Russia-Ukraine crisis live updates | Russia may set up military base in Ukraine’s Kherson region

Here are the latest developments from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict

A captured Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a civilian was sentenced by a Ukrainian court on May 24 to life in prison — the maximum — amid signs the Kremlin may, in turn, put on trial some of the fighters who surrendered at Mariupol’s steelworks.

Meanwhile, in a rare public expression of opposition to the war from the ranks of the Russian elite, a veteran Kremlin diplomat resigned and sent a scathing letter to foreign colleagues in which he said of the invasion, “Never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24.”

Also, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for “maximum” sanctions against Russia in a video address to world leaders and executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He also revealed one of the deadliest single strikes of the war, a missile attack on a village near Kyiv that killed almost 90 people.

Read more news on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis here.

The Russia-appointed administration of Ukraine‘s Kherson region will ask Moscow to set up a military base on its territory, Russia‘s RIA news agency quoted a local government official as saying.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February, seizing, in particular, the Kherson region which is adjacent to Crimea, the peninsula which Moscow has controlled since an earlier conflict in 2014.

It has installed a new administration there and started introducing the Russian rouble as a currency. - Reuters