Russia suffered setbacks when Ukraine bombed a ship in the Black Sea and thwarted an armored column in Donbass.

Ukrainian forces destroyed a pontoon bridge and parts of a Russian armored column as it tried to cross a river in the Donbas region, a video released by Ukraine’s military showed on Friday, and a Russian naval ship was set on fire in the Black Sea. .

Ukraine has pushed Russian troops back from the second-largest city of Kharkiv in the fastest advance since Kremlin forces withdrew from kyiv and the northeast more than a month ago.

Reuters journalists have confirmed that Ukraine is now in control of territory stretching to the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River, some 40 km (25 miles) east of Kharkiv. The city, which had been under fierce bombardment, has been quiet for at least two weeks, but fighting continued to the north.

Firefighters doused the smoldering remains of the House of Culture in Dergachi, 10 km (six miles) north of Kharkiv, after what local authorities said was an overnight Russian missile attack on the building used to distribute aid. Volunteers inside were trying to salvage packages of diapers and baby formula.

“I can’t call it anything other than a terrorist act,” the mayor, Vyacheslav Zadorenko, told Reuters. “They wanted to attack the base where we store supplies and create a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Another missile slammed into the building on Thursday and Russian shelling wounded a clinic staff member and killed a young couple in their home, he said.

Evacuees from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol describe the conditions of survival during the Russian bombardment

Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said its forces shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 plane in the Kharkiv region and disabled the Kremenchuk oil refinery in central Ukraine.

The reports could not be immediately verified.

Southeast of Kharkiv, Britain said Ukraine had prevented Russian forces from crossing the Siverskyi Donets River west of Severodonetsk. Images released by the Ukrainian Airborne Forces Command appeared to show several burned military vehicles and bridge segments partially submerged in the river and many other damaged or abandoned vehicles, including tanks, in the vicinity.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report, or when or where the clash took place.

The British Defense Ministry said Russia was investing significant military effort near Severodonetsk and Izium, and trying to force its way towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to complete its takeover of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region.

The Russian-backed separatists said they had seized the Zarya chemical plant in Rubizne, near Severodonetsk.

The Kremlin calls its February 24 invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation” to demilitarize a neighbor that threatens its security. Ukraine says it poses no threat to Russia and that the deaths of thousands of civilians and the destruction of cities and towns show that Russia is waging a war of aggression.

Ukraine accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 210,000 children since its invasion on February 24, saying they were among 1.2 million Ukrainians transferred against their will.

The Kremlin says that people have come to Russia to escape the fighting.

In kyiv, a court has begun hearing the first case of what Ukraine says are more than 10,000 possible war crimes; a Russian soldier is accused of murdering a civilian shortly after the invasion. Moscow has accused kyiv of organizing such crimes.

In the southern port of Mariupol, Russian forces intensified their shelling of the Azovstal steel mill, the last bastion of Ukrainian defenders in a city almost completely controlled by Russia after a siege of more than two months.

Reuters video showed explosions and thick smoke on Thursday, and Ukrainian fighters released footage showing gun battles. Some of the civilians recently evacuated from the tunnels under the plant where they had taken refuge described terrifying conditions.

“Every second was hell,” nurse Valentyna Demyanchuk, 51, told Reuters.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told 1+1 television that negotiations were under way for the evacuation of wounded troops.

Renewed fighting around Snake Island in recent days may turn into a battle for control of the western Black Sea coast, according to some defense officials, as Russian forces struggle to advance north and west. eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine said it had damaged a Russian navy logistics ship near the island, a small but strategic outpost near Ukraine’s maritime border with Romania.

“Thanks to the actions of our naval sailors, the support ship Vsevolod Bobrov caught fire, it is one of the newest in the Russian fleet,” said Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesman for the Odessa regional military administration.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the details. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Satellite images from Maxar, a private US-based company, showed the aftermath of what it said were likely missile attacks on a Russian Serna-class landing craft near the island, made famous by the foul-mouthed defiance of his Ukrainian defenders early in the invasion.

As fighting continued across the country, broader diplomatic moves increased pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Foreign ministers from the G7 group of wealthy nations met to discuss a planned EU embargo on Russian oil, as well as fears the conflict could spread to Moldova.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who attended the meeting in Germany, said he hoped Hungary, which opposes the EU, would accept the oil embargo and called on the G7 to hand over Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild.

“We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Russia must pay,” she told reporters.

A day after Finland, Russia’s northeast neighbor, pledged to apply for NATO membership, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said her country’s membership would have a stabilizing effect and would benefit countries. of the Baltic Sea.

Joining the 30-nation Western military alliance would end the neutrality the two states maintained during the Cold War and promote the expansion of NATO that Putin said his invasion of Ukraine was intended to prevent.

Moscow called Finland’s announcement hostile and threatened retaliation, including unspecified “military-technical” measures, but said a media report that the Kremlin might cut off gas supplies to Finland was likely a “hoax”.

Russian energy supplies to Europe remain Moscow’s largest source of funds and Europe’s largest source of heat and power.

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