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Graves of civilians in Bucha: Russian war crimes apparently took place in the Kiev suburb
Photo: Carol Guzy / dpa
This article will be continuously updated.
Russia wants to grant safe sea passage from Mariupol
6.56 a.m .:
According to military information from Tuesday evening, Russia wants to set up a safe sea passage from the conquered Ukrainian port of Mariupol towards the Black Sea.
The mine-cleared route through the Sea of Azov is 115 nautical miles (213 kilometers) long and 2 nautical miles wide and navigable from 8 a.m. local time (7 a.m. CEST), according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
At the same time, the damaged port infrastructure of Mariupol will be repaired.
The last Ukrainian defenders of the city laid down their weapons at the end of last week, and Mariupol itself has been largely destroyed.
According to Russian information, around 70 foreign ships from 16 countries are still stuck in the ports controlled by Ukraine on the Black Sea coast.
The Russian Navy will also set up a daily safe corridor there on the coast, it said.
However, there remains a residual danger for the countries bordering the Black Sea from drifting Ukrainian mines that have broken loose.
Ukraine reports rocket attack on the city of Zaporizhia
6:40 a.m.:
“Today, May 25, at 5:13 a.m., the Russian armed forces fired four ballistic missiles at Zaporizhia”: The regional administration responsible for the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia reports on Telegram a serious rocket attack.
One of the missiles was intercepted by air defenses.
The rescue workers are on site to get an idea of the situation, the damage and possible victims of the attack.
Meanwhile, the military experts at the US war research institute Institute for the Study of War (ISW) report in their latest analysis that the Russian military is concentrating forces from different directions in the heavily contested Luhansk region.
The reserves needed for an offensive would be withdrawn from the areas around Kharkiv, Izyum, Donetsk and Zaporizhia.
In the last week, the Russian troops in the Luhansk region managed to gain more territory than in the whole of May, the analysts said.
20,000 reports of alleged Russian war crimes
6.20 a.m .:
In the three months since the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began, around 20,000 suspected war crimes have been reported, according to Kiev.
Police investigators alone registered 13,500 such acts, Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyj said on Ukrainian television on Tuesday.
"We work with foreign prosecutors, joint investigative teams and experts, but most of the work is done by Ukrainian law enforcement officials." Their evidence would later be sent to international bodies to bring suspected Russian war criminals to justice, the minister said.
In a first trial, the Ukrainian judiciary sentenced a young Russian soldier to life imprisonment as a war criminal.
He had shot dead a civilian in the Sumy region.
Ukrainian authorities do not rule out an exchange of the prisoner.
Atrocities in Bucha, Irpin and other cities near Kyiv, which came to light after the withdrawal of Russian troops, sparked worldwide outrage.
EU has frozen oligarch assets of almost ten billion euros
4.45 a.m .:
In the course of the Ukraine war, Russian oligarchs lost access to luxury yachts, real estate and other assets worth almost 10 billion euros.
According to information from the dpa news agency, this is based on figures from the EU Commission.
On April 8, the value was still 6.7 billion euros.
The EU Commission wants to present a legislative proposal this Wednesday that should make it possible to confiscate frozen Russian money.
This money could then be used to rebuild Ukraine.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasized on Tuesday: "We should turn every stone for this - if possible also Russian assets that we have frozen."
Since the start of the Ukraine war, the EU has put a number of Russian oligarchs on the sanctions list because they are accused of supporting the war.
At the beginning of March, an EU special unit was set up to ensure better cooperation between EU countries and to track down the assets of the oligarchs.
Just over a month later, the EU states had frozen assets of 29.5 billion euros - 6.7 billion euros came from the assets of oligarchs.
Added to this were the frozen assets of the Russian central bank.
fek/AFP/dpa/Reuters/AP
