for vital weaponry supplies from the U.S., having been outmanned and outgunned in the east for several months.

Russia’s defense ministry announced the capture of the village of Novobakhmutivka, just north of Semenivka, on Sunday.

— Holly Ellyatt

North Korea reportedly criticized the U.S. for supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine, state media KCNA reported on Monday.

Citing a statement from a defense ministry official, the KCNA news agency quoted the official as saying the U.S. had “adopted such a mean policy as offering even long-range missiles for attacking the Russian territory to their lackeys in a bid to turn the tide of the war recently running against them.”

“Long-range missiles offered by the U.S. will never tip the scale in favor of Ukraine,” the director of the Department of Foreign Military Affairs of North Korea’s Ministry of National Defense was quoted as saying in the statement, which was translated by NBC News.

“It is a matter of time for the world to see the U.S. getting more vulnerable and Washington’s defeat on the Ukrainian battlefield,” the statement continued, adding that “the U.S. can never defeat the heroic Russian army and people with any latest weaponry or military support.”

The comments come after officials said that the U.S. had provided Ukraine with powerful long-range ballistic missiles for the first time earlier this month. The U.S.-provided Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, has since been used to strikes targets in Russian-occupied territory. A National Security Council spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. has provided them but said the supplies had not been revealed earlier for operational security reasons.

Read more from NBC News here: Ukraine uses long-range ATACMS against Russia for the first time

Russia and North Korea have deepened their political and military ties, with Moscow procuring missiles and artillery shells from Pyongyang, according to U.S. officials. They have both denied any arms transfers have taken place.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine said on Monday the Telegram messaging app had restored access to a number of chatbots used by Ukraine’s security agencies to collect information about Russia’s war effort after the services were briefly suspended.

The Dubai-based Telegram app founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov blocked a number of bots used by Ukraine to fight back against Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s military spy agency GUR said in a statement shortly after midnight.

A Telegram bot is an automated feature that allows the app’s users to submit or ask for information. Some of the bots run by Ukraine’s government allow people to report the whereabouts of Russian military hardware and personnel inside Ukraine.

The GUR had said that “management of the Telegram platform unreasonably blocked a number of official bots that have opposed Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, including the (GUR) bot”.

By morning, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication said that three affected bots, used by Ukraine’s SBU security service, GUR and digital ministry for the war effort had been unblocked.

A Telegram spokesperson said bots were “temporarily disabled due to a false positive but have since been reinstated”, without giving further details.

Telegram is widely used as a source of information in Ukraine and Russia, and been a go-to place for posting and accessing unfiltered information about the war.

— Reuters

The number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed in the war has increased in recent months, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Monday, as Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukraine.

In an intelligence update on X, the British defense ministry noted recent data from the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which found that 604 civilians were killed or wounded in March 2024.

“This equates to a 20% increase over the previous month,” the U.K. said, noting that “these deaths are attributed to missile and aerial-munitions strikes throughout Ukraine and increased bombardment at the frontlines.”

The report highlighted “the increased coordinated strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure with 20 destroyed or damaged sites. There were 57 children reported killed, double the previous month, and this was attributed directly to Russian use of aerial munitions,” the ministry noted.

The U.N. stated that, in total, there have been 31,366 civilian casualties in Ukraine (including Ukrainian-controlled and Russian-controlled territories) since Feb. 24 2022; the true number is likely to be far higher, with the collection of such data often difficult and inaccurate at a time of war.

“These figures highlight the tremendous cost of life sustained from Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” the U.K. said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Polish protesters unblocked all border crossing points with Ukraine on Monday morning, a Ukraine border guard spokesperson said on a Ukrainian TV broadcast.

“Fortunately, we have unblocked all directions on the border with Poland,” the border guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko said of Polish farmers ending the blockade. He added that the trucks transporting grain products will still face restrictions.

— Reuters

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded on Sunday for the rapid delivery of U.S. military aid, saying supplies, pledged within the $61 billion aid package agreed in the U.S. last week, had not yet arrived.

“We are interacting with our partners at all levels to achieve the level of efficiency in assistance that is needed not only to hold our positions, but also to disrupt Russia’s war plans,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

“We are still waiting for the supplies promised to Ukraine – we expect exactly the volume and content of supplies that can change the situation on the battlefield in the interests of Ukraine. And it is important that every agreement we have reached is implemented – everything that will yield practical results on the battlefield and boost the morale of everyone on the frontline,” he said.

Zelenskyy said he had spoken to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday and had again “emphasized the need for Patriot [air defense] systems, they are needed as soon as possible.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian forces have been forced to retreat from several villages in eastern Ukraine as Russian forces advanced, the country’s army chief said Sunday.

“The situation at the front [has] worsened,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Telegram.

He said the “most difficult situation” was in the areas west of Russian-occupied Maryinka and Avdiivka, a town captured by Russian forces in February, and that he had moved his forces “to new frontiers” west of the villages of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka in a bid to prevent casualties.

Russia had deployed four brigades in these areas as it launched offensives, Syrskyi said, and while it had achieved some tactical successes, it not yet achieved any “operational advantages.”

Syrskyi said the situation was dynamic, with individual positions changing “from hand to hand” several times during the day, saying this “gives rise to an ambiguous understanding of the situation.”

Intense battles have been taking place in the Chasiv Yar area, near Bakhmut in Donetsk, with Syrskyi saying the area remains one of the “hottest” spots in the war. Ukrainian officials believe Russian forces want to seize the town, which stands on higher ground, offering a strategic advantage, before May 9 — the date when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

Russian forces appear to be looking to take advantage of Ukrainian forces’ shortage of supplies of weapons and ammunition before much-needed U.S. supplies arrive following the approval of a $61 billion aid package.

Syrskyi noted that Russian forces were “trying to take advantage of its advantage in air, missiles and the number of artillery ammunition.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian officials threatened the West on Sunday with a “severe” response in the event that frozen Russian assets are confiscated, promising “endless” legal challenges and tit-for-tat measures.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia would never cede territories seized from Ukraine in exchange for the return of frozen assets, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate comment that there was still a lot of Western money in Russia which could be targeted by Moscow’s counter-measures.

— Reuters