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As the time approaches 9pm in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, here is a round-up of todays news.

Russia said its patience should not be tested over nuclear weapons in another repeat of hardline rhetoric over their use. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia will do everything to prevent the development of events according to the worst scenario but not at the cost of infringing on our vital interests. Vladimir Putin has previously made comments saying he wants to avoid nuclear war, but his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told a UN hearing on Monday that the world was possibly more dangerous than during the cold war.

The Kremlin said that relations with European countries are at their lowest possible level amid more expulsions of diplomats.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it welcomed anything that could hasten the end of the Ukraine conflict when asked about Wednesdays phone call between the Chinese and Ukrainian leaders.

Natos secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also welcomed the discussion between president Xi and president Zelenskiy and repeated the possibility of the war ending at the negotiating table.

Stoltenberg said 98% of promised combat vehicles have now been delivered to Ukraine. This comprises 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks. This equates to nine new Ukrainian brigades.

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide, at a session on Thursday.

A resolution on deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied: create conditions for their safe return, stop these crimes and punish the perpetrators passed with 87 votes in favour, meaning an overwhelming majority. One representative voted against and another abstained.

Russias defence ministry has claimed that its forces had taken four blocks in north-western, western and south-western Bakhmut, Russia state-owned news agency RIA reported.

Russias foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May. It said the measure was taken in response to Washingtons failure to process visas for representatives from the journalistic pool of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.

The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine during a visit to the Vatican. He asked the pontiff for help to return children from the east of Ukraine who have been forcibly taken to Russia by Kremlin forces.

Andrij Melnyk, Ukraines former ambassador to Berlin has said Germany was still failing to provide the support it should. The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should, he told Die Zeit in an interview in Kyiv.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russias Wagner, has said he was joking when he said the mercenary group would suspend fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.

At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraines presidential office has said, including one person killed and 23 wounded including a child when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv.

Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and included a gush of manpower. The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.

Britains opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.

Thats all for today. Thanks for following along. Well be back tomorrow.

Updated at 13.50EDT

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide, at a session on Thursday.

A resolution on deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied: create conditions for their safe return, stop these crimes and punish the perpetrators passed with 87 votes in favour, meaning an overwhelming majority. One representative voted against and another abstained.

In its resolution, the assembly called for immediate and urgent action to be taken to halt the practices of unlawful forcible transfer and deportation currently being carried out by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian population, and especially its policy and practices relating to the removal of children from their families and homes and their subsequent absorption into Russian citizenship, identity and culture.

It added: The assembly highlights the need for the recording and monitoring of individual cases, both in order to permit mechanisms for rapid redress, and to collect evidence of accountability in order to bring the perpetrators, at all levels of responsibility, to justice.

The assembly called for the practice to stop immediately and unconditionally. It also demanded Russia give access to NGOs and charities, as well as information about where the children now are.

The international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March in relation to the unlawful deportation of minors. One was also issued for Russias childrens rights commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova who is believed to have 18 adopted children, including a teenager from Mariupol.

The resolution claims that Russia began moving children from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk before its invasion on 24 February last year. In a report earlier this month, the Ukrainian government said it had collected reports of more than 19,000 children who had been deported.

Updated at 13.19EDT

The Ukrainian security service has given details of eight men of military age who had tried to leave Ukraine to avoid serving in the armed forces.

It said that a group was charging up to $7,000 (5,600) to help people illegally cross the border, including with false documents. Ten have been arrested in total across Ukraine.

One was a taxman in the Poltava oblast who sold fake medical certificates, and another in Kharkiv is suspected of helping people evade military service by posing as business travellers for defence firms.

Other schemes to smuggle people out include disguising them as truck drivers, the SBU reports.

Updated at 12.48EDT

Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and included a gush of manpower.

The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.

The Russian defensive wall runs from Kherson, in Ukraines south, to the north-east of the country, spanning more than 500 miles. An autumn counterattack saw Ukrainian forces sweep across the south-east, retaking half of Kherson city.

These defensive lines consist of layered fortifications and trenches, said Brady Africk at US thinktank American Enterprise Institute.

