April 19, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

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

The Ukrainian military says its units are standing firm in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut and throughout the Donetsk region. Russia launched a new round of strikes in eastern part of the country Wednesday and Ukraine reported shooting down multiple attack drones.

As the heavy fighting continues, Ukrainian officials have welcomed the arrival of more foreign weaponry, and report that Russian losses are several times higher than Ukrainian ones.

Catch up on the latest developments in the war:

• Ukraine downs attack drones: Ukraine says it shot down 10 of the 11 "Shahed" drones launched by Russian forces Wednesday night, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said. Officials announced Tuesday that Russian forces launched an overnight attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa using the Iranian-made drones.
• Air raid alerts reported across Ukraine: Several parts of the country received air raid alerts Wednesday, including the Kyiv city and the region, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, according to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.
• Ukraine holding its ground in Bakhmut: Amid heavy fighting in the Donetsk region, Russia is concentrating the bulk of its forces in Bakhmut and “wants to take full control of the city,” said Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces. Ukrainian forces are “holding back the enemy's offensive,” Syrskyi said.
• More hardware arrives: Ukraine continues to receive Western equipment for both offensive and defensive units, including French armored vehicles and US Patriot missile defense systems and another IRIS-T from Germany – a highly effective system for combatting cruise missiles. The shipments come as recently leaked US military documents indicated the Ukrainians were rapidly depleting or had exhausted some anti-air munitions.
• US announces new assistance: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the US is pledging an additional $325 million security assistance package to Ukraine. The package includes more ammunition and artillery rounds, as well as anti-armor systems meant to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
• Detained American reporter doing well: Jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is doing well but is only able to receive “censored” letters in Russian due to the prison rules, his lawyer said.
• About 80,000 incidents of potential war crimes: Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told US lawmakers that his office has registered tens of thousands of potential war crimes, and to date has convicted 31 Russians for war crimes in Ukrainian courts. The office also has “finished cases against 152 potential war criminals,” Kostin said.
• Ukrainian teen forcibly sent to Russia: A 16-year-old Ukrainian was forcibly sent to Russia "for vacation" and was placed with a family who attempted to indoctrinate him with pro-Russian propaganda, a representative for the teen told the US House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said there have been 16,000 forced deportations of Ukrainian children.
• Surveillance law about to expire: A law that allows the government to collect foreign communications without a warrant is set to sunset at the end of 2023. The law has helped the US gain "vitally important" intelligence about the war in Ukraine, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, adding that losing the law would hamper the department's efforts to hold Russia accountable.

Ukraine says it shot down 10 of the 11 “Shahed” drones launched by Russian forces on Wednesday night, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Telegram. 

“This night the enemy again attacked Ukraine with suicide drones from the southeast,” Air Force Command said. “The anti-aircraft missile units of the East Air Command destroyed 10 out of 11 Shahed-136/131.”

No casualties were reported by the Air Force Command. 

"Shahed" drones are manufactured in Iran and have been frequently deployed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Air Force announced Tuesday that Russian forces launched an overnight attack on the city of Odesa using the Iranian-made drones. "Shahed" drones were also brought down over Dnipro city, according to Andriy Yermak, the head of the president’s office.

The lawyer for jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich says he is doing well but is only able to receive letters in Russian due to the prison rules.

Tatiana Nozhkina, who was retained by the Wall Street Journal to represent Gershkovich, said all of his letters are “censored,” but he has sent and received letters from family and friends. 

Nozhkina told the Russian language channel Current Time TV that she was “constantly in touch with Evan’s mother, we support her as much as we can, we send her regards, as Evan is very worried about her state of health.”

She said she could not divulge the specifics of the criminal case as it has to do with state secrets, but reaffirmed that Gershkovich rejects the accusation.

Nozhkina said she and her colleague Maria Korchagina, who also represents Gershkovich, visited the journalist in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center with permission from investigators. The lawyers have the opportunity to visit Gershkovich in Lefortovo about once every three weeks, she said.

Gershkovich was in quarantine when he was first brought to Lefortovo but has since been placed in a cell with another inmate.

She added that Gershkovich reads and writes notes that he plans to turn into a novel or work. He also has a TV in his cell and is granted one hour of walking per day which he uses to exercise.

Nozhkina declined to comment on suggestions by some Russian officials that discussions about any prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich could only take place once a verdict was reached.

“How soon the verdict will take place will also depend more on the investigating authorities and, in the future, on the court,” she added.

The bright flashes near the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday night may have been caused by a NASA space satellite falling to Earth, according to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.

"Around 22:00 on April 19, a bright glow of an aerial object was observed in the sky in Kyiv. According to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of a NASA space satellite falling to Earth," the administration said.
“To avoid casualties from falling debris, an air alert was declared. The air defense system did not work," added the administration’s head, Serhiі Popko.

CNN is reaching out to NASA for comment. The agency previously reported a defunct satellite that observed solar flares would fall to earth late Wednesday, US Eastern Time.

The retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft, was launched in 2002 and was decommissioned in 2018.

Air raid alerts went into force Wednesday night across several parts of Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.

The administration said on Telegram that an “air target was detected in the sky" and that "air defense forces are ready.”

