Ukraine

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) — Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.

Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

April 19 (Reuters) - The Ukrainian port city of Mariupol could fall to Russian forces within days, a European official said on Tuesday, saying it may suffer more than the town of Bucha, where Russian forces have been accused of atrocities that the Kremlin has denied.

"At the end of the day, we do expect a complete destruction of the city and many civilian casualties in Mariupol," said the European official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

KYIV/KHARKIV, April 19 (Reuters) - Russian troops seized a frontline Ukrainian city on Tuesday, hours after starting a long-anticipated offensive in eastern Ukraine that the Kyiv government has called the Battle of the Donbas.

Thousands of troops pressed an advance across almost the entire stretch of the eastern front as the assault began with massive Russian artillery and rocket barrages. Ukrainian officials said their soldiers would withstand the offensive.

Lviv, Apr 19 (AP) After days of regrouping and reinforcing, the Russian military began a new and potentially climactic phase of the war in Ukraine by launching its long-feared, full-scale ground offensive to take control of the country's industrial heartland, the Donbas, Ukrainian officials said.

The stepped-up assaults began Monday along a broad front of over 300 miles (480 kilometers), Ukrainian officials said.

KIEV, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Russian forces have begun the battle for the Donbas region, but Ukraine will defend itself, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Monday.

"Now we can say that Russian troops have started the battle for Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time. A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive," Zelensky was quoted as saying by the state-run Ukrinform news agency.

"No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight," he added.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces attacked along a broad front in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday as part of a full-scale ground offensive to take control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland in what Ukrainian officials called a “new phase of the war.”

Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces are focusing their efforts on taking full control of the Donbas region. “The occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline,” the General Staff said in a statement early Tuesday.

KIEV, April 18. /TASS/: Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk has called on Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine, to swap him for servicemen and Mariupol residents.

KIEV, April 18. /TASS/: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky gave the head of the EU delegation in Kiev a completed questionnaire, which is a step for Ukraine to get the status of a candidate for EU membership, the Ukrainian presidential office said on Monday.

"President Vladimir Zelensky handed to Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Matti Maasikas a completed questionnaire for our country to obtain the status of a candidate for EU membership," according to a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.

KIEV, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine on Monday sent to the European Commission (EC) the first part of a questionnaire aimed at achieving candidate status for European Union (EU) membership, the Ukrinform news agency reported.

The 1,156-page document contains the answers to 374 questions regarding Ukraine's compliance with the criteria for EU membership in the political and economic spheres, it reported, citing the country's Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles hit the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Monday, killing at least seven people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow’s troops stepped up strikes on infrastructure in preparation for an all-out assault on the east.

Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city after a series of explosions shattered windows and started fires. Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine have seen only sporadic strikes during almost two months of war and have become a relative safe haven for people from parts of the country where fighting has been more intense.