(Reuters) -Russian forces have taken control of a town where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live, the governor of Kyiv region said. U.S. President Joe Biden, visiting NATO ally Poland, called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “butcher”.
BIDEN VISITS POLAND
* Russian President Vladimir Putin could not remain in power, and his war against Ukraine has been a strategic failure for Moscow,Bi den said on Saturday. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw.
* Biden spoke with top Ukrainian government officials in Warsaw, and branded Putin a “butcher” during a meeting with refugees who have fled the war to the Polish capital.
* New comments by Biden narrow the prospects for mending ties between the two countries, TASS news agency cited a Kremlin spokesman as saying earlier on Saturday.
FIGHTING
* Two rocket strikes hit Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, wounding five people, regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said.
* The mayor of the besieged southeastern port of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, said the situation in city remained critical, with street fighting taking place in its centre.
* Russian forces have taken control of the town of Slavutych, where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live, the governor of Kyiv region, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, said.
* Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was seen chairing an army meeting and discussing weapons supplies in a video posted by his ministry, the first time he had publicly been shown speaking for more than two weeks.
* Russia said on Friday the first phase of its military operation in Ukraine was mostly complete and it would focus on “liberating” the Donbass region.
CIVILIANS
* The mayor of Ukraine’s northern city of Chernihiv said 44 severely wounded people, including three children, could not be evacuated to safer areas for treatment since the city had been cut off by Russian forces.
* More than 100,000 people still need to be evacuated from Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
* The war in Ukraine has killed 136 children in the 31 days since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s office of the prosecutor general said.
REFUGEES
* Ukrainian MasterChef winner Olga Martynovska, who fled to Prague with her 6-year-old daughter to escape Russia’s invasion, cooked up borsch and other traditional dishes to raise funds for those trapped back home.
ENERGY/MARKETS/BUSINESS
* The Russian central bank said the Moscow Exchange will resume trading on Monday, with Russian shares and bonds in normal mode, albeit for half a day.
* Ukraine’s new agriculture minister Mykola Solskyi said Ukraine’s ability to export grains was getting worse by the day and would only improve if the war with Russia ends.
QUOTES
* “President Biden said what is happening in Ukraine will change the history of the 21st century, and we will work together to ensure that this change is in our favour, in Ukraine’s favour, in the favour of the democratic world,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba after meeting Biden in Warsaw.
(Compiled by Frances Kerry and Nick Zieminski)
