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12.05EDT

Rescue teams are searching for five people in the wreckage of the apartment building that was targeted in the city of Slovyansk after the Russian missile attacks.

More residents have also been reported missing, Vadym Liakh, the head of the local government, said.

Updated at 12.10EDT

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian internal affairs minister, has provided an update on Fridays attack in Sloviansk.

Yesterday Russia attacked Sloviansk, hitting a residential building with S300 rocket.

A 2 year old boy was killed. He was at home with his dad while his mom went out to a shop. She is in hospital, treated for shock - she and her son just returned home from evacuation. The dad is pic.twitter.com/mS8Q4gqgpM

Updated at 12.00EDT

Heres a roundup of the developments in the Ukraine-Russian war so far on Saturday.

Eleven people have been confirmed as being killed in a missile strike on the eastern Ukraine city of Sloviansk on Friday. A block of flats was badly damaged by the attack. Rescue crews continue to try to rescue people trapped underneath rubble.

Russian shelling in Kherson killed two women on Saturday, the head of the Ukrainian presidents office has said.

The Wagner mercenary group has captured two more areas of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russias defence ministry said on Saturday. The claims have not been independently verified.

Five Ukrainians from Russian-occupied Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia oblast will be tried by a Russian court for being part of a terrorist group, according to Russian state media.

Russia has been using drones to attack police officers in Kherson, according to the regions police force.

A Russian official has claimed four people were killed and 10 injured in Ukrainian shelling of a town in Russian-controlled Donetsk. Denis Pushilin said a seven-year-old girl was among those wounded in Yasynuvata, Reuters reports.

A new Russian law has removed an obstacle that has allowed some men to dodge the draft and suggests Moscow anticipates a lengthy conflict in Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence says. Vladimir Putin was reported to have signed a bill on Friday to create a digital draft system, making it easier to mobilise Russians into the army and stirring fresh fears in the country amid the war with Ukraine.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, has said the US should stop encouraging war in Ukraine and start talking about peace. In that way, the international community would be able to convince the Russian and Ukrainian presidents that peace is in the interest of the whole world, Lula told reporters in Beijing at the end of a visit where he met president Xi Jinping.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to French president Emmanuel Macron on Saturday. In two tweets, he said they had discussed Macrons recent visit to China to meet president Xi Jinping.

My colleague Nadeem Badshah will be picking up from me shortly thanks for following along.

Updated at 11.11EDT

Ukrainian authorities say the death toll from Russian missile strikes on eastern Ukraines city of Sloviansk has gone up to 11 as rescue crews try to reach people trapped in the rubble of an apartment building.

The attack took place on Friday and the increased death toll comes after an earlier announcement that nine had died, earlier on Saturday.

Ukraines air force says the country will soon have weapons with which to try to prevent such attacks.

An air force spokesperson said on Saturday that a Patriot air defence system promised by the US was expected to arrive sometime after Easter, according to Associated Press. They declined to give a precise timeline but said the public would know as soon as the first Russian aircraft is shot down.

A group of 65 Ukrainian soldiers finished their training at Oklahomas Fort Sill army post last month and returned to Europe to learn more about using the defensive missile system to track and shoot down enemy aircraft.

Officials said at the time that the Ukrainians would then go back to their country with a Patriot missile battery, which typically includes six mobile launchers, a mobile radar, a power generator and an engagement control centre.

Germany and the Netherlands also have promised to provide a Patriot system each to Ukraine. In addition, a SAMP/T anti-missile system promised by France and Italy should enter Ukraine in the near future, Ihnat said this week.

Updated at 09.51EDT

The Wagner mercenary group has captured two more areas of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russias defence ministry said on Saturday.

On the Donetsk direction, the fiercest fighting has been continuing in the city of Artyomovsk, the ministry said in a daily statement, according to Reuters.

Wagner assault units successfully advanced, capturing two areas on the northern and southern outskirts of the city, it said.

