Chronicle of the war with Ukraine. Day 45

20:41

The border post in the Kursk region was fired from mortars from Ukraine, said the governor of the region Roman Starovoit. There were no casualties or damage. “The firing point was suppressed by return fire from our border guards and armed forces,” he said.

From the Ukrainian side, there were no statements about the attack of Russian border posts.

20:31

Today, the third exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia took place, according to the Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk. 12 military men returned to Ukraine, including one female officer, and 14 civilians (nine of them were women). The Russian side did not report anything about the exchange of prisoners.

20:20

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to provide Ukraine with 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems, according to the British government's website, in addition to the £100 million worth of equipment already pledged.

Today Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv, where he met Volodymyr Zelensky. The Prime Minister's visit was not announced in advance, and little is known about its details.

19:56

A Russian flag was hoisted over the Kherson city administration building, reports . RIA Novosti

19:50

Russian border guards opened fire on the Apache cargo ship when, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, it was trying to evacuate "leaders of the nationalist Azov regiment and foreign mercenaries" from Mariupol.

According to the agency, on April 8 at 22:38, 30 kilometers southeast of Mariupol, the dry cargo ship “drastically changed course” and tried to break into the port of Mariupol. The cargo ship did not respond to the demands of the border ships to get in touch, after which they opened warning fire. The ship continued on its course, and the Russian military opened artillery fire on the Apache.

As a result, a dry cargo ship caught fire at the stern, the ship drifted, and the crew agreed to the demands of the Russian military. After the inspection, according to the Ministry of Defense, the cargo ship and its crew are escorted to the port of Yeysk.

The Ministry of Defense calls the cargo ship "Ukrainian", specifying that the ship is assigned to Valletta and sails under the Maltese flag. Probably, we are talking about the Apache ship, which is managed by Misha Shipping. The company is registered in Turkey. "The company's fleet specializes in the transportation of grain and bulk cargo between the ports of the Russian Federation (to Rostov-on-Don), the Black and Mediterranean Seas, as well as from / to the ports of the Don River," the Misha Shipping website says.

According to the MarineTraffic service, the cargo ship left the port of Rostov-on-Don on April 7 at 13:20 local time and headed west. The last position of the vessel known to the service was recorded at 3:31 Moscow time on April 8.

Prior to Misha Shipping, Apaches were managed by the Ukrainian company Prestige. Until 1999, the ship was called "Volzhsky-23" and belonged to the Volga Shipping Company.

18:38

The Russian military hit a tank with nitric acid near the town of Rubizhne in the Lugansk region, according to the head of the regional administration Sergei Gaidai.

Earlier today, he spoke about one dead in Severodonetsk, four wounded in Rubizhne and numerous fires in Lysichansk. The official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, did not mention military operations in the Luhansk region at the morning briefing.

17:25

EU Ambassador to Ukraine Matti Maasikas has returned to Kiev, writes he on his Twitter. The EU Delegation temporarily moved to Polish Rzeszow after the start of the war in Ukraine. over the building of the representative office in Kiev Today, the flag of the European Union was again raised .

the imminent return of the diplomatic mission to Kiev also announced Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio . The country's embassy will return to the capital after Easter (April 17).

resumed work in Kiev Earlier, the embassies of Lithuania , Slovenia and Turkey .

16:27

Since the beginning of the war, more than 4.3 million people have left Ukraine, and 7.1 million Ukrainians have been forced to move to other regions of the country. Such data are provided by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Most of all - 2.6 million people - went to Poland.

At the same time, there are already 4.4 million refugees from Ukraine on the UN data portal today.

15:45

Roskomnadzor blocked Kholod's website. A letter with a warning about a possible blocking came to the editor three hours ago, but the site has already been blocked. The agency demands to block access to https://holod.media/ on the basis of the law on discrediting the Russian army.

Commentary of the editor-in-chief of Kholod Taisiya Bekbulatova:

“In recent weeks, we have received two warnings from Roskomnadzor threatening to block our site if we do not remove two materials about the war. We have not removed these texts. Today the third warning came - now the department is demanding that materials about the war be removed from our entire site. We will not do this, of course. We are not going to submit to censorship, much less military censorship in a country that does not even admit that it is at war. We intend to continue to tell the truth about what is happening in Russia and Ukraine, albeit in a blocked form. I am sure that our readers have already installed a VPN for themselves.”

