Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia pounds Bakhmut; US and EU welcome China’s call with Zelenskiy

Jack Teixeira, the US Air National Guardsman accused of leaking military secrets and keeping an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom, appears in court for a detention hearing today (see 06.29).

Reuters reports that federal prosecutors are expected to argue that Texeira, who was arrested on 13 April in Massachusetts and charged with violating the Espionage Act, should remain in custody as a national security risk.

The 21-year-old is alleged to have leaked classified documents, including some relating to troop movements in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, to gamers on the messaging app Discord.

He kept a gun locker two feet from his bed containing handguns, bolt-action rifles and a military-style rifle. FBI agents also found a gas mask, ammunition and what appeared to be a silencer in his desk drawer.

“The defendant undoubtedly poses a danger to the US at large based on his ability to cause exceptionally grave danger to the US national security,” a motion filed by the office of US Attorney Rachael Rollins said.

“There is also evidence to suggest that the Defendant may also pose a physical danger to the community.”

The remains of an “unidentified military object” found in a forest in northern Poland (see 08.03) could be part of a missile stuck in the ground, Polish broadcster RMF FM has said.

Reuters cites RFM as saying the object, found near the city of Bydgoszcz, was an air-to-surface missile measuring several metres, with its head missing. No sources were named.

Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in Ukraine after two people were killed last November by what Warsaw said was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.

The analyst Ulrich Speck has an interesting thread on what may lie behind Wednesday’s phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (see 05.30), their first since Russia invaded Ukraine.

For Xi, who said China would send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties seeking peace, “the war in Ukraine is first and foremost an opportunity to advance his geopolitical agenda”, Speck argues.

The Chinese leader aims to weaken Russia (though not too much), split Europe from the US by playing nice to the EU, and similarly weaken the US by isolating it from Europe, he says.

“Making peace in Ukraine or defending its sovereignty is nowhere on the list,” Speck concludes. “It’s debatable whether Chinese interests as defined by Xi are helped more by an ongoing and even escalating war in Ukraine or by a ceasefire.”

The Twitter thread begins here:

EU diplomats are still seeking to convince central and eastern European countries to extend Ukraine’s tariff-free access to the EU market for another year, reports Politico.

The EU dropped tariff barriers on Ukrainian grain following the Russian invasion last year and is now seeking to extend the policy, which expires on 5 June. But logistical bottlenecks have meant much of the grain has stayed in the EU, depressing prices and farm incomes in neighbouring countries.

The European Commission last week proposed €100m in compensation payments for farmers in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, after three of those countries banned the impact of grain and other food products. These countries will also be allowed to ban the sale of Ukrainian grain inside their borders, although food can continue to travel onwards to other EU states and countries around the world.

Officials hoped this emergency help for central and eastern Europe would ease the decision on extending Ukraine’s duty-free access for one year, but a deal is yet to be reached. Officials are still hopeful of finding a deal, with diplomats due to vote on the plans on Friday.

A jailed former presidential hopeful in Belarus, which has been hit with western sanctions for allowing Russian troops to launch their invasion of Ukraine from its territory, has been transferred to hospital from prison, AFP reports.

Viktor Babariko, 59, a high-profile candidate who wanted to challenge President Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 elections, is undergoing surgery in a hospital in Novopolotsk, authorities confirmed.

Babariko was jailed in 2021 on charges of bribery and tax evasion and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Belarus has jailed or forced into exile all the leading political figures who contested Lukashenko’s re-election.

A reminder that Alessio Mamo, one of several freelance photographers who have worked extensively with the Guardian in Ukraine since the start of the war, last night won the photojournalism category in Amnesty International’s media awards.

Alessio won for this remarkable piece, with Guardian reporters Lorenzo Tondo, Emma Graham-Harrison and Isobel Koshiw, documenting the scale of the violence that has been integral to Russia’s campaign.

A Russian missile strike hit apartment buildings in the Ukrainian town of Mykolaiv overnight, authorities have said (see 05.49), injuring 23 people.

Here are some agency pictures of the aftermath of the strike that have just come through.

The remains of an “unidentified aerial military object” have been found in northern Poland near the city of Bydgoszcz, Poland’s defence ministry and justice minister have said.

