May 5, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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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Russians steal vast amounts of Ukrainian grain and equipment, threatening this year's harvest

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone on Thursday and resolved a row over a would-be visit to Kyiv that was turned down in April, Steinmeier's office said. 

Steinmeier had offered to visit Kyiv in April with the heads of state of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to send a strong signal of common European solidarity with Ukraine, but his trip was not wanted by Kyiv, he told reporters on April 12. “I was ready for it. But apparently […] that was not what was wanted in Kyiv,” he told reporters while visiting Warsaw.

Kyiv's decision in April came amid sustained criticism over Steinmeier's close relations with Russia in his previous role as foreign minister, as well as criticism from Kyiv that Germany was hesitant to provide much-needed military support to Ukraine. 

''Both presidents described the talks as 'very important and very good,'" a statement posted on the German presidential office website read Thursday, adding that ''irritations of the past were cleared up. Both presidents agreed to remain in close contact.''

Following the talks with the German president, Zelensky said Thursday on his official Twitter account that he ''had a good, constructive, important conversation" with Steinmeier. Zelensky thanked him "for strong support for Ukraine," adding he expects the support "to be intensified.'' 

Zelensky said the "German leadership is important to counter Russian aggression'' and said he informed Steinmeier about the ongoing ''situation on the frontline'' and the ''critical situation in Mariupol."

See Zelensky's tweet:

In video shared widely around the world, a Ukrainian nurse who lost both her legs in a blast had her first wedding dance with her husband in a ceremony in the hospital.

About a month ago, Oksana Balandina stepped on a land mine and needed to have her legs amputated.

"I felt like I was flying in the air. I felt a terrible noise in my head. I fell to the ground," she told CNN's Scott McLean. "When I looked down, they were gone."

At that moment, "I didn't want to live anymore," she said.

The newlyweds have been a couple since they were teenagers, and the 23-year-olds have two children together. Marriage had always been in their plans someday, but they decided to move forward with a quicker timeline by getting married in a civil ceremony and a small impromptu ceremony at a hospital in Lviv.

Their children are staying with their grandparents while she recovers. They understand their mother was in pain, and Viktor said they explained she'll have prosthetic legs in the future.

The last time the kids visited, "they were already fighting over who will be the first to push their mother in her wheelchair," Viktor said.

Balandina will be going to Germany to be fitted for prosthetics, and she hopes to be walking down the aisle at a formal church wedding ceremony soon.

"You don't need to give up," she said. "...You have to fight for your life."

See Ukrainian newlyweds share first dance from a hospital room:

Germany marked the start of construction work on Thursday for its first floating terminals for liquified natural gas (LNG) 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 Kremlin’s ongoing war in Ukraine. 

Germany is attempting to speed up the construction of the terminal in order to import LNG from various countries, including the US. 

Germany has been under pressure from Ukraine and other nations in Europe to make progress in weaning itself off Russian energy supplies since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. 

Habeck last month called for unprecedented measures to reduce Germany's reliance on Russian gas and counter what some German politicians call the Kremlin's “energy blackmail.”

Habeck said becoming independent of Russian energy supplies is paramount for Germany, even if that meant pushing for alternative solutions previously considered ''unrealistic.'' Habeck added that Europe's largest economy has reduced the share of Russian energy imports from 35% to 12% for oil, from 50% to 8% for coal and from 55% to 35% for natural gas. 

For weeks, volunteers and staff at an EcoPark near Kharkiv have been helping to evacuate the animals at the facility, with species from kangaroos to tigers and lemurs and lions loaded into the back of vans during sporadic incoming fire.

This week, volunteers were moving the African buffalos. As the animals were loaded onto transports Wednesday, the park came under artillery fire again.

Holding back tears, Oleksandr Feldman, the park's owner, said later in a Facebook post that a 15-year old volunteer had been killed in the strike. He had been helping his parents to feed and get the animals evacuated.

Feldman said the teenager was the sixth member of the EcoPark's team to have been killed.