April 15, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukrainian officials on Friday reported Russian strikes across the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions in eastern Ukraine, amid warnings of a major Russian offensive in the coming days.

The situation in the region was "getting more tense," Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said in a statement on television. "The shelling, airstrikes have increased. Since yesterday in the north of the Donetsk region on the border with Kharkiv region, there have been attempts of breakthrough."

But the attacks were repelled, he added.

CNN was not immediately able to verify the battlefield situation in that region.

Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv region military administration, reported shelling of residential areas of Kharkiv. He said at least 34 people were injured, including three children, and seven people were killed, including a 7-month-old baby. 

Shelling in the city of Severodonetsk damaged the water supply system and destroyed two food warehouses on Friday, said Serhii Haidai, head of Luhansk regional military administration.

"The Russians are cynically hitting infrastructure," Haidai said, adding that Russian fire hit the towns of Rubizhne and Kreminna as well as Severodonetsk.

In a separate statement, Haidai said volunteers bringing humanitarian aid the local population came under fire in the town of Lysychansk, killing one man and injuring his wife. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a request to US President Joe Biden in one of their recent phone conversations to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Zelensky's ask didn't come with the same level of urgency with which he's requested Western leaders provide additional arms and financial assistance, the person said, but he did make it as part of an effort to scale up international condemnation of Russia.

Biden did not offer a firm commitment to Zelensky's request, which was first reported by the Washington Post.

US officials have previously declined to rule out adding Russia to the list of state sponsors of terror, which right now includes North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran.

“I don’t have any assessment of that at this point in time. Obviously, we’re continuing to look at the actions on the ground and the actions of leaders,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at the White House last month.

Adding Russia would be a dramatic move that would escalate economic sanctions and have secondary effects on countries still doing business with Moscow.

Five residents were killed and 15 wounded Friday by cluster munitions scattered on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the city’s governor, Vitaliy Kim, alleged on Telegram.

One of those killed had picked up an unexploded shell, he said. 

“Repeating one more time [...] Do not touch strange objects. It can be fatal," he warned. 

CNN cannot independently verify the governor’s claims, however the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has previously said it had received credible allegations that Russian armed forces have used cluster munitions in populated areas in Ukraine.

The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also confirmed Russia's use of cluster munitions throughout the conflict.

“Cluster munitions pose an immediate threat to civilians during conflict by randomly scattering submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. They continue to pose a threat post-conflict by leaving remnants, including submunitions that fail to explode upon impact becoming de facto landmines," according to HRW.

Remember: In 2008, over 100 countries in the United Nations signed on to ban cluster munitions, according to the UN website. Ukraine and Russia did not sign the agreement.

More than 900 bodies of civilians have been discovered since the Russian army withdrew from the area, the head of the Kyiv regional police said during a briefing on Friday. 

Andrii Niebytov said the bodies were examined and transferred to forensic medical institutions for detailed examination. 

Niebytov also said that the bodies of some people in the village of Shevchenko ​had been identified, adding that "they were ordinary locals, unfortunately also tortured, and we see that they were shot." 

Niebytov said some of the people that were shot had white armbands on them to try to protect themselves from Russian forces.

"During the occupation of our cities, the occupiers forced citizens to wear white armbands as if this person had already been checked and was therefore not treated so meticulously. Therefore, in order to save their lives, our citizens wore these bandages themselves to protect themselves from gunshots," he said.  

He said that wearing white armbands did not always work, "even if they hung white rags on the fences of their apartments," adding that there were also children who were living in those apartments.

As Friday winds down in Ukraine, these are the latest developments in Russia's invasion:

Sunken warship: A senior US defense official said two Ukrainian Neptune missiles hit the Moskva — Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea — earlier this week.

Ukraine claimed it had hit the Russian guided-missile cruiser with anti-ship missiles, while the Russian military acknowledged only that the ship had sunk after a fire on board and the detonation of ammunition.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Ukraine suggested that Russian missile attacks in the south since Thursday night were in retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva.

Zelensky speaks to CNN: In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that "all of the countries of the world" should be prepared for the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use tactical nuclear weapons in his war on Ukraine.

Military aid on its way: The first flight of the $800 million in new aid for Ukraine from the United States is expected to arrive in the region in the next 24 hours, according to a senior defense official. Officials previously said the most urgent requirements such as howitzers and related ammunition as well as radars will be among the first items to be shipped.

Russia warns US: Meanwhile, Russia this week formally protested the United States’ ongoing shipment of weapons to Ukraine, sending a diplomatic note to the State Department warning of “unpredictable consequences” should the support continue, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the document.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that “nothing will dissuade” President Joe Biden's administration from continuing to support Ukraine.

Two Ukrainian Neptune missiles hit the Moskva — Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea — earlier this week, a senior defense official said Friday.

A more detailed assessment from an American official said that the strike and subsequent sinking of the ship was the result of a Ukrainian missile.

CNN reported yesterday the US believed with “medium confidence” that Ukraine’s version of events regarding a missile strike on the warship — which Moscow has disputed — was accurate, according to a source familiar with the intelligence.

The crew of the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, which sank Thursday in the Black Sea, was delivered to the port of Sevastopol, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing an unnamed source. 

TASS provided no additional details about the number of crew members rescued from the ship. 

The Moskva was the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claimed it had hit the Russian guided-missile cruiser with anti-ship missiles, while the Russian military acknowledged only that the ship had sunk after a fire on board and the detonation of ammunition.

The Russian government has provided no details on casualties.

The European Union condemned Russia's "baseless decision" to expel 18 EU diplomats from the country, EU spokesperson Peter Stano said in a statement Friday. 

Stano called Russia's decision "a pure retaliatory step" that "will further deepen its international isolation."

"The European Union continues to strongly call on Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine and to return to respect of international rules and to a cooperative approach in its international relations," he said. 

When asked about the impact of the diplomatic cable from Russia warning the United States not to continue arming Ukraine, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that “nothing will dissuade” President Joe Biden's administration from continuing to support Ukraine.

Price said he is “not in a position to confirm any private diplomatic correspondence.”

But he added: “If the allegation from the Kremlin is that the US and our partners around the world are providing billions of dollars worth of security assistance to our Ukrainian partners, precisely what our Ukrainian partners have requested, and that our Ukrainian partners are using that very security assistance to extraordinary effects to repel this Russian aggression, well, then we're guilty as charged.”

CNN reported earlier Friday that the first flight from the US of the $800 million in new aid for Ukraine – which Biden announced this week — is expected to arrive in the region in the next 24 hours, according to a senior defense official. 

The Kremlin “shouldn’t be surprised” by US support for Ukraine, given the commitments the Biden administration made to supporting Ukraine even before Russia’s invasion began, Price added.