March 25, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Tyler Jacob, an American living in Ukraine, was freed from detention in Russia on Friday, according to the office of Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Klobuchar’s office said Jacob, who is originally from Winona, Minnesota, was taken by Russian forces about two weeks ago while trying to leave Ukraine. He was held in Russia for 10 days.

“I am grateful that Tyler, his wife, and their daughter are in a safe place,” said Jacob’s father, John Quinn, in the statement by Klobuchar’s office.

A State Department spokesman told CNN the department was aware of the reports but had no further comment due to privacy considerations.

A senior adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Defense told CNN the notorious Russian private military group Wagner was involved in an alleged assassination plot against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

Lubkivskyi said the plot was confirmed by Ukraine’s intelligence service and special forces in charge of protecting Zelensky.

“All these documents and the necessary proof will be presented to the International Court,” he said, adding that he couldn’t reveal more due to operational reasons.

CNN was unable to independently confirm the claims.

The Wagner group first came to prominence during Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Since then, independent research and CNN investigations have found that the private military contractor has operated in Syria and multiple countries in Africa. They have been accused by US officials and human rights watchdogs of sustained human rights abuses.

The group is thought to be connected to — and financed by — Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch so close to the Kremlin that he is known as Putin's "chef."

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any links to the group. Prigozhin denies any involvement in Wagner.

On Thursday, the United Kingdom became the latest country to sanction Wagner.

Lubkivskyi says that Ukrainian intelligence has tracked the group inside and outside of Ukraine and that several Wagner operatives have been killed inside the country, identified by their unique ID tags.

Zelensky has repeatedly committed to staying in Ukraine to marshal the country’s defense during the war, now in its second month.

Ukrainian refugees hoping to settle in the UK say they are facing a host of obstacles in the process, including long lines at UK immigration centers, weeks spent paying for temporary housing and forms that require them to put their trust in strangers with sensitive personal documents.

So far, the British government says it has issued 20,000 visas to Ukrainian refugees hoping to reunite with relatives through the Ukraine Family Scheme, which allows those fleeing Ukraine to apply for a special visa that would allow them to live and work in the UK for up to three years. But there are still thousands of applications waiting to be processed.

While the UK government schemes are “certainly more generous” than previous re-settlement programs, it remains a complicated procedure, said Laura Kyrke-Smith, UK Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Ukrainian refugees and their families who spoke to CNN described the process as frustrating and difficult to understand, while others said they feared they would struggle to meet the UK’s document requirements like having copies of their passports and birth certificates given their current circumstances — they’ve fled a war.

Victoria and Andriy, a Ukrainian-British couple who have lived in the UK for more than a decade, told CNN the process to bring Victoria’s elderly parents – who had fled their hometown of Berdyansk – was complicated.  

“I was their only source of information. There were no clear instructions,” Victoria told CNN. Meanwhile, her husband’s family is still waiting in Poland.

A separate scheme aims to connect Ukrainians with sponsors in the UK who are willing to host refugees. But would-be hosts say it’s riddled with red tape. The fine print says host applicants need to identify a refugee to sponsor on their own. 

Host Elsa De Jager took to Facebook and connected with Yana, a 32-year-old teacher who hopes to make it out of Ukraine with her 4-year-old. 

The two are strangers, but they have been required to share sensitive personal documents as part of the application process. 

De Jager told CNN she believes the British government has intentionally made the process difficult to deter Ukrainians from attempting to settle in the UK.

“There shouldn't be this kind of red tape when people are getting bombed every day,” she said. “It’s a PR stunt … It’s lovely on paper, but when you go through the process, it's nigh on impossible to actually do it."

The British government says Ukrainian refugees are welcome, and according to the Home Office, Britain’s visa application process has been “streamlined” in order to help refugees through the process “as quickly as possible.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has lost more than 16,000 troops so far. 

“The number of the Russian losses has exceeded 16,000 casualties,” Zelensky said in a video message posted to social media on Friday. “Among them are the high-ranking commanders. So far no reports of killed Russian general colonels or admirals. However, in that number we have a commander of one of the occupiers' armies and a second in command of the Black Sea Navy.”

CNN cannot independently verify Zelensky’s claims.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a briefing Friday that 1,351 military personnel had been killed in Ukraine and 3,825 had been wounded, during the first major casualty update since March 2. 

Meanwhile, two senior NATO military officials on Wednesday estimated the number of Russian soldiers killed in action in Ukraine to be between 7,000 and 15,000. Other US officials have put Russian losses in a similar range — between 7,000 and 14,000 Russian soldiers killed — but they have expressed “low confidence” in those estimates.

The Ukrainian president on Friday also said authorities were able to ensure 18 humanitarian corridors over the past week and managed to rescue 37,606 people including 26,477 from the besieged city of Mariupol who were taken to Zaporizhzhia.

“All of these war crimes against the civilians in Mariupol and other cities of Ukraine will continue informing nations of the world,” Zelensky said.

The city of Kherson remains under total Russian control, four residents of the city told CNN, contrary to number of reports from other media outlets, citing a senior US defense official.

CNN is not naming the resident over concerns for their security. 

The US official told the outlets, including CNN, that "we’ve seen reports of resistance there in areas that were previously reported to be in Russian control."

