Russia-Ukraine war: outcry over attack killing Ukraine PoWs; Kyiv awaits UN all-clear for grain shipments – live

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The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has spoken with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in their first contact since the Ukraine war, saying he pressed him to accept a proposal on freeing two Americans held in Russia.

“We had a frank and direct conversation,” Agence France Presse reported Blinken as telling reporters after they spoke on Friday.

I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forward.

Blinken had said on Wednesday he planned to contact Lavrov in a bid to free two Americans – basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan – and push forward a proposal issued several weeks earlier.

Blinken declined to characterise Lavrov’s reaction, saying:

I can’t give you an assessment of whether I think things are any more or less likely. But it was important that he heard directly.

The proposal reportedly includes swapping the two Americans for convicted Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout.

Blinken said he also pressed Lavrov on Russia honouring a Turkish-brokered proposal to ship grain out of Ukraine and on purported plans by Moscow to annex additional parts of Ukraine seized by Russian troops.

Blinken said he told Lavrov in the phone call – their first since 15 February – that “the world will never recognise annexation” and that Russia would be hit by additional ramifications.

A Russian foreign ministry account of the call cited Lavrov as telling Blinken that Russia would achieve all the goals of its “special military operation”, and that western arms supplies to Ukraine would only drag out the conflict.

Lavrov also told Blinken that Washington was not living up to promises regarding the exemption of food from sanctions, Reuters reported the ministry as saying.

The latest daily assessment from the UK Ministry of Defence:

Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of bombing the jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held territory in Olenivka, with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, saying more than 50 were killed and calling the attack a war crime.

Russia’s defence ministry alleged the strikes were carried out by Ukraine with US-supplied long-range missiles in an “egregious provocation” designed to stop soldiers from surrendering, Agence France-Presse reported.

The ministry said that among the dead were Ukrainian forces who had laid down their arms after weeks of fighting off Russia’s bombardment of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.

But Zelensky squarely blamed Russia, saying in his daily address late on Friday:

This was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. As it passes 9am in Kyiv, here is a summary of the latest developments.

Russia and Ukraine have both launched criminal investigations into strikes that have reportedly killed at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were held at a pre-trial detention centre in the village of Olenivka, after both countries blamed the other side for the attack.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has accused Russia of a “petrifying war crime” over the killings and called on world leaders to “recognise Russia as a terrorist state”.
Ukraine has said it is ready for grain exports to leave its ports again but is waiting for the go-ahead from the United Nations, which it hoped it would receive later on Friday.
Horrific video has emerged that appears to show a Russian soldier castrating a Ukrainian prisoner, who other reports suggest was subsequently murdered. The footage, reviewed by the Guardian, was originally posted on pro-Russian Telegram channels. Aric Toler at investigative outlet Bellingcat, suggested that the video – featuring a Russian soldier, wearing a distinctive black wide-brimmed hat, approaching another figure who has his hands bound and is lying face down with the back of his trousers cut away – appeared to be authentic .
At least five people have been killed and seven injured in a strike on a bus stop in the city of Mykolaiv, according to the regional governor, Vitaliy Kim. Graphic images from the scene show the street littered with bodies.
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that Russia staunchly supported China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, after the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, warned the US president, Joe Biden, against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in a phone call on Thursday.
Germany’s economy minister said on Friday that putting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into operation was not an option as this would only play into the hands of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. There is growing anger in Germany over soaring energy prices.
Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian operative who was subjected to US sanctions on Friday, has been charged with using political groups in the US to advance pro-Russia propaganda, including during the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
The US treasury department said on Friday it had imposed sanctions on another individual alongside Ionov, as well as on four entities that support the Kremlin’s global malign influence and election interference operations, including in the US and Ukraine.
Belarus recalled its UK ambassador on Friday in response to what it called “hostile and unfriendly” actions by London.
North Macedonia plans to donate an unspecified number of Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine as it seeks to modernise its own military to meet Nato standards, its defence ministry said on Friday.
Germany would deliver 16 Biber bridge-layer tanks to Ukrainian forces, the German defence ministry said.
A Ukrainian court on Friday reduced to 15 years a life sentence handed to a Russian soldier in May for pre-meditated murder in the country’s first war crimes trial.
A Russian ammunition depot in the southern Kherson region had been destroyed, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.
The UK defence minister, Ben Wallace, has said Russian forces in Ukraine are in “a very difficult spot”, and that Putin’s strategy was akin to putting his forces through a meat grinder. In his opinion, he said, Russia was “certainly not able to occupy the country. They may be able to carry on killing indiscriminately and destroying as they go, but that is not a victory.”