CNN has geolocated a video and images shared to social media that appear to show the aftermath of the attack in the Luhansk region

Ukrainian officials claim to have destroyed a Russian weapons depot in Novoaidar, Luhansk region.

CNN has geolocated a video and images shared to social media that appear to show the aftermath of that attack.

On Monday, Serhii Haidai, head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, said in a Facebook post that Ukrainian forces had destroyed a Russian “ammunition warehouse” near a Russian settlement in Luhansk.  

In a video shared by Russian state media RIA Novosti, Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) People’s Militia officer Roman Ivanov said the Ukrainian strikes on Novoaidar destroyed “more than 20 homes, along with a warehouse filled with chemical fertilizers.”

Haidai denied Russian claims that Ukrainians targeted residential buildings.

Burned out shells and rockets are seen scattered all over the ground in the video and images, and an agricultural equipment store is spotted in the distance.

The Pentagon cannot confirm reports that Russian forces have used what may be a chemical weapon in Mariupol, Ukraine, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement Monday, but officials remain concerned about the potential Russian use of riot control agents.

The Pentagon is aware of the reports and will monitor the situation closely, Kirby said.

In Ukrainian villages east of the capital of Kyiv where Russian forces have withdrawn, residents begin to slowly emerge from hiding and the new reality they’re facing is nothing short of devastating.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward toured a pair of villages that were occupied by Russians for more than a month. She reported that they found “endless accounts of horror, executions, arbitrary detentions and more.”

One local school was taken over by Vladimir Putin’s invading army, used as a base, and left in shambles after being looted and ransacked by the troops.

Bloodstains speckle the main entrance, where the school’s principal is left to wonder how such an atrocity came to be.

“We are for education. Education is the future. Our students,” the woman told Ward. “It’s such a shame that our occupiers didn’t understand this. Why steal everything? This is a school.”

One chalkboard in a classroom Ward visited that was formerly occupied by Russians said, “Forgive us, we didn’t want this war.”

Nearby, a local cemetery houses the bodies of six Ukrainian men who authorities say were executed on the first day the Russians arrived.

“We dug very fast so they wouldn’t shoot us,” a woman told CNN. “But there was shooting over there and heavy shelling.”

A pair of brothers are among the dead, Igor and Oleg. Their mother survived, but now mourns.

“They were very good boys,” she said. “How I want to see them again.”

One Ukrainian mother told Ward her daughter was taken on March 25. More than two weeks later she doesn’t know where she is, or whether she survived the Russians’ invasion.

“They said they found information on her phone about their forces,” the mother told Ward. “They told me she was in a warm house. That she was working with them and she would be home soon.”

But as Ward revealed, “Victoria never came home.”

Amid the risk of certain death, the Ukrainian residents clung to one another, and their sense of pride, with one woman finding solace among blue and yellow stripes, Ward reported.

“We kept it, we kept it,” the woman tells Ward, showing the Ukrainian flag given to her husband for his military service. “We hid it.”

Now the flag can come out of hiding, as Russian forces have retreated. The village is decimated, but for the moment, it’s once again free.

Watch Ward’s on the ground reporting:

Jan Gebert represents one of the many Jewish volunteers in Warsaw, Poland, assisting Ukrainian refugees arriving in the country.

Gebert has opened his one bedroom apartment to host refugees. Since the start of the war, he’s hosted three families.

Gebert lives not too far from where his Jewish great-grandparents lived before the Holocaust. His great-grandmother was separated from her husband and child during the war. She was executed by Nazis at the Treblinka death camp. Gebert’s great-grandfather was sheltered by a non-Jewish family.

His family home now serves as a shelter for refugees.

“We are alive because someone helped us. And thanks to that I can help other people,” Gerbet said.

“It’s our time to do what we needed to have done for us 80 years ago,” Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Warsaw, said. Lah reports that the Jewish community in Warsaw has “plunged in” to help with the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, offering everything from child care, housing, to counseling.

Schudrich told Lah that Jewish philanthropies, mostly American, have donated about $100 million to help Ukrainian refugees, regardless of where they are or what their religious affiliation is.

More than 4.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, according to data from the UN.

Watch Lah’s full report here:

Standing alongside the Indian ministers for foreign affairs and defense on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a pointed message about supporting Ukraine.

Blinken noted that the United States would continue to call on nations to back Kyiv, “just as we call on all nations to condemn Moscow’s increasingly brutal actions.”

In remarks at a news conference following the US-India 2+2 Ministerial in Washington, Blinken said, “Russia’s war against Ukraine is an attack on Ukraine’s people. It’s also an attack on that rules-based order that we both adhere to and defend.”

The United States, Blinken said, “will continue to increase our support to the government and people of Ukraine and call on other nations to do the same, just as we call on all nations to condemn Moscow’s increasingly brutal actions.”

Blinken declared that Russia’s war “stands in stark contrast to the vision that the United States and India share for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” and noted that Moscow’s actions were having worldwide consequences.

India has continued to purchase Russian oil in the wake of the war in Ukraine and last week abstained in a vote to remove Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.

“We, as a general proposition, are consulting with all of our allies and partners on the consequences of Putin’s war, the atrocities being committed against the people of Ukraine,” Blinken said at the news conference following the US-India 2+2 Ministerial.

Blinken said it was important that “democracies stand together and speak with one voice to defend the values that we share — and we do share, profoundly, the values of freedom, openness, independence, sovereignty, and those values need to apply everywhere.” 

The top US diplomat noted that “India’s relationship with Russia has developed over decades, at a time when the United States was not able to be partner to India,” but “times have changed” and the US is “able and willing to be a partner of choice with India.”

