April 24, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

By Joe Ruiz, Maureen Chowdhury, Mike Hayes, Simone McCarthy, Amy Woodyatt, Amir Vera, Helen Regan and Andrew Raine, CNN

Updated 12:02 a.m. ET, April 25, 2022
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8:18 p.m. ET, April 24, 2022

Kremenchuk hit by nine missiles, Ukrainian regional military governor says

From CNN's Mariya Knight

Dmytro Lunin, head of the Poltava Regional Military Administration, said Sunday nine Russian missiles struck the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk. 

"Already nine Russian missiles have hit Kremenchuk's infrastructure this evening," Lunin said. "The enemy has no regard, even on such a holy day."

Most Ukrainians observed Easter celebrations on Sunday. Lunin gave no further details about the consequences of the strikes.

4:36 p.m. ET, April 24, 2022

CNN's "Navalny" premieres tonight. So where is he now?

From CNN's Stephanie Halasz and George Ramsay

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, accused of fraud and contempt of court, is seen on a screen via a video link during a court hearing at the IK-2 corrective penal colony in the town of Pokrov in Vladimir Region, Russia March 22.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, accused of fraud and contempt of court, is seen on a screen via a video link during a court hearing at the IK-2 corrective penal colony in the town of Pokrov in Vladimir Region, Russia March 22. (Reuters)

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security jail in March, according to Russian state-owned news agency Tass. He was convicted on fraud charges by Moscow's Lefortovo court over allegations he stole from his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Navalny, 45, was previously serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a detention center east of the Russian capital after being arrested in February 2021 for violating probation terms, a verdict he said was politically motivated.

After the sentence was announced, Navalny wrote on Twitter: "9 years. Well, as the characters of my favorite TV series 'The Wire' used to say: 'You only do two days. That's the day you go in and the day you come out.'"

He added: "I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, considering the print extremist."

The Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported that Navalny will appeal the guilty verdict, according to his lawyer.

Click here to read the full story.

Tune in tonight at 9 p.m. ET to watch the CNN Film “Navalny” on CNN.

2:19 p.m. ET, April 24, 2022

Go behind-the-scenes with the director of CNN's "Navalny"

From CNN Audio

The new CNN Films documentary “Navalny” chronicles the aftermath of top Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s poisoning, allegedly carried out by Russian agents (a charge the Kremlin denies).

CNN Audio talked with the film’s director, Daniel Roher, about how he was able to obtain intimate access to Navalny and his family, why it’s important to him for Russians to see the movie and what Putin’s response to Navalny can tell us about his invasion of Ukraine. 

Here are some highlights from the Tug of War podcast:

Daniel Roher on what made Navalny a captivating subject: 

"Navalny’s greatest asset, I think, is his willingness to talk about anything. There was nothing that was off-limits when we interviewed him. There was nothing that I couldn't ask him about, that he wouldn't discuss. And I think that openness really comes through in the film.” 

Daniel Roher on Putin’s response to his documentary: 

“Putin was personally furious about the film and ordered it to be taken down from Russian torrent sites.”  

Daniel Roher on his hopes for Navalny: 

"I think if you spend enough time working with Navalny, you learn to have hope and optimism for the future, no matter how bleak things can be. And what I hope is that Alexey Navalny is able to one day get out of prison and that he is able to compete in a competitive, free and fair democratic election for the Russian presidency.” 

Click here to listen to the Tug of War episode.

Tune in tonight at 9 p.m. ET to watch the CNN Film “Navalny” on CNN.

2:17 p.m. ET, April 24, 2022

Ukrainian official: Evacuation corridor for Mariupol not opened Sunday

From CNN's Yulia Kesaieva in Lviv

A boy stands near damage and debris in Mariupol, Ukraine on April 24.
A boy stands near damage and debris in Mariupol, Ukraine on April 24. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that a evacuation corridor for Mariupol was not opened Sunday because the Russian side did not guarantee a ceasefire. 

"We could not open humanitarian corridor for Mariupol, as Russia did not confirm the guarantee of a ceasefire regime," Vereshchuk said in remarks on national television. "We will try again tomorrow."

