Ukraine-Russia war latest news: UN conducts “safe passage operation” at Mariupol steel plants

President Volodymyr Zelensky described his meeting with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Kyiv as a strong signal of support at a difficult time.

Speaking during his evening address Sunday evening, Zelensky said Ukrainians are “grateful to all partners who are sending such important and strong signals of support by visiting our capital at such a difficult time.”

The United nations She said she was trying to evacuate civilians hiding in the besieged steel mills of Azovstal in the Ukrainian city Mariupol.

The organization’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Sunday confirmed the start of “Operation Safe Corridor” on Friday, with a team arriving in the besieged coastal city on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added that no further details could be provided, as doing so could jeopardize the safety of evacuees and its staff.

my colleague Rory Sullivan has more:

Sweden’s foreign minister has said Finland will almost certainly apply for NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s fierce military operations in Ukraine.

Anne Lindy told Swedish Radio SVT: “We know more or less that they (Finland) will apply for NATO membership. This changes the whole balance … If one of our countries joins, we know that tensions will increase.”

When asked if she thought Finland would join the military alliance, Linde said: “I think you can say that for sure.”

Sergey Lavrov said that Russia’s upcoming Victory Day – a parade to celebrate the end of World War II – would have no effect on the invasion of Ukraine.

The British Defense Secretary, Ben Wallace, gave his voice to warnings that the parade could be used on May 9 to declare war.

But the Russian foreign minister, speaking in Russian through an Italian translator today, said: “Our soldiers will not base their actions on a specific date.

“We will commemorate our victory in a solemn way, but the timing and speed of what is happening in Ukraine will depend on the need to minimize the risks to Russian civilians and soldiers.”

The Russian foreign minister insisted that the Western media were “misrepresenting” Moscow’s threats and that the country was committed to working to prevent a nuclear war at all.

“Russia has never stopped efforts to reach agreements that will never break out of a nuclear war,” said Sergey Lavrov.

A Ukrainian military officer said that Russian forces resumed bombing the Mariupol mega-steel plan immediately after the partial evacuation of civilians earlier in the day.

Denis Schlega, a National Guard brigade commander, said the bombing began as soon as rescue crews stopped evacuating civilians from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant.

Mr. Schlega added that at least another round of evacuations was needed to clear civilians from the factory – including dozens of young children in bunkers below the industrial facilities.

It was estimated that several hundred civilians were still trapped in the besieged factory, along with approximately 500 wounded soldiers and many more corpses.

As the 67th day of the war in Ukraine passes, we look back to see why Russia started its own “special military operation” in the country:

Read the full story below by our reporters, Thomas Kingsley And Joe Somerlad:

Vladimir Putin put Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons forces on high alert during the first weekend of his war with Ukraine, raising fears around the world about what could happen next.

The Russian president blamed “unfriendly actions in the economic sphere”, referring to the punitive economic sanctions imposed on his country by Western allies, and claimed that prominent NATO members had made “aggressive statements”, forcing him to do so.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed the escalation of tensions on comments by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, an ally of which she in turn denied that anything she said in a series of morning interviews on Sunday “calls for this kind of escalation”.

Read the full story below:

Usmanova, 37, spoke to Reuters on Sunday after she was evacuated from the factory, a sprawling complex founded under Joseph Stalin and designed with an underground network of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attacks.

“I was afraid that the bunker would not hold – I had a terrible fear,” Usmanova said, describing the time I was sheltering underground.

“When the bunker started shaking, I was in hysterics, and my husband can attest to this: I was very worried that the bunker would collapse.”

“We haven’t seen the sun for a long time,” said a spokeswoman in the village of Bizimeni in the Russian-backed separatist-held Donetsk region, about 30 km (30 miles) east of Mariupol.

She remembers the lack of oxygen in the shelters and the fear that controls the lives of the people holed up there.

Usmanova was among dozens of civilians evacuated from the plant in Mariupol, a southern port city that Russian forces besieged for weeks and left a wasteland.

Usmanova said that while on the bus, in a convoy approved by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, she and her husband joked that they would not have to go to the toilet with the torch.

“You can’t imagine what we went through – the horror,” Usmanova said. “I lived there, worked there my whole life, but what we saw there was terrible.”

Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have criticized Wimbledon’s decision to exclude players from Russia and Belarus from this year’s tournament after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The two tennis players said on Sunday that Wimbledon had acted unfairly.

Nadal, a 21-time Grand Slam winner, said in Spain: “I think it’s unfair (for) my Russian tennis colleagues, and my teammates… that what’s happening at this moment with the war is not their fault.” And Djokovic are preparing to play in the Madrid Open.

“I’m sorry for them,” Nadal said. “Wimbledon just made its decision…the government didn’t force them to do it.”

“Let’s see what happens in the coming weeks, if the players will make some kind of decision in this regard,” Nadal added.

The ATP and WTA tennis tours have publicly criticized the All England Club’s decision, which was announced on April 20.

Wimbledon begins on June 27.