Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

(Reuters) – Ukraine’s army was holding out against a Russian assault in the city of Sievierodonetsk, its general staff said on Wednesday, while Russian troops were bringing more resources to the Donbas in a battle for control of the region.

FIGHTING

* Ukrainian forces may have to pull back to stronger positions in Sievierodonetsk but will not give up the city, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said.

* Soldiers are “successfully holding back the assault in the city of Sievierodonetsk” and were holding off attacks in Toshkivka and Ustynivka, the Ukraine general staff said.

* “The absolutely heroic defence of Donbas is ongoing,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video statement on Tuesday. The situation in Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk and Popasna remains the most difficult, he said.

* Zelenskiy’s office said two people were killed and two wounded in Luhansk region in the past 24 hours, five civilians were wounded in Donetsk region, and four were killed and 11 wounded in Kharkiv region. It said the number of casualties in Kherson region was unclear.

* Zelenskiy said Ukraine would launch next week a “Book of Executioners” to detail war crimes.

* Russia denies targeting civilians and has rejected allegations of war crimes.

* Over 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered in the city of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reported, citing a Russian law enforcement source.

* Russia has returned the bodies of 210 Ukrainian fighters, most of whom who died defending Mariupol at a vast steel works, Ukraine’s military said.

DIPLOMACY

* Turkey hosted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov for talks aimed at restarting the stalled Ukraine peace process and finding a way to reopen Ukrainian ports for shipments of grain.

* Following the talks, Turkey said a proposed U.N. plan to reopen the Ukrainian ports was reasonable, but more negotiations were necessary.

* Lavrov said Ukraine would have to remove mines from its ports to allow them to reopen.

* Lavrov said a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Zelenskiy could happen only after peace talks resume.

ECONOMY

* Russian shelling destroyed the warehouses of one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural commodity terminals in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv at the weekend, the region head said.

* Ukraine could export a maximum of only two million tonnes of grain a month if Russia refuses to lift its blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports, said Ukraine’s first deputy minister for Agrarian Policy and Food.

* The World Bank board has approved $1.49 billion of additional financing for Ukraine to help pay government and social workers’ wages.

* Under heavy pressure from Western sanctions and airspace bans, Russian state airline Aeroflot said it planned to raise up to 185.2 billion roubles ($3 billion) in an emergency share sale.

NUCLEAR

* Radiation detectors in the Exclusion Zone around Ukraine’s defunct Chornobyl nuclear power plant are online for the first time since Russia seized the area on Feb. 24, and radiation levels are normal, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said.

(Compiled by Himani Sarkar and Peter Graff)