The statement said Russian army paratroopers were supporting the claimed advance by holding back Ukrainian forces on the flanks.

The report could not be independently verified.

Updated at 09.37EDT

Yulia and Tetiana had spent a while deliberating over a date for their wedding before they decided it had to be 1 March exactly a year to the day they fled the war in Ukraine.

That date should be a sad anniversary, the anniversary of us leaving our old life behind, but we decided to rewrite this story and made it our special anniversary, said Tetiana, 42. We lost a lot and there is a lot of evil in this world, but weve turned that evil into something good.

Yulia, 44, added: We decided to exchange a bad memory for a better one.

They married at Ripley town hall in Derbyshire in the presence of their closest friends, describing it as something very special.

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Updated at 08.23EDT

Guardian foreign correspondent and Russia expert Luke Harding has spoken to sculptor Mikhail Reva about how he uses materials left behind by the war to represent the conflict.

He is Ukraines most famous sculptor. Mikhail Revas playful and humorous creations have been seen by millions of people and can be found in squares and beaches in his native Odesa, in Kyiv and abroad. His sculptures sum up Odesas insouciant view of life. Odesa has a unique language and spirit. I realised that this city should possess its own plastic art slightly ironic, a little naive, careless and jocular, he said.

But Vladimir Putins invasion has transformed Revas work, as well as that of other Ukrainian artists, prompting him to embrace new and darker forms. The horrors of Bucha and Mariupol where Russian soldiers executed civilians inspired him to create a series of extraordinary new sculptures. They might have sprung from a Hoffmann fairytale crossed with a nightmare.

The centrepiece is a four-metre-tall sculpture of Moloch, an ancient god, in the form of a Russian bear. Reva made it from shrapnel and other bomb remains, recovered from the battlefield and welded together. Its like a gigantic scary childrens toy. It will be on wheels, Reva said. The bear has biblical associations and refers to Moscow. You look at it and it hypnotises you. There is fragility and brutality.

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Updated at 07.58EDT

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Russia-Ukraine war live: new Russian law shows Moscow expects lengthy conflict, warns UK as it happened - The Guardian

Olga Rudnieva, CEO of the Superhumans Centre, a large new facility dedicated to prosthetics, rehabilitation and reconstruction that opened last week near Lviv, said the government currently offers help to amputees to the amount of 2.2 million hryvnia (48,000) for soldiers and 5,000 hryvnia for civilians.

However, this is not enough to cover the needs of people with complicated cases, such as those with amputations above the knee or elbow. These require much more complex and expensive prosthetics and thats where non-governmental help must step in.

The Superhumans Centre hopes to help 3,000 people for free by the end of the year. It has support from big donors from the UK and US, including the Warren Buffett Foundation.

However, one challenge facing these types of clinics is that some amputations are done incorrectly due to the difficult circumstances of war. The airways over Ukraine are closed making air evacuation difficult, so it can take hours or days to evacuate someone to medical help. This can lead to a need for further operations and amputations.

Russians shell our evacuation cars so it can take days to get people who are injured to help, Rudnieva said. We have a soldier with a triple amputation he was carried to safety by his comrades for 2.5 hours. Another guy who lost hand had to walk for an hour to get assistance because his units medic was killed.

We need to teach Ukraine to fish

Another problem is that people need more than one prosthetic. A child amputee will need as many as 35 over a lifetime as they grow, and different limbs are needed for different applications, such as for sports or on the battlefield. Someone who works with intricate tasks might need a bionic arm, but they are fragile and sensitive to water so cant be worn all the time.

Yet just as WW2 drove the advance of antibiotics and the use of metal plates to heal broken bones, Rudnieva believes the break in the clouds of Ukraines war is that it will drive innovation. The country already has a wealth of programmers and tech specialists to draw from.

One new start-up that is launching this month is Allbionics, a Ukrainian-Polish company that is hoping to provide 150 bionic arms to people by the end of the year. They have developed a method that allows arms to be fitted and made using 3D scanning and printing, which should dramatically cut wait times.

