Russia-Ukraine war: Russia committed war crimes in Kharkiv, Amnesty alleges; evacuation routes destroyed in Sievierodonetsk – live | Ukraine

Amnesty International has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv – many using banned cluster bombs – had killed hundreds of civilians.

The rights group said in a report on Ukraine’s second biggest city published on Monday:

The repeated bombardments of residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes.

This is true both for the strikes carried out using cluster (munitions) as well as those conducted using other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells.

The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population.”

Amnesty said it had uncovered proof in Kharkiv of the repeated use by Russian forces of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and scatterable land mines, all of which are banned under international conventions.

Cluster bombs release dozens of bomblets or grenades in mid-air, scattering them indiscriminately over hundreds of square meters (yards).

Scatterable land mines combine “the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines”, Amnesty said.

Unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of over 100m.

The report, entitled ‘Anyone Can Die At Any Time’, details how Russian forces began targeting civilian areas of Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on 24 February.

The “relentless” shelling continued for two months, wreaking “wholesale destruction” on the city of 1.5 million.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queuing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

“The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives.

“The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable.”

Kharkiv’s Military Administration told Amnesty 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the conflict began.

Russia and Ukraine are not parties to the international conventions banning cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines.

But, Amnesty stressed, “international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons that are indiscriminate by nature.

Launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, constitutes war crimes.”

Hello it’s Samantha Lock back with you on the Guardian’s live blog as we cover all the latest developments from Ukraine.

Ukrainian defenders are fighting fiercely for “every meter” of Sievierodonetsk – a key eastern city that has become the epicenter of the wider battle for control over Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.

Overnight, Russian forces destroyed a bridge to another city across the river, leaving stranded civilians with just one way out.

If you’re just waking up, or dropping in to find the latest information, here’s a summary of the main points you might have missed:

• Russian forces have taken most of Sievierodonetsk, where fierce street fighting continues after a fire broke out at the Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians are sheltering. “The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there – literally for every metre,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that Russia’s military was trying to deploy reserve forces to the Donbas region. Ukrainian troops reportedly remain in control of an industrial area.

• Russia’s defense ministry said its cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing US and European weapons in Ternopil in western Ukraine on Sunday. The strike destroyed a “large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defense systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries”, the ministry said, a claim disputed by Ukrainian officials who said no weapons were stored there . Ternopil’s regional governor said the attack destroyed a number of residential buildings and injured 22 people, including seven women and a 12-year-old.

• Russian forces destroyed a bridge connecting the embattled eastern city of Sievierodonetsk to its twin city of Lysychansk, cutting off a possible evacuation route for civiliansaccording to local officials. Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk province, said on Sunday that the Russian military had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi River that linked the two cities.

• Amnesty International has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv. Hundreds of civilians have been killed by indiscriminate Russian shelling using widely banned cluster munitions and inherently inaccurate rockets, the agency said in a new report published on Monday. “Russian forces launched a relentless campaign of indiscriminate bombardments against Kharkiv. They shelled residential neighborhoods almost daily, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians and causing wholesale destruction, often using widely banned cluster munitions.”

• Security concerns raised by Turkey in its opposition to Finland’s and Sweden’s Nato membership applications are legitimate, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said. “These are legitimate concerns. This is about terrorism, it’s about weapons exports,” Stoltenberg told a news conference in Finland on Sunday.

• The bodies of many Ukrainian fighters killed during the siege of the Azovstal steelworks in the southern city of Mariupol are still awaiting retrievalthe former commander of Ukraine’s Azov National Guard regiment said on Sunday.

• A former British soldier has died fighting Russian forces in Sievierodonetsk. The British Foreign Office confirmed Jordan Gatley was shot and killed in Ukraine. He left the British army in March “to continue his career as a soldier in other areas” and had been helping Ukrainian troops defend their country against Russia, his father, Dean, wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.

• Friends and family of Brahim Saadoun – the 21-year-old Moroccan sentenced to death alongside two Britons last week – have called for his freedomtelling the Guardian he was an active-duty marine and not a mercenary, as claimed by Russian media and pro-Russia officials in eastern Ukraine who announced the sentence.

• Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Sunday the possibility of new talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “Perhaps in the next week, we will talk about what steps we will take, by holding talks with both Mr Putin and Zelenskiy,” he said in regards to solutions for impeded exports as a result of the war.

• The global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the cold war, and the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments thinktank said. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

• Ukraine has established two routes through Poland and Romania to export grain and avert a global food crisisalthough bottlenecks have slowed the supply chain, Kyiv’s deputy foreign minister said on Sunday.

• Global trade ministers gathered to tackle food security threatened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at a World Trade Organization meeting on Sunday. Ministers are expected to agree on a joint declaration on strengthening food security in which they will “commit to take concrete steps to facilitate trade and improve the functioning and long-term resilience of global markets for food and agriculture”.
• European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called for the need to strengthen anti-corruption laws in Ukraine. After meeting with Zelenskiy, von der Leyen said: “There still needs to be reforms implemented, to fight corruption for example, or to modernize the administration, which will also help attract investors.”
• The British defense company QinetiQ will supply Ukraine with 10 Talon sapper robots for de-mining purposes, Ukrainian authorities announced on Sunday. The first deputy head of Ukraine’s patrol police, Oleksiy Biloshitsky, said: “Talon will be deployed to de-mine Ukraine. This is a sapper robot that not only locates ‘gifts’ but also neutralizes them. Before the war we had already had more than a dozen of them, now QinetiQ will deliver 10 more.”

• McDonald’s restaurants opened their doors in Moscow under new Russian ownership and a new nameVkusno & Tochka, which translates to “Tasty and that’s it”. The reopenings took place on Russia Day, a holiday celebrating national pride.