Russia Ukraine War News Highlights: Russia claims full control of eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman

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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting via videoconference in Moscow, Russia, May 27, 2022. (AP/PTI)

Russia Ukraine War, Mariupol Fall to Russia: Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that the Ukrainian town of Lyman had fallen under the full control of Russian and Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, news agency Reuters reported. The claim comes a day after pro-Russian separatists from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said they had fully captured the town, a railway hub west of Sievierodonetsk.

A ship has entered the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia completed its capture of the city to load metal and ship it east to Russia, TASS news agency reported Saturday, in a move that Kyiv decried as looting. A spokesperson for the port told TASS that the vessel would be loading 2,700 tonnes of metal before travelling 160 km east to the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Monday.

Russia successfully test-fired a hypersonic Zircon cruise missile over a distance of about 1,000 km, the defence ministry said Saturday. The missile was fired from the Barents Sea and hit a target in the White Sea, it said. Video released by the ministry showed the missile being fired from a ship and blazing into the sky on a steep trajectory.

However, breaking with the party line in a rare show of opposition to his country’s war in Ukraine, a Communist Party legislative deputy in Russia’s Far East demanded an end to the military operation and withdrawal of Russian forces. “We understand that if our country doesn’t stop the military operation, we’ll have more orphans in our country,” the deputy said at a meeting of Russia’s Primorsk regional Legislative Assembly.