TOP HEADLINES

• Russian strikes pounded a factory near Kyiv that makes the missiles Ukraine claims it used to sink the Moskva naval flagship, with Moscow on Friday vowing renewed attacks on the capital.

• The United States now believes the sunken missile cruiser was hit by two Ukrainian missiles, a senior U.S. official said on Friday, on condition of anonymity.

• Russia has warned the United States that there will be "unpredictable consequences" if Washington keeps arming Ukraine, the Washington Post reported.

• Ukraine's defense ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said on Friday that for the first time since the start of its military campaign, Russia used long-range bombers to attack the besieged port city of Mariupol.

• Ukraine said it was trying to break Russia's siege of Mariupol and that fighting raged around the southern city's Illich Steel and Iron Works and port. Russia's defense ministry said its forces had taken full control of the plant in Mariupol.

• Ukraine's biggest steelmaker Metinvest said on Friday its enterprises would never operate under Russian occupation and that Ukraine had currently lost access to 30 to 40 percent of its metallurgy output capacity in the besieged city of Mariupol.

• Dozens gathered at a memorial ceremony organized by veterans, in memory of the sunken Russian missile cruiser Moskva, in Sevastopol, Crimea.

• More than 20 buildings and a school were damaged as a result of Ukrainian shelling of a Russian village in the Belgorod region on Thursday, TASS news agency reported, citing regional authorities.

• Ukraine's military said it had repulsed eight attacks in the east in the past 24 hours and destroyed several vehicles, including four tanks. The reports could not be verified.

• Russia has blocked access to the website of French public broadcaster Radio France Internationale, a register maintained by Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor showed on Friday.

• Moscow said on Friday that 18 members of the EU mission in Russia had been declared "persona non grata" and must leave the country. EU has decried the move as "unjustified".

• More than five million people have now fled Ukraine since the start conflict began on February 24, the United Nations says.

• Russia's defense ministry warned it will intensify attacks on Kyiv in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil, after accusing Ukraine of targeting Russian border towns.

• Russia's setbacks could lead President Vladimir Putin to resort to using a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon, CIA director William Burns has said.

• Russia's defense ministry says that it has killed up to 30 Polish mercenaries fighting for Ukrainian forces in the country's northeastern region of Kharkiv.

• Germany has confiscated the world's largest superyacht owned by Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, as part of sanctions against Moscow, police sources said. The 156-meter (1,680-feet) long "Dilbar" has an estimated value of $600 million (555 million euros) according to Forbes magazine.

• Moody's said Russia may be in default because it tried to service its dollar bonds in rubles, which would be one of the starkest consequences to date of Moscow's exclusion from the western financial system since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.

IN DETAIL

Kyiv expects Moscow to seek 'revenge' for sunk cruiser

Ukraine said on Friday that Russia will seek revenge after the sinking of its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva, which Kyiv claimed to have hit with Neptune missiles. 

"The Moskva cruiser strike hit not only the ship itself: it hit the enemy's imperial ambitions. We are all aware that we will not be forgiven for this," Natalia Gumeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's southern military forces said during a briefing.

"We are aware that attacks against us will intensify and that the enemy will take revenge. We understand this," she added, citing ongoing strikes on cities in the south of Ukraine, Odesa and Mykolaiv.

The Moskva had been leading Russia's naval effort in the seven-week military campaign and the circumstances around its sinking and the fate of its crew remain unclear.

"We saw that other ships tried to assist it, but even the forces of nature were on Ukraine's side because the storm made both the rescue operation and crew evacuations impossible," she added.

A factory outside Kyiv that produced the missiles allegedly used to hit Russia's Moskva warship was partly destroyed by Russian strikes overnight, just ahead of Gumeniuk's briefing.

The United States now believes the sunken missile cruiser was hit by two Ukrainian missiles, a senior U.S. official said on Friday on condition of anonymity.

'Mariupol must remain Ukrainian'

Ukraine's biggest steelmaker Metinvest said on Friday its enterprises would never operate under Russian occupation and that Ukraine had currently lost access to 30 to 40 percent of its metallurgy output capacity in the besieged city of Mariupol.

The company controlled by Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov said that Ukraine, one of Europe's biggest suppliers of iron ore, had also more than halved its iron ore production due to the ongoing conflict.

Metinvest owns two vast steel works - Illich and Azovstal - in the city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov and put the two facilities into a special "hot conservation" regime to protect equipment and prevent industrial accidents when the conflict began.

The city has since been devastated by weeks of shelling and siege and a dwindling Ukrainian force is trying to hold out despite being outnumbered and surrounded by a Russian assault.

Metinvest told Reuters news agency in a statement that the sites had been damaged and it was impossible to take stock and assess the scale of damage with fighting still raging.

It said: "We believe in the victory of Ukraine and plan to resume production after the end of hostilities. Metinvest's metallurgical enterprises will never operate under Russian occupation."

Metinvest's plants in Mariupol accounted for more than a third of Ukraine's metallurgical production, it said.

"The country has therefore lost 30-40 percent of its metallurgical production capacity, since the plants are not working. We have no doubt that their work will be resumed, but for this Mariupol must remain Ukrainian," it said.