According to British intelligence, Russia is using 50-year-old T-62 tanks for aggressive war in southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine is still under massive pressure from the Russian army. You can find all the news about the attack on Ukraine in the ticker.
1:34 p.m .: According to Ukrainian sources, “around ten people” were killed in Russian attacks on a military base in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. “A National Guard military training ground was hit by Iskander missiles this morning,” National Guard regional head Gennady Korban told Dnipro TV on Friday. Another 30 to 35 people were injured.
The governor of the region, Valentin Resnichenko, had previously stated that the attacks had caused “severe damage” and rescue workers were looking for victims under the rubble. Dnipro is a large industrial city in central Ukraine. It had so far been spared major war damage and served as a hub for internally displaced persons from the east of the country.
12:37 p.m .: Russia’s military has confirmed attacks on the eastern Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Donetsk. Rockets were fired at a Ukrainian brigade in the fiercely contested town of Bakhmut in Donetsk, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday. Military objects in the Kharkiv region were also fired at with rockets. The Ukrainian side had already lamented several deaths from Russian shelling in Kharkiv on Thursday.
Russia has been at war with Ukraine since February 24. The heaviest fighting is currently raging in the east of the country. The Luhansk region is largely occupied by the Russian and pro-Russian military, and the cities of Sievjerodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are still controlled by Ukrainians, are threatened with encirclement.
11:03 a.m .: Pro-Russian separatists have announced their capture of the strategically important city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine. With the support of the Russian armed forces, they had “gained complete control” over Lyman, the general staff of the separatists in the Donetsk region announced on Friday in the messenger service Telegram. In total, the separatists “liberated 220 towns”. Lyman is an important railway junction northeast of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The capture of Lyman would allow a Russian advance on the two cities still under Ukrainian control. Ukraine recaptured Sloviansk from the separatists in 2014. Kramatorsk is the capital of the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk region.
Russia and Ukraine initially did not comment on the reported intake. An independent verification was not possible. The separatists had already reported on Tuesday that they controlled half of the city.
10.45 a.m .: According to a local politician, dozens of other bodies of residents have been found in the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, which has now been taken by Russian troops. Rescue workers discovered a total of around 70 lifeless bodies on a former factory site, Mariupol city council deputy Petro Andryushchenko wrote on Friday in the Telegram news service. People were buried under the rubble when Russian occupiers shelled the building, he wrote. This information could not initially be verified.
9.10 a.m .: According to official information, around 1,500 people have been killed in the particularly hard-fought eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk since the beginning of the war. Among them are both soldiers and civilians, said the head of the local military administration, Olexandr Strjuk, on Friday. Many people have also fled. Of the once 130,000 inhabitants, only around a tenth is now there. The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, also reported that four people died in Russian shelling on Sieverodonetsk residential areas the day before.
09:05: According to the British Ministry of Defense, Russian troops are still trying to encircle the cities of Sievarodonetsk and Lysychansk. The ministry announced this in its daily situation report. Most recently, Russia has taken over several villages around the town of Popasna.
8.45 a.m .: In its daily intelligence update, the British Ministry of Defense announced that the Russian unit SGF (Southern Grouping of Forces) will probably remain in southern Ukraine. According to their information, Russia is said to have brought 50-year-old T-62 tanks from Russia to the areas where the SGF is stationed.
According to British intelligence, the T-62 tank is particularly vulnerable to anti-tank weapons. The deployment of the 50-year-old tank “shows Russia’s lack of modern and combat-ready equipment,” the intelligence agency writes.
8:10 a.m.: According to the UN, around 4,000 civilians have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Accordingly, at least 3942 civilians were killed. Another 4,591 people were injured, according to the UN Human Rights Office. The actual number of civilians killed is in all probability much higher, since reports from the contested areas only arrive with delays.
Friday, May 27, 3:13 a.m.: The Ukrainian army is under heavy pressure in the far east of its front.
Read here what new attack strategy Russia is using in Donbass: Territorial gains in Donbass – military experts dissect Russian strategy change: “No breakthrough so far”
10:26 p.m .: In the Russian North Caucasus, 115 national guards have refused to be deployed in the war against Ukraine. However, this earned them a dismissal, which was declared lawful by a military court, according to information on Thursday. This was reported by the Interfax agency from Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic.
The National Guards reportedly refused to obey orders and returned to their barracks. When their contracts were subsequently terminated, they sued, but lost the case. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
According to media reports, 15 members of the OMON police unit have also lost their jobs in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar. They had been on an exercise in Crimea in February and had refused to be used in the war against Ukraine.
In addition to the regular army, the Russian leadership is also sending units of the National Guard into the “military special operation”, as the war is officially called. In all units there is a high proportion of young men from the particularly poor regions of Russia. This also includes Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan in the Caucasus or Buryatia in Siberia. For these men, the army or the police are often the only prospect of a job. According to experts, these peripheral republics are also disproportionately affected by the number of Russian dead and wounded in the Ukraine war.
6:01 p.m .: According to local authorities, at least seven people were killed in attacks by the Russian army in the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine. Another 17 people were injured, Ukrainian regional commander Oleg Sinegubov said on Thursday, according to a report by the online newspaper Ukrajinska Pravda. “The enemy is cowardly shelling Kharkiv,” he said. Sinegubov called on people not to take to the streets without need and to go to the bomb shelters in the event of an air raid.
There is heavy fighting in the region, he said. The enemy had to accept numerous casualties. This information could not initially be verified by an independent party.
2:16 p.m .: According to the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister, Russia is moving its infamous Iskander missiles to the Belarusian city of Brest. From there they could reach destinations in western Ukraine.
12:26 p.m .: Ukraine’s problems in Donbass are getting worse. Zelenskyy’s adviser Oleksiy Arestovych expressed concern on TV because the Ukrainian troops are losing speed: “We have now lost to the Russian army in terms of speed. The Russian side managed to accumulate their reserves in front of us.”
But that is not the only thing causing problems for the Ukrainians. In contrast to the first weeks of the war, society is now splitting further and further. He expects an increasing burden on the people and also assumes that there could be power struggles.
8:23 a.m .: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov warned of an attack on Poland via Telegram. “The issue of Ukraine is already closed. I’m more interested in Poland,” he said, “should there be an order, we’ll show that we’re ready in six seconds.”
Kadyrov, also known as “Putin’s bloodhound”, claims to have supported the Russian army in Ukraine with his units since the beginning of the war. His men are considered particularly brutal. However, it is unclear whether and how Kadyrov is really involved in the Russian attacks.
7.30 a.m .: According to British military intelligence, the Russian Air Force is partly responsible for some tactical errors and failures. For example, the attempt to take Kyiv via the military airport in Hostomel or the recent defeat on the Siverski River.
“The failures demonstrate strategic mismanagement and Russia’s failure to ensure air superiority,” Thursday’s Intelligence Update said.
10:49 p.m .: In the embattled city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, the local police buried at least 150 people in a mass grave. This was announced by the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. In an emergency, the police have to take on many tasks, including those of undertakers, he wrote.
Victims of the Russian shelling were buried in the grave, as well as people who died of natural causes. Video showed the bodies being thrown into a pit in white bags, each labeled with their name. After the war the dead should be properly buried, the governor promised.
Hajdaj said that 95 percent of the eastern Ukrainian administrative region of Luhansk was occupied by Russian troops. The situation is “extremely bad”. The cities of Sievjerodonzek and Lyssychansk, which used to have 100,000 inhabitants each, are still in Ukrainian hands, but have been under heavy fire for days. Hajdaj said there were only about 40,000 civilians left in the region, and hardly anyone wanted to leave.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
