April 6, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Ukraine news here or read through the updates below.

Russian shelling left seven people hurt in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine on Thursday evening, the head of the regional military administration said on Telegram.

The strikes hit a series of communities along the Dnipro River near the city of Beryslav, according to the official, Oleksandr Prokudin.

Six people were wounded when a drone dropped explosives on the village of Zmiivka, Prokudin said, and another person was hurt in the nearby settlement of Kozatske.

Medical workers provided emergency treatment and will eventually transfer the injured civilians to a hospital in the larger city of Kherson, according to the regional leader.

Beijing's "top priority" is to push for a ceasefire and end the war in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping told European Union Commission Chief Ursula Von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron during their meeting Thursday, according to the Chinese readout.

Xi emphasized his view that the war in Ukraine is not a conflict between China and Europe.

"China urges all parties to remain calm and reason, and work together to create conditions for peace talks ... We oppose attempts that would add fuel to fire and complicate the situation," the readout said, adding that China seeks to play an active role in promoting peace talks and dialogues. 

Xi also said China and Europe should uphold mutual respect, increase political trust, enhance dialogue and cooperation, and shore up stability of China-EU relations.

Some context: Beijing has claimed neutrality on the war in Ukraine, but has not condemned Russia’s invasion and instead bolstered its economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow over the past year.

Beijing has sought to cast itself as a peacemaker in recent months, releasing a vaguely worded position paper on the “political solution” to the conflict in Ukraine. It was met with skepticism by the United States and its allies.

Here are the latest headlines:

• Intense battles in eastern Ukraine: The "most intense battles" are raging for Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka in eastern Ukraine, with Ukrainian troops focused on the battered city of Bakhmut to try to exhaust the Russians, the Ukrainian military said Thursday. Ukrainian forces repelled more than 20 Russian attacks over the last 24 hours, the military said in an evening update. 

• No concessions on Crimea, Ukrainian officials say: Senior Ukrainian officials insisted that Kyiv will make zero territorial concessions in its fight against Russia, following remarks from a deputy in the Ukrainian president’s office about the future of Crimea. In comments first reported Wednesday by the Financial Times, Andriy Sybiha said if a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian forces back to the administrative border with Crimea, “we are ready to open (a) diplomatic page to discuss this issue."
• Russian court will hear US reporter's arrest appeal on April 18, state media says: A Moscow court on April 18 will hear an appeal filed by lawyers of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich against his arrest, Russian state media said citing the court. Gershkovich is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center at the notorious Lefortovo prison until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges.
• Russian prosecutors seek maximum 25-year prison term for Kremlin critic: Prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to sentence Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison for criminal offenses that include treason, spreading "fakes" about the Russian army, and facilitating activities of an undesirable organization, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Thursday. 
• Teen placed in orphanage after drawing anti-war picture now out of state custody, official says: 13-year-old Masha Moskalyova, who was taken from her home and placed in an orphanage after she and her father expressed anti-war sentiments, has left state custody, a top Russian official said. She was removed from the orphanage by her estranged mother, according to Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Russian prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to sentence Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison for criminal offenses that include treason, spreading "fakes" about the Russian army, and facilitating activities of an undesirable organization, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Thursday. 

"Today there was a debate ... the prosecutor asked for 25 years in prison," Kara-Murza’s lawyer, Maria Eismont, told RIA Novosti. 

A 25-year jail term is the maximum possible sentence for the charges, Eismont said, according to RIA Novosti. 

Kara-Murza, a prominent human rights advocate and Kremlin critic, has been jailed in Moscow for nearly a year after speaking out against the war in Ukraine. He has been critical of President Vladimir Putin and has survived two poisonings. 

In March 2022, Kara-Murza spoke before the Arizona House of Representatives against the war, and in an interview with CNN in April 2022, he called Putin's government "a regime of murderers." He was arrested shortly thereafter for "failing to obey the orders of law enforcement," according to his wife.

Thursday's hearing was held in the Moscow City Court behind closed doors, as the case was dubbed "top secret," according to RIA Novosti. 

The charge of high treason in Russia was broadened in 2012 to include consultations or any other assistance to a foreign state or international or foreign organizations. It is being used against Kara-Murza over his condemnation of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In March, the United States imposed sanctions on a number of Russian individuals connected to Kara-Murza's arbitrary detention and called for his "immediate and unconditional release."

