May 14, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks at a press conference on May 14, in Holstein, Germany.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she supports Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO, despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s criticism.

“Each country is free to decide on its alliance membership. This also applies to Sweden and Finland,” Baerbock said during the concluding press conference following the G7 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Germany. 

Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday that the Nordic nation will decide “to seek NATO membership in the next few days.” On Thursday, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said Sweden will consider Finland’s assessments on NATO membership as it also considers joining the military alliance.

“The German government has already made it clear that we more than support this accession. Sweden and Finland are strong countries in terms of their own defense capabilities. That alone would make their accession stronger for NATO,” Baerbock said.  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday welcomed Finland’s bid to join NATO and offered Berlin’s “full support.”

Erdoğan on Friday said he did not view Sweden and Finland’s possible accession to NATO “positively” and had claimed on Thursday that “Scandinavian countries are like a guest house for terrorist organizations.”

The families of soldiers trapped inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol made a desperate plea to China’s President Xi Jinping to act as a mediator in helping to get their loved ones out, just days after they made a similar request to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

During a press conference in central Kyiv on Saturday, the families, who have limited contact with their loved ones, say time is running out for the soldiers who have dwindling medical supplies and almost no food.

Tanya Vychnyk speaks with CNN.

Tanya Vychnyk, who last saw her 21-year-old son Artem in February, said she’s praying for a miracle. “It is hell in there, they are in real hell,” Vychnyk told CNN, her eyes filled with tears. 

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk region military administration, previously said that difficult negotiations are continuing over the soldiers’ release, several of whom are injured.

Finland's President Sauli Niinistö speaks at a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, on May 11.

Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Saturday that the Nordic nation will decide “to seek NATO membership in the next few days,” Niinistö’s office said in a statement.

“The conversation was direct and straight-forward and it was conducted without aggravations. Avoiding tensions was considered important,” Niinistö is quoted as saying in the statement. 

Niinistö noted that he had already told Putin in their first meeting in 2012 “that every independent nation maximizes its security” and that “this is what is happening now, too,” the statement said.

Niinistö “repeated his deep concern over the human suffering caused by the war Russia wages in Ukraine” and “stressed the imperative of peace.” He also “conveyed the messages on securing the evacuation of civilians delivered earlier in the same week by (Ukraine’s) President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” according to the statement. 

What the Kremlin says: Niinistö and Putin had “a frank exchange of views” during a phone call on Saturday that was held in connection with the announced intention of the Finnish leadership to apply for NATO membership, the Kremlin said in a statement. 

“Vladimir Putin stressed that abandoning the traditional policy of military neutrality would be a mistake, since there are no threats to Finland’s security,” according to the statement. 

“Such a change in the country’s foreign policy may have a negative impact on Russian-Finnish relations, which for many years have been built in the spirit of good neighborliness and partnership cooperation, and were mutually beneficial,” it added.

The leaders also discussed the situation in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

“Vladimir Putin, in particular, shared his assessment of the state of the negotiation process between Russian and Ukrainian representatives, which was actually suspended by Kyiv, who do not show interest in a serious and constructive dialogue,” the statement said. 

Smoke rises at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on May 13.

One of the Ukrainian fighters still trapped in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol has described the atrocious conditions for the wounded there.

Speaking on Ukrainian television from within the plant, the unidentified fighter said there were about 600 wounded still within the sprawling complex. 

“The conditions are just awful,” he said.

He described the conditions in the hospital ward as “completely unsanitary. It’s already warmer, so there are flies. The smell is disgusting.”

After the collapse of the operating room’s ceiling, it had been moved to the same room as the hospital, the fighter said. Medics were operating without anesthesia.

The fighter said he had witnessed one surgery on a soldier with a bad leg wound: “He has a belt in his teeth. He is without anesthesia. And two doctors are trying to remove something there. He yells into this belt, his leg twitches.”

The fighter said he was not sure whether all civilians had been evacuated from the enormous complex.

“No one can be 100% sure. Let’s just say that we took out those civilians that we knew about. Somewhere they may be under the rubble, in some bunkers, where we have not yet explored in some shelters. Therefore, no one can be 100% sure. But those civilians whom we knew who were here, we took out completely 100%,” he said.