Part of their strategy is to retrain civilians who have lost limbs, many of whom work in manual labour, in IT, and other new industries. They are now looking for international investment to help them provide the arms, which cost up to $10,000, for free.

Maybe our first round of prosthetics will have flaws, but the next will be better and the one after that even better, said founder Volodymyr Bandura. Its a classic situation, either you teach a person to fish or you give them a fish. We need to teach Ukraine to fish.

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Dispatch: The desperate need for artificial limbs in Ukraine as toll of ... - The Telegraph

At least five people were killed and 17 wounded on Friday by a Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, the regional governor said. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that seven more people remained under the rubble after S-300 missiles damaged five apartment buildings and five private buildings, among others. Sloviansk is one of two eastern cities coveted by Russian forces, currently bogged down in nearby Bakhmut, as they push ahead with their invasion of Ukraine.

The UKs Ministry of Defence has claimed in its daily intelligence briefing that Ukrainian troops have been forced to make orderly withdrawals from positions they previously held in the highly contested town of Bakhmut, and that the last two days have seen an intense artillery bombardment from Russian forces.

A Russian Su-35 aircraft carried out airstrikes on the settlement of Orihiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, the head of the Ukrainian presidents office said on Friday. In a post on Telegram, Andriy Yermak said private houses and the building of the DYSSH were damaged.

Ukraine will test and use any non-banned weapons to liberate its territory, including Russian-occupied Crimea, the secretary of Ukraines national security and defence council has said.

Rishi Sunak denounced a video purporting to show the beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner of war and said those responsible should be brought to book. Downing Street said the UK prime minister told Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a call on Friday that the footage was abhorrent. Sunak also discussed efforts to accelerate military support to Ukraine.

Ukraines security service has issued a warning to the millions of people in the country celebrating Orthodox Easter this weekend, Sky News reported. Ukrainians are asked to limit the attendance of mass events and avoid lingering unnecessarily in temples during the traditional blessing of the Easter basket.

Ukraine retrieved the bodies of 82 of its soldiers from Russian-controlled territory on Friday, a government ministry said. The ministry of reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories gave no details about how it retrieved the bodies, Reuters reports, but said it was carried out in accordance with the norms of the Geneva convention.

Jack Teixeira has been detained pending a detention hearing that is set for Wednesday 19 April. The member of the US air force national guard has been charged with the unauthorised removal and retention of classified documents and materials. The 21-year-old made his first appearance in a Boston federal court today after the FBI arrested him in Massachusetts on Thursday.

China approved the provision of lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine but wanted any shipments to remain a secret, according to leaked US government documents. A top-secret intelligence summary dated 23 February states that Beijing had approved the incremental provision of weapons to Moscow, which it would disguise as civilian items, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Chinas foreign minister on Friday said the country would not sell weapons to parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine and would regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use. Qin Gang was speaking at a news conference with his visiting German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock. He reiterated Chinas willingness to help facilitate negotiations to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict and said all parties should remain objective and calm. Baerbock urged China to step up to exert its influence on Russia over Ukraine. She said Germany wanted China to influence Russia to stop its aggression.

Ukrainian forces are finding a growing number of components from China in Russian weapons used in Ukraine, a senior adviser in Zelenskiys office told Reuters on Friday.

The UN secretary general, Antnio Guterres, has written to Russia, Ukraine and Turkey raising concerns about recent impediments to the Black Sea grain export deal. The move comes after the UN said no ships were inspected on Tuesday under the deal as the parties needed more time to reach an agreement on operational priorities.

The US secretary of defence will meet with his counterparts in Sweden and Germany next week, including hosting a Ukraine-related defence meeting with top officials from almost 50 countries, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

Alexei Navalny, Russias most prominent opposition politician, has been grappling with severe stomach pain in jail that could be the result of slow-acting poison, a close ally said on Friday. His situation is critical. We are all very concerned, Ruslan Shaveddinov said in a phone interview.

