IMF approves $15.6bn loan package for Ukraine – live updates

Ukraine is unlikely to expel all Russian troops from its territory this year, a top US official has said.

In an interview with Defence One on Friday, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US joint chief of staff, said: “I don’t think it’s likely to be done in the near term for this year.”

The general added that while Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that their objective is to “kick every Russian out”, the task remains “very difficult.”

“Zelensky has publicly stated many times that the Ukrainian objective is to kick every Russian out of Russian-occupied Ukraine. And that is a significant military task. Very, very difficult military task. You’re looking at a couple hundred thousand Russians who are still in Russian-occupied Ukraine. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m just saying it’s a very difficult task,” he said.

Footage published by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Wednesday 29 March claims to show the destruction of a Russian weapons store in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut.

A statement from the 30th Mechanised Brigade said that the “warehouse and the occupiers’ military equipment were destroyed with one shot”.

The city of Bakhmut has been a major Russian strategic objective since last summer, with waves of troops seeking to take the settlement in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

Vladimir Putin has likely lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the bitter battle, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said its executive board had approved a four-year $15.6bn loan programme for Ukraine.

The loan is a part of a global $115bn package to support the country’s economy as it battles Russia’s 13-month-old invasion.

The IMF-supported programme will help maintain economic and financial stability, catalyse much needed financing from donors and partners and support Ukraine’s recovery in the post-war period, the body said.

Finland is set to join Nato “in days” after Turkey’s parliament voted to ratify its membership bid, submitted in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey was the last among Nato’s members to ratify the bid, after months of negotiations between Ankara and Helsinki. All 276 MPs present voted in favour.

“All 30 Nato allies have now ratified the accession protocol,” the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Friday. “Finland will formally join our alliance in the coming days.”

Finland’s entrance into Nato is a significant moment. It shares an 830-mile border with Russia, and the two nations fought ferociously during the Second World War. Helsinki also possesses one of the most powerful arsenals in Western Europe.

Working as a journalist in Moscow seemed a natural fit for Evan Gershkovich, the son of immigrants from the Soviet Union who grew up speaking Russian at home in Princeton, N.J.

After he graduated in 2014 from Bowdoin College, one of the country’s most selective schools, however, “it took me awhile to figure out that journalism was the career for me,” he said in a 2020 interview on the school’s website.

Now Russia’s Federal Security Service says the 31-year-old American reporter for The Wall Street Journal has been arrested on charges of espionage. The FSB, the country’s top security agency and successor to the KGB, said Gershkovich was collecting information on an enterprise of the military-industrial complex.

The Journal denied the allegations and demanded his release.

Sarah Conly, a retired philosophy professor at Bowdoin, recalled that Gershkovich was unafraid to speak up while other students hung back.

Thirteen months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the toll of civilian casualties in the war-torn country is only “the tip of the iceberg”, says the UN.

On Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said: “Using the rigorous methodology of my office, our staff have verified more than 8,400 civilian deaths, and over 14,000 civilians wounded, since 24 February 2022.

“These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the casualties resulted from the Russian forces’ use of wide-impact explosive weaponry in residential neighbourhoods.”

The announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he intends to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus appears to be another attempt to raise the stakes in the conflict in Ukraine.

It follows Putin’s warnings that Moscow is ready to use “all available means,” to fend off attacks on Russian territory, a reference to its nuclear arsenal.

A look at Putin’s statement and its implications:

A team of journalists from The Associated Press spent two days traveling by train with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he visited the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, which still faces regular shelling from Russian forces, and northern towns in the Sumy region that were liberated shortly after the war began a year ago.

The AP is the first news organisation to travel extensively with Zelenskyy since the war began. Here are some takeaways from an interview with Zelenskyy as he returned to Kyiv late Tuesday:

The statement from Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko on Friday about strategic nuclear weapons such as missile-borne warheads will pose an even greater threat if it comes to pass.

Mr Lukashenko spoke during his state-of-the-nation address amid escalating tensions over the conflict in Ukraine.

“Putin and I will decide and introduce here, if necessary, strategic weapons, and they must understand this, the scoundrels abroad, who today are trying to blow us up from inside and outside,” the Belarusian leader said.

“We will stop at nothing to protect our countries, our state and their peoples.”