Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 418

Here is the situation on Monday, April 17, 2023:

Fighting

• Russia’s Wagner Group sent more than 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war back to Ukraine to mark Orthodox Easter, according to a video posted by the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
• The Russian defence ministry said Wagner units captured two more city blocks in the northwest and southeastern parts of the ruined city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s military said its troops and Russian forces were fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in Bakhmut, but said pro-Kyiv forces were still holding on.
• The death toll from a Russian missile attack on the eastern Ukraine city of Sloviansk has risen to 11.
• Russian shelling in Kherson killed two women on Saturday, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
• Russian politician and head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin claimed four people were killed and 10 injured in Ukrainian shelling of a town in Russian-controlled Donetsk. A seven-year-old girl was among those wounded in Yasynuvata, he added.
• Russia has been using drones to attack Ukrainian police in Kherson, according to the region’s police force. It said a police car was attacked in the Korabel area, injuring two officers and damaging the car. In Beryslav, one officer was injured and cars were damaged.
• Russia’s regular spring military draft campaign is proceeding as scheduled, and there are no plans to send out mass electronic notices under a new system just signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, a top official, Colonel Andrei Biryukov said on Saturday.

Diplomacy

• Unilateral action on trade by European Union member states is unacceptable, the bloc’s executive said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect their local agricultural sectors.
• Bulgaria also said it was considering banning grain imports from Ukraine to protect its own agricultural sector.
• Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for establishing a group of countries that are not involved in the Russia-Ukraine war in order to broker peace.
• Thousands of people gathered for a demonstration in Prague on Sunday, chanting “resign” and “shame”, as protesters called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, urging the Czech Republic to leave NATO.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday. In two tweets, Zelenskyy said they had discussed Macron’s recent visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
• The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, will visit Baghdad on Monday, on his first trip to Iraq since Russia invaded Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s national ice hockey players have been forced to train with air raid sirens interrupting practice, sending them underground for cover. Coach Konstantin Simchuk said, “We have to play hockey, and we have to show probably to all the world that we are still alive.”