Ukraine war: Five things you need to know this weekend▼

<h2>1. EU approval of Ukraine's candidate status a morale boost</h2><p>The European Union&#039;s decision to make Ukraine a candidate for EU membership offered war-weary Ukrainians a morale boost and hope of a more secure future Friday as the country&#039;s military ordered its fighters to retreat from a key city in the eastern Donbas region.</p> <p>Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the decision of EU leaders as a vindication of his nation&#039;s four-month fight against Russia&#039;s aggression and said he was determined to ensure Ukraine retained the ability to decide if it belonged in Europe or under Moscow&#039;s influence.</p> <p>“This war began just when Ukraine declared its right to freedom. To its choice of its future. We saw it in the European Union," Zelenskyy told the nation in a televised address late Thursday. “That is why this decision of the EU is so important, motivates us and shows all this is needed not only by us."</p> <p>Ukraine applied for membership less than a week after Russia invaded the country and must undergo a complicated process that could take a long time to be eligible to join the 27-nation bloc.</p> <p>The EU also granted candidate status to the small nation of Moldova, another former Soviet republic that borders Ukraine and also has territory controlled by pro-Russia separatists.</p> <h2>2. Ukrainian forces to retreat from Sievierodonetsk to avoid encirclement</h2><p>Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country&#039;s east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday, after weeks of ferocious fighting over control of the city.</p> <p>Sievierodonetsk, the administrative centre of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment in recent weeks. At one stage, Ukrainian troops fought Russians in house-to-house battles, before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the city&#039;s edge.</p> <p>In recent days Russian forces have made gains around Sievierodonetsk and the neighbouring city of Lysychansk, across the river, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces.</p> <p>Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said that Ukrainian troops have been given the order to leave Sievierodonetsk to prevent that.</p> <p>“We will have to pull back our guys,” he said. “It makes no sense to stay at the destroyed positions, because the number of casualties in poorly fortified areas will grow every day.”</p> <h2>3. Senior Russian-installed official assassinated in Kherson</h2><p>A senior official in the Russian-installed administration of Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region was killed in an apparent assassination on Friday, the deputy head of the administration told Reuters.</p> <p>Dmitry Savluchenko, head of the families, youth, and sports department of the Kherson Military-Civilian Administration, was killed in a bomb blast.</p> <p>Russia&#039;s TASS news agency said there were two burnt-out cars in a courtyard of Kherson, the regional capital where the blast took place, and that the windows of one four-storey house had been shattered.</p> <p>An adviser to the Ukrainian governor of Kherson told Ukraine&#039;s public news network Suspilne that the assassination was the "successful work of partisans" directed by Ukraine&#039;s armed forces.</p> <p>Kherson sits just northwest of the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula and was occupied during the first week of Russia&#039;s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February. A large part of the local population has left.</p> <p>In the first weeks of the occupation, there were regular civilian protests in the region, which were put down.</p> <p>Since then, there have been unverified reports of increasing resistance activity against the Russian-backed authorities.</p> <h2>4. Ukrainian law enforcement retrieves thousands of artefacts stolen in Crimea</h2><p>Ukraine on Friday announced the seizure of the "largest" collection of antiquities in its history, allegedly stolen from museums on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula before ending up in the hands of private collectors.</p> <p>"More than 6,000 antiquities, including swords, sabres, helmets, amphorae and coins" were recovered in a raid by Ukrainian police, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told a news conference.</p> <p>The value of the collection is estimated at "several million dollars", she added at a press conference in Kyiv.</p> <p>According to Venediktova, works belonging to the Bronze Age and the Middle Ages were found in an office in the Ukrainian capital "in conditions far from adequate for storing such objects".</p> <p>The prosecutor explained that the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the "illegal activity" of a former Ukrainian MP, who had also been a senior official in Crimea.</p> <p>She said part of the collection "may have been stolen" from museums in Crimea.</p> <p>Also present at the press conference, Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkatchenko welcomed the "largest illegal collection in the history of Ukraine (now returning) to the state".</p> <p>"During the war, we are getting back what Vladimir Putin is fighting against: our identity, our culture and our cultural heritage," the minister said.</p> <h2>5. Russian military cargo plane crashes, killing four</h2><p>A Russian military cargo plane crashed Friday, killing at least four crewmembers and leaving several others injured, officials said.</p> <p>The heavy-lift Il-76 cargo plane went down in the southwestern Ryazan region. The Russian Defence Ministry said that the plane suffered an engine problem that forced the crew to crash-land it on the ground.</p> <p>The regional administration said that four of its crew were killed and a further five were injured when the plane slammed into a field just outside the city of Ryazan. Officials said that those injured were hospitalised in grave condition.</p> <p>The four-engine Ilyushin Il-76 was designed in the 1970s and has served as the main cargo plane for the Soviet and Russian air forces. It has also been widely used by many countries around the world.</p> Source