Reuters reported that it was not immediately clear what the object was, where it came from, or how long it had been there. The justice minister said it was found in a forest.

“The situation does not threaten the safety of residents. The location of the discovery is being investigated” by Polish officers and military police, the interior ministry said.

The Globsec thinktank has published a report – you can read it here – on the “complex, costly and almost impossibly challenging” task Ukraine will eventually face in demining its territory and clearing it of deadly ordnance and explosives.

About 30% of Ukraine’s territory (174,000 sq km) will require survey and clearance of vast amounts of ordnance, it says, making the country “the largest mined territory in the world, surpassing such former frontrunners as Afghanistan and Syria”.

Much of the area affected is of course difficult or impossible to assess since fighting is still ongoing: around 18% of Ukraine’s territory remains under occupation. Russian troops are also “infamously creative in leaving mine-traps”, the report says, planting “victim-activated devices on animals and dead bodies, as well as double and even triple booby-traps on roads, fields and forests”.

And it says the pace of demining work is cripplingly slow, with operations in areas controlled by Ukraine in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions between 2015 and 2021 succeeding in clearing only about 6% of potentially contaminated territory .

That represents about 64 sq km a year, with most of the work done by the special services of Ukraine’s defence and interior ministries supported by international NGOs such as the HALO Trust.

Reuters has taken a hard look at satellite imagery of Russia’s “vast network of fortifications, sweeping down from western Russia through eastern Ukraine and on to Crimea” and built in readiness for Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive.

The news agency says it has examined thousands of defensive positions, both inside Russia and along Ukrainian front lines, and concluded Russia is most heavily defended in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and the gateway to the Crimean Peninsula.

Military experts have told Reuters the extensive, layered defences, most built since Ukraine’s advance last November, could make things harder for Kyiv this time and that progress would hinge on Ukrainian forces’ ability to carry out complex, combined operations effectively.

Neil Melvin of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said:

It’s not the numbers for the Ukrainians. It’s can they do this kind of warfare, combined arms operations? The Russians have shown they can’t do it and they’ve gone back to their old Soviet method of attrition.

Analysts have said a Ukrainian counteroffensive could change the dynamics of the war, which has become a bloody battle of attrition, and believe the sheer length of the front could leave Russia’s defences severely exposed.

But they warn that Ukraine is unlikely to receive any more armoured weaponry from the west for some time, meaning Kyiv is under pressure to retake as much land as possible in case military support begins to wane. Melvin added:

We’ve cleaned out most of the stocks in the West. It’s going to take some years to rebuild. I think this is Ukraine’s big opportunity to press on.

Hello, this is Jon Henley taking over from Helen Sullivan. I’ll be bringing you the latest news from – and related to – Ukraine as it happens, for the rest of the European morning.

That’s it from me for now. My colleague Jon Henley will take you through the rest of the day’s news from Ukraine.

Zelenskiy has posted a video showing the damage caused by a Russian strike on Mykolaiv overnight – the number of wounded has now risen to 23, including a child, he says.

Zelenskiy wrote:

The country-invader never ceases to prove that the main goal of this war is terror and the destruction of Ukrainians and everything Ukrainian.

At night, Russia shelled Mykolaiv with four Kalibr missiles launched from the Black Sea. High-precision weapons were aimed at private houses, a historic building and a high-rise building.

At the moment, it is known about 1 killed and 23 wounded, including a child. Eternal memory to the deceased and speedy recovery to the wounded.

Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to keep behind bars a Massachusetts Air National guardsman accused of leaking highly classified military documents, arguing he may still have access to secret national defence information that he could expose, the Associated Press reports.

In court papers filed late Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers said releasing 21-year-old Jack Teixeira from jail while he awaits trial would be a grave threat to US national security. Investigators are still trying to determine whether he kept any physical or digital copies of classified information, including files that haven’t already surfaced publicly, they wrote.

“There simply is no condition or combination of conditions that can ensure the Defendant will not further disclose additional information still in his knowledge or possession,” prosecutors wrote. “The damage the Defendant has already caused to the US national security is immense. The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary.”

The documents Teixeira is accused of leaking provided a wide variety of highly classified information on allies and adversaries, with details including Ukraine’s air defences:

Brussels also welcomed the conversation Xi and Zelenskiy, thought to be their first call since Russia invaded Ukraine.

