Europe

MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/: Aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces struck five Ukrainian ammunition depots, eliminating over 200 nationalists, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.

"Over the day, operational-tactical aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces struck two command posts, nine company-level strongholds and areas of amassed manpower and military equipment as well as five ammunition and fuel depots," the spokesman said. "More than 200 nationalists and 23 pieces of armored vehicles have been eliminated."

BATAJNICA, Serbia, April 30 (Reuters) - Serbia on Saturday showed off its new Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles and other military hardware purchased from both Russia and the West, as the country seeks to perform a delicate balancing act over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Members of the public and the media were invited to the display at the Batajnica military airfield near Belgrade, where Chinese and French missiles were lined up beside Airbus (AIR.PA) helicopters, Chinese-armed drones and Russian MIG-29 jets.

April 30 (Reuters) - More than 1 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine into Russia since Feb. 24, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published early on Saturday.

The 1.02 million includes 120,000 foreigners and people evacuated from Russian-backed breakaway regions of Ukraine, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's republics, which Russia recognised as independent just before launching its invasion.

April 30 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia is part of peace talks with Ukraine, but senior Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak denied that this was the case.

"At present, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are actually discussing on a daily basis via video-conferencing a draft of a possible treaty," Lavrov said in comments to China's official Xinhua news agency published on the Russian foreign ministry's website on Saturday.

April 30 (Reuters) - Russia believes the risks of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum and that any armed conflict between nuclear powers should be prevented, the TASS news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as saying on Saturday.

Vladimir Yermakov, the foreign ministry's head of nuclear non-proliferation, said all nuclear powers must stick to the logic laid out in official documents aimed at preventing nuclear war.

KYIV, April 30 (Reuters) - Russian forces have stolen "several hundred thousand tonnes" of grain in the areas of Ukraine they occupy, Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister said on Saturday.

Speaking to Ukrainian national TV, Taras Vysotskiy expressed concern that most of what he said was 1.5 million tonnes of grain stored in occupied territory could also be stolen by Russian forces.

Ukraine's foreign ministry accused Russia on Thursday of stealing grain in territory it has occupied, an act it said increased the threat to global food security. 

DOBROPILLIA, Ukraine/KYIV, April 30 (Reuters) - Russian carried out missile strikes across southern and eastern Ukraine on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, including one that destroyed the runway at the main airport in the strategic Black Sea port of Odesa.

Moscow has turned its focus toward Ukraine's south and east after failing to capture the capital Kyiv in a nine-week assault that has flattened cities, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 5 million to flee abroad.

ROME (AP) — Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol are calling for any evacuation of civilians to also include soldiers, saying they fear the troops will be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by Russian forces.

“The lives of soldiers matter too. We can’t only talk about civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol.

PEJA, Kosovo (AP) — Learning to identify and defuse explosives is something Anastasiia Minchukova never thought she would have to do as an English teacher in Ukraine. Yet there she was wearing a face shield, armed with a landmine detector and venturing into a field dotted with danger warnings.

Russia’s war in Ukraine took Minchukova, 20, and five other women to Kosovo, where they are attending a hands-on course in clearing landmines and other dangers that may remain hidden across their country once combat ends.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to hold off a Russian advance in their country’s south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the industrial Donbas region and Western military analysts said Moscow’s offensive was going much slower than planned.

The United Nations continued trying to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, a southern port city that Russia has sought to capture since it invaded Ukraine more than nine weeks ago.