May 11, 2022: Russia-Ukraine news

US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan visited the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow on Wednesday to deliver a message to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, a US State Department official said. 

The meeting was to discuss bilateral issues, the official said, without detailing what specific issues were discussed. The Russians did not summon Sullivan, this was a previously planned meeting, the official said. 

The official said that reports about the meeting lasting for about 20 minutes were roughly accurate, but noted that is a normal amount of time for meetings between US and Russian officials.

More context: Sullivan’s meeting comes just weeks after a prisoner swap between the US and Russia led to the release of a wrongfully detained American citizen, Trevor Reed. Sullivan was a key player in the Biden administration who worked on securing Reed’s release. 

After that release a different senior State Department official noted that the Biden administration could not share many details about the process behind the release because of the other wrongfully detained Americans in Russia right now, who they are still trying to get home. 

“We need to be cautious because this is not the end, by any means, of what we are involved with in discussing the status of wrongfully detained American citizens in Russia. We need to protect the way that this came about. I am not saying that the others will come about in same way, but I need to be careful about what we say publicly,” the senior State Department official told CNN last week. 

US Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the Russian use of hypersonic weapons in Ukraine was not having “really significant or game-changing effects” during a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing.

“Other than the speed of the weapon, in terms of its effect on a given target, we are not seeing really significant or game-changing effects to date with the delivery of the small number of hypersonics that the Russians have used,” Milley said.

A senior US defense official said on Tuesday that Russia had launched between 10 and 12 hypersonic missiles against Ukraine so far.

Milley confirmed this was the first time hypersonic weapons had ever been used in combat, and he said that the Defense Department has analyzed each hypersonic strike, but added he could only elaborate on the details in a classified session.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the same hearing that he concurred with Milley, and he did not think that Russian President Putin’s use of hypersonics would “cause him to be willing to elevate to use a nuclear weapon.”

Earlier in the hearing, Austin said it was US President Joe Biden’s decision to share intelligence with US allies and partners in the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“That created trust amongst our allies in a more meaningful way,” said Austin, “and that trust allowed us to create greater unity.”

Austin said that intelligence sharing was “a key element” in fostering that unity, which he hoped would continue.

As Wednesday winds down in Ukraine, these are the latest developments in Russia's war:

Since the last time CNN’s team was on the ground in southern Ukraine six weeks ago, nothing has changed, and yet, everything has.

The heavily contested areas are in a brutal stalemate with the give and take on Russian advances as they try to move towards Mykolaiv, a strategic port city.

Constant shelling has torn apart much of the area, trapping many who cannot flee while leaving many isolated — and alone.

The village of Shevchenkove was held by Russia in March but the Ukrainian military has taken it back.

On Sunday, CNN visited and witnessed what is left of it— buildings damaged on every road and empty homes. So much is abandoned, but the sounds of outgoing and incoming artillery fire continue.

More the 50% of this village is destroyed, the military escort told CNN.

The shelling starts getting closer, but two neighbors walking down a gravel road continue chatting, not a flinch in reaction to the sounds of the blasts.

The damage from shrapnel is visible outside the home. She showed CNN the area where she sleeps in their dark and damp candle-lit bunker. She and her husband have been lucky.

Driving into another village nearby, the damage looks the same. In Kotlyareve, few people walk the streets, several elderly are seen on bikes.

“In war I was born, and in war I will die,” Valentina said as she sat alone in her front yard under the shade of a tree.

Using a stick to help her walk, she showed CNN the damage to her home and the craters the shelling left behind.

For many, there is nowhere else to go. Some say they are too old to evacuate. For others, it’s their land they don’t want to give up.

“It would be best to lie down at night and not get up. Neither hear nor see. Pity all the people, pity the soldiers,” Valentina added, sometimes mumbling to herself.

But for mothers like Svitlana, it’s waiting for her son to return from the war in Mariupol that keeps her here.

“Our children are all at war. My son is a prisoner. If he comes back, and if I have gone, it’s like I’ve abandoned him. We wait, hope, worry, he is alive and we will live," she told CNN.

