More than 260 troops evacuated from steelworks – as it happened

We’re going to wrap things up for the day. Thanks for reading. We’ll be back in a few hours with a fresh liveblog, bringing you all the news.

Our story about Turkey’s announcement that it would not approve Sweden and Finland joining it as Nato members is here and you can read Daniel Boffey’s moving account here of the battle for Kharkiv, as the fight over Ukraine’s second city nears its end.

Here are some of the key developments of the day:

• The evacuation of wounded Ukrainian troops from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol is under way, Volodomyr Zelenskiy confirmed, with more than 260 fighters transported out of the plant. The troops have fulfilled their combat mission, the general staff of the armed forces said. Ukraine’s deputy defense minister has said an “exchange procedure will take place” to bring evacuees home.
  
• Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force said on Monday that 20 civilians, including a child, were killed in Russian shelling in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
  
• Western military sources say that Vladimir Putin is involved in the war in Ukraine “at the level of a colonel or brigadier”. The Russian leader is reportedly so personally involved he is helping determine the movement of forces in the Donbas.
• Ukrainian officials claimed that troops counter-attacking against Russian forces in the country’s north-east had pushed them back from the city of Kharkiv and advanced as far as the border with Russia.
• Russian forces have shelled frontline positions in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area as fighting becomes increasingly focused on Severodonetsk, the easternmost city still held by Ukrainian forces after more than 11 weeks of war.
• After Sweden and Finland yesterday confirmed plans to join Nato, Sweden is seeking to quell Turkish opposition by sending diplomats to the country. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said Turkey will not approve the bids, and that delegations from the countries should not bother coming.
  
• Vladimir Putin said Russia had no issue with Finland and Sweden, but that the expansion of military infrastructure on their territory would demand a reaction from Moscow, as the Nordic countries move closer to joining Nato, which Russia has branded a mistake with far-reaching consequences.
• Hungary has been accused of “holding the EU hostage” over its refusal to agree an oil embargo against Russia, as the bloc struggles to reach consensus on its latest sanctions aimed at eroding the Kremlin’s ability to wage war.
• American fast-food giant McDonald’s will exit the Russian market and sell its business in the increasingly isolated country, the company said on Monday. Meanwhile, the Moscow city government is to take over a factory belonging to the French carmaker Renault and use it to revive the Soviet-era Moskvitch in Russia’s first major nationalization of a foreign company during its war in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian troops defending the Azovstal steel plant have fulfilled their combat mission, the country’s general staff of armed forces said.

“The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel,” Reuters reported the general staff said in a statement on Facebook. “Efforts to rescue defenders who remain on the territory of Azovstal continue.”

In his nightly video address, Volodomyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine would fight to save the lives of the Azovstal fighters. “There are severely wounded ones among them. They’re receiving care. Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive,” he said.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has said an “exchange procedure will take place” to bring evacuees home.

View image in fullscreen

Outgunned and surrounded, troops at the plant became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as they continued to fight even after Mariupol fell to Russian forces. Last week, the last civilians rescued from the plant reached safety in Ukrainian held territory after two months of sheltering in the besieged city.

The evacuation of wounded Ukrainian troops from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol is under way, Volodomyr Zelenskiy confirmed, with more than 260 fighters transported out of the plant.

“We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys,” the Ukrainian president said of the evacuation.

Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said that 53 injured troops have been taken to a hospital in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk and that more than 200 others were transported through a corridor to Olenivka. All evacuees will be returned home through exchanges, Malyar said.

16 May 202217.02 EDT

Dan Sabbagh

Putin involved in war ‘at level of colonel or brigadier’, say western sources

Vladimir Putin has become so personally involved in the Ukraine war that he is making operational and tactical decisions “at the level of a colonel or brigadier”, according to western military sources.

The Russian president is helping determine the movement of forces in the Donbas, they added, where last week the invaders suffered a bloody defeat as they tried on multiple occasions to cross a strategic river in the east of Ukraine.

