Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy signs new mobilisation law in effort to boost Ukraine’s exhausted forces – as it happened (2024)

• Ukraine said it had identified almost 37,000 people, including military personnel, who are unaccounted for since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a mobilisation bill into law with the aim of boosting troop numbers. The parliament’s website said the bill had been “returned with the signature of the president” on Tuesday, after receiving final approval from lawmakers last week. The new law toughens penalties on draft dodgers, incentivises conscription and obliges men to keep their military registration details with the authorities up to date.

• Polish President Andrzej Duda may meet Donald Trump during a visit to New York this week, he said on Tuesday. “If there is such a possibility, because it also depends on the schedule, I will also meet socially with … Donald Trump,” Duda, whose term in office expires in 2025, told reporters before boarding his plane. An informal meeting could reportedly take place on a visit to New York during which Duda is scheduled to meet the UN secretary-general António Guterres.

• Lithuania and German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall has agreed to build an ammunition plant in the Baltic state, in a new sign of Europe re-arming to counter any threat from Russia. Germany’s largest military equipment maker and the Lithuanian government signed a letter of intent to set up a factory to make 155mm artillery shells in the EU and Nato member.

• In a wide-ranging interview with PBS NewsHour, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said a lack of air defence missiles prevented Ukraine from thwarting a Russian missile attack last week that destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant. His comments gave fresh urgency to Kyiv’s pleas to be sent more military weapons from its allies as the war appears to have turned in the Kremlin’s favour over recent months.

• Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has unveiled a complicated proposal for passing wartime aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Facing an outright rebellion from conservatives who fiercely oppose aiding Ukraine, Johnson said he would push to get the package to the House floor under a single debate rule, then hold separate votes on aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and several foreign policy proposals, according to Republican lawmakers.

• Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said he hoped Berlin and Beijing could help achieve a “just peace” in Ukraine, as he met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the Chinese capital.

• Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, has accused Russia of a “a well-planned false-flag operation” endangering the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as the two countries traded accusations at the UN security council over alleged attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power station. The Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant reportedly suffered at least three direct strikes on 7 April and another drone attack at the plant’s nearby training centre on 9 April. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said, without attributing blame, that the “reckless” attacks had put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident”.

• The Kremlin reacted coolly to France’s president Emmanuel Macron’s call for a truce in international conflicts during the Paris Olympics, saying Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm.

• Russia and Ukraine negotiated for two months with Turkey on a deal to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea and reached agreement on a text that was to be announced by Ankara last month, but then Kyiv suddenly pulled out, sources told Reuters.

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Ukraine said it had identified almost 37,000 people, including military personnel, who are unaccounted for since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Calculating the exact number of missing is difficult, as Russian forces still occupy around a fifth of the country and neither side regularly releases data on military casualties.

“Almost 37,000 people are considered missing – children, civilians and military. These figures may be much higher,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said.

He said Ukraine and the Red Cross had identified about 1,700 people “illegally detained” by Russia, which he accused of “abducting civilians” since 2014, when war with Moscow-backed separatists in the country’s east first broke out.

Human rights groups have accused Russia of forced disappearances and abducting children in occupied areas, accusations the Kremlin has rejected.

The British Ministry of Defence has said that the UK-based Operation Interflex has trained over 34,000 Ukrainian recruits.

Military personnel from countries including Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Norway have been involved in the operation.

Polish President Andrzej Duda may meet Donald Trump during a visit to New York this week, he said on Tuesday.

Duda, whose term in office expires in 2025, was one of Trump’s preferred international partners during his presidency. The Polish president’s top aide has said they remain in contact, according to Reuters.

“If there is such a possibility, because it also depends on the schedule, I will also meet socially with … Donald Trump,” Duda told reporters before boarding his plane.

An informal meeting could reportedly take place on a visit to New York during which Duda is scheduled to meet the UN secretary-general António Guterres

Many European leaders have long been nervous that another Trump presidency would mean waning US support for Poland’s neighbour Ukraine and the Nato military alliance.

Poland is a staunch ally of Ukraine and both Duda and Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk have urged US lawmakers to approve $60bn in military aid to Ukraine.

While Tusk and Duda are bitterly divided over a host of domestic issues, they are united on the importance of continued support for Ukraine.

“If he actually meets (with Trump), we would expect him to firmly raise the issue of clearly siding with the West and Europe in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict,” Tusk told reporters on Tuesday.

He said his foreign minister would also brief Duda on the importance of speeding up the delivery of American weapons to Poland.

Lithuania and German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall has agreed to build an ammunition plant in the Baltic state, in a new sign of Europe re-arming to counter any threat from Russia, AFP reports.