Ukraine has announced the first Russian soldier set to stand trial in the death of a 62-year-old man in Ukraine’s Sumy region, according to a statement published by the country's prosecutor general's office on Wednesday.

The prosecutor general's office said it has filed an indictment against Vadim Shishimarin, commander of the military unit 32010 of the 4th Tank Kantemirov Division of Moscow region.

The investigation alleges the 21-year-old Russian killed an unarmed 62-year-old resident who was riding a bicycle along the roadside in the village of Chupakhivka in Sumy region on Feb. 28.

According to the statement, the Russian forces drove into the village in a stolen car with punctured wheels. 

On the way, they saw a man returning home and talking on the phone, according to the statement. One of the Russians ordered a sergeant to kill a civilian so that he would not report them to the Ukrainian army. Shishimarin fired several shots through the open window of a car from a Kalashnikov rifle at the head of the resident, prosecutors allege.

"Shishimarin is currently in custody. Prosecutors and SBU investigators have gathered enough evidence of his involvement in violating the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder (Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). He faces between 10 and 15 years in prison or life in prison," Ukraine's Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said in a statement on Facebook. 

CNN has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said it was right to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin and that one needed “to deal with those that cause the problem or that can solve the problem” to find solutions.

Guterres met Putin in Moscow in late April before making his way to Ukraine to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky. His itinerary had received a lot of criticism.

The UN chief said the Putin meeting had produced “concrete results” and resulted in the evacuation of civilians trapped in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

“I think the lives that were rescued of civilians that were in the bunkers of Mariupol deserve that I meet anybody in any part of the world without having any doubt that that is the right thing to do,” Guterres said when asked by reporters whether his Moscow visit had been the right thing to do.

Guterres was at the news conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg Wednesday,

Nehammer, who in April became the first European Union leader to meet with Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, also defended his decision to travel to Moscow, saying, “there cannot be one talk too many, only one too few.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday the internal political situation in the country is stable and dismissed allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning to declare martial law.

When asked whether Putin is planning to introduce martial law in Russia, Peskov said, “No, this is not in the plans.” 

US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Tuesday that the current trend in Ukraine increased chances that Putin would turn to more drastic means, including “imposing martial law, reorienting industrial production, or potentially escalatory military actions to free up the resources needed to achieve his objectives as the conflict drags on.”

Pope Francis on Wednesday met the wives of two Ukrainian soldiers holed up inside Mariupol's besieged Azovstal steel plant.  

The two women, Yulia Fedosiuk and Kateryna Prokopenko, confirmed the meeting with the Pope at the Vatican to CNN.  

The two said their husbands are soldiers of the Azov regiment and are currently inside the steel plant defending it against Russian attacks.  

They said they had written to the Pope in recent days through the Ukrainian ambassador in Rome and were surprised when they received an invitation for the Pope's weekly general audience.  

She said that they also told the Pope about the desperate and unhealthy conditions inside the plant.    

Fedosiuk added that the Pope seemed very well-informed of the situation in Ukraine, and he said that he will pray for them.  

An estimated 4.8 million people in Ukraine have lost their jobs since the Russian invasion began in February, according to a new brief by the International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency.

The ILO report also pointed out that the Ukrainian government has made considerable efforts to keep the national social protection system operational by guaranteeing the payment of benefits, including to internally displaced persons, through the utilization of digital technologies.

Out of 4.8 million people who lost their jobs, a total of 1.2 million of them are refugees who fled to neighboring countries and 3.6 million of them are unemployed living in Ukraine, according to the ILO report. 

More than 5.23 million refugees who are mainly women, children, and people over the age of 60 have fled to neighboring countries since Feb. 24, the report said Wednesday.

The crisis in Ukraine may also create labor disruption in neighboring countries, mainly Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, the report added.

"If the hostilities continue, Ukrainian refugees would be forced to remain in exile longer, putting further pressure on the labor market and social protection systems in these neighboring states and increasing unemployment in many of them," it said.