A series of flashes and an apparent explosion in the air some distance from the capital can be seen in social media video. Air raid alerts were triggered for Kyiv city and the region, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

The head of the President’s office, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram that Iranian-made Shahed drones had been brought down over Dnipro city.

The United States government has gained "vitally important" intelligence about the war in Ukraine from a surveillance law that allows the government to collect foreign communications without a warrant, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday.

The law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enables the US government to obtain intelligence by targeting non-Americans overseas who are using US-based communications services.

"When it comes to this conflict and what Russia is doing in Ukraine, it has proved vitally important," Monaco said to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Section 702 "has helped us uncover gruesome atrocities in Ukraine, including the murder of noncombatants, the forced relocation of children from Russian-occupied Ukraine to Russia, and the detention of refugees fleeing violence by Russian personnel."

Monaco's comments come amid an ongoing battle over whether to reauthorize the law, which is set to sunset at the end of 2023. The law has previously garnered bipartisan backing, although that support has frayed over the past several years over scrutiny for alleged misuse.

The searches are governed by a set of internal rules and procedures designed to protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties, but critics say loopholes allow the program to look through the emails and other communications of American citizens — as opposed to foreign adversaries — without proper justification. 

Reauthorization imperative: However, Monaco said losing Section 702 would hamper the department's efforts to hold Russia accountable because the information the department has uncovered from the law "has helped us as a country and as a national security community galvanize accountability efforts regarding Ukraine by allowing us to confidently and accurately speak with the international community about Russian atrocities."

Monaco also raised concerns that there are other areas where the Justice Department lacks the resources or the authority to take stronger action against Russia.

She emphasized that while the department has "active investigations" into crimes perpetrated in the war and those cases "are moving just as fast as we can possibly move them," the department is hoping to work with Congress to give federal prosecutors criminal jurisdiction over "crimes against humanity" and "expanding the department's authority to prosecute acts of torture committed against US nationals abroad."

"We cannot — and we will not — let war criminals escape accountability for the aggression and atrocities they have committed in Ukraine," she added.

Monaco also told the Judiciary Committee that the US government is "leaving money on the table" to support Ukraine that the Justice Department has seized from Russian oligarchs.

According to Monaco, the department has seized more than half a billion dollars in assets from Russian oligarchs and people who support the Russian government and have evaded US sanctions. But the department is only able to seize and transfer Russian assets that came from certain types of sanctions evasion, Monaco said.

That means "millions" of dollars can't be transferred to the Ukrainian government for humanitarian efforts like repairing damage from the war, she said.

"We are leaving money on the table if we don't expand our ability to use the forfeited access that we gain from enforcement of our export control violations," Monaco said, adding that the DOJ wants "Congress to give us that authority so we can make the oligarchs pay for rebuilding Ukraine."

The Ukrainian military says its units are standing firm in the eastern city of Bakhmut and elsewhere in the Donetsk region amid heavy fighting.

Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has welcomed the arrival of more foreign weaponry – amid growing speculation about when and where Ukraine might launch a counter-offensive.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces, said Russia “is concentrating the largest number of its forces in Bakhmut and wants to take full control of the city. However, the Defense Forces are holding back the enemy's offensive in dynamic battles, inflicting significant losses on them.”

Besides Bakhmut, fighting is heaviest along the Donetsk front in Lyman, Avdiivka and Mariinka, according to the Ukrainian military's General Staff.

In the Lyman sector, to the northeast of Bakhmut, the enemy “conducted unsuccessful offensives near the southern outskirts of Kreminna,” the Ukranian military said. And the Russians, it claimed, made no progress in the Avdiivka area, which President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Tuesday.

“In the Mariinka sector, our defenders repelled numerous enemy attacks in the areas of Mariinka and Pobieda,” the Ukrainian military said.

Further south in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson sectors, it reported Russian shelling of more than 30 settlements. But unlike in Donetsk, Russian forces in these areas are in defensive mode.

The Ukrainian military asserted that Russian occupation “authorities” continue to set up military hospitals behind the front lines – the latest being in the Luhansk village of Kabychivka.

More US, French and German hardware arrives

While Ukrainian units hold their ground, Ukraine continues to receive Western equipment for both offensive and defensive units, including French armored vehicles (AMX-10 RC) and US Patriot missile defense systems.

Defense Minister Reznikov said that “building a multi-level air and missile defense system as soon as possible is our priority. This is to protect peaceful cities, critical infrastructure, and our people in the rear and at the front. Patriot systems create a capability that did not exist before — to defeat ballistic targets.”

Recently leaked US military documents indicate the Ukrainians were rapidly depleting or had exhausted some categories of anti-air munitions.

Reznikov also welcomed another IRIS-T from Germany – a highly effective system for combatting cruise missiles. 

But, he said, “We need more platforms of various levels and ammunition for them. We need more man-portable air defense systems.”

Reznikov’s deputy — Oleksandr Pavliuk — later confirmed that “Patriot air defense systems from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany arrived to Ukraine.”

The United States is pledging an additional $325 million security assistance package to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday.

The package “includes more ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS and artillery rounds, as well as anti-armor systems, small arms, logistics support vehicles, and maintenance support essential to strengthening Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield," Blinken said in a statement.

The aid will help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, he said.

"Russia could end its war today. Until Russia does, the United States and our allies and partners will stand united with Ukraine for as long as it takes," the statement said.