Unprecedented bloodshed in Bakhmut, Ukraine says

KYIV: Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the smashed eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine's military said on Saturday.

* Russia's most powerful mercenary group, Wagner, sent at least 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war back to Ukrainian forces to mark Orthodox Easter, according to a video posted by the group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on Sunday.

* Fighters of Russia's Wagner mercenary group have captured two more areas of Bakhmut, Russia's Defence Ministry said on Saturday. * Russian missiles hit residential buildings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, killing 11 people, wounding 21 and reducing parts of apartment blocks to a tangled mess of metal and concrete.

* Four were killed and 10 wounded by Ukrainian shelling of a residential area in the Russian-controlled town of Yasynuvata south of Sloviansk, the top Russian-installed official in the region said. * A mother and her daughter were killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday by a Russian artillery strike, the regional administration said.

* Russia's regular spring military draft is proceeding as scheduled and there are no plans to send out mass electronic notices under a system just signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, a top official said on Saturday. Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.

ECONOMY * A new international economic support package of $115 billion gives Ukraine more confidence that it can prevail in battling Russia's invasion, amid growing recognition that the war could continue for longer than expected, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told Reuters on Saturday.

* Poland and Hungary have decided to ban imports of grain and other food from neighbouring Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector, the two governments said on Saturday, after a flood of supply depressed prices across the region. * Belarusian furniture company Swed House, which sells items intended to look like those made by Swedish giant IKEA, opened its first store in Moscow on Saturday to a mixed initial reaction from consumers.

PLAYING ON * Ukrainian pianist Roman Lopatynskyi rehearsed in the dark and played concerts by candlelight as air raid sirens resounded across his native Kyiv. The 29-year-old is participating in the International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, which is being held outside Ukraine for the first time since its inception in 1995 due to the Russian invasion.

* Ukraine's national ice hockey players have been forced to train with air raid sirens interrupting practice, sending them underground for cover as they worry about their loved ones, but they have managed to keep their focus. IN-DEPTH STORIES

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* Ukraine says it is finding more Chinese components in Russian weapons