There’s been no word Saturday on the progress of negotiations to evacuate the badly wounded from Azovstal. Late Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “at the moment, very difficult negotiations are underway on the next stage of the evacuation mission, the removal of the seriously wounded and medics. We are talking about a large number of people.”

Foreign ministers of the G7 meet in Berlin, Germany, on May 13.

Foreign ministers of the G7, representing the world’s richest nations, said in a joint statement Saturday they “will never recognize borders Russia has attempted to change by military aggression,” adding that the G7 rejected “any notion of spheres of influence and any use of force that is not in compliance with international law.”

After three days of talks in Germany, the group of foreign ministers collectively expressed their “solidarity with and support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s unjustifiable, unprovoked and illegal war of aggression.”

In the presence of the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Moldova, the group added the war had reaffirmed their determination to “reject outright attempts to redraw borders by force in violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

G7 foreign ministers emphasized their support of Moldova’s stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and called on Belarus to “stop enabling Russia’s aggression” and “abide by its international obligations.” There are fears that Russia could start a new front in the war in Eastern Europe via Transnistria, a breakaway territory within Moldova that has housed Russian troops for decades.

G7 foreign ministers also said they would “uphold (their) engagement in the support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea and all states,” and affirmed its determination to “ensure availability and accessibility of food, energy and financial resources as well as basic commodities” in Ukraine.

Tamara Aheieva sells home-made food, vegetables and flowers. 

The remnants of the horrors that transpired in Dmytrivka just a few weeks ago are everywhere around Tamara Aheieva.

Across the road from her little produce stall lies the burnt wreckage of a Russian armored vehicle. Just to the right of her is the deep crater left behind by a rocket, its edges formed of strangely smooth asphalt that melted on impact, then solidified again.

The building next to it is seriously damaged, its roof collapsed on itself.

“A man I knew was killed riding his bike down the road,” she said.

Friday was Aheieva’s first day back selling home-made pickled vegetables, flowers, potatoes and what she calls “zucchini caviar.”

She fled the village when Russian troops starting to close in and spent the next few weeks about 50 miles (80km) away in Zhytomyr region.

Aheieva said 17 houses have been destroyed in this tiny village alone. She was lucky — her home is a bit further from the main road and was spared the worst damage.

Before the war, the 64-year old pensioner would be one of many coming here to trade home-made food, vegetables and flowers. Now, it’s just her.

“People are just coming back. Normally we sell flowers and vegetable and people stop and buy from us, I hope they will come back,” she said.

As MMA fighter Yaroslav Amosov walks through the streets surrounding his hometown of Irpin, which sits around 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) west of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, there are fleeting moments when it seems like an ordinary day in May.

But for many Ukrainians, such moments have been few and far between since Russia began its invasion on February 24 and every few steps, Amosov is reminded of the destruction Vladimir Putin’s war has brought to his homeland.

“It was always very beautiful here, people were happy, they were happy with their life and took pleasure in it.

Yaroslav Amosov, second from right, rests with fellow Ukrainian soldiers in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 6.

“Then simply to look at the city now, which is on fire, which is getting destroyed and it becomes horrible to look at. You couldn’t really go driving around the city because the roads were covered with trees, in some places, there were parts of houses. Destruction.”

The Ukrainian is one of the best pound-for-pound fighters of his generation and, at 26-0, currently holds the longest active unbeaten streak in all of MMA. On May 13, he should have been defending his welterweight world title at Bellator’s event at Wembley Arena in London, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced him to pull out.

Read the full story:

Related article Exclusive: 'This is not saving, this is destruction': Ukrainian MMA champion Yaroslav Amosov recounts the horrors of war

Finland is on the cusp of joining NATO while Sweden is on the verge of following suit. Here’s what you need to know about how the war in Ukraine pushed the two Nordic states closer to the US-backed alliance, and what comes next:

While other Nordic countries like Norway, Denmark and Iceland were original members of the alliance, Sweden and Finland did not join the pact for historic and geopolitical reasons.

Both Finland, which declared independence from Russia in 1917 after the Bolshevik revolution, and Sweden adopted neutral foreign policy stances during the Cold War, refusing to align with the Soviet Union or the United States.

For Finland, this proved more difficult, as it shared a massive border with an authoritarian superpower. To keep the peace, Finns adopted a process some call “Finlandization,” in which leaders acceded to Soviet demands from time to time.