The sources added that Putin is still working closely with General Valery Gerasimov, the commander of the Russian armed forces, in contrast to claims made by Ukraine last week that the military chief had been sidelined.

“We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier,” the military source said, referring to the ongoing battle in the east of Ukraine.

Moscow’s armies have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough in the Donbas, where they have been mounting an offensive for a month that has failed several times encircle the smaller Ukrainian forces.

No further detail to back up the statement was provided, although it was implied the assessment about Putin’s close personal involvement was based on intelligence that had been received.

Read more here:

Reuters is reporting that Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol have arrived in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk.

A witness told the news agency that evacuees, some wounded and carried out of buses on stretchers, arrived late on Monday.

Russia had said it would use a “humanitarian corridor” it established to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers to a medical facility in the town, about 45km east of Mariupol. Moscow claims to have reached a ceasefire with the last-stand Ukrainian troops at the steel plant, but Ukrainian officials have not confirmed this and it’s unclear exactly what is happening inside the plant.

I’m Dani Anguiano and I’ll be taking over the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine for the next few hours.

There is every expectation that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenzkiy will make a public address from Kyiv before long and give us his update on the situation at the Azovstal steel works.

The huge plant has served for weeks as the last, desperate stand for a group of Ukrainians – military and civilian, now just soldiers – after the fall of the city of Mariupol to Russia.

It appears that wounded Ukrainian soldiers have been evacuated by Russian forces but the exact situation is far from clear.

Civilians trapped with the soldiers were evacuated earlier this month. Despite calls for action by pro-Ukrainian protesters in some parts of Europe in recent days, hope that some sort of Ukrainian special forces rescue mission could be mounted to save the troops besieged in the huge factory have proved entirely unrealistic. The soldiers there are understood to number around 600, according to Reuters.

It’s not known if a ceasefire to evacuate the wounded is the beginning of the end of the siege of the Azovstal plant and the final domino going down in Mariupol.

We await more news. The New York team is handing over to California now, where my colleague Dani Anguiano will keep you up to date on developments.

Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force said on Monday that 20 civilians, including a child, were killed in Russian shelling in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Reuters reports.

The military task force said in a statement on its Facebook page that 25 communities in the regions were fired at, with 42 residential buildings and a school among locations hit.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.
There was no immediate response from Russia to the report.

About a dozen buses carrying Ukrainian servicemen who were holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in Ukraine’s south-east, which was besieged by Russia, left the plant on Monday, a Reuters witness said.

It was not possible to determine how many servicemen were aboard the buses.

It was also unclear whether those on board were all among the 40 wounded fighters Ukrainian officers said to have been beneath the plant, the news agency reports.

Some 600 servicemen were said to have been inside.

View image in fullscreen

The Ukrainian unit holed up beneath the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol said on Monday its garrison was fulfilling orders to save the lives of troops, an apparent indication that the long siege has reached an important new stage.

It is not clear if this is the beginning of the end of the siege or whether the last stand continues by those Ukrainian troops not wounded.

The fighting at Azovstal in ruined Mariupol has symbolized Ukrainian resistance throughout Russia’s nearly three-month invasion. Most civilians who had sought shelter at the vast Soviet-era plant were evacuated earlier this month, Reuters reports.

View image in fullscreen

In order to save lives, the entire Mariupol garrison is implementing the approved decision of the Supreme Military Command and hopes for the support of the Ukrainian people,” the Azov Regiment said in a social media post.

Here’s a little more from the accompanying video that one of the unit’s senior commanders, Denys Prokopenko, posted.

The main thing is to realise all the risks, is there a plan B, are you fully committed to that plan which must allow for fulfilling the assigned tasks and preserve the lives and health of personnel?

This is the highest level of overseeing troops. All the more so when your decision is endorsed by the highest military command.”

Prokopenko did not spell out what action the defenders were taking. The video was released hours after Russia said it had agreed to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers to a medical facility in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk.

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians died in Mariupol during months of siege by Russian forces who destroyed the Sea of Azov port, a city of around 400,000 people.

