Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealed for more time to rescue civilians who are still trapped beneath the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, saying they need to be dug out by hand.

“We hope to continue rescuing people from Azovstal, Mariupol. There are still civilians. Women, children,” Zelenskyy said in his morning address to the nation.

To save them, he said, there needs to be a cease-fire, with Ukraine ready to agree to one.

“It takes time to just lift people out of those basements, out of those underground shelters. In the current conditions, we cannot use special equipment to clear blockages,” he said, adding: “Everything is done manually.”

Two villages in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have been shelled by Ukraine, the region’s Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claimed on Thursday.

“There is shelling from the Ukrainian side on Zhuravlyovka and Nekhoteevka,” he said, Reuters reported. Gladkov said there were no civilian casualties.

Russia had previously accused Ukraine of shelling towns within Russian territory, specifically those near the border.

Ukraine has not publicly admitted to targeting positions within Russia, although one of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top advisors described such attacks several weeks ago as “karma.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia has claimed to have “destroyed” 600 Ukrainian fighters it described as “nationalists” in its latest military update on Thursday. The term “nationalists” is routinely used by Russia to refer to Ukrainian soldiers, and is seen as a way to denigrate the country’s armed forces.

Russia’s Defense Ministry posted on Telegram that it had also destroyed aircraft equipment at the Kanatovo military airfield in the Kirovograd region, a large ammunition depot in the city of Nikolaev and a fuel storage facility for Ukrainian military equipment in the Nikolaev region.

Two warehouses of military equipment at a military airfield near Kramatorsk were also hit, it claimed.

CNBC was unable to immediately verify the information.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia is likely to use snap military drills by its ally Belarus as a way to divert Ukrainian forces away from Donbas in eastern Ukraine, the focus of Russian assaults, as it seeks to seize the entire region, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

“Russia will likely seek to inflate the threat posed to Ukraine by these exercises in order to fix Ukrainian forces in the North, preventing them from being committed to the battle for the Donbas,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter this morning.

Belarus announced it was beginning combat-readiness drills yesterday, saying the purpose of the…