Ukraine news – live: Russian forces ‘fully cleared’ in Lyman, says Zelensky

Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement on Sunday morning that its jets had carried out 29 strikes in the past 24 hours, destroying weapons and anti-aircraft missile systems.

While its ground troops had hit command posts, warehouses containing ammunition and anti-aircraft missile complexes.

US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Lyman’s capture would create new problems for Russia’s military. “We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing right now,” Austin told a news conference on Saturday.

Austin noted that Lyman was positioned across supply lines that Russia has used to push its troops and materiel down to the south and to the west, as the Kremlin presses its more than seven-month-long invasion of Ukraine.

“Without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward.”

Austin did not say whether he thought Ukraine’s capture of Lyman might prompt Russian escalation, although U.S. officials have widely denounced Russia’s nuclear rhetoric in recent days and President Joe Biden has publicly urged Putin not to use nuclear weapons.

“Do you know what it’s like to lose your home, your job, and be told you have lost your country? To have to uproot yourself and try to escape, not knowing whether you are going to make it?” asks Darya.

“And you have to be really unlucky to have this happen to you twice in one lifetime”, she adds with a bitter laugh. “But I am sure it is not going to happen a third time. I am also sure that, with God’s help, we will go back to both our homes.”

Darya and her husband Yuri and two children are the latest in the exodus triggered by the war in Ukraine. They are among the people who have fled from the Russian-occupied south of the country in desperation as referendums ordered by Moscow were followed by annexation.

Vladimir Putin declared on Friday that four regions of Ukraine were now part of the Russian Federation

Russia has restricted access to music-streaming app SoundCloud citing “false information” about what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported on Sunday, quoting communications watchdog Roskomnadzor (RKN).

Russia has battled big tech companies to control the flow of information after it sent troops to Ukraine , slowing Twitter’s service and banning Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

“Roskomnadzor restricted access to the SoundCloud service in connection with placement of materials containing false information regarding the nature of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine,” Interfax said citing RKN.

It said access to the service was blocked at the behest of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, adding that the information in question related to the special operation’s form and methods of warfare including “attacks on civilians, strikes on civilian infrastructure, about numerous civilian casualties at the hands of Russian soldiers”.

Ukrainian soldiers wave flag at entrance of Russian-controlled Donetsk town

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog called for the release of the director-general of Ukraine‘s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, saying his detention posed a threat to safety and security, reports Reuters.

A Russian patrol detained Ihor Murashov on Friday, the state-owned company in charge of the plant said on Saturday, and the International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia had confirmed the move.

“IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed the hope that Mr Murashov will return to his family safely and promptly and will be able to resume his important functions at the plant,” the agency tweeted late on Saturday.

The IAEA has been in contact with relevant authorities seeking clarifications on his temporary detention, which it said had a “very significant impact” on him and nuclear safety and security standards.

Grossi is expected to hold talks in Moscow and Kyiv next week on the creation of a protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant, the watchdog said on Saturday.

Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown with suicide drones on Sunday, and Ukraine pushed ahead with its counteroffensive after taking back control of a strategic eastern city.

Russia’s loss of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian flag is already in Lyman,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”

Russia has attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown with suicide drones Sunday Ukraine pushed ahead with its counteroffensive that has embarrassed the Kremlin

Russian men desperate to avoid fighting in Ukraine following Vladimir Putin’s conscription order have told of three-day long border queues and bribing security officials hundreds of pounds at makeshift “checkpoints” to flee the country.

‘We are terrified of being killed in a war we don’t want with Ukraine.’

Ukraine said today that it was in full control of the eastern logistics hub of Lyman, Kyiv’s most significant battlefield gain in weeks.

“As of 1230 (0930 GMT), Lyman is fully cleared,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a short video clip on his Telegram channel.

There was no comment from the Russian armed forces on Sunday on the status of the city.

Pope Francis has urged Vladimir Putin to “stop this spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine, and denounced the “absurd” risk to humanity of catastrophic nuclear war as tensions escalate.

The pontiff made his strongest plea yet on the seven-month war as he addressed the public in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. It was the first time in public that he cited Mr Putin’s leadership.

He also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “be open” to serious peace proposals, reports Associated Press.

And he exhorted the international community to “use all diplomatic instruments” to end this “huge tragedy” and “horror” of war.

“This terrible, inconceivable wound of humanity, instead of shrinking, continues to bleed even more, threatening to spread,” said Francis.

“That humanity again finds itself before the threat of atomic war is absurd.

“What more has to happen, how much more blood has to flow?” before the war ends, he asked.

The pope implored “the Russian Federation president, also for the love of his people, to stop this spiral of violence and death”.

He then urged Mr Zelensky to “be open to serious proposals to peace”, and called upon “all protagonists of international life and political leaders with insistence to do all they can to put an end to the war”, avoiding “dangerous escalation”.

Francis called for the “recourse to all diplomatic instruments to end this huge tragedy”. In his address he called war “a horror” and “madness”.