"We can’t corroborate exactly who is in control of Kherson, but the point is, it doesn’t appear to be as solidly in Russian control as it was before," the official said. "We would argue that Kherson is actually contested territory again."

The assessment that the city of Kherson was contested was based in part on images and media reports from the city showing the Ukrainian flag draped from city hall, according to two other defense officials.

Previous CNN reporting confirmed that the Ukrainian military counteroffensive has reached the Kherson region's northernmost villages. A CNN crew in one of the northernmost villages in the Kherson region, earlier this week, witnessed the Ukrainian counteroffensive there. 

Despite that, in the city of Kherson, the situation is unchanged. 

Ukrainian forces have been able to launch attacks from the Mykolaiv region just to the north, into Kherson region, for over a week. While the residents of the city continue to hold large protests, the Russians remain firmly in control of it and much of the region at this time.

For example, residents in town draped a large Ukrainian flag on Thursday down the side of city hall.

Five Western scientists have written a letter that calls on US policymakers and the rest of the scientific community to “avoid shunning all Russian scientists” in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

In their letter, published Thursday in the journal Science, the scientists said Putin and his associates deserve “every appropriately sized and targeted sanction against the Putin regime that the horrified world can devise.” 

But, they said, it would be a major setback if the world punished Russian scientists for the actions of their government.

The lead author on the letter was John Holdren, a professor of environmental science and policy at Harvard University. Holdren was previously the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration.

The scientists noted that they had all participated in international collaborations, and welcomed the outpouring of support for Ukrainian scientists. However, they stressed that Russian scientists deserve the same security. The scientists noted the thousands of Russian academics and students living in the West who have criticized the Russian government publicly for their attack on Ukraine.  

Nina Federoff at the Pennsylvania State University, Neal Lane at Rice University, Nick Talbot at the Sainsbury Laboratory and Toby Spribille at the University of Alberta were also authors on the letter.

French President Emmanuel Macron will speak with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the terms and conditions of an “exceptional humanitarian operation” to evacuate civilians in Mariupol, he announced at a press conference on Friday.

The operation will be carried out with Turkey and Greece to evacuate the civilians who want to leave the besieged city, according to Macron.

During the Macron-Putin call, France will demand Russia to lift its siege of Mariupol so that civilians who wish to leave can evacuate and humanitarians aid can go in for those who chose to stay, the Élysée Palace specified after the press conference.

Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that there has not been any rotation of technical staff at the Chernobyl nuclear plant since March 21, the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday.

According to an IAEA statement, Ukraine also did not know when the next rotation might take place.

Ukraine’s regulatory authority told the IAEA on Thursday that Russian shelling of checkpoints in the nearby city of Slavutych, where many Chernobyl nuclear power plant staff live, “prevented them from travelling to and from the plant,” the statement read.

The current staff who arrived at the plant on March 20-21 replaced the personnel who had been there since Russian forces took control of the site on Feb. 24, the IAEA said.

On Friday, Ukraine’s State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone “provided additional detailed technical information about the Central Analytical Laboratory in Chernobyl town, which it earlier this week said had been ‘looted by marauders,'” the IAEA said.

The IAEA’S Director General Rafael Grossi said he has “in recent weeks expressed deep concern about the difficult situation facing staff operating Ukrainian nuclear facilities where the Russian military is present. He has stressed that their ability to carry out their important tasks without undue pressure” is critical in order to maintain nuclear safety.

A top Russian general gave some of the most detailed public remarks to date on Russia's military strategy in Ukraine, claiming on Friday that the "first stage" of Russia's military plan is now complete, with their primary focus now centered on eastern Ukraine.

Rudskoy's remarks come as Russia's advances appear to have stalled around major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia has also failed to achieve air superiority in Ukraine and has suffered heavy losses of personnel since the start of the invasion.

"The public and individual experts are wondering what we are doing in the area of ​​the blockaded Ukrainian cities," Rudskoy said. "These actions are carried out with the aim of causing such damage to military infrastructure, equipment, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the results of which allow us not only to tie down their forces and prevent them from strengthening their grouping in the Donbas, but also will not allow them to do this until the Russian army completely liberates the territories of the DPR and LNR."

Rudskoy was referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, separatist territories in eastern Ukraine that Russia recognized on the eve of its invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the goal of what Russian officials refer to euphemistically as the "special military operation" in Ukraine is the complete demilitarization of the country. Putin has said the war is going according to plan, but Russian forces have incurred serious losses: Rudskoy said in the same briefing that 1,351 military personnel had been killed in Ukraine and 3,825 had been wounded. US, NATO and Ukrainian officials estimate the Russian casualty count is much higher.

"Initially, we did not plan to storm them in order to prevent destruction and minimize losses among personnel and civilians," Rudskoy said. "And although we do not exclude such a possibility, however, as individual groupings complete the tasks set, and they are successfully solved, our forces and means will be concentrated on the main thing -- the complete liberation of Donbas."

It is unclear if Rudskoy's statement implies a shifting of the goalposts for the Russian military, or just represents a change in public messaging.

The Russian military has claimed it is not targeting civilians or residential areas, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.