Germany’s largest military equipment maker and the Lithuanian government signed a letter of intent to set up a factory to make 155mm artillery shells in the EU and Nato member that was once a Soviet-ruled nation.

“This will be the largest ever defence investment in Lithuania,” the country’s economy minister, Ausrine Armonaite, told reporters.

“It is time for us, democracies, to step up our arsenal that is (a) prerequisite to defend freedom,” Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, said on social media.

Lithuania is a staunch ally of Germany, which plans to deploy a brigade-sized military unit in the country until 2027 to help secure Nato’s eastern flank. Germany is also a key arms supplier to Lithuania.

Lithuania’s defence minister, Laurynas Kasciunas, said the war in Ukraine showed the importance of having an independent ammunition supply “as an integral part of national security and defence”.

The location of the plant and the investment amount are being negotiated between the government and the German company.

Poland will cooperate with the European Sky Shield Initiative air defence umbrella and it makes sense for the country to be part of several air defence systems, the country’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced.

The European Sky Shield Initiative is a common air defence scheme set up by Germany in 2022 to boost European air defence.

Warsaw has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters since Russia’s February 2022 invasion and has said Ukraine must regain control over all of its territory in order to deter Moscow from further aggression.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, signed into law a bill overhauling army mobilisation rules, according to the parliamentary website (see earlier post at 13.13 for more details)

The law will come into force a month after it is officially published, Reuters reports.

It obliges men to update their draft data with the authorities, boosts payments to those who volunteer, and adds new punishment for draft dodging. Russia has many more soldiers fighting in the war than Ukraine.

In the first weeks after the invasion, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians volunteered to serve at the front in an explosion of patriotism that helped keep the country independent and fight off the initial attack.

More than two years later, however, many of those initial recruits are dead, wounded or simply exhausted, and the army needs new recruits to fill the ranks. By now, most of those who want to fight have already signed up, leaving the military to recruit among a much more reluctant pool of men.

Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 reservists in September 2022, after a series of military defeats saw Russian forces routed from east Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and under increasing pressure in the southern Kherson region.

Since then, it has replenished its ranks by recruiting prisoners as well as luring tens of thousands of recruits from poorer Russian regions with the promise of high salaries.

At the end of 2023, Putin said that 486,000 new recruits had joined the army that year and that 1,500 a day were signing contracts.

Russian blogger Anastasia Ivleeva, the organiser of a “Nearly Naked” party that caused a major scandal, has been charged with discrediting the Russian army, according to the Moscow court service.

Ivleeva has been charged with an administrative offence, which could lead to a fine, and the hearing has been set for 25 April, the court service said.

On 20 December, Ivleeva threw an “Almost Naked Party” at Moscow’s Mutabor nightclub. It was attended by a number of household celebrity names who have stayed in the country since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The scantily clad stars wore flesh-coloured mesh, lace, and lingerie, with one rapper attending in nothing but a sock, in what appeared to be a tribute to the famous 1987 Red Hot Chili Peppers album cover.

But when videos surfaced of the party, there was outrage among Russian politicians and law enforcement agencies. You can read more about what happened here:

Ukraine’s bill on mobilisation has been submitted to Volodymyr Zelenskiy for signature, according to the online portal of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has said.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

The bill was passed in its second reading in parliament on 11 April and was signed by the speaker of the parliament on 15 April.

The bill on mobilisation is a critical component of the Ukrainian political and military leadership’s efforts to update the legal framework around conscription in order to ramp up mobilisation in 2024.

After an initial, contentious version of the mobilisation bill was withdrawn in January, a new, updated version passed the first reading on 7 February. Lawmakers have proposed over 4,000 amendments to the bill since then.

Several key provisions of the earlier draft law were eventually passed by the parliament separately, with Zelenskiy signing three laws in early April: on the lowering of the conscription age to 25, the introduction of an electronic register for conscripts, and the canceling of the “partially eligible” status.

The final version of the mobilisation bill was approved by the parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee on 9 April.

Of the provisions remaining in the bill, key points include the right of disabled soldiers and those who have returned from captivity to discharge themselves, and the introduction of mandatory medical commission checks for those who previously held the “partially eligible” status.

The Reuters newswire is running an interesting explainer on why Russia is trying to capture the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar.

Here are some extracts:

Russian paratroopers have reached the eastern edge of the Ukrainian town, which Kyiv’s top commander says Moscow wants taken by 9 May, the date when Russia marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

If Russian forces capture the town, 12 km (7.4 miles) from the centre of the devastated city of Bakhmut they took last May after months of bloody fighting, they would be able to launch direct offensives against several Ukrainian “fortress cities.”