The last defenders, including many who were wounded, had been holding out for weeks in bunkers beneath Azovstal, one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe.

The Russian defense ministry said it established a “humanitarian corridor” to evacuate wounded Ukrainian troops to Novoazovsk, about 45kms east of Mariupol in an area under Russian control.

Russia says a ceasefire has been reached with the last-stand Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, in order to evacuate the wounded, although there has been no confirmation of this from Ukrainian officials, Agence France-Presse reports.

Russia’s defence ministry said moments ago that an agreement has been reached to evacuate injured soldiers from the plant.

An agreement was reached with representatives of the Ukrainian military blocked at Azovstal in Mariupol to evacuate the wounded,” the ministry said.

It added that a “regime of silence” was introduced for the duration of the evacuation and that the Ukrainian soldiers would be taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Novoazovsk.

There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian officials.

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers remained holed up in the underground tunnels of the huge Azovstal steel factory that has been besieged by Russian forces for weeks after Moscow claimed control of Mariupol.

Ukraine’s Azov battalion, which has led the defense of Mariupol, has posted desperate videos from the plant, saying soldiers are dying from their wounds there.

Here is a report from the Guardian with glimpses of what the besieged troops have been withstanding.

The last of hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering in the labyrinthine steel works, after the Russians overran Mariupol, in its deeper layers underground, were brought out earlier this month.

There are significant developments at the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the last stand of a nub of Ukrainian soldiers in the defeated south-eastern port city.

It’s not yet entirely clear what is going on, whether the soldiers surrounded there in dire straits are giving up or are negotiating to have the severely wounded evacuated by occupying Russians. We’ll keep following closely.

A senior commander of Ukrainian forces holed up beneath the Azovstal steel mill besieged by Russian forces said he was carrying out a decision by the military high command to save the lives of service personnel, but made no mention of surrendering, Reuters writes.

Commander Denys Prokopenko has posted a video on social media.

The main thing is to realise all the risks, is there a plan B, are you fully committed to that plan which must allow for fulfilling the assigned tasks and preserve the lives and health of personnel.

This is the highest level of overseeing troops. All the more so when your decision is endorsed by the highest military command,” he said.

Here it is with subtitles:

Here’s a tweet from BBC journalists:

The Guardian US team has taken the blog baton now and will keep you updated for the next few hours. This is Joanna Walters in New York and I’ll be handing over a little later to our colleagues in California.

16 May 202214.03 EDT

Summary

Nicola Slawson

Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:

• Ukrainian officials claimed that Ukrainian troops counter-attacking against Russian forces in the country’s north-east had pushed them back from the city of Kharkiv and advanced as far as the border with Russia.
• Russia said its forces had shot down three fighter jets.
• Russian forces have shelled frontline positions in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area as fighting becomes increasingly focused on Severodonetsk, the easternmost city still held by Ukrainian forces after more than 11 weeks of war.
• Following a meeting, the EU foreign ministers failed reached an agreement on the sixth package of sansctions against Russia, EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell confirmed.
• After Sweden and Finland yesterday confirmed plans to join Nato, Sweden is seeking to quell Turkish opposition by sending diplomats to the country. Meanwhile, Russia branded the move a mistake with far-reaching consequences. Estonia welcomed the decision as a boon for Nordic nations’ security.
• Vladimir Putin said Russia had no issue with Finland and Sweden, but that the expansion of military infrastructure on their territory would demand a reaction from Moscow, as the Nordic countries move closer to joining Nato.
• Norway, Denmark and Iceland have issued a joint statement offering their support to Finland and Sweden in case the two Nordic nations were to come under attack during their Nato applications.
• The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he will not approve Finland and Sweden joining Nato. He said Swedish and Finnish delegrations should not bother coming to Turkey to convince Turkey to approve their Nato bids.
• Hungary has been accused of “holding the EU hostage” over its refusal to agree an oil embargo against Russia, as the bloc struggles to reach consensus on its latest sanctions aimed at eroding the Kremlin’s ability to wage war.
• The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ruled out potential concessions to Russia that could lead to a ceasefire in the war and said the European Union faces “moral failure” if it doesn’t approve the nation’s candidacy for membership by June.
• American fast-food giant McDonald’s will exit the Russian market and sell its business in the increasingly isolated country, the company said on Monday. Meanwhile, The Moscow city government is to take over a factory belonging to the French carmaker Renault and use it to revive the Soviet-era Moskvitch in Russia’s first major nationalisation of a foreign company during its war in Ukraine.
• The European Union and the United States have agreed closer cooperation to counter disrupted supply of commodities and food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to combat disinformation from Moscow.

