TOP HEADLINES

• A fire broke out at an oil refinery in southern Russia, a day after authorities confirmed a drone attack, Russian state-run news agencies reported.

• Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Russia would respond with "concrete actions," to the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin that it believes could not have happened without Washington's awareness. 

• The head of Russian paramilitary group Wagner threatened to pull his fighters from the frontline in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine on May 10, saying ammunition shortages meant they faced "senseless death."

• The Ukrainian air force said it downed its own drone that lost control over Kyiv, after a series of explosions shook the capital. The explosions, which resonated for about 15 to 20 minutes in Kyiv, followed a wave of overnight Russian attacks between Wednesday and Thursday.

• Hundreds of thousands of children may have been transferred to Russia since 2015, international experts probing the "massive" assimilation of Ukrainian minors said. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia-installed authorities said a drone had been shot down near an airbase in Crimea, the region which has been absorbed by Russia, the latest in a string of such incidents in recent days. 

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was "realistic" that it would not be able to join NATO while still fighting Russia. "We are realistic, we know we will not be in NATO during the war," "But we want a very clear message that we will be in NATO after the war," Zelensky added.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted that a special tribunal must be created to hold Russia to account for its "crime of aggression," while on a surprise visit to the Netherlands.

• EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned Moscow to not use an alleged drone attack that it said targeted the Kremlin to escalate its conflict in Ukraine. Borrell spoke to journalists as he went in to attend an EU ministers meeting in Brussels.

IN DETAIL

Report warns Ukrainian children transfered to Russia on 'massive' scale

Hundreds of thousands of children may have been transferred to Russia since 2015 after Russia resumed control of Crimea, international experts probing the "massive" assimilation of Ukrainian minors said.

A mission of three experts, established under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said it found that "numerous and overlapping violations of the rights of the children deported to the Russian Federation have taken place."

"It seems there is a plan to assimilate them (children) on a massive scale," one of the experts, Veronika Bilkova, told reporters.

She said the exact numbers of children brought from Ukraine to Russia remained uncertain, with findings showing such transfers since 2015.

"The lowest estimates that we have been able to find put this number at at least 20,000 children... But both Russian sources and Ukrainian sources indicate numbers which are 10 or even more times higher. So we are really speaking about a massive phenomenon," Bilkova said.

Russia denies the allegations, saying instead it has saved Ukrainian children from the horrors of the war. Russia has taken "legal and policy measures... to grant Russian citizenship to some of these children and to facilitate their placement in foster families," the experts found in their 82-page report.

They also detailed that once in Russia, children "are exposed to pro-Russian information campaign often amounting to targeted re-education as well as being involved in military education."

The report on the "forcible transfer of children" is the latest carried out under the OSCE's so-called Moscow Mechanism, which allows for an ad hoc team of experts to be established to assist in resolving an OSCE member state's problems.

To do the report, which was finalized by April 23, 2023, the experts collected written material, conducted more than 25 online or in-person interviews and visited Kyiv from between April 14 and April 20.

Russia's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova said previously that Russia had not moved anyone against their will or that of their parents or legal guardians, whose consent was always sought unless they were missing. Russia did not answer an invitation to contribute to the report, according to the authors.

More than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the offensive started in February 2022, according to Kyiv, with many allegedly placed in institutions and foster homes.

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