What did 13 April 2022 reveal about the war's widening stakes?
A look back at a day of naval claims, new US weapons pledges, a visit by four presidents to Kyiv and sharpened Russian threats.
What happened on 13 April 2022, as the war entered its second month and a half? Several developments pointed in the same direction: more Western weapons, more Russian warnings, and a fight at sea.
Ukraine said it had struck the Russian Navy cruiser Moskva with Neptune anti-ship missiles, hours after the warship was reported to be on fire in the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials and the US defence department, as reported at the time, backed the account of two missile hits. Russia's defence ministry said something different: that the ship had been evacuated after a fire detonated ammunition on board and badly damaged it. Both sides agreed the warship had caught fire. Moskva, commissioned in 1983, was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.
The United States announced a further $800 million in military aid. Reports listed artillery systems and rounds, armoured personnel carriers, Mi-17 helicopters transferred from Afghanistan, 300 Switchblade drones and unmanned surface vehicles for coastal defence. Some Biden administration officials had judged such a step too risky in terms of escalation only weeks earlier. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov responded that US and NATO vehicles carrying weapons on Ukrainian territory were legal military targets.
Russia's defence ministry also said it would begin to target Ukrainian decision-makers, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and command centres in Kyiv if Ukrainian forces kept attacking Russian territory.
The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Andrzej Duda, Gitanas Nausėda, Egils Levits and Alar Karis, travelled to Kyiv and met Zelenskyy.
On the ground, the governor of Kharkiv Oblast, Oleh Synyehubov, said seven people had been killed and 22 injured in the oblast over the previous 24 hours. Around Mariupol, Russia's defence ministry claimed that about 1,000 Ukrainian marines had surrendered; Ukraine made no comment.
The language of the war was also in play. A day earlier, on 12 April 2022, US President Joe Biden had for the first time used the word genocide about events in Ukraine. On 13 April 2022, Colombia's president, Iván Duque, said in an interview that what was happening in Ukraine was genocide and must stop.