Thanks so much for joining me. I’m handing over to my colleague Joanna Walters now.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell says that Hungary is maintaining that its block on the EU oil embargo against Russia is for economic reasons rather than political ones.

He said:

The discussion will continue to see when and how much cost each member state will have to bear.

He also said:

The EU considers it unacceptable for the Balkan countries to maintain a neutral position towards Russia.

The EU will not recognize any part of Ukraine being claimed as part of Russia, EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

Borrell is speaking at a press conference following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

He also added that the EU will help Ukraine to export grain from storage to Europe, including by sea, in order to make room for a new crop.

The Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Swedish and Finnish delegations should not bother coming to Ankara to convince it to approve their NATO bid because they harbour terrorists.

In a news conference, Erdogan said Turkey would not approve their bids to join NATO, calling Sweden a “hatchery” for terrorist organisations, and adding they had terrorists in their parliament.

Ankara says Sweden and Finland harbour people it says are linked to groups it deems terrorists, namely the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and followers of Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the 2016 coup attempt.

The EU Foreign Ministers have not reached an agreement on the sixth package of sansctions against Russia, EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said during a press conference happening now.

Speaking following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels he said they had “failed to agree”

The allocation of another 500 million euros to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons, bringing the total amount to 2 billion euros, was approved by the ministers, however.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he will not approve Finland and Sweden joining Nato.

Reuters is reporting he has said Swedish and Finnish delegrations should not bother coming to Turkey to convince Turkey to approve their Nato bids.

Finland and Sweden, while both Nato partners, have long viewed membership as an unnecessary provocation of Russia, their powerful eastern neighbour. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, however, has led to a radical rethink of their security policies.

Membership of Nato would require ratification by all existing members.

Turkey has been a Nato member since 1952 and its membership remains a cornerstone of its foreign policy towards western countries.

16 May 202213.05 EDT

Andrew Roth

The Moscow city government is to take over a factory belonging to the French carmaker Renault and use it to revive the Soviet-era Moskvitch in Russia’s first major nationalisation of a foreign company during its war in Ukraine.

The development, which was met with ridicule by Russians with long memories, follows Renault’s decision to join the wave of western companies such as McDonald’s and Siemens leaving the Russian market as the war in Ukraine nears its fourth month.

Renault has ceded its 68% stake in Russia’s biggest carmaker, AvtoVAZ, with an option to buy it back within six years. According to media reports, the company’s Russian assets were sold for one rouble, meaning the city of Moscow has effectively taken control of the factory free.

Renault’s CEO, Luca de Meo, said in statement that the company was protecting its future business in Russia.

Today we have taken a difficult but necessary decision, and we are making a responsible choice towards our 45,000 employees in Russia while preserving the group’s performance and our ability to return to the country in the future.

Hawkish commentators such as the head of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, have said foreign companies that leave the Russian market should have their local assets seized. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, appeared to defend Renault’s decision and said the city would take over the factory to prevent unemployment.

Sobyanin said:

The foreign owner decided to close the Moscow Renault plant. This is its right, but we cannot allow thousands of workers to be left without work. Therefore, I decided to take the plant under control of the city and resume the production of passenger cars under the historical Moskvitch brand. We will try to keep most of the team working directly at the plant and its associates.

Read more here: