May 5, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Here's everything we know about the battle for Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant and other developments in Ukraine.

Mariupol: Heavy fighting continues inside the Azovstal steel complex, according to a Ukrainian commander inside the ruins. He claimed the Russians had broken their pledge to allow civilians to leave through evacuation corridors Thursday.

Ukrainian forces "repelled" Russian troops at the plant when they entered, according to a Ukrainian presidential adviser, while the Kremlin dismissed reports that the Russian army had broken into the territory of the plant, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to avoid storming it was still in place.

Another joint United Nations and Red Cross evacuation convoy is attempting to get to the Azovstal plant in Mariupol by Friday morning. The UN said it's unclear how many people remain in the plant, while Ukrainian authorities put the number in the hundreds.

Grain stolen from farmers: Sources said Russian troops are stealing farm equipment and thousands of tons of grain from Ukrainian farmers, as well as targeting food storage sites with artillery. Ukraine's defense ministry said Thursday an estimated 400,000 tons of grain had been stolen to date.

Supplies from Russia and Ukraine together account for almost 30% of global wheat trade, with experts predicting the war could lead to a food crisis.

Lavrov's Hitler comments: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had apologized for comments that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made earlier this week about Adolf Hitler and Jews.

Putin’s office earlier issued its own readout of the call which made no mention of an apology or of Lavrov’s comments, which included the baseless claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestors.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Lavrov should publicly apologize to all Jews around the world for his statements.

War crimes testimony: Ukraine's Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova testified at the hearings of the Helsinki Commission on alleged war crimes of Russia in Ukraine. She claimed to the US governmental commission that the Russian army had committed more than 9,800 war crimes in 70 days of war.

New lines of energy: Germany marked the start of construction work on Thursday for its first floating terminals for liquified natural gas in Wilhelmshaven, a city and port located in Lower Saxony. The construction is part of the country’s efforts to become independent of Russian gas in the wake of the war. 

Meanwhile, Japan's prime minister said the country will be utilizing nuclear reactors and renewables to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.

The spokesperson of the United Nations secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, said it’s not clear how many civilians remain in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.

Speaking to reporters at a briefing at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday, Dujarric referred to the gathering of information out of the region as “extremely challenging.”

“It’s in the middle of an active war zone. parts of it have been destroyed; there are people living in tunnels,” Dujarric said. “It is very difficult for us to have an exact number. We are continuing working in partnership, of course hand-in-glove, with the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and dealing with the highest levels of both Ukraine and Russia to get more people out of the Mariupol region as well as the plant.”

Earlier, the United Nations Special Envoy for Ukraine Martin Griffiths said another convoy is hoping to reach the Azovstal plant Friday morning.

Those who have been evacuated from the plant require immediate support following the “trauma” they have experienced, the Dujarric added. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 344 people were evacuated from Mariupol and surrounding areas to Zaporizhzhia Wednesday.

Russia said it would open evacuation corridors from the Azovstal plant Thursday — but the Ukrainian commander inside the complex says Russians had broken their pledge to allow civilians to leave as the fierce combat continues.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the need for weaponry to prevent “civilian bombardment” during a conversation with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson Thursday. 

The Azovstal steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol where soldiers and civilians have been sheltering from Russian attack for weeks has been subjected to bombardment this week. Video from the interior ministry of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) administration was geo-located by CNN to the Azovstal steel plant with CNN analysis dating the damage to this week. 

During the call, Johnson also reiterated the UK's commitment to support Ukraine in efforts to gather evidence on war crimes, Downing Street added.

Finally, the two leaders discussed Johnson's address to the Ukrainian parliament earlier this week. Zelensky tweeted that he thanked the prime minister. Downing Street's readout said Zelensky told Johnson that the reaction had been “heartfelt, demonstrating the importance of the UK’s support for Ukraine."

CNN's Anastasia Graham Yooll and Katie Polglase contributed reporting to this post.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had apologized for comments that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made earlier this week about Hitler and Jews – comments which led to a furious war of words between Russia and Israel.

“The Prime Minister accepted President Putin's apology for Lavrov's remarks and thanked him for clarifying the President's attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” Bennett’s office said in an official statement.

Putin’s office earlier issued its own readout of the call which made no mention of an apology or of Lavrov’s comments, which included the baseless claim that Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestors. 

According to the Kremlin, Putin and Bennet also discussed the situation in Ukraine, including the evacuation of civilians from the territory of the Azovstal plant. Putin said that the Russian military was ready to ensure the safe exit of civilians from the Azovstal, according to the Kremlin. He stressed that Kyiv should order the “militants to lay down their arms.”

The readouts from Moscow and Jerusalem largely agreed on the other subjects that the two leaders talked about in a phone call marking Israel’s Independence Day. 

CNN has asked Putin’s spokesperson if the Russian president apologized to Bennett.

CNN's Katharina Krebs contributed reporting to this post.

Nataliya Luhovska, a Ukrainian woman who joined the Azov regiment after her own son was killed on the front lines, has died inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.  