14:40

A resident of the village of Bezruki in the Kharkiv region discovered PTM-1C mines, writes The New York Times. During an air strike, up to two dozen such mines are dropped. They can explode either on contact (with a tank or a person, depending on sensitivity) or automatically: each mine can be programmed to self-destruct. In Bezruki, a local resident told the newspaper, mines exploded approximately every 50 minutes, from 10 am to 3 am.

The New York Times clarifies that these weapons are prohibited "under some interpretations of international law" and have not yet been used in the war in Ukraine.

Bomb disposal specialist Maksim (he declined to give his last name), who works in and around Kharkov, said the PTM-1C mines began appearing “last week.”

Corrected at 16:10. Clarified how PTM-S mines explode.

13:30

The head of the Kharkiv regional administration, Oleg Sinegubov , said in an interview with Radio NV that bodies of dead people with signs of torture are found in the liberated cities of the region.

“When we liberate settlements (this was the case with Olkhovka, Malaya Rogan), unfortunately, we found the bodies of dead civilians, in some places their hands were tied and there were even control shots in the head,” said Sinegubov.

At the same time, Ukrainian telegram channels , including the channel of the UNIAN news agency and the channel of the strategic command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, published a photo that allegedly depicts a mass grave of Russian soldiers in Olkhovka. It is this settlement that is mentioned in videos that appeared on the Internet at the end of March, in which, presumably, the Ukrainian military shoot the legs of Russian prisoners of war. The Ukrainian authorities promised to investigate reports of possible war crimes by their army.

Updated at 14:42. Added a link to the channel of the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

11:59

On the night of April 9, Russian troops launched a missile attack on infrastructure in Mirgorod (Poltava region), according to the head of the regional administration Dmitry Lunin. According to him, two people were injured.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation claims that the Russian military "during aerial reconnaissance" identified and destroyed a MiG-29 fighter, a Mi-8 helicopter and a "warehouse with aviation weapons" at a military airfield in Mirgorod.

11:27

A court in St. Petersburg fined Artur Dmitriev from Ufa for 30 thousand rubles for a phrase from the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The court ruling was posted by the activist himself on his Facebook.

Dmitriev went to a solo picket on April 7 with a piece of paper on which was written: “The war has brought so much grief that it is impossible to forget. There is no forgiveness for those who again plot aggressive plans.” The court decided that this phrase discredits the Russian army.

these words Vladimir Putin uttered at the parade in honor of the 76th anniversary of victory in World War II (Dmitriev erroneously says that this phrase is from Putin's speech on the 75th anniversary of victory).

10:59

A monument to Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in Ternopil. “War leaves us no choice. Everything Russian must be dismantled. Including a monument to a Russian writer,” explained on his Facebook. Sergey Nadal, Mayor of the city,

The official decision of the Ternopil City Council states that the monument was dismantled as a result of an appeal from the technical supervision department of the City Council and the conclusion of the Prombudproekt company on the technical condition of the monument.

9:49

In Bucha, the exhumation of bodies from the mass grave near the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called, which was visible on satellite images, began, reports Mediazona . At least 67 people are buried in it, by 17:00 on April 8, 36 bodies were exhumed. The mass grave is over 13 meters long.

The publisher of Mediazona, Pyotr Verzilov, said that many of the dead were not wearing various items of clothing. “Both the local police and the authorities claim that many of the bodies show signs of torture and other mutilations,” he added.

9:21

The US banned energy imports from Russia and suspended normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus. The relevant laws, according to the press service of the White House, were signed by Joe Biden. Now the US will be able to impose higher duties on Russian and Belarusian goods.

Results of the 44th day of the war

More than 50 people were killed in a rocket attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk. Russian and Ukrainian authorities blame each other for the strike.

Bodies of civilians continue to be found in the Kyiv region. Thus, 132 civilians were found in Makarov, who were shot dead when the region was under the control of Russian troops.

According to BBC Russian Service sources, General Alexander Dvornikov was entrusted with the command of the operation in Ukraine. He has extensive combat experience in Syria.

The European Union and Great Britain, following the United States, imposed sanctions against Putin's daughters Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova.

Finland and Japan expelled Russian diplomats. Russia expelled Polish diplomats in response to the same decision by Poland.

Cover photo: Oleksiy Samsonov, KMDA**