Both countries’ balancing acts effectively ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They joined the European Union together in 1995 and gradually aligned their defense policies with the West, while still avoiding joining NATO outright.

Each country had different reasons for avoiding signing up for NATO pact in tandem with the EU.

For Finland, it was more geopolitical. The threat for Russia is more tangible thanks to the two countries’ shared 830-mile border.

“Finland has been the exposed country, and we’ve been the protected country,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a joint interview alongside former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb.

While an independent nation, Sweden’s geography puts it in the same “strategic environment” as its liberal democratic neighbors, Bildt said. Finland and Sweden have enjoyed a close partnership for decades, with Stockholm viewing its decision to refrain from joining NATO as a way to help keep the heat off Helsinki. Now, however, Sweden is likely to follow Finland’s lead.

Read the full story here:

A Leopard 2A6 battle tank during the Finnish Army Arrow 22 training exercise, with participating forces from the U.K., Latvia, U.S. and Estonia, in Niinisalo, Finland, on Wednesday, May 4, 2022. Swedes and Finns are increasingly in favor of joining the NATO defense bloc after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, adding pressure on the countries' leaders to change long-standing policies of military non-alignment. Photographer: Roni Rekomaa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Related article What you need to know about Finland, Sweden and NATO | CNN

Russia has suspended power exports to Finland, Finnish operator Fingrid confirmed to CNN on Saturday.

Fingrid’s Senior Vice President of Power System Operations Reima Päivinen said the supply was effectively cut at 12 a.m. CET on Saturday (7 p.m. ET Friday).

He added that the suspension did not have any impact on the market and that Finland “can cope” with the cut, as Russian electricity amounts to a small fraction of the country’s total consumption. 

“We’re also heading into the summer and less electricity will be needed,” Päivinien said, adding he was “confident there won’t be any major problems” next winter. 

On Friday, Fingrid said Russia was suspending power exports due to problems in receiving payments.

Some context: The Finnish government is planning to issue a second white paper on Sunday proposing that the country joins NATO, Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters on Thursday. The proposal would then be put into a parliamentary vote with a plenary scheduled for Monday morning.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Finland’s possible accession to NATO marked a “radical change in the country’s foreign policy” and warned of retaliatory countermeasures.

Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia and its accession would mean that Russia would share a border with a country that is formally aligned with the US.

“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop the threats to its national security that arise in this regard,” it said.

In late April, Gazprom said it fully halted supplies to Polish gas company PGNiG and Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz after they refused to meet a demand by Moscow to pay in rubles rather than euros or dollars.

Ukrainian Army vehicles drive past the remains of a Russian tank near Kharkiv on Friday, May 13.

The Ukrainian armed forces said in a brief update late Friday that Russian forces are focused on ensuring the withdrawal of troops from the northern Kharkiv region. Those troops have come under growing pressure from Ukrainian counter-attacks along a wide front to the west of their supply lines.

The fierce counterattack has taken back a number of villages in the area east of Kharkiv. Ukraine’s advances threaten the symbolic embarrassment of pushing the Kremlin’s forces back to their own border, while posing the strategic threat of cutting Russia’s supply lines into Ukraine and its forces further south in the Donbas region. It has also revealed further evidence of apparent Russian atrocities, according to a CNN team on the ground.

The General Staff on Friday also reported more cross-border shelling far from the current area of hostilities in the northeastern region of Sumy – as well as an airstrike against a village in the region.

In the east of Ukraine, the General Staff said there had been more artillery shelling of Ukrainian-held territory as the Russians tried to make progress towards Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, a key objective. The village of Nova Dmytrivka had come under fire, it said, as it has done since late April. 

It also said that there had been airstrikes around Dolyna, which is 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Sloviansk and nearby Adamivka. Airstrikes in the area earlier this week damaged two religious sites, according to Ukrainian authorities. 

In the Luhansk region, the General Staff said a Russian attack on the town of Zolote had been repulsed. 

