Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv accuses Moscow of executing more than 150 prisoners of war

Russian troops have captured the settlements of Stupochki, Otradne and Loknia in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Sumy regions, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Saturday.

The battlefield report has not been independently confirmed.

Kyiv’s military intelligence agency have said that Russian forces have executed Ukrainian prisoners more than 150 times.

Intelligence officials said they had received reports of multiple instances where a “direct orders to kill” prisoners of war had been received by Putin’s troops.

According to the agency, these acts are “not isolated incidents” but part of a deliberate and systematic policy of the Russian leadership.

In March, the United Nations also reported a growing number of cases in which Russian forces deliberately killed or maimed Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered or attempted to surrender.

Russia attacked Ukraine with 14 ballistic missiles and 250 Shahed drones overnight, officials said, adding that Ukrainian forces shot down 6 missiles and neutralized 245 drones — 128 drones were shot down and 117 were thwarted using electronic warfare.

The Kyiv City Military Administration said it was one of the most massive combined missile and drone attacks on the capital.

“A difficult night for all of us,” the administration said in a statement.

The debris of intercepted missiles and drones fell in at least six city districts of the Ukrainian capital.

According to the acting head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, six people required medical care after the attack and two fires were sparked in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv.

The Obolon district, where a residential building was heavily damaged in the attack, was the hardest hit. There were at least five wounded in the area, the administration said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the first phase brought home 390 Ukrainians, including soldiers and civilians, with further releases expected over the weekend that will make it the largest swap of the war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it received the same number from Ukraine.

Read the full article here:

Both Ukraine and Russia said they will comply with a request from U.S. President Donald Trump to hold fresh talks about a peace deal. The two sides carried out a major prisoner exchange on Friday, which Trump suggested could be the first step towards more positive developments.

However, Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of not being serious about seeking an end to the fighting, with Russia launching a “massive” drone attack overnight on the Ukrainian capital.

A huge attack overnight on Ukraine by Russian drones and ballistic missiles was a fresh demonstration that Moscow is blocking a ceasefire deal to end the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.

“It was a tough night for all of Ukraine,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media platform Telegram.

“With each such attack, the world becomes convinced that the reason for the war being dragged out is Moscow,” he wrote. “Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.”

In the early hours of the morning, Reuters witnesses saw and heard successive waves of drones flying over Kyiv, and a series of explosions jolted the city. The capital also reverberated with the sound of anti-aircraft batteries trying to bring down the drones.

Pictures posted online showed smoke billowing from the top of one block of flats and flames leaping from part of another as emergency crews trained water on it. An orange-red glow lit up the city as plumes of smoke wafted across the horizon. By morning, the Kyiv city military administration reported damage in six districts of the Ukrainian capital, and a total so far of 14 people wounded.

As dawn broke on Saturday, residents at an apartment building just outside the centre of Kyiv were surveying the damage caused by drones.

Dozens of windows had been shattered, and balconies on one side of the building were smashed.

“I wish they’d agree to a ceasefire. To bomb people like this,” said Olha Chyrukha, a 64-year-old resident. “The poor children! My three-year-old granddaughter was screaming scared.”

A 62-year-old resident, who gave only her first name of Kateryna, said: “It is a great distress for people. The first thing that I thought is that people got hurt for nothing.”

At least 14 people were injured in one of the biggest combined drone and ballistic missile attacks to date on the Ukrainian capital, the city’s military administration said in a post on messaging app Telegram on Saturday.

The Ukrainian air force said that Russia launched 250 long-range drones overnight, with the target being Kyiv.

Below you can see the latest map of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The map has been provided by the British Ministry of Defence, who has been publishing regular intelligence updates on the state of the war on Ukraine.

Ukraine and the US have finished setting up the US-Ukraine reconstruction fund, the core part of the agreement to share profits from new Ukrainian resource projects.

Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said all procedures to set up the fund were completed on Friday.

“The Fund is now officially launched,” she said on X.

Read more about the fund and why it was created here.