Vereshchuk expressed hope that the United Nations could broker a humanitarian evacuation, saying, "I think the UN should have been and should be the most effective now [in providing evacuation corridors]. António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is going to visit Moscow sometime around April 26. We are not asking anymore, we are demanding the UN ensure a ceasefire regime and providing a humanitarian corridor from Azovstal [a steel factory that is a last stronghold for Ukrainian forces] — it's important to emphasize this, and from Mariupol as well — because there are currently 1,000 women and children in Azovstal now. Plus 500 or more wounded, 50 of whom require urgent medical care. And this is what Mr. Guterres should say in Moscow if he considers talking about peace."

Guterres is expected to travel to Moscow Tuesday. The UN secretary-general is also expected to travel next week to Ukraine, where he is expected to meet with President Zelensky on Thursday, according to a UN spokesperson.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Sunday said that "immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access" to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol is "urgently needed."

12:33 p.m. ET, April 24, 2022

How to watch the CNN film "Navalny"

From CNN's Foren Clark and Janelle Davis

What is it about?

The CNN film “Navalny” follows Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was poisoned in August 2020 with a nerve agent during a flight to Moscow. The film paints an intimate portrait of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics and takes viewers inside the harrowing search for answers following his poisoning. 

When and where can I watch it?

Sunday, April 24, at 9 p.m. ET on CNN

How long is the film?

98 minutes 

Who is Navalny?

Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, Kremlin critic and activist. He has been a prominent organizer of street protests and has exposed corruption in the Russian government on social media.

He created the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a nonprofit organization that investigates corruption among high-ranking Russian government officials.

In March, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security jail, according to the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, after being convicted on fraud charges over allegations that he stole from his Anti-Corruption Foundation. The Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported that Navalny will appeal the guilty verdict, according to his lawyer.

Who made the film?

Daniel Roher directed the documentary.

“I want audiences to be reminded that bad guys win if people stop caring and stop paying attention, whether it be authoritarians rising in Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, China — or the US,” said Roher. “Alexey wants to remind us that we cannot be inactive. I want people to focus on that when they think about Alexey.”           

11:18 a.m. ET, April 24, 2022

It's 6 p.m. on Sunday in Kyiv. Here's what you need to know

An Orthodox priest sprinkles holy water during the Orthodox Easter service next to The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Church damaged by shelling in the village of Peremoha, Ukraine on April 24.
An Orthodox priest sprinkles holy water during the Orthodox Easter service next to The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Church damaged by shelling in the village of Peremoha, Ukraine on April 24. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will meet top US officials in Kyiv on Sunday, as heavy fighting continues in the east and south of the country over Ukraine’s Easter weekend. 

Meanwhile, many Ukrainians are attempting to celebrate one of their most important holidays of the year, Orthodox Easter, two months after the country was thrust into a devastating war

Zelensky said he was "expecting specific things and specific weapons" from world leaders who come to the country, after announcing that he would meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday.

The White House has declined to comment or confirm the potential trip, which would be the first visit to Ukraine by top US officials since the war broke out.

Here are more of the latest headlines on the Russia-Ukraine war:

