LIVE UPDATES: Total Human Losses of Ukrainian Troops Exceed 23,300, Russian MoD Says

Ukraine will break off negotiations with Russia if Ukrainian troops in the city of Mariupol are eliminated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Earlier in the week, 1,160 Ukrainian soldiers, including 176 officers, of the 36th Marine Brigade surrendered in Mariupol. The Russian Defence Ministry said it was ready to allow all Ukrainian troops to withdraw through humanitarian corridors and promised to spare Ukrainian nationalists who agree to lay down arms. The Ukrainian side declined the offer.

"Mariupol is, perhaps, like ten Borodyankas and I would like to say that elimination of our boys will put an end to all talks," Zelenskyy said, as quoted by Ukrainian news website Strana.ua.

Mariupol, a coastal city in the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) with a population of 450,000, went under the control of Ukrainian troops during the 2014 offensive. On 7 March, a senior DPR military said that Russian and DPR forces have surrounded the city and are clearing it of Ukrainian troops, including the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.

French skin care brand L'Occitane reversed its stance and announced the closure of all of its stores and online sales in Russia in the light of the special military operation in Ukraine.

On Thursday, the company told the BBC that it will not cease operations in Russia for fear that its employees will face "retaliation".

"Given the enormous human suffering being caused by escalating military action in Ukraine and to protect our employees worldwide from potential public aggression, we have decided to close our own stores and e-commerce websites in Russia," the company said in a press release published on Friday.

L’Occitane also announced suspending investment and expansion plans in Russia.

According to the company's 2021 annual report, it has over 100 retail shops located in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan and Yekaterinburg.

Ukrainian troops shelled the towns of Vasylievka and Tokmak in the Zaporozhye region on Thursday, killing at least one person and injuring five, as well as destroying houses and schools, local authorities said.

"On April 14, 2022, our city Vasylievka was under another shelling. People suffered as a result. A civilian woman died. Five civilians are injured," Deputy Mayor Denis Kalinin said, adding that both private and public property suffered damage, such as schools where shrapnel landed.

Sputnik has obtained a video showing the site of the shelling, which shows traces of a 9M27K rocket from the Uragan multiple rocket launcher system.

"Of course, these events baffle us. We, the city council, are doing everything to help people to at least protect communal property, [and] restore it if possible, bury or help with transport and burial of the dead, provide medical assistance through our hospital's personnel," Kalinin added.

The economic sanctions against Russia have had no effect so far, but there are ways of toughening the restrictions, Estonian Minister of Defence Kalle Laanet said on Saturday.

"It takes time for sanctions to hit. So far, only a relatively short period of time has passed, so we have not yet seen the desired effect. But we still have ways of tightening sanctions even further, for example, by boycotting oil and gas," the minister told German newspaper Handelsblatt.

He accused European countries of "financing" Russia's operation in Ukraine by continuing to buy fuel from it.

The number of Ukrainian refugees coming to Germany by train each day has decreased by nearly 70%, German Minister for Transport Volker Wissing said on Saturday.

"The number of people fleeing to Germany by train has fallen significantly compared to the peak at the beginning of war – from around 8,200 to the current 2,500 people per day. We continue to keep the logistics and transport structures in place, however, because … [we] can experience an increase in the number of refugees at any time. We must expect further escalation and be prepared. People who are in need in Ukraine should be able to find refuge in Germany," Wissing told the RND news agency.

Germany "cannot and will not" reject any refugees from Ukraine, he added.

According to Germany’s Interior Ministry, almost 300,000 refugees from Ukraine have been registered in the country as of 1 April, with most of them travelling by train. The ministry noted that the actual number is likely higher as not all Ukrainian refugees have registered with the police.

Ukrainian citizens holding a biometric passport are allowed to legally stay in EU member states for 90 days without contacting the migration authorities.

Italy will close its ports to Russian ships starting this Sunday, including those that have changed their flag since February 24, Italian media reported.

Last week, the European Union agreed on the fifth package of anti-Russian sanctions over Ukraine, which include a ban on access to EU ports for ships under the Russian flag. Romania also banned Russian-flagged vessels from entering Romanian ports — except for humanitarian emergency purposes and energy transit — starting Sunday.

According to newspaper La Stampa, citing the country's port authority, the vessels that are currently staying at Italian ports will have to leave immediately after concluding their commercial activities.

According to the DPR representative at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination on ceasefire, Ukrainian forces shelled the town of Donetsk twice within ten minutes on Saturday, firing 11 'Grad' rockets.

Ukraine’s economy may contract by between 30% and 50% due to the impact of Russia’s special military operation, Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko said on Saturday.