They include anti-tank ditches, raised barriers, lines of pre-fabricated defences known as dragons teeth, landmines and trenches for personnel, he told AFP.

The Russian objective is to maintain control over occupied territory and to attempt to limit Ukraines ability to conduct a counteroffensive, he said.

Moscows strategy is to be able to absorb any attack, said Pierre Razoux at the Mediterranean Foundation of Strategic Studies, a French research body.

The attackers are likely to get stuck by the time they reach the second layer, and even if they get past it, the third is going to be very hard to breach, he said.

Russia will employ the time-honoured strategy of channelling attacking enemy troops onto ground of their choosing, said Andrew Galer at British strategy thinktank Janes.

But Ukraine meanwhile gets to decide where to attack Russian lines, he said, adding that Kyiv may not have made its choice yet.

Ukraine could well try to mislead Russia with a small-scale attack to pull defending forces there, and then direct the main attack elsewhere, he said.

Vassily Kashin, at the HSE university in Moscow, said Ukraine could pick the region of Bakhmut where battles have raged for 10 months for its attack, but acknowledged that the data we have are very limited.

Kashin said the balance of forces at the front is changing in favour of Russia. Ukraine can try to change this with a last desperate blow, he said.

Updated at 12.15EDT

More from Vladimir Putins speech at the launch of a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey on Thursday.

Putin praised the leadership of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan ahead of an election where Erdoan is running to be re-elected.

Erdoan, 69, suspended all campaigning for Turkeys pivotal presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 May after falling ill while conducting a live TV interview on Tuesday.

While a member of Nato and sending arms to Ukraine, Turkey has maintained ties to Russia during the war and has hosted discussions between both sides.

The Russian president spoke virtually at the launch of a Russian-built nuclear plant in Turkey, using the opportunity to heap praise on Erdoan, saying Moscow was ready to extend the hand of friendship.

Putin said the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkeys first, was a convincing example of how much you, President Erdoan, are doing for your country, for the growth of its economy, for all Turkish citizens.

I want to say it straight: you know how to set ambitious goals and are confidently moving towards their implementation, he added.

Putin stressed that Russia was one of the first countries to send rescue teams and medical personnel to Turkey in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in February.

We are always ready to extend the hand of friendship to our Turkish partners, Putin added.

Updated at 11.51EDT

Russia has destroyed a bridge in Chernihiv, according to the north-eastern oblasts governor.

Viacheslav Chaus told a telethon that Russian shelling had destroyed the crossing over the Sudost River. It connected the villages of Muravyi and Gremyach near Novgorod-Siversky.

Serhii Serhienko, the head of the Novgorod-Siversky district military administration said: For several weeks, the bridges over the rivers of the Novgorod-Siversk community have been shelled. This makes it impossible to provide services to the population in a normal format: to provide food and other things. And it limits movement to the central self-government bodies.

Updated at 10.21EDT

A former commander of Russias Wagner group who is seeking asylum in Norway has been convicted of carrying an air gun and being involved in a bar fight.

Andrei Medvedev was given a two-week sentence which has been suspended for two years. He was acquitted of violence against the police, Reuters reports.

I want to thank the court for a fair ruling, Medvedev told Reuters, adding he was looking to the future. I am studying Norwegian and I hope I will get asylum.

He crossed the Russian-Norwegian border in January and has spoken out about his time fighting in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to fighting outside an Oslo bar in February and preventing a police officer from doing his or her duty. He also pleaded guilty to carrying an air gun in public on a separate occasion on 14 March.

But Medvedev had pleaded not guilty to a fourth charge of committing violence against a police officer. He was acquitted on Thursday.

Separately, Medvedev will continue to speak with Norwegian police about his time with Wagner. Russia denies accusations of war crimes in the conflict.

Now he can avoid jail and focus on what he came [to Norway] for: explain [about his time] in the war in Ukraine, his lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, told Reuters.

Updated at 10.11EDT

At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraines presidential office has said, including one person killed and 23 wounded including a child when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv (see 05.49).

The governor of Mykolaiv province, Vitalii Kim, said 22 multi-storey buildings, 12 private houses and other residential buildings were damaged in the attack, Associated Press reports.