  • Russian forces continuing attack on Mariupol, Ukrainian commander says in Easter message: In an Easter message, Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of Ukraine's Azov Regiment, said Sunday that Russian forces were continuing to bombard the city of Mariupol, underscoring the need for evacuation of civilians and encircled Ukrainian forces. "Christ is Risen, dear Ukraine," he said. "Today is a big day but even so, the enemy continues to drop aerial bombs, ships fire artillery, cannons fire, enemy tanks continue to hit, infantry tries to assault."
  • White House official says to expect more announcements on US assistance to Ukraine: White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Sunday to expect more announcements on US assistance to Ukraine "in the week ahead," highlighting the billions of dollars in security aid the US has delivered so far. "We've been announcing deliverables, which is a fancy word for things that we are providing to the Ukrainians, to enable their fight just about every day and if not every day, every week, and we will have more to say about that in the week ahead," Finer said on NBC's "Meet the Press," stressing that US assistance has had a "significant" impact. 
  • Republican congresswoman urges US to restart diplomatic work in Ukraine: Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Illinois, who is the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, on Sunday urged the US to restart diplomatic work in Ukraine, saying the move would send “a strong message for Ukrainian people.”
  • More than 370,000 Ukrainian refugees are in Germany: Germany's federal police has recorded 376,124 refugees from Ukraine to date, according to the country's Interior Ministry. These are predominantly children, women and elderly people, they said in a Sunday tweet.
  • International Committee for the Red Cross says they urgently need "humanitarian access" to Mariupol: The International Committee of the Red Cross said that "immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access" to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol is "urgently needed." In a press release Sunday, the ICRC said it is “deeply alarmed by the situation in Mariupol, where the population is in dire need of assistance.” Russian forces continued to attack the city on Sunday, Ukrainian Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar said in an Easter message.
  • Melitopol mayor says Putin wants to "kill all of Ukrainian nation": Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov, who was detained by Russian forces for five days in March, told CNN Sunday that his city is in a "very difficult and dangerous situation." Russian forces occupied Melitopol, in southeastern Ukraine, within days of the invasion beginning, but the city has seen sporadic protests since. A new mayor was installed in the city, which is under Russian military control, after Fedorov was kidnapped. Fedorov was later released as part of a prisoner exchange. He told CNN's Boris Sanchez on "New Day" that Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal was to "kill all of Ukrainian nation," starting by occupying its cities.
  • Russia is "trying to depopulate the east of Ukraine," says Zelensky administration adviser: An adviser to President Zelensky's administration said Sunday that Russia was "trying to depopulate the east of Ukraine," amid heavy fighting there. "I think the message they're sending is very clear," Tymofiy Mylovanov told CNN's Isa Soares in Lviv. "If you surrender, like Crimea in 2014, nothing is going to happen to you. If you resist, like Donbas, like the east of Ukraine, you'll be destroyed. (It) doesn’t matter if you're military or civilians. So the message Russia is sending is, 'surrender or be erased.'"
  • OSCE says several staff have been detained in eastern Ukraine: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is working to "facilitate the release" of several of its Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) members who have been "deprived of their liberty in Donetsk and Luhansk," it said Sunday. "The OSCE is extremely concerned that a number of SMM national mission members have been deprived of their liberty in Donetsk and Luhansk," it said in a statement posted to Twitter. "The OSCE is using all available channels to facilitate the release of its staff." The SMM is an unarmed civilian division of the OSCE, which is tasked with observing and reporting on conflict zones.

11:07 a.m. ET, April 24, 2022

The new journalism uncovering poisoning and war crimes

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf

If you want to understand Vladimir Putin's stranglehold on power in Russia, watch the new film "Navalny," which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.

Russia's government has gone to great lengths to sideline the opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was sentenced to prison after surviving a poisoning attempt.

The film documents the improbable detective work that identified the team of Russian spies who hunted and then tried to kill Navalny, as well as his recovery in Germany and return to Russia, where he was immediately arrested.

I talked to one of the investigators who unmasked the spies, Christo Grozev — who works with the investigative group Bellingcat — about his methods, his new mission documenting war crimes in Ukraine and his views about how the ethics of journalism must change to fight government corruption.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below:

Catching Russian poisoners with digital breadcrumbs

WHAT MATTERS: In the documentary, you put all these pieces together -- from telephone numbers to car registrations and so forth — to figure out who poisoned Navalny. How have you and Bellingcat developed this process of investigation? And what made you apply it to Russia in particular?

GROZEV: We started in a different way, by just piecing together social postings in the context of the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

The first investigation that Bellingcat did by just piecing together available pieces of data from the internet was the downing of (Malaysia Airlines) MH17 in July 2014.

At that time, a lot of public data was available on Russian soldiers, Russian spies, and so on and so forth -- because they still hadn't caught up with the times, so they kept a lot of digital traces, social media, posting selfies in front of weapons that shoot down airliners.

That's where we kind of perfected the art of reconstructing a crime based on digital breadcrumbs. ... But as time went by, sort of the bad actors that we were investigating, they started hiding their stuff better. ... By 2016, it was no longer possible to find soldiers leaving status selfies on the internet because a new law had been passed in Russia, for example, banning the use of mobile phones by secret services and by soldiers.

