TOP HEADLINES

• Ukrainian forces are raiding onto the eastern bank of the Dnipro river near Kherson to try to dislodge Russian troops, a regional official said on Tuesday. "Our military visits the left (eastern) bank very often, conducting raids. The Ukrainian armed forces are working, and working very effectively," said Yuriy Sobolevskiy, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration. READ MORE BELOW

• The Kremlin reaffirmed that the Black Sea grain deal is not working for Russia, a day after United Nations (UN) chief Antonio Gutteres handed Moscow a letter with proposals to improve and expand it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the deal "has not yet been implemented, it has not come together as a package, the conditions that concerned us have still not been realized." READ MORE BELOW

• The UN's grain deal proposal can only succeed if the international community collectively pressures Russia, said senior Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who also denied an assertion by Russia's defense ministry that Kyiv was trying to attack its ships in the Black Sea.

• Ukraine has received $1.65 billion in the latest macro-financial assistance from the EU, said the country's finance ministry, bringing the total amount of direct budget support from the EU to $6.6 billion. 

• A group of pro-Ukrainian scholars has called for much tougher Western sanctions on Russia, including halving an oil price cap to $30 a barrel, imposing a full embargo on Russian steel, iron and diamonds and making it easier to confiscate Russian assets.

• A former commander in Russia's Wagner mercenary group has pleaded guilty to being involved in a fight outside an Oslo bar and carrying an air gun in public. Andrei Medvedev, who is seeking asylum in Norway, said he felt "very ashamed."

• Russian forces hit a museum in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk during an attack on Tuesday, killing one person, wounding 10 and burying others under rubble, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

• Ukraine has rescued 138 civilians trapped by fighting in Sudan, including its own nationals and citizens of Georgia and Peru, Ukraine's military intelligence said on Tuesday.

• Russia's foreign ministry said it was expelling a Moldovan diplomat in what it cast as retaliation for the expulsion last week of a Russian diplomat in Moldova.

• Former KFC restaurants in Russia will begin reopening as Rostic's on Tuesday, reviving a 1990s brand after KFC's U.S. parent company Yum! Brands Inc last week finalized its exit from Russia.

• An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the planet is probably on the verge of a new world war and the risks of a nuclear confrontation were rising. "The world is sick," Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Putin's powerful security council, told a conference in Moscow.

IN DEPTH

Ukraine says it is raiding east of Dnipro near Kherson

Ukrainian forces based on the western side of the River Dnipro are frequently carrying out raids on the eastern bank near the city of Kherson to try to dislodge Russian troops, a regional official said on Tuesday.

Russian forces have held the eastern side of the Dnipro near Kherson since retreating from the southern city in November after months of occupation, but Ukraine is expected to launch a spring counteroffensive to try to recapture more territory.

Yuriy Sobolevskiy, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration, said the raids were intended to reduce the combat capability of Russian troops who have been shelling Kherson city since being forced to retreat.

"Our military visits the left (eastern) bank very often, conducting raids. The Ukrainian armed forces are working, and working very effectively," Sobolevskiy told Ukrainian television.

"The results will come as they did on the right bank of the Kherson region when, thanks to a complex and long operation, they were able to liberate our territories with minimal losses for our military. The same thing happens now on the left bank."

Military analysts say Ukraine is likely to launch a counteroffensive soon, and that one of the main goals could be breaking through a southern land corridor between Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimea region. Retaking all the Kherson region would be an important step towards achieving this goal.

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said last week that Russian military bloggers had posted enough geolocated footage to confirm that Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

Sobolevskiy gave no further details, saying a military operation requires "informational silence."

Russia says food shortages not due to lack of grain

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that a global shortfall in food supplies was not primarily attributable to a lack of Russian and Ukrainian grain on the market. It also reaffirmed its position on Tuesday that the Black Sea grain deal is not working for Moscow, a day after the head of the United Nations handed Russia a letter with proposals to improve and expand it.

"Despite the fact that so much time has passed, (the deal) has not yet been implemented, it has not come together as a package, the conditions that concerned us have still not been realized," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Therefore, while the circumstances don't add up in favor of this deal, we continue to observe," he said.

The deal was brokered by Türkiye and the United Nations last July to allow Kyiv to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports that had been severed after Russia attacked Ukraine five months earlier.

Russia has signaled that it will not allow the deal to be extended beyond May 18 unless obstacles to its own food and fertilizer exports are removed.

On Monday, a U.N. spokesperson said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin a "way forward aimed at the improvement, extension and expansion" of the agreement.

"We all know that the genesis of the global food crisis has other roots. And it is not a direct consequence of the loss of Ukrainian grain from the market," he said. "Of course, the loss of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain from the market may be one of the factors, but not decisive."

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