"[According to] rough estimates that have been announced, from 30 to 50% of GDP may be lost. But the issue is that it is too early to make such predictions. Everything depends on the course of the war," Marchenko said in an interview with Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske.

On 24 February, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. Russia said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine and that only military infrastructure is being targeted.

Russian aerospace forces destroyed 16 Ukrainian military objects overnight using high-precision missiles, Russian Defence Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.

"Air-launched high-precision missiles have destroyed 16 enemy military objects overnight. This includes 11 hubs of Ukrainian military vehicles and weapons destroyed in villages of Povstanskoe in the Odessa region, Barvenkovo, Lysychansk, Sribnoye, Petrovskoye and Opytnoye," Konashenkov told a briefing.

The spokesman added that the military has destroyed two warehouses of missile and artillery weapons near the city of Nikolaev, the central storage base for radar reconnaissance and communications equipment southeast of the city of Poltava, a storage base for anti-aircraft missiles south of Poltava, and a hub of Ukrainian units of the 95th airborne brigade in the village of Gusarovka.

"Production buildings of a tank factory in Kiev and a workshop for the repair of military equipment in Nikolaev have been destroyed with high-precision weapons," Konashenkov said.

The spokesman noted that Russian anti-aircraft defence systems have also shot down Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet near the city of Izium.

The transit of Russian gas through the territory of Ukraine is expected to decrease by 18% on Saturday, according to Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine.

The Russian requests for gas pumping via gas metering stations Sudzha and Sohranovka on Saturday amount to only 57.23 million cubic meters, compared to 69.98 million cubic meters on Friday. It is almost half of Russian gas giant Gazprom's maximum obligations to Ukraine under the transit contract, amounting to some 109.6 million cubic meters per day.

Gazprom confirmed in a statement on Saturday that it will pump 57.2 million cubic meters of gas through the territory of Ukraine in accordance with the requests of European consumers.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, and Home Secretary Priti Patel are also on the list.

Moscow explained that the decision to impose individual sanctions was made in response to London unleashing an info-political campaign against Russia. The Foreign Ministry promised to expand the black list shortly by adding British politicians and MPs, who fuel "anti-Russia hysteria".

Belgium issued a similar ban on Friday.

Ukrainian forces fired six shells with a calibre of 122 mm at Makeevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the DPR’s representative office at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire (JCCC) said.

The Russian military hit another 811 objects of the Ukrainian Army, including 43 command posts, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

Russian air defence systems shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 jet near the city of Izyum (Kharkov region), the MoD spokesman said on Saturday.

The Russian military has destroyed the production buildings at a military plant in Kiev as well as a workshop for the repair of military equipment in Nikolaev with long-range high precision weapons, Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry, said.

Russian aerospace forces have destroyed 16 Ukrainian military objects overnight using high-precision missiles, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.

"Air-launched high-precision missiles have destroyed 16 enemy military objects overnight. This includes 11 hubs of Ukrainian military vehicles and weapons destroyed in villages of Povstanske in the Odessa region, Barvinkove, Lysychansk, Sribne, Petrovske and Opytne," Konashenkov told a briefing.

Vershinin noted that Western countries might suspend other nations from the Council to turn it into "a closed club of true democracies."

"It is beyond any doubt that the desire to 'cancel' Russia's membership in the HRC was an attempt to punish our country for its independent domestic and foreign policies. Obviously, this step of the 'collective West' will be followed by similar measures against other sovereign countries that do not accept the dictate of the Western world in the field of human rights," the deputy minister said.

He pointed at the United States and EU countries, in particular, saying that they "continue to seek a 'monopoly' on the human rights work of the UN," and "their goal is to transform the HRC into some sort of a closed club of true democracies intended to set up the rules of the game for the rest of the world, violation of which will be punished without remorse."

The April 7 UNGA resolution was passed in a 93-24 vote with 58 abstentions.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that some 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and about 10,000 were injured in the course of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine.

"As to our military, out of the numbers we have, we think that we have lost 2,500 to 3,000... We have about 10,000 injured. It is hard to say how many will survive," Zelensky told CNN.

Zelensky found it difficult to name the number of civilian casualties due to a lack of information from the "blocked" territories in the south and east of Ukraine.

On 12 March, Zelensky said that some 1,300 Ukrainian troops were killed. Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the head of Ukraine's presidential office, said at the end of March that Kiev is no longer providing information about its army losses as it is a military secret. Russian Defence Ministry said in March that about 14,000 Ukrainian troops were killed and 16,000 injured in the course of the operation.