CNN’s Isa Soares first reported on her story on Wednesday. In an interview, Nataliya’s mother, Paraskeviya, said she begged her daughter to leave Azovstal, but she rejected two offers to surrender. 

“She goes until the end. There is no point in crying and begging,” her mother said. “I want people like Putin to not exist on Earth … What can I say, poor are those mothers that brought up sons that are now killing innocent people.”

When CNN reached Nataliya via Telegram on Monday, she wrote “morale is high” and “wait for us to come back with the victory."

The news of her death was also confirmed by the Azov regiment and the town mayor. Her family said she died as a result of an airstrike. She was 51 years old. 

CNN first learned about the family’s story while filming in their hometown of Chernovohrad, about one hour north of Lviv. 

When asked about her rank within the regiment, Nataliya said she was a junior sergeant, and that she first had a role as a military psychologist but then had “additional new responsibilities” that she couldn’t disclose.  

According to the family, Nataliya’s son-in-law also died while fighting in Mariupol on April 21.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Ukraine Martin Griffiths said another evacuation convoy is hoping to get to the Azovstal plant in Mariupol by Friday morning.

Griffiths was speaking at the Ukraine Donors Conference in Warsaw. He said the UN was working with the International Red Cross to get the convoy to Mariupol, as it did in the operation to evacuate civilians in Azovstal during the weekend.

US officials said a $300 million yacht belonging to a Russian oligarch was seized by Fijian authorities on Thursday as part of their broad crackdown on individuals friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Amadea, a 348-foot luxury yacht owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian oligarch sanctioned by US authorities in 2018, was docked at the port in Lautoka, Fiji, and seized by local law enforcement at the request of the Justice Department.

US officials allege Kerimov, who made his fortune in gold, acquired the yacht after he was placed on the US sanctions list. They allege Kerimov violated US law by using the US banking system to conduct dollar-denominated transactions to cover expenses for the yacht, according to a FBI affidavit. The cost of maintaining the yacht runs $25 million to $30 million a year, the affidavit said. 

The yacht sailed through the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, to Mexico and then arrived in Fiji on April 12, authorities said. They believe it was en route to Russia to avoid US seizure when it docked in Fiji, the affidavit said.  

Fiji’s High Court earlier this week ruled the US could seize the yacht, according to news reports. Fijian officials executed the seizure warrant on Thursday.

Kerimov was detained in France in 2018 after bringing as much as 20 million euros into the country in suitcases without reporting the money to tax authorities. He was suspected of laundering the money through villas. The initial charges were dropped but a new tax investigation by the French authorities opened in 2019.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Thursday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov should publicly apologize to all Jews around the world about his comments about Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

Last Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made comments on Italian television, repeating Russia’s claim that its invasion of Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country. When the interviewer pointed out that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, Lavrov said “I may be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. It means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”

Israeli officials condemned Lavrov's comments and Russia's ambassador to Israel was summoned to Israel's foreign ministry for talks. Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the assertions "lies" and Lapid described them as "unforgivable and outrageous," warning that Israel had "tried to maintain good relations with Russia, but there is a line, and this time the line has been crossed."

"Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust," Lapid added. "The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of anti-Semitism."

Russian forces are stealing farm equipment and thousands of tons of grain from Ukrainian farmers in areas they have occupied, as well as targeting food storage sites with artillery, multiple sources have told CNN.

The phenomenon has accelerated in recent weeks as Russian units have tightened their grip on parts of the rich agricultural regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, the sources said. Sowing operations in many areas have since been disrupted or abandoned.

The actions of the Russian forces may threaten the harvest this year in one of the world's most important grain-producing countries. The volumes involved are said to be huge.

Oleg Nivievskyi, an agrarian specialist at the Kyiv School of Economics, told CNN that on the eve of the invasion, six million tons of wheat and 15 million tons of corn were ready for export from Ukraine, much of it held in the south of the country.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Thursday an estimated 400,000 tons of grain had been stolen to date.

Farmers and others in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have provided CNN with details of multiple thefts.

In late April, Russian soldiers removed 1,500 tons of grain from storage units known as elevators in the Kherson village of Mala Lepetykha, using trucks with Crimean number plates. The next day, those same trucks — 35 in all — returned and emptied large storage units known as grain silos at nearby Novorajsk across the river Dnieper.

In Melitopol, an occupied city in Zaporizhzhia region, Mayor Ivan Fedorov shared a video with CNN that showed trucks — several bearing the "Z" sign of the Russian military — carrying grain towards Crimea. The main elevator in the city had been emptied.

Fedorov told CNN that the Russians "went around all the villages, every yard and looked for agricultural machinery, for grain, which they subsequently looted."

"Chechen soldiers, fighting for Russia, act like criminals in the 1990s. First they offer to buy grain for a ridiculously low price. But if you don't agree, they take everything from you for nothing.

"The scale of looting is simply overwhelming," he said.

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