Russia Ukraine War April 15th Latest News: In yet another setback for Russia, its flagship of Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser, sank on Thursday after it was heavily damaged. Ukraine had claimed that their forces hit the vessel with two of their Neptune missiles. Russia had acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack. The Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sank in a storm while being towed to a port.

The news of the flagship sinking overshadowed the news of Russian troops advancing in Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the war. As per a report by Associated Press, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov had on Wednesday said that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metals factory in Mariupol. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today.” It is still unclear how many forces are still defending Mariupol.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Western countries’ attempts to phase out Russian gas imports will have a negative impact on their economies. Putin on Thursday said that European attempts to find alternatives to Russian gas shipments will be “quite painful for the initiators of such policies.”

Here are some more latest updates from the Russia-Ukraine war:

Powerful explosions were heard in early hours on Friday in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and a number of other cities across the country, local media reported. Explosions were also heard in the southern city of Kherson, the eastern city of Kharkiv and in Ukraine’s western city of Ivano-Frankivsk. Overnight, air raid sirens were going off over all of Ukraine, reported Reuters.

The head of the UN World Food Program said people are being “starved to death” in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and he predicted the country’s humanitarian crisis is likely to worsen as Russia intensifies its assault in the coming weeks.
WFP executive director David Beasley also warned in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press in Kyiv that Russia’s invasion of grain-exporting

Canada is sending its soldiers to Poland to help with the care, co-ordination and resettlement of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, including some who will go to Canada. More than 2.6 million Ukrainians have fled into Poland since the first Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24 and over 2 million more have fled into other surrounding countries.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister has said that a total of 2,557 people were evacuated from the cities through humanitarian corridors on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Ukrainians on Thursday to be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack. Zelenskyy, in his video address, said that he remembered the first day of invasion when many world leaders advised him to leave the country.