NATO leaders are meeting as Finland and Sweden make moves to join the US-led alliance. This comes as Ukraine’s defense minister says the country is now entering a “long” phase of war with Russia. Here’s the latest:

Nordic NATO developments: NATO foreign ministers are convening in Germany on Saturday while the Finnish government plans to issue a second white paper on Sunday proposing that the country joins NATO. But NATO-member Turkey signaled hesitancy about the bloc’s expansion. The Kremlin says it will be “forced to take retaliatory steps” if Finland goes forward. Russia will suspend power exports to Finland starting Saturday due to problems in receiving payments, Finland’s transmission system operator Fingrid said in a statement on Friday.

Where the fighting is happening: In eastern Ukraine, satellite imagery and first-hand testimony have provided a fuller picture of the multiple and disastrous efforts by Russian forces to cross the Siverskyi Donets River over the past week. Russians may have sustained heavy casualties, and lost as many as 70 armored vehicles and other equipment in attempting to cross the river early this week. Their goal was to try to encircle Ukrainian defenses in the Luhansk region, but it failed spectacularly. 

In the Luhansk region, more than 50 houses have been destroyed by Russian shelling, as fighting continues to rage around a belt of industrial towns in the area, according to Ukrainian officials. The Russians appear to have made little progress on the ground after consolidating their control over Rubizhne earlier this week.

In northern Ukraine, a Ukrainian counterattack has taken back a number of villages in the area east of Kharkiv. The Ukrainian advances threaten the symbolic embarrassment of expelling the Kremlin’s forces back to their own border and while posing the strategic threat of cutting Russia’s supply lines into Ukraine and its forces further south in the Donbas region. It has also revealed further evidence of apparent atrocities.

In Mariupol, difficult negotiations are continuing over the fate of Ukrainian soldiers still trapped in the Azovstal steel plant, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk region military administration, said. In the meantime, he said, the Russians continued to attack Avozstal from the air. “These are heavy, vacuum, high-explosive bombs,” the official said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine has retaken six settlements from Russian forces on Friday, and 1,015 overall since the start of the conflict in February. It is unclear exactly how much territory those settlements constitute. Zelensky did outline other gains by Ukraine’s military in those areas.

Ukraine appeals for more defense systems: A Ukrainian lawmaker called on the United States to provide air defense systems and fighter jets to Ukraine, saying that the situation on the battlefield is “far worse” than it was at the beginning of the war. The House of Representatives passed the $40 billion Ukraine aid supplemental this week, but the Senate failed to pass the bill after Sen. Rand Paul blocked its passage.

Rising food prices see India export ban: India is banning wheat exports as prices rise worldwide due to Russia’s prolonged war on Ukraine. India is the world’s second-highest producer of wheat, the bulk of which is consumed domestically. Ukraine and Russia together are responsible for about 14% of global wheat production. Wheat exports from the Black Sea region have plummeted since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, sending global buyers to turn to India to alleviate supply shortages. 

War crimes trial: 21-year-old soldier Vadim Shishimarin is set to become the first Russian to be tried for war crimes at a trial in Kyiv on Friday. He is accused of killing an unarmed 62-year-old man in Ukraine’s Sumy region, according to the country’s prosecutor general’s office.

War looms large at the Eurovision: Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra is the favorite to win at tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest, the continent’s garish and much-loved singing competition scheduled to take place in Turin, Italy. Russia was removed from the competition following its invasion of Ukraine.

The Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine performs during their first dress rehearsal for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, Italy on Friday May 13.

The Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest – the continent’s garish and much-loved singing competition – is scheduled to take place in Turin, Italy on Saturday.

Last year 183 million viewers tuned in to watch the last three stages of the competition, when Italy’s punk-rock band Måneskin narrowly beat France and Switzerland to take the crown, according to the official Eurovision website.

Looking ahead to Saturday’s final, musicians from 25 countries will compete on Europe’s biggest stage, but only one group is commanding the spotlight in the build-up: Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra.

The folk-rap group are runaway favorites in the betting markets and their presence at the tournament has captured the imagination of fans from every competing country.

Getting Kalush Orchestra to the Eurovision stage took some doing, and their journey is deeply interwoven with the war at home.

The band initially finished second in Ukraine’s national selection competition, but they were elevated after it emerged the winner had previously traveled to Russian-annexed Crimea. They were unveiled as the country’s entry on February 22, two days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

Eurovision, for all its oddities, maintains a special place in the cultural calendar. However, winning would be uniquely significant for Kalush Orchestra, and it’s hard to imagine a more popular victor in the tournament’s history.

