UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visits Ukraine

After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to try to negotiate a ceasefire in the nine-week war and an agreement on civilian evacuations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres travels to Ukraine.

He visits the ruined town of Borodianka outside Kyiv, where Russian forces are accused of murdering civilians.

“The sooner this war ends, the better — for the sake of Ukraine, Russia, and the world,” he tweeted on his arrival in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov says the country faces “extremely difficult weeks” as Russia ramps up its offensive in the Donbas region, which it has vowed to “liberate”.

Moscow “will try to inflict as much pain as possible”, Reznikov writes on Facebook, adding Ukrainians will need to show “extraordinary unity”.

Kyiv said Tuesday that a string of villages in the east had fallen to Russian forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warns that if Western forces intervene in Ukraine, they will face a “lightning-fast” military response.

“We have all the tools for this, that no one else can boast of having,” the Russian leader tells lawmakers, implicitly referring to Moscow’s ballistic missiles and nuclear arsenal.

“We won’t boast about it: we’ll use them, if needed. And I want everyone to know that,” he says.

MPs in Canada unanimously adopt a motion accusing Russia of “acts of genocide” against the Ukrainian people and acknowledging evidence of “systematic and massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of the first leaders, after US President Joe Biden, to accuse Russia of genocide in Ukraine.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accuses Moscow of using gas to try “blackmail” Europe after Russian energy giant Gazprom halts gas shipments to Poland and Bulgaria for refusing to pay in rubles.

The Kremlin blames Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine invasion which have left Russia unable to use a large chunk of its foreign currency reserves.

Von der Leyen says other EU members have stepped in to cover Poland’s and Bulgaria’s needs.

“Today, the Kremlin failed once again in its attempt to sow division among member states. The era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe is coming to an end,” she says.

Despite the tensions over Ukraine, Russia and the United States announce a prisoner swap, with Moscow handing over jailed ex-Marine Trevor Reed in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot convicted of drug smuggling.

Reed’s father tells CNN that the swap took place in Turkey.

French energy giant TotalEnergies says it has taken a $4.1 billion charge against first-quarter earnings due to additional sanctions complicating development of its Arctic LNG 2 gas project under construction in northern Russia.

A spokesman says the write-down signals “the beginning of a retreat” from the project.

TotalEnergies, unlike rivals BP and Shell, did not abandon Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. It announced last month that it would stop funding new projects in Russia and stop buying Russian oil by the end of the year, but not Russian gas.