Ukraine updates: Putin appoints Shoigu to security council

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as the head of the national security council, the Kremlin announced.

The body is made up of senior Russian officials that advise Putin.

Shoigu replaced former secretary Nikolai Patrushev.

Putin has nominated civilian Andrei Belousov to replace Shoigu as defense minister.

The Kremlin said that Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will remain in their posts.

The reshuffle comes as Putin begins his fifth term, while the war in Ukraine continues into its third year.

Belousov has served as deputy prime minister and has been one of Putin's most influential economic advisers over the last decade.

"Today, the winner on the battlefield is the one who is more open to innovation and its implementation," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov told reporters that it was vital to ensure defense spending was aligned with Russia's overall interests.

He added that Shoigu will continue to be involved in defense policy in his role at the security council.

"Shoigu will continue to work in [defense], which he knows well."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his nightly video address that fierce fighting was underway in several villages in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

He also spoke of battles in parts of the eastern Donetsk region.

"There are villages that have in fact been turned from a 'grey zone' into a zone of hostilities," he said, adding that there had been "fierce" fighting. "The occupier is trying to gain a foothold in some of them, while others are being used to advance further."

Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synehubov said that "all areas" of the regional border with Russia were now "under enemy fire almost around the clock."

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces had "advanced deeply into the enemy defenses." A day earlier, it claimed to have captured five villages in the Kharkiv region.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called for Berlin to express solidarity with other countries in the world, including Ukraine, at an event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.

During the airlift, the US, UK and France supplied West Berlin with food and fuel in the face of a Soviet blockade in 1948-49.

 "The airlift showed how important it is to do the right thing," Pistorius said at the Berlin Airlift Memorial in Berlin.

"If our partners had just shrugged their shoulders or argued that the costs were too high and the risks too great, Berlin would very probably have been finished," he said.

"We Germans in particular have benefited greatly from partnerships and assurances of common security in the past," the minister said.

He said that Germany must not allow authoritarian forces to violate international law and impose their will on sovereign states and peoples throughout the world and "above all in Ukraine."

"As naturally as our allies stood up for us back then, we must also clearly stand up for our international order, for peace and freedom today," Pistorius declared.

Russia says it has captured four more villages in Ukraine's Kharkiv region after thousands of residents were evacuated amid Moscow's surprise ground offensive.

Russia's Defense Ministry announced the new gains on Sunday, a day after claiming to have seized five villages in the region from which Russian troops had been pushed back nearly two years ago.

The ministry said Russian troops had "advanced deeply into the enemy defenses villages including Gatishche, Krasnoye, Morokhovets and Oleinikovo. However, the Ukrainian army has said it is managing to hold back further Russian advances.

Ukraine's military chief says his country's forces are facing a difficult situation in fighting in the Kharkiv region, but that they are doing their utmost to hold the line.

Russia launched a new offensive from its territory into the northern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv on Friday. The move appears to have reopened a front that had long been dormant at ground level in the 27-month war, with Russia on Saturday saying it had captured five villages.  

"Units of the Defense Forces are fighting fierce defensive battles, the attempts of the Russian invaders to break through our defenses have been stopped," Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's armed forces, wrote on the Telegram app.

"The situation is difficult, but the Defense Forces of Ukraine are doing everything to hold defensive lines and positions, inflict damage on the enemy," he added.

Ukraine is presently on the defensive against Russia, which enjoys a significant advantage in terms of munitions and manpower.

Kyiv says several months of delays by the US Congress in voting through a huge package of aid have caused it to lose ground. Ukrainian officials hope significant quantities of the new assistance will arrive quickly to shore up the country's defense effort.

The warmer summer months are the easiest time to try to make gains in a region that frequently faces very cold winters.

Russian media has reported that at least three people were killed when a multi-storey apartment block partially collapsed after a Ukrainian missile strike in the Russian city of Belgorod.

Footage posted by Vyacheslav Gladkov, who is governor of the border region, showed at least 10 stories of the building collapsing.

"The city of Belgorod and the Belgorod region were subjected to massive shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine," Gladkov said.

"As the result of a direct hit by a shell into an apartment building, the entire entrance from the tenth to the first floor collapsed."

Russian reports initally said at least three people had been killed with a possible 20 people buried in the rubble of the apartment block.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday said that fragments of a Soviet-era Tochka-U missile (referred to by NATO as a Scarab B missile) launched by Ukraine and downed by Russian air defense systems had damaged an apartment block in Belgorod.

Ukrainian officials say thousands of people have now been relocated from border areas in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, as Russia kept up its bombardment of a key town and small villages as part of a cross-border offensive.

A Russian attack across Ukraine's northeastern border began on Friday, on a front that had been relatively motionless since late in 2022, with Moscow's troops making small advances in an area from where they had been ejected nearly two years ago.

"In total, 4,073 people have been evacuated," Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on social media, a day after Russia claimed to have captured five villages in the region.

Ukraine says several civilians have been killed in the offensive. The latest, a 63-year-old man, was killed by artillery fire in the village of Glyboke.

A senior police officer from the town Vovchansk helping to coordinate evacuations, said shelling had killed "several people" on Saturday with another found dead in rubble overnight. 

"The city is constantly under fire," he was cited as saying by the AFP news agency. "Everything in the city is being destroyed... You hear constant explosions, artillery, mortars. The enemy is hitting the city with everything they have."

Ukraine's military Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has thanked the mothers of service personnel in a special greeting on Ukrainian Mothers' Day.

Syrskyi offered a "down-to-earth bow to mothers whose sons and daughters are serving in Ukraine's armed forces."

"Thank you for the dignified and noble upbringing of your children who are now serving in the benches of the Defense Forces of Ukraine," he said.

"Thank you for your infinite maternal love, tenderness and sleeplessness in the troubles of the night."

"No matter how old we are, whatever military ranks we have, whatever high positions we hold, whatever dangerous tasks we perform, we remain children to our mothers."

Syrskyi promised mothers whose children were held as Russian prisoners of war that Kyiv's troops were "fighting for every Ukrainian warrior and are trying to do everything to return our brothers and sisters back from Moscow."

"I ask each and every one that can take time out this day and call their mom and congratulate her, thank her for upbringing and her prayers."

"Call and support the mother of the lost brothers and sisters. They need to know we are around," he said.

May 12 is Mother's Day in much of the world this year, including Germany and Ukraine, though its timing varies in several countries. 

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine has said a woman was killed and 29 people wounded amid attacks over the weekend. 

Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov also said several hundred flats were damaged after continuous attacks from Ukraine over the weekend.

"The city of Belgorod and Belgorod region were subjected to massive shelling by Ukrainian armed forces," Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app late without specifying when the shelling happened.

The governor said about 300 flats in 85 apartment buildings and four commercial properties were damaged, with four roofs of apartment buildings receiving direct hits.

He also said two hospitals, a school, and a sports facility were damaged.

Kyiv says it does not target civilians but instead fires at Russia's military, energy, and transport infrastructure in response to Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian areas.

Lithuania is voting in the first round of its presidential election after a campaign focusing on security concerns in the Baltic states after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Just over half of Lithuanians believe a Russian attack is possible or even very likely, according to an ELTA/Baltijos Tyrimai poll.

The main candidates agree that the country should increase defense spending to counter a perceived threat from neighboring Russia.

You can read more on that story here.

rc/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)