Ukraine

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounded targets across Ukraine, taking aim at supply lines for foreign weapons in the west and intensifying an offensive in the east, as the European Union moved Wednesday to further punish Moscow for the war with a proposed ban on oil imports.

The Russian military said Wednesday it used sea- and air-launched precision guided missiles to destroy electric power facilities at five railway stations across Ukraine, while artillery and aircraft also struck troop strongholds and fuel and ammunition depots.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials and the United Nations held out hope for more evacuations from the bombed-out steel mill in Mariupol as scores of civilians reached relative safety after enduring weeks of Russian shelling against the city’s last pocket of resistance.

While the evacuees savored hot food, clean clothing and other comforts that were denied to them while underground, Russian forces on Tuesday began storming the plant, where some Ukrainian fighters were still holed up.

KYIV, May 2 (Reuters) - Ukraine has formally closed its four Black and Azov sea ports, which Russian forces have captured, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Monday.

The Azov Sea ports of Mariupol, Berdiansk and Skadovsk and the Black Sea port of Kherson were closed "until the restoration of control", the ministry said in a statement.

"The adoption of this measure is caused by the impossibility of servicing ships and passengers, carrying out cargo, transport and other related economic activities, ensuring the appropriate level of safety of navigation," it said.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, May 3 (Reuters) - Russia launched an attack on the encircled Azovstal steel works in Mariupol, Ukraine's last redoubt in the port city, after a ceasefire broke down on Tuesday with some 200 civilians trapped underground despite a U.N.-brokered evacuation.

In a Telegram video, Captain Sviatoslav Palamar of Ukraine's Azov Regiment said that Russia pounded the steel works with naval and barrel artillery through the night and dropped heavy bombs from planes.

WASHINGTON, May 1. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba held a phone conversation on Saturday to discuss the return of US diplomats to Ukraine and the US government’s request to Congress to authorize additional aid to Kiev totaling $33 billion.

US Department of State Spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement after the talks: "The Secretary provided an update on plans for U.S. diplomats to return to Ukraine, including initial visits to Lviv this week and plans to return to Kyiv as soon as possible."

(AP) Harrison Jozefowicz quit his job as a Chicago police officer and headed overseas soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. An Army veteran, he said he couldn’t help but join American volunteers seeking to help Ukrainians in their fight.

Jozefowicz now heads a group called Task Force Yankee, which he said has placed more than 190 volunteers in combat slots and other roles while delivering nearly 15,000 first aid kits, helping relocate more than 80 families and helping deliver dozens of pallets of food and medical supplies to the southern and eastern fronts of the war.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian civilians holed up inside a steel plant in Mariupol under siege by Russian forces nearly two months began evacuating over the weekend and people sheltering elsewhere in the city were to leave Monday, local officials said.

Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus.

April 29 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said there was a big risk that peace talks with Moscow would end and blamed public anger over what he said were atrocities by Russian troops, Interfax Ukraine reported.

"People (Ukrainians) want to kill them. When that kind of attitude exists, it's hard to talk about things," Interfax quoted him as telling Polish journalists.

KYIV, April 30 (Reuters) - Never mind forging swords into ploughshares; a Ukrainian businessman is turning scraps of wreckage from a downed Russian fighter plane into souvenir key fobs and selling them abroad to support the war effort.

"Many of my friends tell me '$1,000 - nobody will give you this for this piece of metal, it's crazy," said Iurii Vysoven, founder of "Drones for Ukraine".

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — A long-awaited effort to evacuate people from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was underway Sunday, the United Nations said, while U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed she visited Ukraine’s president to show unflinching American support for the country’s defense against Russian aggression.