Here is where things stand on Thursday, 17 April:
Fighting
- A Russian drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa overnight injured three people, sparked fires and damaged homes and civilian infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its units destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones overnight. Nine of the drones were shot down over the southern Voronezh region, while eight were taken down over the border region of Belgorod. The remaining drones were downed over the Kursk, Lipetsk and Moscow regions, as well as over the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, the ministry said.
- The Defence Ministry also said Russia has taken control of Kalynove village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
- Moscow’s military further reported that it repelled seven Ukrainian drones over Russia’s Ivanovo region, the location of one of two Russian missile units that Kyiv accuses of launching a deadly attack on the city of Sumy which caused dozens of casualties last weekend.
- Kyiv’s air force said Russia launched almost 100 drones in overnight attacks on Ukraine, of which 57 were shot down and another 34 failed to reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare measures.
- Russian glide bombs and artillery struck the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding nine others, in what Ukrainian officials described as a timed “double-tap strike”. The region’s head, Oleksandr Prokudin, said it was a “deliberate tactic by Russia” to prevent rescuing victims and to harm medics, rescuers and police officers who rushed to the scene of the first attack only to then be caught in the second strike.
- A Russian mass drone attack killed two people and injured 16 in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. Five of the injured were hospitalised.
- The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it detained nine people, including five teenagers, with more than 30kg (66 pounds) of explosives on suspicion of preparing sabotage attacks on behalf of Russia.
Attacks on energy facilities
- Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine carried out six attacks on Kremlin energy infrastructure despite a mutually agreed 30-day moratorium on energy strikes.
- Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Heorhii Tykhyi, told a news briefing that Russia carried out more than 30 attacks on its energy infrastructure since the two sides agreed in March to pause strikes on such targets.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would announce when the US-brokered moratorium on energy strikes would end.
Politics and diplomacy
- United States President Donald Trump’s administration has reduced its estimate for the cost of US assistance provided to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s invasion to about $100bn from $300bn, Bloomberg news reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
- The US and Ukraine have made “substantial progress” in their talks on a minerals deal and will soon sign a memorandum, which would give Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth deposits, Kyiv’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
- Kyiv’s parliament voted to extend martial law in Ukraine until 6 August. The decision was supported by an overwhelming 357 deputies, while one politician voted against the bill.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will discuss Ukraine among other issues during the emir’s visit to Moscow on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said.
- The former governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, was detained on Wednesday on suspicion of fraud, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
