EU expected to announce sanctions on Russian oil; Mariupol steel plant evacuees reach safety

The EU is expected to announce further sanctions on Russia on Wednesday, this time targeting Russian oil imports.

The move is difficult for the bloc as some member states, particularly Hungary and Slovakia, are heavily reliant on oil imports from Russia, prompting expectations that these countries could be spared an embargo.

On Tuesday, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country would not support sanctions that would make it impossible to receive oil from Russia, Reuters reported, creating the potential for further division between the country — which has cultivated warm relations with Russia in recent years — and Brussels.

An embargo on Russian oil imports would be the bloc’s sixth round of sanctions against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine began in late February.

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan met with Oscar Stenstrom, state secretary for foreign affairs to the prime minister of Sweden, according to a statement from U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

The two discussed the security situation in Europe as well as efforts to support Ukraine and impose costs on Russia.

Sullivan and Stenstrom also pledged to continue close coordination on the full range of security issues.

— Chelsea Ong

A group of civilians who were evacuated earlier this week from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, a last stronghold for Ukrainian fighters in the besieged port city, have reached the relative safety of the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia.

“We finally have a result, the first result of our evacuation operation from Azovstal in Mariupol, which we have been organizing for a very long time,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Telegram.

“It took a lot of effort, long negotiations and various mediations. Today 156 people arrived in Zaporizhzhia. These are women, children,” he said.

Some of those evacuated had been sheltering beneath the steelworks for more than two months, the president noted, adding that there would be more efforts to evacuate “everyone who remains there, both civilians and military, from Mariupol, from Azovstal.” Several hundred civilians are believed to remain trapped in the steel plant complex.

Zelenskyy accused the Russian military of not holding up its end of the agreement to allow the evacuation — carried out under the auspices of the United Nations and Red Cross — to go ahead, claiming Russian forces are “continuing to conduct mass strikes at Azovstal. They are trying to storm the compound.”

He also said the Russian shelling of areas of western Ukraine is “evidence that Russia does not have any special military objective. Hitting Zakarpattya [the most western part of Ukraine]. What specifically can it give to Russia?” he said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia intends to capture the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk to help consolidate control in northeast Donbas, the U.K. Defence Ministry said in an intelligence update.

If successful, this would provide a staging point for Moscow’s efforts to cut off Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said.

Still, the agency said Russian troops are struggling to break through Ukrainian defenses and build momentum.

— Christine Wang

Officials in Israel are reportedly preparing to send more military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Among the items being considered are “defensive systems that protect troops on the ground, personal combat gear and warning systems,” according to the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The discussions come as Israel faces growing pressure from the U.S. and the European Union to take a firmer stance on Russia’s brutal invasion, which is now in its third month.

Notably, the talks also coincide with the rapid deterioration in recent days of Israel’s diplomatic relations with Russia.

The breakdown began when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tried to defend Russia’s claim that it is “de-Nazifying” Ukraine — a country whose president is Jewish — by saying that “the biggest antisemites were Jewish,” including “Hitler.”

The remarks infuriated officials in Jerusalem. But instead of backing away from Lavrov’s comments, Russia’s Foreign Ministry doubled down on Tuesday, accusing Israel of supporting a “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv.

Despite the breakdown in relations between Moscow and Jerusalem, Haaretz reported that as of Tuesday, Israel was not yet ready to provide its most sophisticated and lethal weapons systems to Ukraine.

— Christina Wilkie

— Amanda Macias and Adam Jeffery

President Joe Biden called on Congress to quickly pass $33 billion in additional U.S. assistance to Ukraine, as the war-weary country approaches its 10th week of fighting off a Russian invasion.

“I urge the Congress to pass this funding quickly to help Ukraine continue to succeed against Russian aggression, just as they did when they won the battle of Kyiv and to make sure the United States and our allies can replenish our own stock of weapons to replace what we’ve sent to Ukraine,” Biden said.

“This fight is not going to be cheap, but caving to aggression would even be more costly,” added Biden, flanked by Javelin missiles at a Lockheed Martin facility in southern Alabama.

Last month, Biden requested roughly $13 billion more in funding from Congress after exhausting his presidential drawdown authority.

Biden’s latest military aid package of $800 million was announced on April 21, the eighth such installment of security assistance. It brought the U.S. weapons and security commitment to Ukraine up to $3.4 billion just since Russia’s late February invasion.

The new funding from Congress would add another $20 billion in weapons and security assistance, in addition to funds to help Ukraine run its government and money for additional humanitarian and food aid.

— Amanda Macias