🔺Wimbledon to ban Russian stars such as Daniil Medvedev

Wimbledon organisers are on the brink of announcing a full ban of all players from Russia and Belarus at this year’s championships.

The likes of the world No 2 Daniil Medvedev and the former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka will not be permitted to appear at the All England Club this summer because of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by military forces from the two aforementioned countries.

A ban will see Wimbledon become the first tennis tournament to suspend Russians and Belarusians. As it stands, they are permitted to play on the ATP and WTA tours as neutral athletes, and have been allowed to put their names on the entry list for next month’s French Open.

Sources have told The Times that a decision has finally been reached after close to two months of discussions between the All England Club and the UK government. Officials from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) had suggested that players could offer a written private declaration that they would not make comments in support of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, but Wimbledon organisers decided that a ban was more feasible because of the risks an effective denunciation could potentially bring to the players’ family members.

Advances by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have also reduced the chances of a peace deal between Putin and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the coming weeks, so Wimbledon organisers believe it is best to now go ahead with a full ban.

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🔺US spy plane on patrol in Black Sea before sinking of Russian flagship Moskva

A US aircraft was patrolling the Black Sea in the hours before the Moskva was hit by Ukrainian missiles.

A Boeing P8 Poseidon was within 100 miles of the Moskva on the day the Russian cruiser sustained catastrophic damage.

Hundreds of sailors are thought to have died when the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet was hit by at least one Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile. Its sinking has dramatically reduced the likelihood of an amphibious assault on Odesa and has dealt a blow to Russia’s capabilities in the Black Sea.

The P8, which costs about £330 million, is the most sophisticated submarine-hunting and warship-tracking plane in the US arsenal.

Experts have previously estimated that a P8 could map a cross-sectional radar area of 10,000 square metres from a range of more than 220 miles, meaning the Moskva would have been in range on the day of its sinking.

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🔺Civilians in steelworks can surrender or rot, says Putin as Russia ‘liberates’ Mariupol

Russia claimed this morning to have “liberated” Mariupol and President Putin ordered the military to call off an assault on a steelworks where more than 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were making a desperate last stand.

The Russian leader ordered his military to cancel plans to storm the Azovstal steel plant where the city’s last defenders, along with about 1,000 civilians, are holding out in underground shelters and tunnels.

Putin instead instructed Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, to blockade the industrial plant so that even “a fly” cannot pass unnoticed. He said that anyone who surrendered would be treated well.

“We must think about preserving the life and health of our soldiers and officers,” Putin said.

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🔺Don’t pretend to care about captured Britons, Russia tells Johnson

Moscow has claimed that Boris Johnson does not care about the two British men captured by Russia while fighting for the Ukrainian army because they did not attend lockdown parties at Downing Street.

Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were taken prisoner last week in Mariupol, the shelled-out Ukrainian port city, after their unit ran out of ammunition and food.

“We would call on Russia and Putin to treat any prisoners of war properly in line with conventions and laws,” a spokesman for the prime minister said. When asked specifically about Aslin in the Commons, Johnson appealed to Moscow to treat him “humanely and compassionately”.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said that Johnson had “no interest” in what happened to the men.

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🔺Kremlin ‘admits it has lost 20,000 troops in Ukraine’

Russian forces in Ukraine may have suffered as many as 20,000 casualties, according to a pro-Kremlin website that rapidly withdrew the report claiming that it had been hacked.

Readovka said in a post on the VK Russian social media network that Russia’s armed forces had suffered more than 13,000 deaths in Ukraine since the start of the war on February 24. 

It said that the figure was announced at a closed defence ministry briefing and added that 7,000 Russian soldiers were said to be missing in action.

Among the casualties supposedly announced at the briefing were 116 sailors killed aboard the Moskva guided missile cruiser, with more than 100 crew still missing.

Russia’s defence ministry last updated its tally of casualties on March 25, when it said that 1,351 troops had died.

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🔺PM plans tank swap in defence of Ukraine

Britain is planning to send tanks to Poland to help Ukraine as Boris Johnson conceded that Russia had a chance of winning the war.

The prime minister said the UK was considering “backfilling” Poland by sending Challenger 2 tanks so it could transfer its own Soviet-era T-72s to Ukraine.

Johnson also said that Britain was working with western allies on a security guarantee to protect any peace deal, adding that he would close a loophole that allowed the Russian defence ministry to use smuggled western technology in its cruise missiles.

However, he stopped short of committing to a military intervention should Russia invade Ukraine again in future.

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🔺Inside Ukraine’s Hurt Locker: the team defusing 300 bombs a day

Everything seems to stand still as the two men in navy overalls and body-armour crouch around the hole in the floor of Irina Lebvedev’s small kitchen and lever up the tiles.

The Russian shell smashed through a roof, a ceiling and the floor without exploding so they are confident they will not set it off now — “Russian ammo is shit”, says one — but, just in case, they tell Irina’s grandson and others to stand back as they wield the crowbar. Even Irina’s ginger cat stops mewing and for a moment the only sound is the men’s breathing as they reach down for the unexploded 122mm shell, pull out the fuse, then carry it outside.

