Live updates | Ukraine: Russia is escalating Donbas assault

Cars pass by Russian tanks destroyed in a recent battle against Ukrainians in the village of Dmytrivka, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A man passes by Russian tanks destroyed in a recent battle against Ukrainians in the village of Dmytrivka, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Cars pass by destroyed Russian tanks in a recent battle against Ukrainians in the village of Dmytrivka, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Russian Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin listens to his translator during a court hearing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. The court sentenced the 21-year-old soldier to life in prison on Monday for killing a Ukrainian civilian, in the first war crimes trial held since Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Police escort Russian Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin after a Ukrainian court sentenced him to life in prison in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. The court sentenced the 21-year-old soldier for killing a Ukrainian civilian, in the first war crimes trial held since Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Russian Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin waits for the start of a court hearing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. The 21 year old soldier facing the first war crimes trial since the start of the war in Ukraine plead guilty on May 18 to killing an unarmed civilian. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

People, fleeing from areas near the front line in Donetsk, board buses in Kurakhove, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. In the Donbas region, people continue to flee from towns and villages coming under heavy bombardment. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A nurse tends to a patient after he underwent surgery for injuries to his leg and abdomen caused by a mine explosion in Severodonetsk, at Kostyantynivka hospital, in Kostyantynivka, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

People, fleeing from village of Novomykhailivka near the front line in Donetsk, board a mini bus in Kurakhove, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 23, 2022. In the Donbas region, people continue to flee from towns and villages coming under heavy bombardment. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Refugees wait in a crowd for transportation after fleeing from the Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Monday, March 7, 2022. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians attempting to flee to safety Sunday were forced to shelter from Russian shelling that pummeled cities in Ukraine's center, north and south. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy displayed on a screen as he addresses the audience from Kyiv on a screen during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Monday, May 23, 2022. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from May 22 until May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine - A Ukrainian official says Russian forces are stepping up their bombardment of the Donbas area.

Pavlo Kyrylenko told The Associated Press on Monday in Kramatorsk that heavy fighting was continuing near the region of Luhansk and that the front line was under continuous shelling.

Kramatorsk and neighboring Sloviansk are the largest cities in the parts of Donetsk region not held by Russian forces currently.

Kyrylenko told The Associated Press in Kramatorsk that the "situation is difficult. The front line is under shelling at all times.”

The vast majority of the population has already been evacuated, he said. Of more than 1.6 million people who lived in the region before the Feb. 24 Russian invasion, there are “not more than 320,000 people” left.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

— Russian sentenced to life in Ukraine’s 1st war crimes trial

—‘They ruined everything’: Fleeing the devastation in Ukraine

— Russian offensive turns to key Donbas city, heavy shelling

— ‘A long journey’: Volunteers from Belarus fight for Ukraine

— After 3 months of war, life in Russia has profoundly changed

— Russia’s claim of Mariupol’s capture fuels concern for POWs

Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

BERLIN — Germany’s banks say refugees from Ukraine will be allowed to exchange a limited amount of Ukrainian currency into euros from Tuesday.

In a statement Monday, the banks said they had signed an agreement with the German Finance Ministry and the national banks of Germany and Ukraine to allow a total of 1.5 billion hryvnia ($50.8 million) to be converted.

Every adult Ukrainian refugee with an account at a major German bank will be allowed to exchange up to 10,000 hryvnia, or about 317 euros ($339).

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DAVOS, Switzerland — A veteran Russian diplomat in Geneva says he handed in his resignation before sending out a scathing letter to foreign colleagues inveighing against the “aggressive war unleashed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Boris Bondarev, 41, confirmed his resignation in a letter Monday after a diplomatic official passed on his English-language statement to The Associated Press.

“For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24 of this year,” he wrote, alluding to the date of Russia’s invasion.

Reached by phone, Bondarev – a diplomatic counselor who has focused on Russia’s role in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva after postings in places like Cambodia and Mongolia – confirmed he handed in his resignation in a letter addressed to Amb. Gennady Gatilov.

“Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not about diplomacy. It is all about warmongering, lies and hatred,” he said, telling the AP that he had no plans to leave Geneva.

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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin says Russian economy is “withstanding the blow” of international sanctions well, even though it “is not easy.”

Putin on Monday hosted his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“The Russian economy withstands the sanctions blow, it withstands it very worthily,” Putin said, opening the talks. “All the main macroeconomic indicators speak of this.”

