4h ago
08.31 GMT
Opening summary
It has gone
10am in Kyiv and 11am in Moscow. This is our latest Guardian blog covering all
the latest developments over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Overnight,
Ukrainian forces shot down 26 out of 28 attack drones launched by Russia,
Kyiv’s military said on Thursday.
The
Iranian-made drones were destroyed over parts of eastern, southern and
southeastern Ukraine, the air force added.
The
Zaporizhzhia region’s governor said on Telegram that two women had been wounded
when debris struck a residential neighbourhood in the regional capital, while
prosecutors in the eastern Kharkiv region said a restaurant, a store and
offices were damaged by debris from three drones.
Meanwhile,
it was reported that Russia has no designs on any Nato country and will not
attack Poland, the Baltic states or the Czech Republic, president Vladimir
Putin said late on Wednesday. He said if the west supplies F-16 fighters to
Ukraine then they will be shot down by Russian forces.
More on
that in a moment, but first, here are the other latest developments:
The US
secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will discuss support for Ukraine during
talks in Paris next week with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the US
state department has announced. After Paris, Blinken will head to Brussels for
talks of Nato foreign ministers ahead of the alliance’s 75th anniversary summit
in Washington in July. Blinken will also hold a three-way meeting in Brussels
with EU leaders and the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who wants to
branch out from Armenia’s alliance with Russia.
Ukraine
downed 26 Russian drones over Wednesday night, Mykola Oleshchuk, the head of
Ukraine’s air force, said on Thursday morning. “The enemy launched a missile
airstrike against Ukraine using three Kh-22 cruise missiles and an Kh-31P
anti-radar missile (from the Black Sea), an S-300 anti-aircraft guided missile
(Donetsk) and 28 attack UAVs of the Shahed-136/131 type. Twenty-six attack UAVs
of the Shahed-136/131 type were destroyed within Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk
and Zaporizhzhia regions,” he said on Telegram, without providing details on
the missile strikes.
Russia
has bombed the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, killing at least one civilian and
wounding 16 others, according to authorities. The airstrikes caused widespread
damage, hitting several residential buildings and damaging the city’s institute
for emergency surgery.
Volodymyr
Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, condemned the attack as “Russian terror” and
Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the Kharkiv regional police, said Moscow might have
used a new type of guided bomb, which he described as the UMPB D-30. “This is
something between a guided aerial bomb which they [the Russians] have used
recently, and a missile. It’s a flying bomb so to say.” The regional governor,
Oleh Synehubov, said: “It seems that the Russians decided to test their
modified bombs on the residents of the houses.”
After
the attack on Kharkiv, Zelenskiy urged Ukraine’s allies to speed up deliveries
of warplanes and air defence systems. “There are no rational explanations for
why Patriots, which are plentiful around the world, are still not covering the
skies of Kharkiv and other cities.”
Russian
has formed a “Dnipro River flotilla” in occupied Kherson that is likely to be
susceptible to attacks by Ukraine’s uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs), or drone
boats, according to an intelligence update from the UK Ministry of Defence.
Vladimir
Putin has reportedly told Russian military pilots that the supply of F-16
fighter jets to Ukraine will not alter the situation on the battlefield. But
they can carry nuclear weapons and Moscow would have to take account of that in
its military planning, the Russian president was quoted as saying. Earlier on
Wednesday, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said the jets should
arrive in Ukraine in the coming months.
A
Ukrainian spy chief has hinted at a secretive assassination campaign “possibly”
run by Ukraine’s SBU spy agency to take out Ukrainian citizens collaborating
with Russia. In a televised interview with Ukraine’s national broadcaster ICTV,
the head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, said Ukrainian spies had targeted “very
many” people responsible for war crimes and attacks against Ukrainian citizens.
“Officially, we will not admit to this. But at the same time I can offer some
details.”
The SBU
has detained two alleged agents of Russia’s intelligence agency accused of
passing the location of sensitive military targets to enemy forces. “As a
result of a special operation, two [Russian] FSB agents were detained in Kyiv
and Odesa,” the SBU said in a statement. “Both criminals were detained
red-handed while spying on potential targets for the occupiers.” One of the
suspects photographed a thermal power station, ostensibly to help Russia with
its bombardment of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Both were charged with
collaboration and face life in prison.
A
Russian court has sentenced Lucy Shtein, a member of feminist group Pussy Riot
and a former municipal deputy in Moscow, to six years in prison in absentia for
anti-war social media posts, Reuters reported the court’s press service as
saying on Wednesday. Shtein, 27, in March 2022 posted on X accusing Russian
soldiers of “bombing foreign cities and killing people”. Shtein fled house
arrest in Moscow to live in Iceland soon after the invasion, and reportedly has
Icelandic citizenship.
Samsung
has said it will stop supporting the Russian payment card Mir on its mobile
payment service from 3 April – a result of anti-war sanctions. The US treasury
has announced sanctions on Russia’s national payment card system, the central
bank-owned entity that operates Mir.
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