Russia-Ukraine war latest news: Macron tells Putin he is making a ‘major mistake’; Zelenskiy says defence lines holding against onslaught – live

Six people have been rescued after a cargo ship sunk off the coast of Odesa due to an explosion, a senior Ukrainian official told Reuters.

Earlier we reported the Estonian-owned cargo ship, Helt, had sunk this afternoon, with two crew members in a life raft at sea and four others unaccounted for, according to the shipping agency’s managing director.

Victor Vyshniov, deputy head of Ukraine’s maritime administrator, has now said six crew members have been picked up by Ukraine’s rescue service.

The six have been taken to hospital in nearby Chernomorsk due to being in cold water.

Vyshniov provided no further details about the cause of the incident.

A second round of talks between Ukraine and Russia have started, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has confirmed.

Mykhaylo Podolyak said he and other officials had begun talks with Russian delegates in Belarus.

The Ukrainian delegation’s agenda is to agree an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to leave frontline communities.

Ukraine’s parliament has approved a bill to allow the seizure of assets or property in Ukraine owned by Russia or Russian citizens.

Under the law, the government can suggest assets for confiscation to the security council, which must then approve their transfer to state ownership, Reuters reported.

An advance team left the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague on Thursday to start investigating possible war crimes in Ukraine, its top prosecutor told Reuters in an interview.

Their departure came hours after the prosecutor Karim Khan said he would start collecting evidence as part of a formal investigation launched after Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began on 24 February.

“Yesterday I formulated a team and today they are moving to the region,” Khan said. “It’s an advanced team, comprised of investigators, lawyers, but also those with particular experience in operational planning.”

Khan said his office would be examining possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – the offences under the court’s jurisdiction – by all parties in the conflict.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, and Moscow does not recognise the court, which was established in 1997 by the Rome Statute and opened in The Hague in 2002.

Though not a member of the ICC, Ukraine signed a declaration in 2014 giving the court jurisdiction over alleged grave crimes committed on its territory from 2014 onwards regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, told Russia’s Vladimir Putin he was making a “major mistake” in Ukraine, that he was deluding himself about the government in Kyiv, and that the war would cost Russia dearly over the long term, a French official said.

In the phone call initiated by Putin on Thursday, the Russian leader reiterated his determination to obtain the neutralisation and disarmament of Ukraine, whether diplomatically or by arms, the official told Reuters.

“There was nothing in what President Putin said that could reassure us,” the French presidential adviser said, adding that Putin had reiterated his “narrative” that he was seeking the “de-nazification of Ukraine”.

“‘You are lying to yourself’,” Macron told Putin, the official said. “‘It will cost your country dearly, your country will end up isolated, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.’”

Ukrainian negotiators have arrived by helicopter for talks with the Russian side in Belarus, the Russian state news agency TASS said.

On Wednesday, Belarus’s foreign ministry posted a photo of a conference room, saying it had been set up to host a second round of talks.