To onlookers it resembles a scene from The Hurt Locker, the Oscar-winning film about a maverick bomb disposal unit during the war in Iraq.

For Roman Horiak, leader of the five-man team removing land mines and ordnance left by Russians in Bucha and Irpin, it is all in a day’s work.

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🔺Zelensky warns the world: You’re next

It was a surreal setting for a press conference and a bravado performance even by the standards of the actor-turned-president who has mesmerised the world since his country was invaded.

Against a backdrop of two escalators on the platform of a metro station in the Ukrainian capital, where just a few weeks ago his people were sheltering from Russian bombs, Volodymyr Zelensky warned last night that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country “is only a beginning”, adding: “When they finish with us they will start with you.” But he insisted he was still willing to meet the Russian leader to try to end the war.

“I don’t say I want to meet him but any healthy and sane person chooses diplomacy over military means because even if it’s hard, it may stop the loss of hundreds of thousands, even millions.”

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🔺The Englishman driving deep into Donbas to rescue Ukrainians

With just a car and rendezvous points mapped on his phone, Dave Young is risking his life to save families living in the eastern war zone, Anthony Loyd reports

The man rose from his bed and packed a small bag with a change of clothes, his toothbrush, washing kit and three books. Then he fed his dog, his only companion, for the last time, said goodbye to the animal and let it out of the door.

He felt like crying. The taps had not worked for weeks so he had a glass of boiled rainwater, composed himself and began his walk to the rescue rendezvous.

The streets were empty. Glass and rubble crunched under foot. Oleh Shtogrin, a 53-year-old miner, was familiar with the sounds of the weaponry wrecking the city around him so when three explosions happened near by he told me that he knew that one set came from Grad rockets another from mortars and the last from a howitzer.

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Alina Kabaeva: Putin’s gymnast emerges from the shadows at festival

President Putin’s rumoured girlfriend has resurfaced to lead a patriotic festival hailing the heroism of Russia’s armed forces.

The former gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 38, who is known in Russian media as the “First Lady in the shadows”, appeared at a performance with a uniformed military choir. The Olympic gold-medal winner is said to have up to four children with Putin, including twins born in 2019.

The event included some of the Soviet Union’s most patriotic songs to mark its victory over the Nazis in the Second World War, although pictures also featured the “Z” symbol — likened by critics to a swastika — to show support for the war in Ukraine.

Wearing a pink dress with a black and orange St George’s ribbon, commemorating veterans of the Eastern Front, she linked that victory to current events. “Every family has a war story and we mustn’t ever forget it, but pass it on from generation to generation,” she said.

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🔺Russian fuel depots ablaze after suspected Ukrainian strikes

Huge blasts tore through two oil storage centres in a Russian city near the border with Ukraine this morning after a suspected strike by Ukrainian missiles.

The explosions occurred within 15 minutes of each other, Russian state television said, without speculating on the cause. It said that one blast occurred at a fuel tank at a military unit, the other at an oil refinery.

Video showed fires burning across Bryansk, about 95 miles from the Ukrainian border, with one showing a large plume of black smoke coming from the military base.

Unconfirmed reports said a railway line that transported Russian military hardware to Ukraine had also been damaged in an explosion.

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🔺Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov warns of ‘real’ danger of World War Three

Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a “proxy war” in Ukraine and warned that the danger of a third world war escalating from the conflict is “serious, real”.

In a televised interview, Sergey Lavrov claimed Ukraine was stalling talks between the two countries and accused President Zelensky and Boris Johnson of “playing to the gallery” rather than negotiating for peace.

But Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said today that Lavrov’s comments meant that Russia “senses defeat” after two months of war.

In a lengthy interview with Russian state television last night Lavrov defended Moscow’s invasion and also blamed America for the lack of dialogue.

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🔎 Desperate Putin prepares for war without end | Roger Boyes

Vladimir Putin’s existential decision, the gamble of his life, is whether to declare a general mobilisation of able-bodied Russian men. It would mark the end of the pretence that Moscow is simply running a “special operation” in Ukraine and it would usher in a protracted war that would shape Europeans, in the west as well as the east, for a generation.

Putin has been reluctant to take that step. Tsar Nicholas II ordered a general mobilisation of Russia on July 30, 1914; two days later Germany declared war on Russia and the die was cast, not just for bloodshed but also domestic upheaval and revolution at home. In modern times, general mobilisation raises the possibility of a stop-the-war movement, of Kremlin infighting, of martial-law style measures — and with no guarantee that it will be successful.

But the depletion of his troops may leave Putin with little choice other than to escalate or go home trumpeting a transparently fake victory, a lipsticked pig. Here’s Michael Kofman, Russian military analyst at the CNA think tank: “Without national mobilisation, I think the Donbas is the last major offensive the Russian military can attempt given the current state and availability of forces. Whether it succeeds or fails, the Russian military will be largely exhausted in terms of offensive potential.”

