The number of children killed by the war has reached 477, according to figures just posted to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s Telegram account.
The toll rose after it emerged on Saturday that two more children had died in a rocket attack on a high-rise building in Uman on 28 April. The attack killed 23 people, including six children.
More than 955 children have been injured in the conflict, according to Ukraine’s official figures. The most children were harmed in Donetsk, where 452 were injured or killed.
In Other Developments
* Ukraine remains in control of a key supply route into Bakhmut, a military spokesperson said on Saturday, as the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group threatened to withdraw some of his troops from the eastern city if Moscow did not send more ammunition.
FIGHTING
* A drone strike caused a fire at a fuel storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, sending a vast column of black smoke into the sky before it was extinguished, the city’s Moscow-installed governor said.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy carries a pistol and would have fought to the death with his inner circle had the Russians stormed his Kyiv headquarters at the start of the war, he said in an interview shown on Saturday.
* Two civilians died as a result of Ukrainian shelling on a village in Russia’s Bryansk region on Saturday evening, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
DIPLOMACY
* The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) recommendation to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to return to international competition as neutrals is “excessive and discriminatory”, the Russian Olympic Committee’s (ROC) athletes’ commission said.
* Russia on Saturday promised it would respond harshly to what it said was Poland’s illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw, an act it called a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.
* Pope Francis met Ukrainian refugees on the second day of his visit to Hungary on Saturday, telling them a different future was possible as they described the hardships they have faced since the war began.
ECONOMY
* Dividends of as much as $400 million to four Indian companies for their stakes in Russian oil assets are stuck due to problems in payments triggered by Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a government source said on Saturday.
