Ukraine-Russia news live: Putin’s ‘40th colonel killed’ as Moscow’s casualties

Joining NATO is the best option for Finland to guarantee its national security, the Finnish parliament’s defence committee said on Tuesday, ahead of Finland’s official decision on whether or not to join the Western defence union in the coming days.

Finland’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would significantly increase the deterrent for becoming a target of Russia’s aggression, the defence committee concluded in a statement.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland, which shares a 1,300 km (810 mile) border and a difficult past with neighbouring Russia, is reconsidering its long-standing position to refrain from joining NATO in order to maintain friendly relations with its eastern neighbour.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock pledged Tuesday that the international community would hold to account those responsible for the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha during Russia’s war.

Speaking during a visit to the town on the outskirts of Kyiv, Baerbock said that “the worst crimes imaginable” had been perpetrated in Bucha during the Russian occupation.

Witnesses have told how Russian soldiers targeted civilians seemingly at random, leaving their bodies lying on the street after their withdrawal on 31 March.“We owe it to the victims that we don’t just commemorate them here, but that we hold the perpetrators to account,” Baerbock said.

“And we as the international community will do this. That’s the promise we can and must make here in Bucha.”

RuTube, Russia’s answer to YouTube, was crippled for a second day on Tuesday by a cyber attack whose timing it linked to this week’s anniversary celebrations of victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Usually packed with video content, RuTube’s site is currently black, with a short message reading: “Attention! The site is undergoing technical work. The site was attacked. At the moment the situation is under control. User data has been saved.”

The attack began on Monday, a major national holiday when Russia commemorated the Soviet victory over Adolf Hitler and President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech likening that struggle to the current war in Ukraine.

“Someone really wanted to prevent RuTube from showing the Victory Day parade and celebratory fireworks,” RuTube said. “It is not a sin to remember the battles our guys won. The battle for RuTube continues.”

It described the cyber attack as the worst in the site’s history.

More now from the UN on civilian casualties in Ukraine.

The UN team, which includes 55 monitors in Ukraine, has said most of the deaths have occurred from the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area such as missile and air strikes.

“We have been working on estimates, but all I can say for now is that it is thousands higher than the numbers we have currently given to you,” Matilda Bogner told a news briefing in Geneva, when asked about the total number of deaths and injuries.

“The big black hole is really Mariupol where it has been difficult for us to fully access and to get fully corroborated information,” she added, referring to the port city in southeast Ukraine that has seen the heaviest fighting of the war.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Ukraine on Tuesday, the highest-ranking German government official to visit the country since Russia’s invasion began on 24 February.

Her first stop was in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, where Russian forces are accused of having committed war crimes.

Moscow, which has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in the Ukraine war, has called allegations that its forces executed civilians in Bucha while they occupied the town a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating the Russian army.

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Tuesday he hoped for a deal soon on an EU oil embargo on Russia, possibly for EU foreign ministers to agree.

Foreign ministers are due to meet on Monday, 16 May. Borrell said last week he could also call an emergency meeting of the ministers to sign off on the sanctions if they were ready, or to move negotiations forward.

If EU ambassadors could not agree this week, he also said foreign ministers could try to break any deadlock, in a bid to win over reluctant states, particularly Hungary. The European Commission proposed the oil embargo on 4 May.

Vladimir Putin has reportedly lost his 38th, 39th and 40th colonels in the Ukraine war, adding to Russia’s mounting losses in the conflict.

Russian officials had previously denied that the colonel, who served in a motorised rifle unit, had been killed.

The number of Ukrainian civilians killed during Russia’s invasion is likely to be thousands higher than the official figure of 3,381 the UN has said.

Last Monday, the UN said the death toll of civilians killed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February had exceeded 3,000 people.

It said the figure is likely to be higher, citing access difficulties and ongoing corroboration efforts.

Most of the victims were killed by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, such as missile strikes and air strikes, the rights office said, without attributing responsibility.

The bodies of 44 civilians have been found in the rubble of a building destroyed in a Russian attack in March, a Ukrainian official has said.

The five-story building in Izyum in the Kharkiv region collapsed after being bombed, Oleh Synehubov, the head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, said on Tuesday on social media.

My colleague Thomas Kingsley has the full report:

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is only likely to end when the “last Russian soldier is killed”, a former adviser has said.

Cormac Smith, who worked for the Ukraine foreign minister, spoke to TalkTV earlier.

He told the broadcaster he thinks the Russian president is under “huge pressure” because the war has gone “very, very badly for him.”