Russia-Ukraine Crisis: The US Pentagon says the majority of Russian forces that had been around the port city of Mariupol have left and headed north, leaving roughly the equivalent of two battalion tactical groups. Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has devastated hundreds of hospitals and other medical institutions and left doctors without drugs to tackle cancer or the ability to perform surgery.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador TS Tirumurti has told the Ambassador of the Netherlands to the UK that “Kindly don’t patronise us,” New Delhi “knows what to do” when the Dutch envoy said India should not have abstained in the UN General Assembly on Ukraine. India has told the UN Security Council that diplomacy will be a lasting casualty while underscoring the immediate need to evacuate innocent civilians from areas witnessing intense fighting in Ukraine.
Ukrainian fighters battling Russian forces in the tunnels beneath Mariupol’s immense steel plant refused to surrender in the face of relentless attacks, with the wife of one commander saying they had vowed to “stand till the end.” Some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were holed up in a maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath Mariupol’s sprawling Azovstal steelworks. A few hundred civilians were also believed trapped there.
US First lady Jill Biden is using her second solo overseas trip to get an up-close look at the Ukrainian refugee crisis by visiting Romania and Slovakia, where she will spend Mother’s Day meeting with displaced families. Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologised for remarks made by his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who claimed Adolf Hitler may have had “Jewish blood”, Israel said on Thursday.
The US said it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship, an incident that was a high-profile failure for Russia’s military. Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he accepted an apology from Russian President Vladimir Putin over controversial remarks about the Holocaust made by Moscow’s top diplomat.