CNN’s Sana Noor Haq contributed reporting to this post.

Read the full story:

Related article Ukraine takes the Eurovision Song Contest spotlight as the weirdest show on earth returns | CNN

A drone image shows some of the dozens of burnt-out armored vehicles on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River near Bilohorivka, Ukraine on May 12.

Satellite imagery and first-hand testimony have provided a fuller picture of the multiple and disastrous efforts by Russian forces to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in eastern Ukraine over the past week.

New video and analysis of drone and satellite imagery show that the Russians may have lost as many as 70 armored vehicles and other equipment in attempting to cross the river early this week. Their goal was to try to encircle Ukrainian defenses in the Luhansk region, but it failed spectacularly. 

In its account of the battle, Ukraine’s 80th separate assault brigade said it had “destroyed the pontoons and thwarted nine crossing attempts.”

It claimed that “at least 73 units of equipment were destroyed, including T-72 tanks” and a variety of infantry fighting vehicles.

This tally appears supported by analysis of drone video showing Russian equipment strewn along a track to the north of the river, as well as half-submerged tanks.

It’s clear that the Ukrainians had previously worked out where the Russians were likely to try to lay down the pontoons and had observed the approach of Russian units. Reconnaissance of possible crossing points had begun at least two days before the Russian attempt.

The Siverskyi Donets flows quickly and the Russians appear to have needed motorized tugs to try to complete the bridge. The noise was a further clue to Ukrainian units that an attempt to ford the river was underway.

In its account, the 80th brigade says that “despite heavy losses, the enemy still managed to break through … gaining a foothold on the northern outskirts of one of the settlements.” At least 30 Russian vehicles and infantry did make the crossing. 

Other Ukrainian officials say that those Russian units that did get across, north of the village of Bilohorivka, were stranded.

Open source analysis suggests this is probably true, with at least 30 infantry fighting vehicles counted among the wreckage at the site of the pontoon, not counting what may have been destroyed among the equipment that did get across.

In its analysis of the episode, the Institute for the Study of War said that “Ukrainian forces likely inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces attempting to cross the Siverskyi Donets River.”

“Russian forces have likely lost the momentum necessary to execute a large-scale crossing of the Siverskyi Donets River,” it added.

Mick Ryan, a former Major General in the Australian armed forces who studies the Ukrainian conflict, tweeted: “Russians clearly intended to invest in this axis and throw a lot of combat power down it.

“Consequently, this is probably a larger setback for the Russians than some have speculated,” Ryan said in a post published to his verified Twitter account.

“Importantly, the Russians lost scarce engineer bridging equipment (and probably combat engineers too). These resources are neither cheap nor available in large quantities. And these are in high demand during an offensive.”

The Russians’ inability to advance from the north across the river has likely slowed down its offensive in Luhansk, which for now is reliant on troops moving from the east and south through frontlines that have moved little in a month. 

A special task force policeman inspects a site after an airstrike by Russian forces in Lysychansk, Ukraine on Friday, May 13.

More than 50 houses in the Luhansk region of Ukraine have been destroyed by Russian shelling, as fighting continues to rage around a belt of industrial towns in the area, according to Ukrainian officials.

The houses were located in the area around Popasna and Lysychansk, said Serhiy Hayday, the head of the Luhansk region military administration.

“They do not need people and their houses – they do need only the territory that the enemy turns into a desert,” Hayday said, adding that ten enemy attacks had been repulsed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the past 24 hours.

The Russians appear to have made little progress on the ground after consolidating their control over Rubizhne earlier this week.

A combine deposits harvested wheat in a tractor trailer on a field in Ahmedabad, India on March 16.

India is banning wheat exports as prices rise worldwide due to Russia’s prolonged war on Ukraine.  

India’s Director General of Foreign Trade released a statement prohibiting the export of wheat with immediate effect, except in cases where irrevocable letters of credit had already been issued, or if the government of India grants export permissions to countries relying on wheat for food security. 

India is the world’s second-highest producer of wheat, the bulk of which is consumed domestically. 

The government cited rising wheat prices and the need to protect food security in India and neighboring vulnerable countries as the catalyst for amending its export policy. 

Ukraine and Russia together are responsible for about 14% of global wheat production, according to Gro Intelligence, an agricultural data analytics firm. 

