US defence secretary announces aid as Zelenskiy pleads with west for more Patriot systems to defend Ukrainian cities The US will provide Ukraine with additional Patriot missiles for its air defence systems as part of a massive $6bn additional aid package, the defence secretary has announced. “This is the largest security assistance package that we’ve committed to date,” Lloyd Austin said after the conclusion of a virtual meeting of dozens of Kyiv’s international supporters ..read more

Evacuations come after comments by head of Belarus KGB, who said buildings hosted military personnel. What we know on day 794 See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage Officials in Ukraine’s capital announced the evacuation of two hospitals – including a children’s hospital – that they fear could be targeted by Russian strikes. Kyiv’s city administration said on Friday that “a video is being widely circulated online, de facto announcing an enemy attack on these medical facilities”. It referred to comments made by the head of the KGB in Moscow-allied Belarus, who said on national TV that the bu ..read more

Mykola Solskyi is accused of illegally seizing land worth more than $7m when he was the head of a major farming company and an MP Ukraine’s agriculture minister, Mykola Solskyi, has been detained after being named a formal suspect in a multimillion dollar corruption inquiry. Blighted by severe corruption scandals since the fall of the Soviet Union, Kyiv has pledged to bolster its anti-graft efforts as part of its bid for EU membership ..read more

First payments to be made during an ongoing conflict is ‘important step towards restoring justice’, says first lady, Olena Zelenska The first reparation payments are to be made in the next few weeks to survivors of wartime rape by Russian soldiers during the invasion of Ukraine, in a move that Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, called “an important step towards restoring justice”. Up to 500 Ukrainian survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are being identified and awarded with interim reparations this year, including financial, medical and psychological support ..read more

Pentagon says it will help Ukrainians to adopt tactics that use M1A1 tanks more effectively. What we know on day 793 ..read more

To support arms for Ukraine and defending Red Sea shipping is part of Labour’s anti-fascist tradition, writes Paul Mason Two years ago in Madrid, I watched Jeremy Corbyn launch a pan-European campaign to end arms supplies to Ukraine. As he did so, a friend in the Ukrainian army sent me a photo of the machine gun that he’d been issued with: it was made in 1944. If the west had not poured billions of pounds worth of arms and ammunition into Ukraine, its people would have been massacred and enslaved. So forgive me if I describe Mr Corbyn’s call for “peace” as a meaningless abstraction (Our leader ..read more

After Poland and Lithuania said they are prepared to help Ukrainian authorities return men subject to military conscription, we want to hear how you feel about it Poland and Lithuania have pledged to help Ukrainian authorities repatriate men subject to the military draft after Kyiv announced it is ending consular services for such men who are abroad. We would like to speak with Ukrainian men living abroad about their views on this development. Whether you left Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion or years before that, we want to hear how you feel about the statements and Kyiv’s suspe ..read more

Strong rhetoric boosts Ukraine’s effort to reinforce frontlines, but mechanism by which émigrés could be sent back remains unclear Poland and Lithuania have said they are prepared to help Ukrainian authorities return men subject to military conscription to the country, after Kyiv announced this week that it is suspending consular services for such men who are now abroad. “We have suggested for a long time that we can help the Ukrainian side ensure that people subject to [compulsory] military service go to Ukraine,” Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s defence minister, told the television chann ..read more

Such policies are ‘betrayal’ of values, says French president in speech covering defence and negative effects of Brexit Europe live – latest updates Emmanuel Macron has criticised migration policies that involve sending people to African countries as “a betrayal of our [European] values”, just days after the UK government passed its Rwanda deportation bill. The French president made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech on Thursday aimed at warning Europe against overdependence on other countries for security and trade ..read more

Ukrainian president meets Jeremy Hunt and calls for sanctions against Russia to be tightened Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that any talks on ending the conflict in Ukraine were pointless without Russian participation, referring to a conference that Switzerland plans to host in June, reports Reuters. Zakharova also told reporters that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace formula – which calls for a full withdrawal of Russian forces from all the territory they have captured – does not bring peace closer but prolongs the conflict ..read more