At the same time, the Russian leader noted that “everything is not easy, everything that happens requires special attention and special efforts from the economic bloc of the government.”

Putin has repeatedly assured the public that Russia is coping well under the pressure, which many experts describe as unprecedented. However, the ruble has briefly lost half its value at some point, prices for food and other goods spiked and even temporary shortages of sugar, sanitary products and some medications were reported.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has objected to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, called on Stockholm on Monday to take “concrete steps” that would alleviate Turkey’s security concerns.

Turkey has said it opposes the two Nordic states membership in the alliance citing their alleged support to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK and other groups that Turkey views as terrorists. The country is also demanding a lifting of military export bans on Ankara.

“We can in no way ignore the fact that Sweden is imposing sanctions against us,” Erdogan said Monday during a ceremony marking the docking of a submarine. “Turkey’s rightful expectations concerning (an end to the) support to terrorism and sanctions must be met.”

In his speech, Erdogan made no reference to Finland amid reports that most of Turkey’s grievances are directed at Sweden, which has a large community of Kurdish exiles.

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A Russia-installed governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region says that starting Monday, the region will officially become an area with dual currency — Russian rubles and Ukrainian hryvnyas.

Vladimir Saldo also said that an office of a Russian bank will open in the region, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

The Russian forces have took control over the Kherson region, which borders the Donetsk region to the east and Crimea to the south, early on in the war and installed a pro-Kremlin administration there. One official in this administration has announced plans to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to incorporate the region into Russia.

Putin has previously said that Russia doesn’t plan to occupy Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the residents of Ukrainian regions must “determine how and with whom they want to live.”

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KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian court sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier to life in prison on Monday for killing a Ukrainian civilian, in the first war crimes trial held since Russia’s invasion.

Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin was accused of shooting a Ukrainian civilian in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region in the early days of the war.

He pleaded guilty and testified that he shot the man after being ordered to do so. He told the court that an officer insisted that the Ukrainian man, who was speaking on his cellphone, could pinpoint their location to the Ukrainian forces.

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KYIV, Ukraine — A Mariupol official on Monday sounded the alarm about the growing threat of an epidemic in the ravaged port city captured by the Russians, pointing to unsanitary conditions compounded by the weather.

Mayor advisor Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram that rain drains and sewers make rainwater spread across the city “along with rotting garbage and corpse poison.”

“The threat of an epidemic becomes a reality with each thunderstorm,” Andryushchenko wrote, adding that the Russian forces in the city “continue to ignore sanitary challenges and are only engaged arranging ‘good photos’ depicting fictional ‘life improvements’.”

The official said that Mariupol “desperately needs a new wave of evacuations.”

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The head of the Russia-backed separatist region in eastern Ukraine says that Ukrainian fighters from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol who were captured by Russian forces are being held in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and will face “international tribunal” there.

“The plan is to arrange the international tribunal on the territory of the republic as well,” Denis Pushilin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. Pushilin added that “at the moment the charter for the tribunal is being worked out.”

Pushilin said earlier that 2,439 people from Azovstal were in custody, including some foreign citizens, though he did not provide details.

Family members of the steel mill fighters, who came from a variety of military and law enforcement units, have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine.

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MOSCOW — The Russian military on Monday released footage of de-mining specialists working at the recently overtaken Azostal steel mill in the captured port city of Mariupol.

Russia’s Defense Ministry was quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency as saying that over the past two days, more than 100 explosives have been destroyed.

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KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces overnight shelled the Dnipropetrovsk region in southeastern Ukraine, its governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Monday morning.

The Dnipropetrovsk region borders with the Donetsk region, which remains the focus of the Russian offensive in the east.

According to Reznichenko, the Russians used the Uragan or “Hurricane” multiple-rocket launch system and the shelling hit “between the two settlements.” No one was hurt, he added.

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LONDON — British military officials say Russian forces in Ukraine have experienced a death rate similar to that suffered by the Soviet Union during its nine-year war in Afghanistan.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense, in a briefing posted Monday morning, says the high casualty rate during the first three months of the war is due to poor tactics, limited air cover, a lack of flexibility and a command approach that reinforces failure and repeats mistakes.

The ministry says the death toll may weaken support for the war among the Russian public, who have been sensitive to losses in past wars.

“As casualties suffered in Ukraine continue to rise they will become more apparent, and public dissatisfaction with the war and a willingness to voice it, may grow,” the ministry said.