CNN's Jennifer Hansler and Josh Pennington contributed to this report.

Senior Ukrainian officials insisted Thursday that Kyiv will make zero territorial concessions in its fight against Russia, following remarks from a deputy in the Ukrainian president’s office about the future of Crimea.

What the presidential official said: In comments first reported Wednesday by the Financial Times, top adviser Andriy Sybiha said if a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian forces back to the administrative border with Crimea, “we are ready to open (a) diplomatic page to discuss this issue."

“It doesn’t mean that we exclude the way of liberation (of Crimea) by our army," Sybiha added.

Why it's notable: The suggestion that Crimea might ever be up for negotiation has been essentially taboo for Ukrainian officials since the early days of the war.

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014, in a move denounced by Ukraine and many Western allies as violating international law. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to take back the territory as the country fights off Russia's full-scale invasion, launched eight years after seizing the peninsula.

The two countries have not held talks on ending the fighting in a year.

Ukrainian leaders restate their position: Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential office, appeared to restate Ukraine’s uncompromising stance on Crimea Thursday.

Yermak said “the return of all Ukrainian territories” was key.

Another senior official in the president’s office, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in a tweet that the basis for "real negotiations" with the Kremlin is "the complete withdrawal of Russian armed groups beyond the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine in 1991. Including Crimea."

View the full tweet below:

CNN's Rob Picheta contributed to this report.

The "most intense battles" are raging for Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka in eastern Ukraine, with Ukrainian troops focused on the battered city of Bakhmut to try to exhaust the Russians, the Ukrainian military said Thursday. 

Ukrainian forces repelled more than 20 Russian attacks over the last 24 hours, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in an evening update. Russian forces launched four missiles and seven air strikes, the General Staff said, firing "more than 10 times from multiple launch rocket systems at the positions of our troops and civilian infrastructure of settlements."  

"The enemy continues to focus its main efforts on conducting offensive actions at the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka directions," the General Staff said. "The most intense fighting is taking place for the towns of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka."

Russian forces continue their offensive to take full control of Bakhmut, the military said, and Ukrainian defense forces repelled about 10 enemy attacks in this area alone. More than 15 settlements in the combat area were targeted by Russian shelling, it added. 

"Bakhmut remains the main direction of enemy's attacks. Just over this day, there were 302 shelling with various calibers along the Bakhmut sector front line by the enemy. There were 22 combat clashes," Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said on national television Thursday. 

Cherevatyi said that the Russian force in Bakhmut, "replenished by Russian prisoners, is now very shattered and has to be reinforced by paratroopers, motorized rifle units of the occupying army, which in turn largely consist of freshly mobilized personnel."  

"Our defenders of Bakhmut are now doing the main thing: They are exhausting the occupier's capabilities, knocking out their morale, so that when our reserves, who are now training and mastering new equipment abroad and in Ukraine, are ready, they will drive this evil out of our land forever," Cherevatyi said. 

Tensions are unlikely to escalate so far that Russia would use the nuclear weapons it plans to station in Belarus, the top official on the Belarusian Security Council said Thursday, according to state news agency BelTa.

“The number of warheads doesn't matter. What matters is how they will be used and whether they will be used correctly," said Alexander Volfovich, who serves as the Security Council's secretary.
"As for whether they will have to be used or not ... I don't think things will go so far that they will need to be used," he added. 

Volfovich was speaking in Moscow, where Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and other officials traveled this week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Warheads and other tactical or strategic nuclear munitions are primarily designed as a deterrent, designed to ensure the security of both Russia and Belarus,” Volfovich said, according to BelTa.

Reporters asked Volfovich to clarify where Russia will station the warheads, following a Russian ambassador's remark that they would be deployed to Belarus' western border.

“The entire Belarus is located near the western border. It is the western outpost of the Union State of Belarus and Russia. We don't have to deploy them near the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia," he said.

The Belarusian official said the country has "plenty of space for deployment," saying dozens of Soviet-era sites it once used to station nuclear weapons have been "preserved."

Some background: Belarus is one of Russia’s few allies in its war on Ukraine. Its military isn’t directly involved in the fighting, but Belarus helped the Kremlin's troops launch its invasion by entering from their territory.

Last month, Putin announced he plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on his ally's territory.

Belarus has had no nuclear weapons on its territory since the early 1990s. Shortly after gaining independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it agreed to transfer all Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction stationed there to Russia.

