Ukraine War highlights: UK slaps fresh sanctions on Russia, Belarus; UN chief 'appalled' at school attack

Russia has forgotten everything that mattered to the victors of World War II, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday, a day before Moscow commemorates the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany.

Denouncing Russia's heavy shelling in the east of the country including one strike on a school that he says killed 60 people, he added: "Russia has forgotten everything that was important to the victors of World War II. "

"Civilians who simply hid in the school from the shelling. It was a targeted blow to the school. Another crime of the occupiers. I am sure that today Ukraine has shown that we are already a full-fledged part of the free world and a united Europe," he added.

Russia will on Monday mark the 77th anniversary since victory in what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War.

Britain announced on Sunday it will increase tariffs on platinum and palladium imports from Russia and Belarus in a new package of sanctions targeting 1.7 billion pounds ($2.10 billion) of trade, which it said aimed to further weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin's war machine.

Import tariffs on a range of products will be raised by 35 percentage points, Britain said, while it will also ban exports of goods such as chemicals, plastics, rubber and machinery to Russia, worth a combined 250 million pounds ($310 million).

The UK government will legislate for the new sanctions in due course, it said.

The United Nations chief says he is “appalled” at the reported attack on a school in the Ukrainian town of Bilohorivka, where many people were apparently seeking shelter from fighting, news agency PTI reported.

A U.N. spokesman said Sunday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterates that civilians and civilian infrastructure must be spared under international law.

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric says: “This war must end, and peace must be established in line with the Charter of the United Nations and international law. The United Nations and its humanitarian partners in Ukraine will continue supporting those whose lives have been shattered by war.”

Sixty civilians died in the bombing of a school in eastern Ukraine's Lugansk region this weekend, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday as news agency AFP.

"Just yesterday in the village of Bilogorivka, Lugansk region, a Russian bomb killed 60 people. Civilians," Zelensky said during an address to the G7 summit by video conference.

Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday, holding a surprise Mother's Day meeting with first lady Olena Zelenska to show U.S. support for the embattled nation as Russia presses its punishing war in the eastern regions, reports PTI.

She became the latest high-profile American to enter Ukraine during the war, while Zalenska's public appearance was her first since since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24

Scores of Ukrainians were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb flattened a school where about 90 people were taking shelter in the basement, while Ukrainian fighters held out inside Mariupol's steel plant as Moscow's forces apparently raced to capture the city ahead of Russia's Victory Day holiday.

Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people at the school in the village of Bilohorivka after Saturday’s bombing, according to the governor of Luhansk province, part of the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas.

“Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Gov. Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.

The State Department on Sunday announced a raft of visa bans and a new policy of visa restrictions on more than 2,500 Russian military officials and Russian-backed forces in Ukraine, according to a department fact sheet, Reuters reported. 

Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday that its high-precision missiles had destroyed weapons and military equipment supplied to Ukrainian forces from the United States and unspecified Western countries at a railway station near the town of Soledar. The ministry also said that it had destroyed six depots storing missile and artillery weapons in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv regions while its air defences shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 warplane.

Leaders of the Group of Seven most industrialized countries pledged to ban the import of Russian oil in response to President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The heads of the leading economies made the commitment after holding a video call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday, the eve of Russia’s May 9 Victory Day, which commemorates Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a televised address to the nation on Sunday May 8, marking the anniversary of the end of World War Two, assured Ukraine of solidarity in its fight against Russia's invasion. "Putin will not win this war. Ukraine will persevere," said Scholz. The date takes on special meaning this year as two countries that were once victims of Nazi Germany - Ukraine and Russia - are now at war because Russia unleashed it, he said.

The US top diplomat to Ukraine Kristina Kvien and her team arrived in Kyiv on Sunday, a senior State Department official said, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised on a visit last month to reopen the US. embassy in the Ukrainian capital soon, Reuters reported.   

The move is the latest step toward the resumption of a full US presence in Kyiv after diplomats began returning to the western city of Lviv last month, having left the country ahead of Russia's Feb. 24 invasion out of security concerns. 

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Sunday he discussed with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken how to unblock Ukraine's food exports and ensure global food security.

Ukraine, one of the world's major grain and oilseeds, used to export most of its cereals through its Black Sea ports, which have been blocked by Russia since the start of Moscow's invasion on Feb. 24.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday told CBS that Congress needs to pass by the end of the month a bill that would give Ukraine $33 billion in military and humanitarian aid, Reuters reported. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made on Sunday an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian town of Irpin, which had been temporary held by Russian troops, the town's mayor said on Telegram. "I've just had an honor to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, who came to Irpin to see with his own eyes all the horror which Russian occupiers have caused to our town," Oleksandr Markushyn said on his Telegram channel.

US First Lady Jill Biden on Sunday made an unannounced visit to Ukraine to show support to the war-torn country in its fight against Russia, Reuters reported. She also met her Ukrainian counterpart Olena Zelenska. "I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine,” she said. Full report

Ukraine's foreign ministry shares video of rock band U2 performing in a subway station in Kyiv. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that "evil has returned" to Europe, comparing Russia's invasion to Nazi Germany during an address commemorating World War II.

"Decades after World War II, darkness has returned to Ukraine, and it has become black and white again," Zelensky said in a video address, in which he was filmed standing in front of destroyed residential buildings.

Hungary continued to block a European Union proposal that would ban Russian oil imports, holding up the bloc’s entire package of sanctions meant to target President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the talks, Bloomberg reported.

A meeting of the EU’s 27 ambassadors ended on Sunday without an agreement, with talks expected to resume in the coming days, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

Ukrainian fighters at the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the southeastern port of Mariupol, who are the last holdout against Russian forces in the city, vowed on Sunday to continue their stand as long as they are alive.

"We will continue to fight as long as we are alive to repel the Russian occupiers," Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, a deputy commander of Ukraine's Azov Regiment, told an online conference.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday marked the anniversary of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, overshadowed this year by the war in Ukraine, AFP reported. Paris' traditional WWII commemorations began on the Champs-Elysees avenue, with the president laying a wreath at the statue of Charles de Gaulle, the wartime French resistance leader and later founding president of France's Fifth Republic.

Ukrainian forces were braced to defend their final bastion in the devastated port city of Mariupol on Sunday, desperate to deny Russia a symbolic win on the eve of Moscow's Victory Day celebrations. Shelling and missile strikes have intensified in the build up to the World War II anniversary, and rescuers are hunting for 60 Ukrainian civilians feared killed in the bombing of a village school.

Britain will provide an extra 1.3 billion pounds (USD 1.6 billion) in military support to Ukraine to help the country defend against Russian forces, officials said Sunday, AP reported. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders from other Group of Seven countries are expected to hold online talks with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday to discuss the further support.

US first lady Jill Biden spent Mother's Day in Slovakia, meeting with Ukrainian mothers who have been displaced by Russia's war and assuring them that the “hearts of the American people” are behind them. At a bus station in the city of Kosice that is now a 24-hour refugee processing center, Biden found herself in an extended conversation with an emotional Ukrainian woman who said she struggles to explain the war to her three children because she cannot even explain it to herself.

Ukrainian troops retreated from the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, the governor of Luhansk region said on Sunday, confirming previous reports that it had been taken, Reuters reported. The head of Russia's republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, had said on Sunday his troops had taken control of most of Popasna.

Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says that the time for Sweden and Finland to join the military alliance is now, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is "preoccupied" with Ukraine. "As far as Finland and Sweden are concerned, I think there's a window of opportunity for [the] two countries to join, exactly now because Putin is preoccupied elsewhere. He can't do anything about it," Rasmussen told CNBC on Saturday.