Ukraine-Russia war latest: Five killed and 19 injured after Moscow strikes market with drones, says Kyiv

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he can help other countries “unblock the Strait of Hormuz”, in an interview.

In a post on X he explained Ukraine had a similar problem when Russia blocked their Food Security Corridor in the Black Sea.

“They used a wide range of equipment for the blockade – not only battleships, but also helicopters, missiles, jets, and many other things. We crippled the Russian Black Sea Fleet and pushed them away from the corridor. Then we organized convoys for civilian vessels using sea drones to counter Russian helicopters and other offensive weaponry,” he said.

He added that now the Food Security Corridor is under their control and works.

But that no country has asked for Ukraine’s help with the Strait of Hormuz.

A cargo ship carrying wheat has ⁠sunk in the Sea of Azov, leaving one person dead ⁠and ​two missing, a ⁠Russian-installed official said on ⁠Sunday in a ​post on ⁠the Telegram ‌messaging app.

Vladimir Saldo, Moscow-installed leader of the Russian-controlled ‌parts of ‌Ukraine’s Kherson region, said nine crew members ⁠were found alive on the shore – all Russian nationals.

An aide to the captain has died and two ‌people are unaccounted for, ​Saldo said, ‌adding that ⁠an investigation into the ⁠incident is under way.

Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure struck Russia’s NORSI oil refinery on Sunday, setting it ablaze, while a fuel reservoir leaked at the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk after being hit by shrapnel, Russian authorities said.

The governor of Nizhny Novgorod region, Gleb Nikitin, said two facilities at NORSI were hit in the attack, with a power station and several nearby houses also damaged. No injuries were reported. NORSI is Russia’s fourth-largest oil refinery and its second-largest producer of gasoline, with a processing capacity of around 320,000 barrels per day.

At Primorsk, the governor of Leningrad region Alexander Drozdenko corrected an earlier statement, clarifying the port’s pipeline had not been damaged but that a fuel reservoir had leaked after being struck by shrapnel. Primorsk, one of Russia’s largest oil export gateways with a capacity of one million barrels per day, has already lost at least 40 per cent of its storage facilities in Ukrainian drone attacks last month, according to US commercial satellite images seen by Reuters. At some point last month, around 40 per cent of Russia’s total oil exporting capacity was shut due to a combination of the attacks, the closure of the Druzhba pipeline in Ukraine and the seizure of Russia-linked tankers.

Air raid alerts were also declared in Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest Black Sea port, due to incoming drone threats. Oil loadings there, including from the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal which handles Kazakh oil exports, are typically suspended during such alerts.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past month in an effort to cut into Russia’s key source of war revenue.

Egypt will refuse to buy grain that Russia has exported from occupied Ukrainian territories, president Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday following a call with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

“Egypt will no longer accept grain exported by Russia from our temporarily occupied territories,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, adding that Cairo had expressed interest in increasing direct grain imports from Ukraine.

The move marks a significant shift in Egyptian policy. Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer and purchased more than 8 million tons of Russian grain in 2025, according to Russia’s ambassador to Egypt. Zelensky said the two leaders also discussed the Iran war and its impact on global oil markets, and that Kyiv had offered Cairo military-technical cooperation.

The finance ministers of Spain and four other European countries are urging the European Union to impose a bloc-wide windfall tax on energy companies, concerned that surging oil and gas prices driven by the war in Iran will fuel inflation and strain households.

Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said Saturday that his counterparts from Germany, Italy, Portugal and Austria had signed a letter to the European Commission citing “market distortions” caused by the price spike.

“The conflict in the Middle East has caused oil prices to rise, placing a significant burden on the European economy and on European citizens,” the letter, dated Friday and made public by Cuerpo in an online post, said.

“It is important to ensure that this burden is distributed fairly,” it added.

Nearly 34,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded in March, the highest level since the start of the war, according to Volodymyr Zelensky.

Another 1,363 Russians were “eliminated” in artillery and other strikes over the month, bringing Russian losses to more than 35,000 in March.

“Importantly, the results in the destruction of Russia’s air defence systems have also significantly increased, with 274 such systems hit in March alone,” Ukraine’s leader wrote on social media.

“There have also been tangible results in the destruction of Russian depots and military logistics. The Ministry of Defence, together with the Armed Forces, will present a detailed report to the public for March – data that may be made public.”

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner could travel to Kyiv later this month, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s top aide Kyrylo Budanov said on Saturday, as Washington attempts to revive peace talks that stalled after the outbreak of the US-Iran war.

“Kushner, Witkoff, Lindsey Graham — those are the ones expected to come,” Budanov told Bloomberg, adding the visit could take place shortly after Orthodox Easter on 12 April.

It would be the first official visit to Kyiv for both men, who have previously met Ukrainian representatives in the US but have travelled to Moscow for talks with Russia.

Peace negotiations brokered by Washington between Ukraine and Russia stalled after the US and Israel bombed Iran in late February, triggering retaliatory strikes across the Middle East.

Slovak prime minister Robert Fico has called on the European Union to end sanctions on Russian oil and gas imports and restore flows through the Druzhba pipeline, arguing the bloc needs to draw on all available energy sources to address the supply crisis triggered by the US-Iran war.

Fico made the call in a statement after a call with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán on Saturday, saying the EU should renew dialogue with Russia and ensure member states could access gas and oil from all sources, including Russian ones. “It is not enough to deal with the energy crisis only at the national level,” he said.

Hungary and Slovakia are outliers in the EU for maintaining relations with Moscow, and were the only two member states still importing Russian oil when a Russian drone strike hit pipeline equipment in Ukraine in January, disrupting Druzhba flows. Budapest and Bratislava have accused Ukraine of deliberately delaying repairs to resume the pipeline, triggering a political dispute that has seen Hungary block an EU loan to Kyiv. Ukraine says it is fixing the damage as quickly as possible.

Oil prices have surged since US and Israeli strikes on Iran began on 28 February, creating what the International Energy Agency called the biggest oil supply disruption in history. The EU had cut Russian oil imports to just one per cent of its total supply by the final quarter of 2025 following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

A Ukrainian drone strike has damaged an oil pipeline at Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, local governor Alexander Drozdenko said on Sunday.

No injuries were reported.

The pipeline was shut down and a fire was safely burning out, Drozdenko said on Telegram. Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia’s Baltic Sea ports over the past month.