Russia says it has full control of Mariupol steel plant

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said Friday that Italy has put forward a plan aimed at a facilitating a “lasting peace” in Ukraine.

The move comes at a time when prospects for peace are highly uncertain, and many military experts are bracing for a conflict that stretches for months or years. But the Italian plan, submitted this week to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, aims to provide a basic blueprint.

Italy submitted its plan a week after Prime Minister Mario Draghi met with President Biden in Washington. Draghi, speaking before the Italian parliament on Thursday, said that it was important to reach a cease-fire “as soon as possible,” given the humanitarian crisis, an opinion shared by the White House.

The plan calls for four steps, starting with a cease-fire, followed by talks on Ukraine’s international status, and then a bilateral agreement on areas such as Crimea and Donbas. The final step would be a multilateral deal addressing peace and security in Europe. Any effort to forge an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on contested territory would be highly challenging, given the Kremlin’s goals of holding onto its military gains and a Western consensus that Ukrainian retains sovereignty over its prewar territory.

Josep Borrell, the European Union foreign policy chief, said Friday that the E.U. had “taken note” of the plan, according to ANSA, the Italian news agency.

“We support any effort to end the conflict,” he added. “But, according to the European point of view, this must start from the immediate end of the attack and the unconditional withdrawal of the Russian army. Ukraine will have to decide on the conditions for this cease-fire.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that a “very large number” of Ukraine’s pilots were killed trying to defend Mariupol against Russian forces.

Speaking on a national telethon, Zelensky referenced the high death toll that Ukrainian forces faced in the battered port city of Mariupol. Ukraine evacuated its remaining combatants from the city earlier this week, ending its last stand to prevent Russia from capturing the strategic port city after weeks of heavy Russian bombardment.

“A very large number of people, our pilots, died, unfortunately,” he said, according to Interfax. “Absolutely heroic people who knew that it was difficult, that it was almost impossible to fly. Fly to Azovstal, bring medicine, food, water, pick up the bodies of the wounded. All this happened.”

Earlier in the day, Denys Prokopenko, a leader of the far-right Azov Regiment, said an order has been issued to cease in the group’s last-ditch defense of Mariupol, which has been gutted by the Russian military, and that the effort will now focus on saving lives and removing the dead. Hundreds of fighters, many of them seriously wounded, had been hiding in Mariupol’s sprawling Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and its network of tunnels.

Zelensky said Friday that some of the pilot losses in Mariupol were due to Russian air forces providing no air corridors, according to Interfax.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he’s ordering a state information protection system to be developed in response to what he claims are an increasing number of cyberattacks and “a war in the media” against Russia during the invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking at an online meeting of the Russian Security Council, Putin claimed the cyberattacks on Russia have intensified since the beginning of the invasion and “have become even more acute and serious, on a larger scale.”

“In fact, a real aggression, a war in the media, has been unleashed against Russia,” he said, according to Ukrainian Pravda. “I think it is reasonable to consider the creation of a state information protection system.”

Russia has found itself struggling under an unprecedented hacking wave that entwines government activity, political voluntarism and criminal action. Digital assailants have plundered the country’s personal financial data, defaced websites and handed decades of government emails to anti-secrecy activists abroad. One recent survey showed more passwords and other sensitive data from Russia were dumped onto the open Web in March than from any other country.

Putin said Friday he was waiting on the council to offer proposals outlining “what additional steps should be taken to ensure the sustainable operation of the information infrastructure in government and public administration.”

“There are targeted attempts to disable the Internet resources of Russia’s critical infrastructure. Media, financial institutions and large-scale, socially significant portals and networks were first and foremost under attack,” the Russian president said. “Serious attacks were launched against the official websites of the authorities.”

But he also claimed without evidence that “the cyber aggression against us, as well as the sanctions attack on Russia in general, have failed.”

Joseph Menn contributed to this report.

It will take between five and seven years for Ukraine to clear all of the mines set across the country during the Russian invasion, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Mary Hakobyan, deputy minister of the interior, said during the first meeting of the International Coordination Center for Humanitarian Demining that measures were being taken by the country to identify and neutralize explosive objects across more than 3.2 million square feet.

“Today is the 86th day … the war is still going on and we have 300,000 square meters that need to be cleared,” she said, according to Interfax. “Tentatively, we are talking about the fact that we need five to seven years to clear mines.”

Hakobyan said 30 days are required to clear a territory of mines after just one day of fighting.

Both Russia and Ukraine have used land mines with prevalence throughout the invasion. Russian troops have scattered mines along their path of retreat from northern Ukraine to the east, including variants capable of detecting seismic activity and being timed to explode. That many have been placed indiscriminately around populated areas is evidence, observers say, of Moscow’s intent to sow destruction and fear.

Hakobyan said Friday that negotiations were underway to make the process of clearing the mines throughout Ukraine more effective. Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, added that Ukraine can’t achieve its goal of humanitarian demining without the support of countries that have offered backing on the initiative, such as France, Canada and Finland.

“Some countries are already responding and supporting us,” Zhovkva said, according to Interfax.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian troops were “absolute evil” and showed “absolute stupidity” on Friday after a missile strike at a cultural center in the Kharkiv region injured seven, including a child.

Zelensky said in a Telegram post that seven people were injured in a Russian attack on a newly renovated cultural center in the city of Lozova on Friday afternoon. Among those injured was an 11-year-old, Zelensky said. The Telegram post includes video purportedly of the attack.

“The occupiers identified culture, education and humanity as their enemies. And they do not spare either missiles or bombs,” Zelensky wrote. “What is in the minds of people who choose such targets? Absolute evil, absolute stupidity.”

The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify the attack on the cultural center.

Russian forces have targeted cultural centers and museums in Ukraine during the invasion in an attempt to rid the country of its culture and heritage.

Ukrainian troops have been fighting a Russian assault in the country’s eastern region that Zelensky described as “hell” on Thursday night.