All Ukrainian cities and Crimea must be part of Ukraine again and a real peace will come by restoring the country's borders, Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Thursday.
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"There is no difference between ... any Ukrainian city, they all must and will be Ukraine again," he said, speaking via a video link at a Black Sea security conference in Bucharest.
BATTLEFIELD
* Ukraine and Russia traded barbs over how much invading Russian forces control the city of Bakhmut, for months the focal point of Moscow's bid to advance through eastern Ukraine.
* Hundreds of cemeteries near front lines will be closed to Ukrainians wanting to pay their respects at graves of their relatives for Orthodox Easter this weekend due to the danger of land mines and unexploded ordnance.
* As many as 354,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in a conflict that may last well beyond 2023, according to purported US intelligence documents posted online.
POLITICS/DIPLOMACY
* The person who leaked US classified documents prompting a national security investigation is a gun enthusiast in his 20s who worked on a military base, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
* The Black Sea will never be a "NATO sea", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday after Ukraine's foreign minister urged the Atlantic alliance to play a bigger security role in the region.
* The Kremlin on Thursday denied a report that President Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Russia last month on espionage charges.
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the situation in Ukraine with his Chinese counterpart during a meeting in Uzbekistan, the foreign ministry in Moscow said on Thursday.
* Norway's foreign ministry said on Thursday it had decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials who it said were intelligence officers operating under the cover of diplomatic positions.
ECONOMY
* Ukraine's gross domestic product fell by almost 30 per cent in 2022 as Russia's full-scale invasion battered the economy, the state statistics service said.
* The US Commerce Department said it was imposing export controls on more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and other countries for supporting Russia's military and defence industries.
* The World Bank said it would finance $US200 million ($A297 million) to help fix Ukraine's energy and heating infrastructure, with partners and others to provide a further $US300 million.
* The Kremlin said the outlook was not great for extending a UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal as promises to remove obstacles to Russian exports of agricultural products and fertiliser had not been fulfilled.
Australian Associated Press