Wheat exports from the Black Sea region have plummeted since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, sending global buyers to turn to India to alleviate supply shortages. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky say Ukraine has retaken six settlements from Russian forces on Friday, and 1,015 overall since the start of the conflict in February.

It is unclear exactly how much territory those settlements constitute. Zelensky did outline other gains by Ukraine’s military in those areas.

“We return electricity, water supply, communications, transport, social services there,” he said.

He also stated that “the gradual liberation of Kharkiv region” proves that Ukraine “will not leave anyone to the enemy.”  

Members of the Ukrainian Army's mobile evacuation unit treat a soldier wounded on the frontline before his transfer to a hospital by ambulance, near Lysychansk, on May 10.

A Ukrainian lawmaker called on the United States to provide air defense systems and fighter jets to Ukraine, saying that the situation on the battlefield is “far worse” than it was at the beginning of the war. 

Daria Kaleniuk, a leading Ukrainian civil society activist, explained “we can’t win this war with Soviet equipment because A. Russia has much more Soviet equipment, B. we don’t have anywhere to get ammunition for this, and C. Russia simply has more people and more troops.”

Ustinova said Ukraine no longer seeks the Soviet-era MiG fighter jets because “the war has changed.”

Instead, she said Ukraine needs the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), Paladin self-propelled howitzers, and fighter jets like the F-16s in order to effectively counter Russia, and called on the US to begin training Ukrainian pilots to use such jets. 

Kaleniuk, who said she recently met with Ukrainian defense officials in Kyiv, noted that Ukraine has “combat-experienced pilots, who are willing and ready to go now for trainings. They were willing to go yesterday for trainings. But there is no decision to accept them and to provide that because there is no decision to provide fighter jets.”

The US has begun to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine, but has yet to give them MLRS or fighter jets. 

Ustinova and Kaleniuk, who were in Washington this week for meetings, said that they believe there is a lack of “political will that is needed” for the administration to decide to send such kinds of heavy weaponry – and quickly — and the feeling that there is still fear about provoking Moscow. 

They decried the fact that it took so long for the US to decide to send the heavy weaponry it is sending now, with Ustinova saying, “if we had Howitzers two months ago, Mariupol would not happen because they wouldn’t be able to surround like they did, to surround the city and literally destroy it.”

“For us time means lives, thousands of lives. We’ve been hearing that it has been unprecedented how fast everything is moving and how fast the decisions are taking. But there has never been a war since World War Two like that. And unfortunately, we keep asking here to take the decisions faster,” she said.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby speaks during a news briefing in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday.

If Congress does not pass the $40 billion Ukraine aid supplemental by May 19, “it’ll start impacting” the United States’ ability to provide Ukraine military aid “uninterrupted,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said during a briefing at the Pentagon on Friday.

“May 19 is the day we really, without additional authorities, we begin to not have the ability to send new stuff in,” Kirby said. “By the 19th of May, it’ll start impacting our ability to provide aid uninterrupted.”

The House of Representatives passed the $40 billion supplemental this week, but the Senate failed to pass the bill after Sen. Rand Paul blocked its passage. Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, wanted more oversight of how the funds will be spent before agreeing to let the bill go to the Senate floor for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has started procedural steps to override Paul’s objection, but the bill likely won’t pass until next week at the earliest.

There is still “about $100 million dollars left in current” presidential drawdown authority funding, Kirby said. That funding has not been “allocated or announced” yet, he added.

“We would like to get approval for additional authorities before the third week of this month so that we could continue uninterrupted the flow of aid and assistance into Ukraine, so obviously we continue to urge the Senate to act as quickly as possible so we don’t get to the end of May and not have any additional authorities to draw back, to draw upon,” Kirby said.

Smoke rises above the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on May 13.

Difficult negotiations are continuing over the fate of Ukrainian soldiers still trapped in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk region military administration, said.

Kyrylenko echoed the comments of Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk that the Ukrainian side would not offer detailed comments about the process.

“We have to talk about it only when people will be safe. Only then we shall give any comments. Negotiations are ongoing and they are really very difficult. Because, first, the Russian Federation always changes them [the conditions]. And even those agreements that are reached are not a 100% agreement with Russia,” he explained.

In the meantime, he said, the Russians continued to attack Avozstal from the air. “These are heavy, vacuum, high-explosive bombs,” the official said.