Global reaction: Ukraine, NATO and the European Union's top diplomat have condemned Moscow's plan. The US has downplayed the move, saying there are no indications Russia will use nuclear weapons.

A Russian 13-year-old Masha Moskalyova, who was taken from her home and placed in an orphanage after she and her father expressed anti-war sentiments, has left state custody, a top Russian official stated on Telegram.

She was removed from the orphanage by her estranged mother, Olga Sitchikhina, according to Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly kidnapping Ukrainian children and placing them with Russian families.

Moskalyova had been placed in a juvenile shelter center after her father, Alexey Moskalyov, who was raising Masha alone, was charged with “discrediting the Russian military” and put under house arrest. He was sentenced to two years in prison last Tuesday.

Moskalyov, who pleaded not guilty, was detained in Belarus after failing to turn up at his hearing in the city of Yefremov, his lawyer told CNN Wednesday. As of Thursday, his location is still unknown, his lawyer Vladimir Bilienko told CNN: "We petitioned the court to make a request to the Federal Penitentiary Service, [to find out] where Alexey is."

Some background: In April 2022, Masha drew a picture of Russian missiles being fired at a Ukrainian family and wrote “No to war” and “Glory to Ukraine” during her art class, according to Russian independent news outlet, Mediazona. Her school subsequently called the police.

Lvova-Belova claimed on Telegram that at first, Masha did not want to leave the orphanage to return to her estranged mother, and her opinion is required by law to be taken into account. “Now her [Masha’s] position has changed — she told me this herself on the phone,” Lvova-Belova claimed. Sitchikhina is currently not limited in parental rights, she added.

Lvova-Belova released photos on her Telegram page, which she says show Masha reuniting with her estranged mother. Bilienko, Her father's lawyer, dismissed those photos as propaganda from the Children’s Rights Commissioner's office, and claimed, "this has been orchestrated by the authorities."

Bilienko previously expressed concerns about the child being handed over to her mother, whom he claims did not show interest in Masha's life until very recently. “These sweet-looking pictures are designed to convince everyone that maternal instincts have woken up in the girl's mother," Bilienko told CNN.

Sitchikhina was quoted in the local government-owned newspaper, Tulskiye Izvestiya, saying that Masha will now live with her. She added that in September, she will resume going to school.

Officials in the city of Yefremov's Commission on Juveniles previously said that Sitchikhina had not been living with her daughter for more than seven years, noting, "Parent-child relations had been cut, connection with the mother lost, legal guardian takes no interest in the fate of her daughter, deviates from upbringing her," according to an official court statement from the commission, shared by lawyer Bilienko, who said that the officials have made a "180-degree U-turn" on their position, and that he believes "this was an initiative of higher authorities."

Previous reporting from CNN's Mick Krever

Beijing's "top priority" is to push for ceasefire and end the war in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping told European Union Commission Chief Ursula Von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron during their meeting Thursday, according to the Chinese readout.

Xi emphasized his view that the war in Ukraine is not a conflict between China and Europe.

"China urges all parties to remain calm and reason, and work together to create conditions for peace talks ... We oppose attempts that would add fuel to fire and complicate the situation," the readout said, adding that China seeks to play an active role in promoting peace talks and dialogues. 

"China ... supports Europe in putting forward ideas and proposals for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis based on its own fundamental and long-term interests, and promote the establishment of a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework," the readout stated.

Xi also said China and Europe should uphold mutual respect, increase political trust, enhance dialogue and cooperation, and shore up stability of China-EU relations.

Some context: Beijing has claimed neutrality on the war in Ukraine, but has not condemned Russia’s invasion and instead bolstered its economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow over the past year.

Beijing has sought to cast itself as a peacemaker in recent months, releasing a vaguely worded position paper on the “political solution” to the conflict in Ukraine. It was met with skepticism by the United States and its allies.

What the EU leader said: In her opening remarks, Von der Leyen told Xi she doesn’t see breaking ties with China as a viable or desirable strategy for the EU, but "equally I could see a number of risks that Europe should address."

"In the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, we want peace to be restored, and for this we need Russia to end its invasion and withdraw its troops from Ukraine," the European leader said. She added that "territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamentals of the UN Charter that we both fully support."

Macron said in his opening remarks that a peace solution – one that earns Ukraine's approval and respects its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity – is feasible. 

CNN's Simone McCarthy and Rob Picheta contributed to this report.