So we had to develop a new way to get data on government crime. We found our way into this gray market of data in Russia, which is comprised of many, many gigabytes of leaked databases, car registration databases, passport databases.

Most of these are available for free, completely freely downloadable from torrent sites or from forums and the internet.

And for some of them, they're more current. You actually can buy the data through a broker, so we decided that in cases when we have a strong enough hypothesis that a government has committed the crime, we should probably drop our ethical boundaries from using such data -- as long as it is verifiable, as long as it is not coming from one source only but corroborated by at least two or three other sources of data.

That's how we develop it. And the first big use case for this approach was the ... poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 (in the United Kingdom), when we used this combination of open source and data bought from the gray market in Russia to piece together who exactly the two poisoners were. And that worked tremendously.

Click here to read the full story.

11:12 a.m. ET, April 24, 2022

Republican congresswoman urges US to restart diplomatic work in Ukraine

From CNN's Devan Cole

Rep. Victoria Spartz of Illinois speaks with CNN on Sunday April 24.
Rep. Victoria Spartz of Illinois speaks with CNN on Sunday April 24. (CNN)

Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Illinois, who is the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, on Sunday urged the US to restart diplomatic work in Ukraine, saying the move would send “a strong message for Ukrainian people.”

“A lot of countries are actually bringing (diplomatic work) back to Kyiv. The least we can do -- actually bring it maybe to Lviv,” Spartz told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “In any job – whether it’s a political job or diplomatic job – you do take some risks. You need to be smart. But also, that's a part of your job, to do your service. And if you’re not on the ground, it's very difficult to do your job.”

“It's important but it also sends a strong message for Ukrainian people,” she added. “It’s important for them to see that support and it makes them stronger and they’re going to win (the war).”

The US and other countries pulled their diplomats and evacuated embassies and consulates from Kyiv in the days leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, shifting them to the western city of Lviv. Those officials were soon moved to Poland, commuting into Lviv, and the State Department suspended all diplomatic services in Lviv just before Russia's invasion began.

Spartz also called on President Joe Biden to visit Ukraine, saying: “I think we can do it. We’re strong people, we’re a strong country. We definitely can arrange for our people to come here and visit Ukraine.”

The comment comes the same day US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin plan to visit Kyiv.

9:55 a.m. ET, April 24, 2022

White House official says to expect more announcements on US assistance to Ukraine 

From CNN's Sam Fossum

White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Sunday to expect more announcements on US assistance to Ukraine "in the week ahead," highlighting the billions of dollars in security aid the US has delivered so far.   

"We've been announcing deliverables, which is a fancy word for things that we are providing to the Ukrainians, to enable their fight just about every day and if not every day, every week, and we will have more to say about that in the week ahead," Finer said on NBC's "Meet the Press," stressing that US assistance has had a "significant" impact. 

When asked if the US was ready to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, Finer said that the administration continues to look into "additional steps" when it comes to punishing the Kremlin for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. 

"I think we've been clear that we're looking at that as we're looking at a whole range of other additional steps that we could take to hold Russia accountable for the crimes that it's perpetrating on the ground in Ukraine," Finer said. 

CNN reported on Monday that the US State Department was looking into adding Russia to the list of countries labelled as state sponsors of terrorism — which include North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Syria — a move that would further cement the Kremlin's status as a pariah state.   

Finer also pointed out Russia's "shifting" war aims since its invasion of Ukraine started two months ago, noting that it is "quite clear" that the Kremlin's forces have "had to adjust" in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance to focus more on the South and East of the country. 

Asked about whether a further push by the Russians into southern Ukraine would change US strategy, Finer said that the US has remained "nimble."

"We've shown ability to be nimble to adjust our assistance and our approach as the Russian war aims have evolved. And we will continue to do that over time depending on how things evolve on the battlefield," Finer said. 

On the talks between the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Finer said that Ukrainians should be the "touchstone" in any discussions. 

Asked to confirm whether the US would be sending a high-level delegation to Ukraine, as Zelensky said would be happening, Finer reiterated that the US would not announce such a visit in advance. 

"We've also been quite clear that if we were going to take some sort of high-level visit to Ukraine, we would not be announcing that in advance," Finer said.