Russia has put its Pacific naval fleet on high alert as part of a surprise inspection aimed at building its defensive capabilities. The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said: The main objective of this inspection is to increase the ability of the armed forces to repel the aggression of a probable enemy from the direction of ocean and sea.

Finlands embassy in Moscow has contacted the Russian foreign ministry after it received a letter containing powder.

The 15 Russian diplomats expelled by Norway this week had sought to recruit sources, conduct so-called signal intelligence and buy advanced technology, the Norwegian security police said on Friday.

Ukraine has barred its national sports teams from competing in Olympic, non-Olympic and Paralympic events that include competitors from Russia and Belarus, the sports ministry said. The decision published in a decree on Friday, criticised by some Ukrainian athletes, comes after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) angered Kyiv by paving the way for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals despite Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Chinas defence minister, Li Shangfu, will visit Russia from 16 to 19 April, and meet Russian military officials.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy and UK prime minister discuss accelerating military support for Ukraine as it happened - The Guardian

KYIV, Ukraine On a riotous Instagram profile featuring pole-dancing, cross-dressing and fierce makeup, a picture of Ivan Honzyk in high heels and stockings next to an image of him in military uniform has gotten the most likes by far.

The junior sergeant's posts are a bold statement in socially conservative Ukraine, where pride parades were often attacked before the war and swaths of the country are occupied by forces loyal to Russia, one of the worlds most conspicuously homophobic states.

But as more members of the LGTBQ community fight on the front lines, the greater visibility of gay and lesbian military personnel appears to be a catalyst for acceptance in wider society, and opinion polls show attitudes are changing.

Honzyk, 27, said his uncompromising self-expression, combined with his work in places like Bakhmut the city in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the bloodiest battles of the war, while serving as a potent symbol of the countrys defiance is helping to further the cause of LGBTQ rights in the country faster than any pride marches could.

My fellow soldiers are really impressed with what Ive done in Bakhmut, the massive scale of work that I did there, and after that they just dont care about who I sleep with, Honzyk, whose medical unit evacuates wounded soldiers and provides emergency first aid, said in a hip caf in Ukraines capital, Kyiv, while on leave from the front line.

Plenty of other gay and lesbian soldiers have also posted photos and videos of themselves online,some sporting unicorn insignia on their uniform, the mythical creature an ironic riposte to the idea that there are no LGBTQ people in the military.

In the U.S., lesbian, gay and bisexual people were allowed to serve openly in the military only in late 2011. Ukraines armed forces did not have rules preventing the LGTBQ community from serving, but homophobia was rife in the ranks, reflecting a more widespread societal attitude.

But in apparent recognition of their services, Ukrainian lawmakers recently tabled draft legislation that would recognize same-sex relationships and address the lack of inheritance, medical and other rights for the partners of LGTBQ soldiers killed or wounded fighting pro-Moscow forces.

The parades and pride events were not enough, said Honzyk, who has served for four years. The better way to change attitudes is what were doing now. We entered the military and were showing that were worthy. Were not hiding somewhere at the back. Were doing real missions, dangerous missions.

Across the border, President Vladimir Putin has maintained that he launched the invasion in February 2022 to protect Russian-speaking people in Ukraines east, while attempting to frame what he calls the special military operation as a defense of morality against un-Russian liberal values promoted by the West.

Putin has frequently espoused traditional values in his speeches and framed gender-transition surgery and same-sex parenting as morally degenerate Western imports. In December he signed a law expanding Russias restrictions on promoting what it calls gay propaganda, in effective outlawing any public expression of LGBTQ behavior in Russia.

Any action considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public; online; or in films, books or advertising could incur a heavy fine.

Activists like Edward Reese, 37, a nonbinary communications officer with KyivPride, saidRussias invasion had sharpened Ukraines sense of its own distinct identity and caused many of his countrymen to show more empathy toward their LGBTQ compatriots.

People see that homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism are Russian values, he said. People understand that they dont want to have anything in common with Russia. So thats why they start to rethink their own homophobia here in Ukraine.