Russian military analysts list Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka as the “fortress cities” in Ukraine’s east accessible from Chasiv Yar.

The Washington-based Institute for War Studies (IWS) think-tank describes the cities as “the backbone” of the Ukrainian army’s defence in the east.

“The offensive effort to seize Chasiv Yar offers Russian forces the most immediate prospects for operationally significant advances,” ISW said in a briefing note.

The ISW warned that losing Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka in particular would be a major operational setback that would be hard to reverse.

A ballet performance in South Korea featuring dancers from Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet was cancelled abruptly, the organisers confirmed to AFP on Tuesday, amid growing tensions between Seoul and Moscow over Ukraine and North Korea.

The Russian embassy in Seoul expressed its “deep regret” over the cancellation of the show – scheduled to open 16 April – which comes after another planned performance in Seoul featuring Russia’s top ballet dancer Svetlana Zakharova was axed in March.

Ukraine said the show had been cancelled after a lobbying campaign by its local embassy. “Russian ‘cultural’ propaganda should have no place on international platforms,” it added on an official Telegram account.

But the South Korean organiser Choi Jun-seok, who studied at Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet Academy, told AFP that while Kyiv’s embassy had requested he cancel the show, the final decision was made by the venue, Seoul’s Sejong Centre for the Performing Arts.

• In a wide-ranging interview with PBS NewsHour, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said a lack of air defence missiles prevented Ukraine from thwarting a Russian missile attack last week that destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant. His comments gave fresh urgency to Kyiv’s pleas to be sent more military weapons from its allies as the war appears to have turned in the Kremlin’s favour over recent months.

• Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has unveiled a complicated proposal for passing wartime aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Facing an outright rebellion from conservatives who fiercely oppose aiding Ukraine, Johnson said he would push to get the package to the House floor under a single debate rule, then hold separate votes on aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and several foreign policy proposals, according to Republican lawmakers.

• Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said he hoped Berlin and Beijing could help achieve a “just peace” in Ukraine, as he met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the Chinese capital.

• Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, has accused Russia of a “a well-planned false-flag operation” endangering the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as the two countries traded accusations at the UN security council over alleged attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power station. The Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant reportedly suffered at least three direct strikes on 7 April and another drone attack at the plant’s nearby training centre on 9 April. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said, without attributing blame, that the “reckless” attacks had put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident”.

• The Kremlin reacted coolly to France’s president Emmanuel Macron’s call for a truce in international conflicts during the Paris Olympics, saying Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm.

• Russia and Ukraine negotiated for two months with Turkey on a deal to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea and reached agreement on a text that was to be announced by Ankara last month, but then Kyiv suddenly pulled out, sources told Reuters.

A lack of air defence missiles prevented Ukraine from thwarting a Russian missile attack last week that destroyed the biggest power plant in the region around Kyiv, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said.

Trypilska thermal power plant was destroyed in a strike last month. It was the biggest energy facility near Kyiv and was built to have a capacity of 1,800 megawatts, more than the prewar needs of Ukraine’s biggest city. Other stations and imports have filled the gap for now but residents have been urged to save power.

“There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed the first seven, and four (remaining) destroyed Trypillia. Why? Because there were zero missiles. We ran out of missiles to defend Trypillia,” Zelenskiy said in an interview with PBS.

He warned earlier this month that Ukraine, which has reported ongoing ammunition shortages, could run out of air defence missiles if Russia keeps up its intense long-range bombing campaign.

Zelenskiy said in the PBS NewsHour interview:

It’s a lot to preserve ourselves. It’s very difficult for us. We are fighting against a large army. They don’t care about their soldiers’ lives. They’re not training them. They’re not as trained as our soldiers.

But there’s a lot of them. They have an unlimited number of people and a lot of shells. They use thousands of drones against us. Tell me, please, how can you fight against these thousands if you don’t have weapons to take them down? They have aircraft taking off from Crimea and engaging us at a distance of over 300 kilometers. It could be over 300, 400, 500 kilometers, depending on how deep they’re targeting from Crimea.

How can we destroy those? The plan is very simple. It’s very clear. It exists. There is a specific weapon that we need to advance. There’s a specific weapon to defend the skies. This plan exists. Besides, all the partners have it in their hands. This is the plan for what we really need.

Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has faced mounting pressure to act on Joe Biden’s long-delayed request for billions of dollars in security assistance for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It’s been more than two months since the Senate passed the $95bn aid package, which includes $60bn for Ukraine.

The Republican speaker huddled with fellow GOP lawmakers on Monday evening to lay out his strategy to gain House approval for the funding package.