May 4, 2022: Russia-Ukraine news

The European Union is considering ways to further boost Moldova’s military, EU Council President Charles Michel said Wednesday, following recent attacks in the country’s pro-Moscow breakaway region of Transnistria.

Speaking alongside Moldova’s president Maia Sandu in Chisinau, Michel said “some decisions” have already been taken to enhance support in the fields of logistics and cyber defense.

The pair discussed what further military support could be provided, he said, but would not go into detail “to avoid any escalation.”

The Defense Ministry in Ukraine described the unexplained explosions in the Transnistria region as a "planned provocation" by the Russian secret services.

The ministry's defense intelligence department said in a statement on its Telegram channel that three days before the incident, the leaders of the breakaway region "were already preparing for it and took care to install a secure and comfortable bunker" at the Ministry of State Security, which was damaged in the explosions. 

Russia's supposed "peacekeeping" presence in Transnistria has mirrored Moscow's pretext for invasions in Georgia and Ukraine, sparking fears the disputed territory is now included in Vladimir Putin's war strategy.

Some background: Transnistria is a breakaway republic in eastern Moldova that borders Ukraine. It has a population of nearly 500,000 and is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.

Russia has maintained a military presence in Transnistria since the early 1990s.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the "remnants of the Ukrainian military group" located in the Azovstal steel plant are "reliably blocked along the entire perimeter of the plant."

His comments, made on a conference call in Moscow, were reported by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The Azovstal steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol is under "constant fire," Ukrainian officials say as they race to evacuate the remaining civilians holed up in bunkers within the sprawling complex.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 150 people had been evacuated from the complex and are now safe in the city of Zaporizhzhia Tuesday.

In Wednesday's conference call, Shoigu added that the Russian army, together with units of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, is expanding control over the territories of both regions, according to RIA Novosti.

He also repeated Moscow's warning that it will consider NATO equipment arriving in Ukraine as a legitimate target, according to RIA Novosti.

His latest warning came after Russian cruise missiles hit several locations Tuesday in western and central Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials said were an attempt to destroy the country's transport infrastructure.

Shoigu warned that NATO vehicles with weapons and ammunition for Ukrainian troops will be destroyed in the country.

"The United States and its NATO allies continue to pump weapons to Ukraine," Shoigu said.

Pope Francis warned the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, not to become “Putin’s altar boy,” he said in an interview this week. 

In his strongest words to date against the pro-war Patriarch, Francis also slammed Kirill for endorsing Russia’s stated reasons for invading Ukraine.

“I spoke to him for 40 minutes via Zoom,” the Pope told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published Tuesday. “The first 20 minutes he read to me, with a card in hand, all the justifications for war.”

“I listened and told him: I don’t understand anything about this," said the Pope. "Brother, we are not clerics of state, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus.”

“The Patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin’s altar boy,” the Pope said.

Francis said the conference call with Kirill took place on March 16, and that both he and the Patriarch had agreed to postpone a planned meeting on June 14 in Jerusalem.

“It would be our second face-to-face meeting, nothing to do with the war,” the Pope said. “But now, he too agrees: let’s stop, it could be an ambiguous signal.”

In March Kirill Patriarch Kirill said that the conflict was an extension of a fundamental culture clash between the wider Russian world and Western liberal values, exemplified by expressions of gay pride.

Experts say that Kirill's comments offer important insights into Putin's larger spiritual vision of a return to a Russian Empire, in which the Orthodox religion plays a pivotal role.

But the hardline stance of the Russian patriarch is costing him followers.

In March the Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam announced it was severing ties with the leader, joining a growing number of priests and churches who are abandoning Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

One person is dead after Ukrainian shelling caused a fire at an oil depot in the separatist-held Donetsk region, the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Territorial Defense Headquarters claimed Wednesday.

“According to preliminary data, as a result of the shelling of the oil depot in Makiivka, one person was killed and two were injured,” the post from the DPR Defense HQ said, adding that “four large capacity tanks” containing 5,000 cubic meters of oil had been ignited. 

The Ukrainian Armed forces are yet to respond to the accusation. 

CNN has verified social media videos of the fire which show large plumes of black smoke coming from the area on Wednesday, as flames engulf the depot. 

Some context:

Russian-backed leaders in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have repeatedly accused Ukraine of launching attacks on fuel depots and military installations, claims that Ukrainian officials say are intended to stoke “anti-Ukrainian sentiment.”

Russian forces are aiming to take control of all of the Donestk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

They have been trying to push south from the Kharkiv region in an effort to surround Ukrainian units defending the Donetsk region, but with limited success, according to the Ukrainian military.

Despite heavy artillery fire on a number of fronts, Russian forces have made few advances, according to their Ukrainian counterparts.

Irish politicians have condemned a report from Russian-state media that simulated the devastation caused by a nuclear attack off the coast of Ireland.

The report from Russia's Channel One, presented by Kremlin ally Dmitry Kiselyov, shows a video simulation of an underwater missile which it said would cause a “gigantic tsunami wave up to 500 meters high” to sweep across Ireland and the UK. 

Neale Richmond, a politician from the ruling Fine Gael party in Ireland, said the propaganda report was another reason to expel Russia’s ambassador to Ireland, Yury Filatov.