Defence officials said the Kalibr missiles were fired from somewhere in the Black Sea.

Updated at 10.07EDT

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russias Wagner, has said he was joking when he said the mercenary group would suspend fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.

Prigozhin said in an audio message on Thursday: A decision has been taken to suspend artillery fire so that American journalists can safely film Bakhmut and go home.

In a later audio message, however, he said: Guys, this is military humour. Humour, and nothing more ... It was a joke, Reuters reported.

Wagner has been leading Russias assault on Bakhmut since the summer in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, but Ukrainian forces have so far thwarted its attempts to take full control of the city.

Updated at 09.24EDT

Andrij Melnyk, Ukraines former ambassador to Berlin who was deeply critical of what he saw as Germanys hesitancy over providing material support to Ukraine from the start of Russias invasion has said Germany was still failing to provide the support it should.

The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should, he told Die Zeit in an interview in Kyiv.

Melnyk, who returned to Ukraine in October as deputy foreign minister, was perceived as something of a thorn in the side of the government of Olaf Scholz for his frequent interventions in debates on Ukraine, which he himself describes as often undiplomatic.

He said he regretted he was no longer able to use his influence on Berlin. A year ago we were powerful participants in the debate, and even steering it. But my successor does it differently, he said.

Now were simply swimming with the current, letting ourselves go with the flow.... Our offensive is going to happen, and the Germans think: Weve delivered 18 Leopards (tanks), ticked that off the list, finito. As if the war had been won with these tanks. The coalition government has convinced the German public that regarding military help, everything is sorted. Which is not true.

Instead of continuing to bang the drum, his successor, Oleksiy Makeev, was repeating mantra-like, Thankyou Germany, Melnyk said, adding that he was hardly in touch with Makeev, due to their very different points of view.

He denied his return to Ukraine where his particular responsibility is relations with Latin America - was an attempt to rein him in. My post there was long enough and it was a miracle that I was able to stay there when the war started, he said. But he admitted he had not wanted to leave.

It is no secret that I left Berlin against my will. I would have liked to have continued, because I had the feeling that I could have achieved a lot more for Ukraine despite the strong headwinds I faced.

Here in Kjiv the opposition was stronger still, because many didnt understand why I was often acting in this very unconventional, often undiplomatic way in order to pull the government out of its lethargy.

Updated at 11.16EDT

Heres some analysis of President Xi and President Zelenskiys call on Wednesday by our correspondent Helen Davidson in Taipei, and why it may have been hastened by problematic comments about sovereignty by a Chinese ambassador.

A long-awaited phone call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been cautiously welcomed, but China analysts say the timing suggests it could be partly an act of damage control after controversial comments by Chinas ambassador to France.

Ambassador Lu Shaye, one of Chinas wolf warrior diplomats with a history of fiery remarks, caused outrage across Europe this week when he denied the sovereignty of former Soviet states, saying they did not have effective status. The comments were roundly condemned, with several European nations summoning Chinese envoys for rebuke, and politicians suggesting it demonstrated Chinas untrustworthiness as a neutral party in the Ukraine war.

Beijing, which counts Russia as its closest major ally, has sought to present itself as neutral and a potential peacemaker and there have been signs that Xi was unhappy with Russias actions, but in practice China has largely supported Russias stance.

At a time when there is already significant concern about Russian ambitions and PRC [Peoples Republic of China] support for them, Lus comments seemed to suggest that Beijing is open to continued, perhaps even expanded, Russian aggression, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

Read more:

Updated at 08.42EDT

Russias foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May.

It said the measure was taken in response to Washingtons failure to process visas for representatives from the journalistic pool of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.

Lavrov led a session of the UN security council on multilateralism, in which he said the world was at its most dangerous since the cold war. He had requested to bring journalists with him from Russia, but they were barred from entering the US.

It was particularly emphasised [to the US diplomat] that such sabotage, intended to prevent normal journalistic work, would not go unanswered, the foreign ministry said in its statement.

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Forced deportation of children from Ukraine by Moscow is genocide, Council of Europe says as it happened - The Guardian