Reese said he had a tough upbringing and was sent for so-called conversion therapy by religious parents who followed the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The church has been outspoken against LGBTQ people, and last year its leader, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, said the sin of gay pride parades justified the war in Ukraine.

But his influence and that of his church has plummeted in recent years in Ukraine. In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine split from its Russian counterpart.

Kyiv has since accused Russian Orthodox priests of spying for Moscow, charges they deny.

Ukrainian civil society is trying to kick out the Russian Orthodox Church, and they are the most anti-gay people in Ukraine, said LGBTQ activist Maksim Mishkin, 40, speaking at KyivPrides offices.

Today most religious people in Ukraine are either positive or neutral towards us.

Away from the battlefield, LGBTQ groups in Ukraine and abroad have helped evacuate and house people displaced by the fighting and raise money for the military.

Mishkin said he had held fundraisers to send care packages to serving personnel, the appreciative soldiers sending back photos of themselves brandishing coffee mugs and other items featuring LGBTQ-affiliated logos.

Such efforts may have contributed to growing acceptance in Ukraine.

A January survey by the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that works to increase the effectiveness of democratic institutions in developing countries, found that 58% of Ukrainian respondents agreed that LGBTQ people should have the same rights as others.

That contrasts with a 2016 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology that showed 60.4% of respondents viewed LGBTQ people negatively. Last year a similar poll found that percentage had shrunk to 38.2%.

Ukrainian politician Inna Sovsun hopes to harness the positive momentum to pass a draft bill she introduced in parliament last month recognizing same-sex relationships.

When a person in uniform says, Look, I have a loved one. If I am killed in action protecting this country, protecting every single one of you, my partner will not be able to make decisions about where to bury me because there is no legal connection between us, that is something that society cannot say no to, because they are in uniform and risking their lives every single minute for us, she said.

Right now its not just the right thing to do, its also the politically smart thing to do, because the majority of Ukrainians actually support it, she added.

However, she cautioned that the level of support for LGBTQ rights in Ukraine can be overstated.

Outside of the countrys main metropolitan centers, life for LGBTQ people can be difficult, she said, adding that not all LGBTQ military personnel were accepted by their peers and some had been bullied.

For Honzyk, lifes too short to worry about the haters before he heads back to the front line.

If you accept yourself, then the world will accept you too. You need to remember a lot of people are wearing masks, but you shouldnt do that because you have only one life, and any day a missile may kill you, he said.

Dont care about what other people say, because theyll always find somebody to hate.

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As Ukraine's LGBTQ soldiers fight on the front line, acceptance ... - NBC News

An air-raid warning was issued in the east of Ukraine and in Kyiv Oblast, and an air target was spotted in the sky over Kyiv Oblast on the evening of 19 April.

Source: alerts.in.ua; Kyiv Oblast Military Administration on Telegram; Andrii Yermak,

Head of the Presidents Office, on Telegram

Quote from Kyiv Oblast Military Administration: "Residents of Kyiv Oblast! An air target has been detected in the sky. Air defence forces are on alert.

Stay in shelters and observe information silence: do not film or post anything online."

Details: The air-raid warning has also been issued in Sumy, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk oblasts and Crimea.

The sound of sirens means the threat of missile and air strikes. At this time, it is necessary to take cover.

Even before the air-raid warning was issued, Kyiv residents saw a bright flash in the sky. What exactly it was is currently unknown.

Andrii Yermak, Head of the Presidents Office, reported that the air defence worked in the city of Dnipro and several Shahed drones were shot down.

At the same time, Yermak called on everyone "not to worry about UFOs" because "it is an operation of air defence"; but later he changed this message and asked everyone to wait for information from the Air Force.

At 23:01, the all-clear was given in the city of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. Meanwhile, Kharkiv Oblast has been added to the air-alert map.

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Air-raid warning issued in part of Ukraine, air target spotted over Kyiv Oblast -