“And I would also note that India is providing significant humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine, notably medicines which are very necessary and in real demand,” he added.

Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said that India is “against the conflict” and “for dialogue and diplomacy” and the “urgent cessation of violence.”

“We are prepared to contribute in whatever way to these objectives,” he said.

Blinken said that “when it comes to oil purchases, sanctions, etc, I’d just note that there are carve outs for energy purchases. Of course, we’re encouraging countries not to purchase additional energy supplies from Russia.”

“Every country is differently situated, has different needs, requirements, but we’re looking to allies and partners not to increase their purchases of Russian energy,” Blinken said.

On oil, Jaishankar said that the world should look to Europe, suggesting that Europe buys more Russian oil than India does.

Blinken said President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “had a very warm and productive conversation,” and “on Russia-Ukraine, they talked about ways of mitigating the profound impact that this is having on global food supplies and prices, commodity markets and working together to achieve that.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who also attended the event, spoke on the importance of the US and India remaining aligned.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said Monday that the “defense of Mariupol continues” amid heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces inside the besieged city and Russian troops and pro-Russian separatists. 

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, said Monday the city’s port had fallen to Russian and Russian-backed forces, Russian state news agencies reported. Those reports could not be immediately verified. 

Ukrainian officials have said around 100,000 civilians remain in the city, which has come under heavy bombardment. Ukraine’s defense of Mariupol has tied down Russian units and hampered their efforts to solidify a land corridor from the Russian border to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.

The Institute for the Study of War, a defense think tank that tracks military operations in Ukraine, assessed Sunday that “Russian forces bisected Mariupol from the city center to the coast on April 10, isolating the remaining Ukrainian defenders in the southwestern port and eastern Azovstal Steel Plant.”

The defense of Mariupol has been a national rallying point for Ukrainians, and the destruction of the city has become a symbol of Russia’s indiscriminate use of firepower.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed “tens of thousands” of people had died in Mariupol, a claim that could not be immediately verified. 

Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, discussed her office’s war crimes investigation during a CNN interview Monday. Venediktova said that they are currently building “more than 5,800 cases” and every day are starting “more and more such proceedings.”

Venediktova said that she has made multiple visits to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where images of mass graves have been observed, and plans to return again tomorrow.

Venediktova was asked on CNN about her office’s report earlier today that found 183 children had been killed and 342 had been wounded since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine. That report cited preliminary figures from juvenile prosecutors.  

“As of April 11, 2022, according to official data from juvenile prosecutors, more than 525 children were casualties in Ukraine as a result of the armed invasion of our country by the Russian Federation,” the statement from the prosecutor general read. “183 children died and more than 342 were injured. These figures are not final, as work is underway in places of active hostilities in the temporarily occupied and liberated territories.”

With regards to the figures, Venediktova described them as “not correct” because they don’t account for the dead in places like Mariupol that are occupied by the Russians. 

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday, “tens of thousands” of people had been killed in the besieged city of Mariupol, a figure that could not be immediately verified. 

The prosecutor general explained how they are proceeding with probing events in Mariupol since the area is still under Russian control, including how they are getting information from individuals who have been able to evacuate.

“We started to proceed the common case. We don’t know concrete facts. But common case, for example, as a bomb in maternity hospital in Mariupol, drama theater in Mariupol, and all the cases, we started. Because we have some refugees, you know, that people could evacuate from Mariupol. We knew some facts from the witnesses,” she said.

Asked about suspects and potential war crimes prosecutions, Venediktova said that they “want to prosecute these war criminals in our Ukrainian courts, named by Ukraine.” 

“But, of course, for us… it is a lane of international criminal court,” she added, acknowledging the role the International Criminal Court (ICC) plays in these cases.

Venediktova said they are therefore doing their investigations under international law and currently have more than 500 suspects, including top politicians, top military officers and top Russian propaganda agents who they suspect started and continue this war.

The prosecutor general said that they understand that three people in the Russian Federation are now under functional immunity — the president, when he is still president, the minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister. “This is rule,” she noted.

“But from the other side, absolutely possible to take them to responsibility by instruments of international criminal courts,” she told CNN, noting that is why they are documenting all the evidence for “all the big fish” to learn about “who wanted this war, who started this war and who continued this war.”

The International Criminal Court formally opened an investigation into the situation in Ukraine last month. The top war crimes prosecutor for the ICC has traveled to Ukraine to investigate, and the US Embassy in Kyiv argued in the war’s opening days that specific Russian attacks constituted war crimes. Read more about how war crimes prosecutions work here.

Watch CNN’s interview with Ukraine’s prosecutor general:

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced Monday an initial deal to increase energy imports from Algeria after a meeting with the country’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algiers. 

“Our governments have signed a declaration of intent on the bilateral cooperation in the energy sector,” Draghi said in during a news conference. 

Additionally, Draghi said an agreement was signed between Italian energy company Eni and Algeria’s national state-owned energy company to implement the export of natural gas to Italy. 

Italy imports about 40% of its total gas consumption from Russia, according to Reuters. 

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 4,354 people have been evacuated Monday from areas where fighting continues, including a few hundred from Mariupol, where Russian forces are tightening their stranglehold. 

Vereshchuk said 556 people had been evacuated from Mariupol and a further 3,298 people from other cities in southern Ukraine, including Melitopol and Berdiansk, which are both occupied by Russian forces.

The evacuees had been taken to the city of Zaporizhzhia, she said.

Vereshchuk said more than 500 people had been evacuated from towns and cities in the Donbas region which have seen near constant shelling in recent days. They include; Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Kreminna and Popasna in the Luhansk region, she said. All of the towns have experienced widespread destruction as the focus of the Russian offensive has shifted to the Donbas.