It’s difficult to disagree. Russian units have become less combat-effective, not just because of casualties and fatigue but also because of disabled vehicles. General mobilisation could improve morale and bestow a sense of national mission on the invasion force, but it would not fix the structural problems facing the Russians: the quality of generalship, the lack of flexibility, the poor co-ordination of advancing tanks, accompanying infantry and air support, the jumbled supply lines.

There is a fundamental flaw in the balance between professional contract soldiers and conscripts. Russian law doesn’t allow the deployment of conscripts before they have had four months’ training. General mobilisation or some form of martial law could override that rule but it wouldn’t make them any more competent. And once word got out, or body bags returned, there would be plenty of local resistance.

Still, Putin may be ready to give it a try. The western reading of the May 9 “victory parade” in Moscow this year is that Putin is impatient for a battlefield success before the Red Square march-past, one that can cement his authority as a commander-in-chief. But that timescale puts too much pressure on the Russian forces to achieve a significant victory in Donbas.

More likely, the significance of the parade is that it will allow Putin to promote the narrative for the next phase of the war. This could explain some of the strange happenings of the past weeks — fires at a Russian defence research institute and various explosions in fuel depots in Bryansk, a Russian military staging point three hours’ drive from the Ukrainian border. Even more mysterious has been a string of suicides of wealthy Russian businessmen, some of whom are associated with the gas business.

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🔺Ukraine can use British weapons to hit Russian territory, says armed forces minister

The Kremlin threatened to launch retaliatory strikes on western targets yesterday as British support for attacks on Russian territory risked escalating the conflict outside Ukraine’s borders.

James Heappey, the armed forces minister, said it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to hunt targets in Russia to disrupt logistics, even if the weapons were British-supplied.

In an interview with Times Radio, he said that “of course” Britain backed what were said to be Ukrainian strikes on fuel depots in Russia this week. He said logistics that were not disrupted “would directly contribute to death and carnage on Ukrainian soil”.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that Nato’s supplies of weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, armoured vehicles and drones, were “pouring oil on the fire”. The alliance was “in essence” engaging in a proxy war, he said.

“These weapons will be a legitimate target for Russia’s military acting within the context of the special operation,” Lavrov said. “Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War Three,” he said. “The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”

In response to Heappey’s comments, Russia raised the prospect of retaliatory attacks on diplomats returning to Kyiv or any other westerners in the country. The defence ministry warned Britain that if it continued to provoke Ukraine to strike targets in Russia there would be an immediate “proportional response”.

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🔺Liz Truss fears Russia’s war on Ukraine will last years

The foreign secretary believes that the war in Ukraine could last for years and fears President Putin could deploy weapons of mass destruction in a desperate attempt to break the deadlock.

Liz Truss, in a speech at Mansion House in London, said that Putin was a “rogue operator” and warned that he could invade other countries, including Georgia and Moldova.

She is understood to believe that the war could realistically last up to five years, or even as long as a decade. She called on western countries to help push Russian troops out of Ukraine altogether and said that if Putin succeeded in making territorial gains he could inflict “untold further misery across Europe”.

In other developments:

• Russia said it would sanction nearly 300 MPs for fuelling “Russophobic hysteria”, but appeared to be working from an outdated list of names.

• Officials in Washington revealed that US intelligence had helped Ukrainian forces to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops.

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🔺Satellite images show Russian-trained dolphins at Sevastopol harbour

The Russian navy has deployed trained bottlenose dolphins in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea to help protect its warships from underwater sabotage, satellite images show.

Two pens with the dolphins have been spotted in the naval base, which is the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the annexed part of Ukraine.

Dolphins have been trained by the Russians for decades to detect mines and give warning of hostile frogmen. The US navy has a similar training programme for dolphins and sea lions at its naval base in San Diego, California.

Sevastopol was the home base for Moskva, the guided-missile cruiser and Black Sea flagship that was sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship Neptune missiles on April 14.

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🔺First war crimes cases brought against Bucha suspects

Ukrainian prosecutors have brought the first criminal charges against Russian soldiers accused of torturing civilians in the town of Bucha, where hundreds of people died during a brutal one-month occupation.

The country’s chief prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, announced the charges against ten named members of Russia’s 64th Motorised Infantry Brigade for “cruel treatment of civilians and other violations of laws and customs of war”.

Venediktova said that the soldiers took unarmed civilians as hostages, deprived them of food and water, forced them on to their knees with their hands tied and their eyes covered in tape, and beat them with fists and gun butts. They also performed mock executions.

A team of 300 prosecutors, police officers and agents of the intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), are working on the cases.

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🔺British aid workers captured by Russian troops in Ukraine

Two British volunteers helping to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine have been captured by the Russian military.

The non-profit Presidium Network named the men as Paul Urey, 45, and Dylan Healy, 22.

The pair were working to evacuate a woman and two children from the Zaporizhzhia region when they were stopped at a military checkpoint on Monday and accused of being British spies.

The Presidium Network said they last had contact with Urey at 4am. Since then, a person claiming to be the volunteer failed to provide personal details when messaging the organisation.

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