Europe

April 15 (Reuters) - Ukraine's defence ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said on Friday that for, the first time since the start of its invasion, Russia used long-range bombers to attack the besieged port city of Mariupol.

Motuzyanyk said Russia was concentrating its efforts on seizing the cities of Rubizhne, Popasna and Mariupol.

PARIS, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The West bears some responsibility for the ongoing escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, two former French politicians have said in two separate articles, during which they expressed their concerns over sanctions against Russia.

In an article published in Le Figaro, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, a senior former diplomatic adviser to former French President Jacques Chirac, said that since the end of the Soviet Union, the hubris of the West has resulted in the loss of sight of the fact that security must be "arranged."

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser that became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war, sank Thursday after it was heavily damaged in the latest setback for Moscow’s invasion.

Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.

LONDON (AP) — The British government said Friday that it plans to start putting asylum-seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda within weeks, as it defended a deal that has outraged refugee groups and humanitarian organizations.

Britain and Rwanda announced Thursday that they had struck an agreement that will see some people arriving in the U.K. as stowaways on trucks or in small boats sent 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to the East African country, where their asylum claims will be processed and, if successful, they will stay.

Kyiv (Ukraine), Apr 15 (AP) The flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser that became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war, sank Thursday after it was heavily damaged in the latest setback for Moscow's invasion.

Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack.

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have visited Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle on their first joint visit to the U.K. since they gave up formal royal roles and moved to the U.S. more than two years ago.

The couple’s office says they visited the 95-year-old queen, Harry’s grandmother, Thursday on their way to the Netherlands to attend the Invictus Games. Harry is a founder and patron of the international sports competition for wounded military veterans.

PARIS (AP) — As she cooks lunch and talks politics, Jewish voter Sarah Gutmann has a nasty feeling — of would-be French president Marine Le Pen invading the privacy of her home, reaching directly into her life and the plates of chicken and kosher sausages that she is frying for her husband and their eldest son.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The messages, reports from across Ukraine, scroll in real time:

One civilian dead.

Thirteen military casualties.

Five civilians injured.

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova glances at her cell phone. The stark numbers and bare-bones accounts that unreel in her hand are just the start; her staff will catalog them, investigate them -- and try to bring the Russian perpetrators of war crimes to justice.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Unbroken by a Russian blockade and relentless bombardment, the key port of Mariupol is still holding out, a symbol of staunch Ukrainian resistance that has thwarted the Kremlin’s invasion plans.

More than six weeks after the Russian siege began, Ukrainian troops are continuing to fight the vastly superior Russian forces in ferocious battles amid the ruins of what once was a bustling city on the Sea of Azov coast.

The city’s mayor says that an estimated 120,000 people remain in the city, of Mariupol’s pre-war population of about 450,000.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A day after Moscow suffered a stinging symbolic defeat with the loss of the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, Russia’s Defense Ministry promised Friday to ramp up missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged military “diversions on the Russian territory.”