“With Russian state media broadcasting blatant threats against Ireland supported by a continuing campaign of disinformation, it’s clear we need to expel Russia’s Ambassador from Ireland,” he wrote on Twitter.

“He is just another patsy in their propaganda machine as they wage war in #Ukraine.” 

Irish MEP Billy Kelleher replied to a video of the report saying that such "wild language is simply unacceptable to us" while urging the Irish government to convey its disgust at the blatant nuclear threat.

Russia has been angered by countries supporting Ukraine since the start of the invasion. The UK has provided resources to the Ukrainian military and imposed numerous sanctions on Moscow in recent months.

Hundreds of schools across Ukraine are reported to have been hit by heavy artillery, airstrikes and other explosive weapons in populated areas, "underscoring the dramatic impact the conflict is having on children’s lives and futures," the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement Tuesday.

“The start of the academic year in Ukraine was one of hope and promise for children following Covid-19 disruptions,” said Murat Sahin, UNICEF Representative to Ukraine. “Instead, hundreds of children have been killed, and the school year ends amid the closure of classrooms due to war and the decimation of educational facilities.”

Among the schools that have been damaged or destroyed by shelling is "School 36 – the only ‘Safe School’ in Mariupol," UNICEF said, adding two schools have been hit by attacks in the past week alone. 

The "Safe Schools" program was established with Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science in response to attacks on kindergartens and schools in the Donbas region, "which has seen a simmering armed conflict since 2014," UNICEF said.

UNICEF points out that for children affected by crisis, school provides not only a safe space and "a semblance of normality in the most difficult of times," but also access to information on the risks of deadly explosive ordnance.

Educational facilities also connect them and their parents to health and psychosocial services, added the agency.

“Ensuring access to education can be the difference between a sense of hope or despair for millions of children,” Sahin said. “This is crucial for their future and that of all Ukraine.”

Children and schools should be protected in line with international humanitarian law, UNICEF said, calling on the warring sides to take measures to avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and the use of educational facilities for military purposes.

“Despite the horror of war, impressive work has gone into making sure children can keep learning,” said Sahin. “Ultimately, the fighting needs to stop so that classrooms can be rebuilt, and schools can be safe and fun places to learn again.”

The war in Ukraine is having "a devastating impact" on the country’s 7.5 million children, UNICEF has said, as "children continue to be killed, wounded and deeply traumatized by the violence all around them."

The agency has also warned that children fleeing the violence in Ukraine are at heightened risk of human trafficking and exploitation. 

More than 5.4 million refugees had fled Ukraine as of May 1, around half of them children, according to the latest UNICEF data. 

Millions more people have been internally displaced, UNICEF said, adding "such large-scale displacements could have lasting consequences for generations to come."

Electricity in Lviv has been “completely restored” following missile strikes last night, the city’s deputy mayor Serhiy Kiral told CNN on Wednesday.

Kiral said three cruise missiles hit three power stations in Lviv on Tuesday, leaving them "badly damaged.”

Two other missiles that reached western Ukraine and the Lviv region “were shot down” by the air defense system, Kiral added. Another one hit the Transcarpathian region.

In total, there were “18 or 19” cruise missile strikes “shot from the Caspian Sea from the Russian strategic bombers” in Ukraine’s direction, he said, “probably Tu-295 or Tu-160” aircraft.

“There were also disruptions on our pumping stations, which are supplying the city with water,” Kiral said.

“This is interesting because, in fact, water [supply] was not stopped… and this is the result of some of the contingency plans for the resilience of the city that we had before the war,” he added.

“We bought the diesel generators, and those diesel generators yesterday helped to continue to supply the water not only to the citizens, but also to the firefighters, which were trying to put out the fire,” said Kiral.

The Ukrainian military said that the Russian missile attacks on Tuesday night were designed to destroy transport infrastructure.

Cruise missiles hit at least half a dozen targets across central and western Ukraine in what appears to have been an attempt to hamper the transit of military equipment and supplies.

The Ukrainian railway system reported that more than 40 trains were delayed following the attacks.

Kiral said he does not believe the attacks on infrastructure would affect supplies from the west.

"But it may affect the exports of the Ukrainian commodities, which is very critical in these times of the year because we need to take out more than 5 million tons of grain in order to be ready for the new harvest," he said.

Fresh evacuations from the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol got underway on Wednesday, according to a local official, who did not provide a figure for the number of people involved.

A convoy of buses departed Mariupol for Zaporizhzhia in efforts led by the United Nations and the Red Cross, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk Region Military Administration, announced on Telegram. The convoy will stop at Tokmak, Vasylivka and Lunacharske to pick up more civilians on the way, he said.

Private vehicles will be able to join the convoy from Tomak, Kyrylenko added. 

He did not specify if the evacuees had been sheltering in the Azovstal steel plant, where Mariupol’s last defenders are holding out against the Russian bombardment. 

Some background: More than 127 people arrived in Zaporizhzhia from the steel plant Tuesday, and an unknown number of civilians remain, according to the UN. CNN's team in Zaporizhzhia saw the arrival of five buses with evacuees and witnessed emotional scenes as people emerged from the buses and were greeted by volunteers.

The European Union is proposing a ban on Russian oil, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

She said on Twitter:

Von der Leyen is speaking at the European Parliament during a discussion on a sixth package of sanctions against Russia.