Russia Ukraine war live: Putin loses six more planes in drone strike as Moscow ‘using chemical weapons’

The Russian army is carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks on Ukrainian troops, soldiers have claimed.

A Ukrainian commander said their positions have been coming under daily attacks by drones dropping tear gas and other chemicals.

The use of such gas, known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ihor, the commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance team who is deployed near the front-line city of Chasiv Yar, Donetsk Oblast, told the Daily Telegraph: “Nearly every position in our area of the front was getting one or two gas grenades dropped on them a day.”

Tajikistan’s foreign ministry on rejected a claim by a top Russian security official that Ukraine’s embassy in the Tajik capital was recruiting mercenaries to fight against Russia.

“We note that this assertion by the Russian official has no basis to it,” Russian news agencies quoted Tajik Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shokhin Samadi as saying.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, a top ally of President Vladimir Putin, said on Wednesday, without providing evidence, that “Ukrainian special services” were behind last month’s deadly concert shooting near Moscow and that the Ukrainian embassy in Tajikistan was recruiting fighters, state media reported.

Ukraine has denied having anything to do with the attack that killed at least 144 people, and the United States has said Islamic State militants bore sole responsibility.

Britain must ramp up its defence and aid spending and bolster its diplomatic and intelligence networks amid “the most dangerous period” since the Cold War, the UK’s formerly top civil servant has warned.

Writing in The Independent, former cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill urged the government to nearly double Britain’s defence spending to reach 4 per cent of GDP, and to restore the international aid budget to 0.7 per cent of national income, which was slashed by Boris Johnson in 2021.

And warning of the threat should Vladimir Putin prevail in his war on Ukraine, he called for Kyiv’s allies “to “upgrade defence industrial capacity to wartime levels”, “run our own factories 24/7” and buy weaponry and munitions for Ukraine, whether or not Congress funds the US to do so.

Finland will extend the closure of its border crossing points with Russia beyond the current April 14 deadline “until further notice” due to a high risk of organized migration orchestrated by Moscow, the Finnish government said on Thursday.

The Finnish Interior Ministry said in a statement that the Nordic country’s national security and public order would come under serious threat if the estimated hundreds of third-country nationals were to continue to attempt to enter from Russia without proper documentation.

“Based on information provided by public authorities, the risk that instrumentalized migration (by Russia) will resume and expand as seen previously remains likely,” the ministry said.

Russia on Saturday condemned as a provocation a drone attack on a military facility of pro-Russian separatists in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniestria region and called for an investigation.

A kamikaze drone hit a facility belonging to the separatist authority’s defence ministry six km (four miles) from the border with Ukraine, the region’s security ministry said on Friday.

Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked fears that Moscow might seek to sweep west through southern Ukraine all the way to Transdniestria, linking up with its garrison there. Those fears faded as Kyiv’s troops beat back Russian forces to the eastern side of the Dnipro river.

The nearest front lines lie around 200 km (125 miles) from eastern Moldova.

“We regard this incident as yet another provocation aimed at exacerbating the already tense situation around Transdniestria,” Russia‘s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

“We expect a thorough investigation into all the circumstances of what happened. We trust that those behind this reckless action will fully realize its dangerous consequences.”

Russian forces attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles overnight, killing at least six people and wounding 11 more in Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second largest city, local officials reported.

Governor of the Kharkiv region Oleh Syniehubov said missile strikes on the city damaged residential buildings, a petrol station, a kindergarten, a cafe, a shop and cars.

Overall, Russia fired 32 Iranian-made Shahed drones and six missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to the air force commander.

Ukrainian air defence forces shot down three cruise missiles and 28 drones, Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk said in a statement.

“Russian killers continue to terrorise Ukrainians and attack Kharkiv and other peaceful cities,” he said.

Russian authorities on Friday again tried to link the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall to Ukraine, saying one of the detained suspects had photos on his phone depicting troops in camouflage uniforms with the Ukrainian flag.

Ever since the March 22 mass shooting and fire at the Crocus City Hall concert venue that killed 145 people, Russian officials have sought to blame Ukraine for the massacre, even though Kyiv has denied any involvement and an affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Authorities, including President Vladimir Putin, have provided no evidence for the link as they sought to shift the narrative from the failure by security services to prevent the attack.

“A local resident was sentenced to life imprisonment for guiding the occupiers’ missile attack on the pizzeria in Kramatorsk,” the office of the war-torn country’s prosecutor general said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian forces are still in control of the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine despite attempts by Russian troops to break through their defences, Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday.

Russia‘s RIA news agency on Friday cited an official as saying Russian forces had entered the suburbs of the town, which Moscow sees as an important staging point for Kyiv’s troops. Ukrainian military said the report was untrue. “Chasiv Yar remains under our control, and all enemy attempts to break through to the settlement have failed,” Syrskyi said on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday.

A rapid Russian advance on Chasiv Yar, a heavily fortified town with a pre-war population of 12,200 situated west of the ruined Russian-occupied city of Bakhmut, would be a grim setback for Kyiv.

Russian forces are inching forward in eastern Ukraine after capturing the bastion town of Avdiivka in February. Kyiv’s soldiers are trying to dig in, facing long-term shortages of artillery shells with U.S. aid stuck in Congress.

During his interview, the first with Western media since the fall of the city, Maksym Zhorin was blunt about the reality of the eastern frontline while Western weapons supplies are delayed or simply being withheld – and he was frank about the future of European security.

A US military package worth roughly $60 billion has been in limbo in Washington for seven months, victim to squabbling politicians, while European partners have failed to send more than half of the million artillery shells they promised to Kyiv by this year, unable to agree on how to finance their production.

Hours after Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg announced a long-term proposal for a €100 billion military package to Ukraine this week – a step in the right direction for Kyiv – Mr Zhorin said that the pledge will help but it is, like all Western aid, coming too late.