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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.

Read more here:

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.

Read more:

Updated at 07.58EDT

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