Summary

  • Ukrainian troops could withdraw from their final pockets of resistance in the eastern Luhansk region, an official there says

  • Russia is trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk as it tries to capture the Donbas region

  • Civilians in Severodonetsk "are constantly in shelters, it is almost impossible to go outside due to the density of shelling," said governor Serhiy Haidai

  • Earlier Ukrainian officials said Russian-backed forces had taken control of the city of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region

  • The Pentagon says it is "mindful" of Ukrainian requests for long-range weapons, something Russian state TV called a red line

  • The Moscow-backed branch of Ukraine's Orthodox Church severs ties with Russia, saying its leaders have failed to condemn the war

Live Reporting

  1. We must not compromise or appease Russia – Truss

    Guy Delauney
    BBC correspondent, reporting from Belgrade

    Liz Truss (right) with Sarajevo's mayor Benjamina KaricReuters

    Liz Truss (right) with Sarajevo's mayor Benjamina Karic

    UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says Britain and its allies should not be considering "compromise or appeasement" towards Russia.

    Speaking in Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, she says it is "appalling" that Vladimir Putin is "trying to hold the world to ransom" and attempting to "weaponise" the hunger of the world's poorest people.

    Responding to a question on whether sanctions should be eased in return for Russia creating corridors for grain exports from Ukraine, Truss says it is important to "cut off funding for the war", adding "we cannot have any lifting of sanctions or appeasement which would make Putin stronger".

  2. A harvest trapped by war

    Ruins of a grain silo in Siversk, Donbas. Russian shelling destroyed a grain silo there. Russian forces are now concentrating their offensive in the east of the country.Getty Images

    Powerful images have come in of grain burning in a silo on Wednesday in the combat zone of east Ukraine.

    News agencies say the silo in Siversk, near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, was destroyed by Russian shelling.

    Ukrainian farmers have 20 million tonnes of grain they cannot get to international markets, and a new harvest is about to begin.

    What can be done to get the food to people who desperately need it, as prices soar around the world?

    Read this report by our population correspondent, Stephanie Hegarty.

    Ruins of a grain silo in Siversk, Donbas. Russian shelling destroyed a grain silo there. Russian forces are now concentrating their offensive in the east of the country.Getty Images
  3. Analysis

    Questioning the blood price of the war

    Employees put down the coffins of Andriy Vertiev and Serhiy Evtushenko, Ukrainian servicemen, killed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, during funeral at Lychakiv cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, on May 25, 2022AFP

    Lviv saw the funerals of two Ukrainian soldiers on Wednesday

    The BBC's Jeremy Bowen has been sharing his thoughts about the progress of the war in eastern Ukraine as he visits frontline towns facing the Russian army's slow but steady advance in the Donbas (the coal-mining basin made up of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions).

    If the Russians can encircle Severodonetsk in Luhansk, their next targets would most likely be the key cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in Donetsk.

    Then Russian President Vladimir Putin might declare victory in the battle for the Donbas, our correspondent says. Russia would control a belt of territory stretching along its border south from the Donbas and along most of Ukraine's coastline.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says only diplomacy can end the war but Russia must return to the positions it held before the invasion. His allies, led by the US and UK, want to weaken Putin's Russia permanently. They have said Russia must not win.

    Their critics say they'll fight to the last Ukrainian, our correspondent adds. The currency of war is blood. As families bury their dead, more Ukrainians will question the blood price they are paying, and ask whether it is better to pay for a ceasefire with land - or lives.

    Read Jeremy's analysis in full.

    Map illustrating who is in control of areas in eastern Ukraine.

  4. We cannot allow Putin to win this war - Scholz

    Damien McGuinness
    Reporting from Berlin

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addresses a plenary session during the 51st annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on 26 May 2022EPA

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been delivering a half-hour speech and a short Q&A on the final day of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

    He condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but does not mention the criticism levelled against his government for being too slow to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine.

    "A major nuclear power is behaving as if it has the right to redraw borders," he says.

    "Putin wants to return to a world order in which strength dictates what is right, in which freedom, determination and sovereignty are not for everyone.

    "We cannot allow Putin to win this war," he says, adding "there will be no dictated peace".

    Scholz is under fire in Germany and abroad. Critics says he appears hesitant in supporting Ukraine militarily.

    But in his speech, he says Germany is completing its so-called "Zeitenwende" or turning point in foreign policy, by supplying weapons to a war zone for the first time, spending €100bn ($107bn, £85bn) on its army and cutting its dependency on Russian energy.

  5. Zelensky rebukes West over weapons and appeasement of Moscow

    President Volodymyr ZelenskyEPA

    President Zelensky of Ukraine has issued a bitter rebuke to the West for dithering over heavy weapons supplies - and for spreading the idea that peace without territorial sacrifices to Russia would be impossible.

    He's taken a specific swipe at The New York Times and the veteran US politician, Henry Kissinger.

    "It seems Mr Kissinger's calendar is not 2022, but 1938," he says, referring to the Munich deal that ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.

    Zelensky accuses observers such as Kissinger of having overlooked Russian war crimes, adding they always try to take Moscow's interests into account, no matter how Russia acts.

    In a speech at Davos yesterday, Kissinger warned that pushing Moscow to surrender Crimea and parts of the Donbas it controls threatened to turn the conflict into a new, broader war.

  6. Police burying bodies in mass graves in eastern Ukraine, governor says

    Police in the eastern city of Lysychansk are having to bury the bodies of civilians in mass graves, according to a senior Ukrainian official.

    About 150 people have been buried in a grave in one district, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai says, adding that families of the people buried there will be able to carry out a reburial after the war.

    Police are issuing documents enabling Ukrainians to secure death certificates for loved ones, Haidai adds.

    Meanwhile, Ukrainian government adviser Vadym Denisenko says "everything now is focused on the Donbas," adding the situation is very tense as 25 Russian battalion tactical groups attempt to surround the Ukrainian forces.

  7. Welcome back to our live coverage

    We're resuming our coverage of the war in Ukraine after some technical issues. We're back up and running now - welcome.

    Here are some of the major developments so far on Thursday:

    • Russia continues efforts to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine
    • About 8,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war are being held in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics, and hundreds are being added daily, according to an official of the pro-Kremlin separatist Luhansk region. The BBC has not been able to independently verify these claims
    • Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of being like those who appeased the Nazis in 1938, after Kissinger suggested Ukraine should let Russia keep Crimea, which it annexed in 2014
    • Russia's airborne forces have seen "heavy losses" due to "strategic mismanagement" during the invasion, the UK says in its latest military intelligence update
    • Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree simplifying the procedure for residents of the Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to get a Russian passport. Ukraine has called the move illegal
    • The head of the World Bank, David Malpass, has warned Russia's invasion of Ukraine could lead to a global recession - as the prices of food, energy and fertiliser jump