Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces suffer deadliest day of year, says Kyiv

Russian president Vladimir Putin congratulated Iranian leaders on Nowruz and said Moscow remained a loyal friend and reliable partner to Tehran, the Kremlin said this morning.

Most residents in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region were left without power on Saturday after a Russian drone attack, local governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

He said repairs were underway to address the damage. The region, which borders Russia and Belarus, had a pre-war population of nearly one million.

Ukraine is still expecting the first tranche of a €90bn loan ‌from the European Union next month, despite a failure to break Hungary’s veto of the funding at a summit this week, president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

EU leaders were unable to convince Hungarian prime minister Viktor ​Orban on Thursday to lift his blockade of the loan, which is crucial for Ukraine ​to maintain its fight against Russia following its February 2022 invasion.

Mr Zelensky said he had discussed the ⁠matter with the EU leaders and trusted they would find a solution.”We are more optimistic. They ​will find ways to provide us with funding partially,” Mr Zelensky told reporters in the ​WhatsApp media chat.

“We are expecting in April the first tranche of the amount we agreed for 2026.

“With the war now in its fifth year, Ukraine faces a persistent budget deficit. Funding from the EU, Kyiv’s ​main backer, is critical to Ukraine’s stability and its ability to maintain its ​defence.This year, Ukraine needs between $45bn and $52bn in external financing to cover its budget gap.

Ukraine launched more than 280 drones at Russia overnight, Russia’s State news agency reported.

Around 90 drones were shot down in the southern Rostov region, its governor Yuri Slyusar said.

At least 27 drones launched towards the capital were intercepted, Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

The US Treasury Department has removed two Russian citizens from its sanctions.

Russian citizens Yurii Korzhavin and Lidiya Korzhavina have been removed from the US sanctions list, the Treasury Department said in an update yesterday.

The move comes as the Trump administration temporarily eased curbs on Russian oil transit and purchases to ease supply pressures, after the US-Israeli war with Iran drove a surge in global crude prices.

Russia has reportedly offered to stop intelligence-sharing with Iran if the US agreed to do the same with Ukraine.

Moscow has stepped up intelligence sharing and military coordination with Tehran since US and Israeli strikes on Iran began three weeks ago, including reportedly supplying coordinates of American military assets in the region.

Washington, however, rejected the quid pro quo last week, two people familiar with the matter, told the Financial Times.

Nearly 30 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the Russian capital and the surrounding region overnight, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said.

Throughout the latter part of yesterday and during the early hours of today, swarms of Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow, the mayor said, adding that the artillery units were intercepted by Russia’s defence units.

Emergency services responded to the crash sites, and no casualties were reported, he said.

Czech authorities said Friday they were investigating a fire at a warehouse of a company that makes drone technology as a suspected arson linked to terrorism.

The fire broke out in an industrial zone in the city of Pardubice, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Prague, causing no injuries, police said.

LPP Holding confirmed a fire in one of its buildings. It said it was cooperating with the investigation and declined further comment.

The French navy on Friday intercepted and boarded a tanker in the Mediterranean Sea that President Emmanuel Macron said is linked to Russia’s sanctioned shadow fleet shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

According to the French maritime authorities for the Mediterranean, the tanker Deyna is suspected of operating under a false flag designation. The interception took place in the Western Mediterranean and was carried out in cooperation with allies, including the United Kingdom, which monitored the ship, the authorities said.

“This operation aimed to verify the nationality of the vessel,” which was flying the flag of Mozambique and was coming from the Russian port of Murmansk, the maritime authorities said in a statement. The documents found onboard “confirmed doubts about the validity of the flag,” they said.

Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv — who worked for decades to establish an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church that was free from Moscow’s religious authority, a schism that foreshadowed the Russia-Ukraine war — died Friday. He was 97.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced his death, citing the “exacerbation of chronic diseases.”

Filaret had a more limited role in recent years as the cultural and religious divide between Ukraine and Russia widened into full-scale warfare. But his legacy includes a long and partially successful effort to gain recognition of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdiction.

“The person and numerous good deeds of the late Patriarch Filaret rightfully occupy a special place in the modern history of both the local Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Ukraine as a whole,” said Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv, who leads the OCU.