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‘We are convinced there will be no lasting peace if it is not negotiated with the Ukrainians,’ says France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné
Welcome to our live coverage on Ukraine. It is just after 10am in Kyiv and in Moscow and I’m Donna Ferguson. Here are the headlines:
France’s top diplomat has said China must speak clearly to Russia over its war in Ukraine. “We expect China to send very clear messages to Russia,” said Emmanuel Macron’s foreign minister, Stephane Sejourne, after meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing. “We are convinced that there will be no lasting peace if it is not negotiated with the Ukrainians. “There will be no security for Europeans if there is no peace in accordance with international law.”
Ukraine’s air force shot down two out of three Russia-launched Shahed drones on Sunday night, the Ukrainian military said on Monday. The general staff did not provide additional details.
Russian attacks killed at least three people in different regions of eastern Ukraine, local officials said on Sunday, and two more in Lviv region, far from the frontlines. In the centre of the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, a frequent target of Russia’s attacks on energy and other infrastructure, a strike hit civilian targets in the evening, said the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov. Regional news outlets said bombs were dropped on different areas of the region. No injuries were reported. Earlier on Sunday, heavy shelling killed a man in the town of Borova, south-east of Kharkiv, local prosecutors said.
Police in the Donetsk region, in Ukraine’s south-east, said Russian shelling hit 14 towns and villages, with two dead reported in Krasnohorivka, west of the Russian-held regional centre of Donetsk.
Russian attacks on infrastructure extended well behind the frontlines. The Lviv regional governor, Maksym Kozitskyi, said two bodies were pulled from rubble after cruise missile strikes.
Russian forces bombed the border territories and settlements of the Sumy region 39 times on Sunday, the Ukrainian local regional military administration said. There were 157 explosions recorded from ordnance including artillery shells, mortars, exploding drones, drone-dropped mines and grenades, and rockets fired from helicopters. Sumy has been pounded by Russian attacks in recent weeks, forcing evacuations.
Over the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said a woman was killed when a border village came under attack. The accounts of military action from either side were not independently confirmed.
“Our spirit does not give up,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an Easter message. “There is no night or day when Russian terror does not try to break our lives,” Zelenskiy wrote to Ukrainians on social media, following Russian missile strikes.
Zelenskiy was in Bucha on Sunday alongside the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, and several foreign ambassadors to mark two years since the city and surrounding areas’ were liberated from a brutal month-long occupation by Russia at the start of the war. The Ukrainian leader laid a lamp at the town’s wall of remembrance, which names the 509 civilians who have so far been identified of those killed during Bucha’s occupation.
France will deliver hundreds of old armoured vehicles and new surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. The French defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu, told a French newspaper that the president, Emmanuel Macron, had asked him to prepare a new aid package, which will include old but still functional equipment, as well as new missiles.
Protesters in Kyiv have demonstrated for the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the Azov brigade. Relatives and friends of captured soldiers, some dressed in military clothing, waved placards at passing traffic.
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