Three ships carrying almost 60,000 tonnes of grain between them have left Ukrainian Black Sea ports and are heading for Britain, Ireland and Turkey respectively. Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, said he plans to “ensure that the ports have the capacity to handle more than 100 ships per month.”
Russia says it is ready to discuss a prisoner swap with the US after Wednesday’s nine-year prison sentence for American basketball player Brittney Griner. However, the Kremlin says these negotiations should not be held publicly.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has criticized an Amnesty International report, which suggested that Ukrainian forces’ tactics put civilians at risk by using some schools and hospitals as bases. Zelenskiy said the report “cannot be tolerated” as “there can be no conditions under which any Russian attack on Ukraine is justified”.
The UK Ministry of Defense has expressed concerns about the “safety and security” of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control. It says Russia has “used artillery units based in these areas to attack Ukrainian territory on the western bank of the Dnipro River.”
Vladimir Putin and Tayyip Erdogan are due to meet in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Talks between the presidents of Russia and Turkey are expected to focus on Syria, Ukraine and Russia’s construction of a nuclear power plant in southern Turkey.
Canada is sending up to 225 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to the United Kingdom to restart training of the Ukrainian military, Canada’s defense minister has announced. Canada has trained 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel since 2015, but halted some aspects of the training in February.
A US official has accused Moscow of preparing to plant false evidence to make it appear that the recent mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners in an attack on a Russian-controlled prison was carried out by Ukraine. Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for strikes at the Kremlin-controlled Olenivka prison in eastern Ukraine last week.
Ukraine has ceded some territory in the Donbass region to Russian forces, and Kyiv has acknowledged Russia’s “partial success” in recent days. Zelenskiy has described the pressure his forces are under in the east of the country as “hell”. They have retaken two villages near the city of Sloviansk, according to Ukrainian General Oleksiy Hromov, but have been forced to abandon a coal mine seen as a key defensive position as forces are pushed outside Avdiivka.
Russia may launch an offensive in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region to try to regain momentum from Kyiv and has been visibly building up forces, Hromov said on Thursday. Much of the region is already occupied by Russia after it captured areas at the start of its invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been mounting a counter-offensive to regain territory.