Kyiv: Russian forces have almost encircled Severodonetsk, the easternmost city in Ukraine held by Kyiv, and are trying to enter it, a local official said Friday. “The city is almost surrounded by Russian and (separatist) Lugansk People’s Republic troops,” Oleksandr Striuk, the head of the Severodonetsk military administration said on Ukrainian television.
Meanwhile, on the 72nd day of the war around 12 civilians including children were evacuated by bus from the Azovstal complex in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Around 41 people, including 28 military, were handed over in a prisoner exchange with Ukraine, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Friday.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Germany’s head of state President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Scholz to visit the country on May 9, the day Russia marks the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, AP reported. Speaking at London’s Chatham House think-tank on Friday, Zelenskyy said he had spoken to Steinmeier and invited both him and Scholz to come to Kyiv. The Ukrainian government has claimed that Russia lost 24,900 troops and 1,110 tanks among losses in its war in Ukraine since February 24.