Vereshchuk has also been speaking about the Azovstal negotiations, apparently seeking to tamp down expectations.

A Russian General, identified in a CNN investigation as responsible for targeting civilians in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and his role as the architect of the siege of Aleppo, was involved in high-level defense talks with his UK counterpart in 2017 after receiving Russia’s highest military honor for his role in its war in Syria.

Col-General Alexander Zhuravlyov, in his capacity as then Deputy Chief of General Staff, met with the UK’s then Vice Chief of Defence Staff General Messenger for high-level talks, during a trip to Moscow in 2017 in what was characterized by the UK’s Ministry of Defence as “military to military dialogue.” Zhuravlyov discussed with Messenger “a restart of military interaction,” Russian state news agency TASS reported on February 28, 2017, quoting Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

CNN’s investigation found that Zhuravlyov’s leadership in 2016 catalyzed the assault on eastern Aleppo. After he took the reins, the Russian military rapidly ramped up its attacks on the rebel-held territory and completed the siege of the densely populated city, exacting a large death toll and setting the wheels in motion for a tactic that has defined Russia’s intervention in Syria: besiege, starve, bombard and grind into submission.

His period of command also saw a dramatic increase in documented cluster munition attacks in Aleppo.

European intelligence agency analysts who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity said the pattern of Zhuravlyov’s behavior in Syria and Ukraine is the same, subjugating cities through terror. “Zhuravlyov was brought in with the purpose of bringing about a swift capitulation of Aleppo. He did that using much of the same methodology we see in Ukraine. Ordering the indiscriminate use of cluster munitions against dense civilian infrastructure and populations,” the analyst said.

Syrian human rights activists have long called for Russia’s General to be held accountable, and a leading UK human rights lawyer at the law firm Payne Hicks Beach, Matthew Ingham, told CNN: “Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlyov should have been sanctioned for his actions in Syria” adding, “It is a shame that there was not a stronger response to alleged war crimes at that stage, because that may have affected Putin’s Ukrainian strategic calculations from the outset. 

Neither the US nor the UK have taken public action against Zhuravlyov or other key Russian generals implicated in war crimes. The US State Department wouldn’t comment on the specific findings of CNN’s investigation but said they continued to track and assess war crimes and reports of ongoing violence and abuses. 

In a statement to CNN, the UK Ministry of Defense said a previous statement issued in 2017 “made it clear” that they supported military to military dialogue to minimize risk and miscalculation

“We stand by that principle, which is why we gave Russia every opportunity to engage in dialogue this year over Ukraine before they launched their reprehensible and unprovoked invasion,” an MOD spokesperson said. 

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report

Russia will suspend power exports to Finland starting Saturday due to problems in receiving payments, Finland’s transmission system operator Fingrid said in a statement on Friday.

“RAO Nordic Oy, a subsidiary of the Russian entity Inter RAO, which trades electricity over the 400 kV interconnectors, will suspend imports of electricity to Finland at 1 am on Saturday 14 May 2022,” according to Fingrid.

The subsidiary said that it has not received payments for the volumes sold since May 6 and that this is the first time it has happened in over 20 years of its trading history.

“Unfortunately, in the current situation of lack of cash income, RAO Nordic is not able to make payments for the imported electricity from Russia. Therefore we are forced to suspend the electricity import starting from 14th of May,” RAO Nordic Oy said.

According to Fingrid, the adequacy of electricity in Finland is not under threat, with Russian imports in recent years covering 10% of Finland’s total consumption.

“The lack of electricity import from Russia will be compensated by importing more electricity from Sweden and by generating more electricity in Finland,” said Reima Päivinen, senior vice president of power system operations at Fingrid.  

Some context: The Finnish government is planning to issue a second white paper on Sunday proposing that the country joins NATO, Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters on Thursday. The proposal would then be put into a parliamentary vote with a plenary scheduled for Monday morning.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Finland’s possible accession to NATO marked a “radical change in the country’s foreign policy” and warned of countermeasures.

“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop the threats to its national security that arise in this regard,” it said.

In late April, Gazprom said it fully halted supplies to Polish gas company PGNiG and Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz after they refused to meet a demand by Moscow to pay in rubles rather than euros or dollars.

CNN’s Luke McGee contributed reporting to this post.