“It is an important, long overdue first step by China in exercising its responsibilities as a member of the UN security council,” said European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer.

“China’s leadership needs to use its influence to bring Russia to end its war of aggression, restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and respect its sovereignty, as a basis for a just peace.”

The White House has welcomed Wednesday’s phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but said it was too soon to tell whether it would lead to a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson, told reporters that the call was a “good thing,” but regarding whether it would lead to a meaningful move toward peace, “I don’t think we know that yet.”

The governor of the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv said Russian missiles had also hit an apartment building and a private house in the city of the same name.

One person was killed and 15 were injured, Vitaliy Kim wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The Guardian was not able to verify battlefield reports.

Russian forces pounded the city of Bakhmut, the months-old focal point of their attempts to capture the eastern Ukrainian industrial region of Donbas, and the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force said Ukrainian troops were pouring in ahead of an “inevitable” counter-offensive.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, in a report on Facebook, said fighting gripped Bakhmut and nearby areas. It said Russian forces had failed to advance on two villages to the north-west. At least a dozen localities came under Russian fire.

Separately, Serhiy Cherevatiy, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces, told national television on Wednesday that in the past 24 hours, Russian forces had attacked 324 times using artillery and multiple rocket launchers.

“The Russians are destroying buildings in Bakhmut to prevent our soldiers from using them as fortifications,” Cherevatiy said.

Cherevatiy on Tuesday said there had been a record number of attacks on a section of the front farther north – near the city of Kupiansk, in northeastern Ukraine.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest news as it happens.

Our top story this morning: Russian forces are pounding the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east.

Serhiy Cherevatiy, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces, told national television on Wednesday that in the past 24 hours, Russian forces had attacked Ukraine’s east and northeast 324 times using artillery and multiple rocket launchers.

“The Russians are destroying buildings in Bakhmut to prevent our soldiers from using them as fortifications,” Cherevatiy said.

Cherevatiy on Tuesday said there had been a record number of attacks on a section of the front farther north, near the city of Kupiansk, in northeastern Ukraine.

And both the US and European Union have welcomed news of a call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, with the EU calling the call, the first between the two leaders since the war began, “an important, long overdue first step by China in exercising its responsibilities as a member of the UN security council”.

• Here are the other key recent developments:

  China’s president, Xi Jinping, spoke to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Wednesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv had publicly sought such talks for months. Zelenskiy described the hour’s phone call as “long and meaningful”. Xi told Zelenskiy that China would send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties seeking peace, Chinese state media reported. The White House welcomed the phone call, but said it was too soon to tell whether it would lead to a peace deal.

• Russia’s envoy to the UN in Geneva said no real progress had been achieved in resolving issues raised by Moscow over the Black Sea grain deal, which is due to expire next month.

• British fighter jets helped in a joint Nato response to intercept three Russian planes, including two SU-27 fighter jets, over the Baltic Sea on Wednesday.

• The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia said Ukraine was preparing for an “inevitable” counter-offensive and was sending well-prepared units to the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, for many months the focal point of fighting.

• The Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny says he is being investigated on terrorism charges that could see him sentenced to 30 years in prison, Reuters has reported. The Kremlin critic is serving sentences totalling 11 and a half years on charges including fraud and contempt of court, which human rights groups say were made up to silence him.

• Italy has said it wants to play a major role in the reconstruction of Ukraine and urged EU bodies to back the rebuilding. Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, met the Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, on Wednesday.

• A Ukrainian reporter working as a fixer for Italy’s daily newspaper Repubblica was shot dead by snipers in Kherson, while his Italian colleague was wounded, the newspaper said. “Our correspondent Corrado Zunino and his fixer Bogdan Bitik were victims of an ambush by Russian snipers today on the outskirts of Kherson, in southern Ukraine.”

• Russia is resettling poor citizens from its remote regions in the occupied east of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister. Hanna Mailar said the inward migration to Ukraine was mainly being seen in Luhansk.

• In a press conference, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said there was “no use now in saying who is right” in the conflict. In a joint conference with the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, Lula said that “no one can doubt that Brazilians condemn Russia’s [invasion]. The mistake happened and the war started.”