Ukraine

Ukraine widened its campaign against Russia’s energy infrastructure overnight, hitting several oil sites including two refineries in the Samara region and a Baltic Sea port used to ship petroleum products, according to Russian regional governors and a Ukrainian military official. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have intensified strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries, targets seen as vital contributors to Moscow’s war financing. Some of those attacks have reached facilities located thousands of kilometres from the…

Ukraine was hit by one of the war’s most devastating overnight assaults as a huge Russian drone and missile attack killed at least 19 people in cities across the country, more than four years after the invasion began and with efforts to halt the fighting still at a standstill. Explosions boomed across the capital through the night, while towering columns of black smoke rose over central Kyiv at first light. More than 100 people were injured in the strikes, which tore into apartment blocks while residents slept. "The impact…

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte opened a meeting of Ukraine’s main backers in Berlin with a stark warning: allies must not let attention drift from the war and should raise their support for Kyiv to $60 billion in 2026. The appeal came as defence ministers from countries including Germany and Britain gathered with the conflict against Russia now entering its fifth year. "We have to ensure that we are capable of delivering uninterrupted support for Ukraine," Mr Rutte said. "We cannot lose sight of Ukraine." In recent weeks,…

Hours after a brief Orthodox Easter truce expired, Ukraine and Russia returned to overnight drone warfare, with both sides trading accusations that the 32-hour pause had been violated on a massive scale. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 98 drones overnight and reported that air defence units shot down 87 of them. Officials in Ukraine said an infrastructure site in the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region was struck, adding that casualty details were still being established. Russia, for its part, said that “on April…

For years, Viktor Orban was the European Union’s perennial blocker. His decisive election defeat in Hungary has now prompted a wave of relief across the bloc. Mr Orban, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, conceded defeat yesterday after parliamentary elections delivered victory to conservative Peter Magyar, a former government insider turned political newcomer who campaigned on a promise of “system change”. Whether the issue was support for Ukraine or sanctions on Russia, Mr Orban repeatedly slowed or stopped some of the…

Charges of truce-breaking flew from both Kyiv and Moscow over Orthodox Easter, with each side alleging thousands of violations as the war stretched into its fifth year. The two countries had agreed to a ceasefire for the religious holiday. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the pause on Thursday, more than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first proposed suspending hostilities. "As of 7:00 a.m. (5am Irish time) on 12 April, 2,299 ceasefire violations were recorded. Specifically: 28 enemy assault…

In one of the war’s few recurring acts of coordination, Moscow has returned the remains of 1,000 soldiers to Ukraine, according to a source in Russia's negotiating delegation, while Kyiv handed back the bodies of 41 dead Russian troops. The exchanges of war dead have continued even as the four-year conflict, unleashed by Russia's full-scale invasion, has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and left little room for cooperation elsewhere. Footage published by Russia's state-run Ruptly video agency showed men wearing white…

A Russian FPV drone slammed into a bus in central Nikopol, killing three people and injuring 12 others in one of the deadliest strikes reported in the frontline city in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region. "Three people were killed and another 12 injured. The enemy attacked a city bus with an FPV drone right in downtown Nikopol. It was pulling up to the stop - there were people both on board and at the stop," the head of the region's military administration, Oleksandr Ganzha, wrote on social media. Elsewhere, Russian shelling…

Flames tore through the Sheskharis oil terminal in Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk after overnight Ukrainian drone strikes, in what appeared to be one of the most consequential hits on Russia’s energy infrastructure in the more than four-year-old conflict. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine struck facilities at the maritime transhipment complex in Novorossiysk, damaging a mooring point used by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) and setting four oil product reservoirs ablaze, according to Russian media. The…

A Russian drone strike tore through a market in the frontline Ukrainian city of Nikopol this morning, killing five people and wounding 19 others, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general's office. "This is yet another war crime committed by the Russian Federation," the prosecutor's office said on Telegram. Regional governor Oleksandr Ganja said in a Telegram post that the dead included three women and two men. He also said a 14-year-old girl was among the 19 injured and remained in "critical condition". At the same time, a…