Ukraine

KYIV, May 13 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian court held a preliminary hearing on Friday in the first war crimes trial arising from Russia's Feb. 24 invasion, after charging a captured Russian soldier with the murder of a 62-year-old civilian.

The case is of huge symbolic importance for Ukraine. The Kyiv government has accused Russia of atrocities and brutality against civilians during the invasion and said it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes.

DERGACHI, Ukraine, May 13 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces destroyed a pontoon bridge and parts of a Russian armoured column as it tried to cross a river in the Donbas region, video released by Ukraine's military showed on Friday, and a Russian naval ship was set afire in the Black Sea.

Ukraine has driven Russian troops back from the second-largest city of Kharkiv in the fastest advance since Kremlin forces pulled away from Kyiv and the northeast over a month ago.

TAVRIISKE, Ukraine (AP) — There’s dancing in the garden, and ball games. A soft wind blows, cooling the spring sunshine. But there is an ominous accompaniment to the music and laughter: the unmistakable dull thud of not-so-distant artillery fire.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin warned it may take retaliatory “military-technical” steps after Finland’s leaders said they favor joining NATO, and Sweden could do the same within days, in a historic realignment triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the first war-crimes trial of a Russian soldier since the start of the conflict was set to open Friday in Kyiv. A 21-year-old captured member of a tank unit is accused of shooting to death a civilian in the war’s first week.

KIEV, May 12./TASS/: Legislator Alexey Goncharenko took to his Telegram channel on Thursday and disclosed that the "Opposition Platform - For Life" party was liquidated in the Ukrainian parliament.

"The faction of the ‘Opposition Platform - For Life’ was officially liquidated," he blogged.

KYIV, May 12 (Reuters) - One of the fighters holed up in a steelworks besieged by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has appealed to SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk to help evacuate them.

Many civilians were rescued from the sprawling Azovstal plant last week under an agreement with Russia, but no deal has been reached with Moscow on allowing out hundreds of fighters, some of whom are wounded, after weeks of bombardment. 

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces were continuing their airstrikes on the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol and pressing their advance on towns in eastern Ukraine, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Thursday.

The bombardment came as Ukraine offered to release Russian prisoners of war in exchange for the safe evacuation of the badly injured fighters that remained trapped inside the mill in the ruined city.

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — As he listened to his father die, the boy lay still on the asphalt. His elbow burned where a bullet had pierced him. His thumb stung from being grazed.

Another killing was in progress on a lonely street in Bucha, the community on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where bodies of civilians are still being discovered weeks after Russian soldiers withdrew. Many had been shot in the head.

The 14-year-old Yura Nechyporenko was about to become one of them.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — It’s easy to tell the delivery room from the rest of the main maternity hospital in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, even from the outside. Its exterior wall is piled high with sandbags.

In the dim basement, where heavily pregnant women must bend low to avoid the water pipes, there is a delivery table in case the baby comes amid the air raid sirens.

Stress is part of childbirth, but it’s not meant to be like this.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s natural gas pipeline operator said Wednesday it would stop Russian shipments through a key hub in the east of the country, while its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Kyiv’s military had made small gains, pushing Russian forces out of four villages near Kharkiv.