Extract from ABC News
Ukraine says it is nearly ready to launch a huge ground assault to retake occupied land, after Russian missiles struck cities as people slept, killing at least 25 civilians in its first large-scale air strikes in nearly two months.
Key points:
- Kyiv will use hundreds of Western tanks and armoured vehicles when it launches its counterattack
- Russia hit a residential building in Ukraine with a missile, while Kyiv's forces struck a minibus carrying civilians
- Vladimir Putin signed new laws to increase jail terms for several offences including terrorism and sabotage
The war is coming to a crucial juncture after a months-long Russian winter offensive that gained little ground despite the bloodiest fighting so far.
Kyiv is preparing a counteroffensive using hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles sent by the West.
It wants to drive Russia out of the nearly one fifth of Ukraine that it occupies and claims to have annexed.
"As soon as there is God's will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it," Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleskii Reznikov told an online news briefing.
Ukraine was "to a high percentage ready", he said, with new modern weapons to provide an "iron fist".
Along hundreds of kilometres of front, Russia has been fortifying its territory for months in anticipation of Kyiv's planned assault, widely expected once warmer weather dries out Ukraine's notorious sucking black mud.
Ukraine made swift gains throughout the second half of 2022, but has kept its forces on the defensive for the past five months.
Russia, meanwhile, launched a huge winter campaign using hundreds of thousands of freshly called-up reservists and convicts recruited as mercenaries from jail.
But despite the heaviest ground combat in Europe since World War II, Moscow captured little additional territory, focusing mainly on the small mining city of Bakhmut where Ukrainians have withstood for almost a year.
Kyiv and its Western military backers hope a push by thousands of Ukrainian troops trained at Western bases, using hundreds of newly donated tanks and armoured vehicles, will shift the dynamics of the war.
Russia strikes apartments, Ukraine hits minibus
In the central town of Uman, firefighters battled a blaze at a residential apartment building struck on an upper floor by a Russian missile.
Officials said at least 23 civilians were killed there, including four children.
Rescue workers clambered through a huge pile of smouldering rubble, carrying a body away on a stretcher.
A man wearing a face mask sobbed as he watched, and a woman came to comfort him.
"No one is left," said Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, who survived inside a flat on the seventh floor.
He was rescued by firefighters from the balcony where he escaped with his wife after the explosion blocked their front door.
Mr Lubivskyi wept as he took a deep drag from a cigarette and looked up at the smouldering gaps in the building where adjacent flats had been blasted away.
"My neighbours are gone," he said.
"Only the kitchens were left standing."
The wave of Russian missile attacks was the first since early March.
Russia had launched such attacks almost weekly for most of the winter, but they tapered off as spring arrived, with Western countries saying Moscow was running out of missiles.
Moscow said the targets of its strikes were locations of Ukrainian reserve troops, which it had hit successfully, preventing them from reaching the front.
It supplied no evidence to support this.
In the south-eastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
The capital Kyiv was also rocked by explosions in the early hours, as were the central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and Mykolaiv in the south.
Two people were wounded in the town of Ukrayinka, just south of Kyiv, officials said.
Closer to the front, in Donetsk, an eastern city controlled by Russian proxies since 2014, a Russian-installed official said seven people, including a child, had been killed by Ukrainian shelling that hit a minibus.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia.
"This Russian terror must face a fair response from Ukraine and the world," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post alongside images of the wreckage.
"And it will."
Putin raises jail terms for treason
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Russia needed to act quickly to counter what he called the West's "economic aggression", adding Moscow would expand ties with countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America.
Russia's economy has faced multiple challenges this year, including a weaker rouble, lower energy revenues and further isolation as Western countries continue to impose sanctions over its actions in Ukraine.
"Today, in the face of the West's economic aggression, the parliament, the government, all regional and local authorities need to act clearly, and quickly work as one cohesive team," Mr Putin told a meeting of Russian politicians.
"We are not going to leave Russia to isolate itself. On the contrary, we are going to expand pragmatic, equal, mutually beneficial, exclusively cooperative relations with friendly countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America."
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday that Moscow's forecast of a 2023 budget deficit not exceeding 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) still stood, but achieving this would depend on oil and gas revenues, Russian news agencies reported.
Mr Putin on Friday (local time) also signed a decree formally increasing the maximum sentence for treason to life in jail, part of a drive to suppress dissent since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Legislators also approved raising the maximum sentence for carrying out "a terrorist act" — defined as a deed which endangered lives and was aimed at destabilising Russia — to 20 years, from 15 years at present.
Those found guilty of sabotage could also go to jail for 20 years, up from 15, while people convicted of "international terrorism" could be sentenced to life, up from 12 years.
Russia said the laws would protect it from infiltration by Ukraine and Western intelligence agencies.
'Butcher of Mariupol' removed as deputy minister
Russian Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, who was sanctioned by the West and dubbed the "Butcher of Mariupol" for his role in the Ukraine war, has been removed as deputy defence minister, according to a military blogger and a leading news website.
Colonel General Mizintsev orchestrated the siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the early months of the war last year.
In September, he was appointed deputy defence minister in charge of logistics and supplies.
Imposing sanctions against Colonel General Mizintsev last June, the European Union referred to him as the Butcher of Mariupol and said he was responsible for the "inhuman" siege of the shattered Ukrainian city, which Russia said it has been rebuilding.
His departure was reported by a Russian military blogger, Alexander Sladkov, and by the RBC news site.
Neither offered an explanation for why he had apparently been removed.
The defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Kremlin has said it cannot say anything on the subject and has referred questions on the matter to the defence ministry.
Mr Putin has frequently reshuffled top military figures without explanation, including in January when Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, replaced Sergei Surovikin in overall charge of what Russia calls its "special military operation".
Reuters/ABC
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