Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv says Putin targeted energy facilities in overnight drone attack

Russian drones targeted energy infrastructure in overnight attacks on Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovohrad regions, hitting an energy facility in the latter, Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday.

Nine drones were shot down over Dnipropetrovsk region where debris caused two fires in the regional capital of Dnipro, the governor said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, adding they had both been put out.

But a drone hit a high voltage substation in Kirovohrad region, causing a fire there, the Ukrenergo grid operator wrote on Telegram. The governor said no casualties had been reported.

Air defences were able to down nine out of 10 of the incoming Russian drones, the General Staff said.

Russia has pounded Ukraine’s energy facilities in recent weeks, dealing significant damage to the Ukrainian power system and causing blackouts in many regions.

Belarusian forces kickstarted their military exercises today in regions bordering Ukraine and European Union members Lithuania and Poland, Belarus’s defence ministry said.

The three-day drills in the southeastern city of Gomel and the western Grodno region aim to train officers and territorial defence troops how to defend their respective regions and how to act in case martial law is enacted, the ministry said on Telegram.

Russia’s closest ally, Belarus is facing flak from its western neighbours after it provided its territory as a launchpad to Russia for invading Ukraine in February 2022.

It is the only nation to hold drills with help from Russia and allow Moscow to station tactical nuclear weapons in the region.

Days after Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv in the dramatic first weeks of their full-scale invasion two years ago, a photo revealed what had become of Nataliia Verbova’s missing husband.

Poring over the image of eight men executed and lying on cold concrete in the suburb of Bucha, taken by AP photographer Vadim Ghirda, she focused on a man face down with his hands tied. She didn’t want to believe it was Andrii, who had joined the territorial defence days after the invasion but was detained by the Russians.

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A month later, she visited the morgue and recognized the socks she had gifted him. It was Andrii.

“I will never forget the pool of blood under him. When I saw these photos all around the world I felt pain,” she said, standing over her husband’s grave. “Two years have passed, but for me it’s as though it happened yesterday. Nothing has changed.”

Ukrainian officials accused Russia of firing its new hypersonic Zircon missiles at Kyiv five times since the start of this year, the capital city’s military administration said.

The Zircon was hailed by Vladimir Putin as part of a new generation of weapons systems during his annual state-of-the-nation address in February. Fired from the sea, Zircon missiles have a range of 1,000km (625 miles) and travel at nine times the speed of sound, according to officials in Russia.

The five Zircon missiles were among more than 180 Russian missile and drone attacks launched against the Ukrainian capital in the first three months of the year, the administration said in a post on Telegram.

Six other types of missiles were also used including the Kh-101, an air-launched cruise missile, of which 113 have been fired on Kyiv since the start of this year, the administration said.

Ukraine’s exports by sea hit 11.8 million tonnes in March, the country’s economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on X.

The country’s grain exports, a major source of contention since Russia’s invasion led to spiking food prices around the world, have exceeded expectations in recent months.

“Positive developments in Ukrainian maritime exports. In March, we exported 11.8 million tonnes worth $3.2 billion. Keeping up the pace is crucial,” the minister said.

A Russian court ordered a detained Russian-American journalist to be held in jail for two more months pending investigation and trial, in a further step in the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent and free speech.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service, was taken into custody on 18 October and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military. Later, she was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

A court in Tatarstan said she will remain behind bars at least until 5 June.

She told reporters in the courtroom that she wasn’t doing “very well physically” and that some of her medical conditions have flared up in detention. “Living conditions are very bad, I have no way of taking care of my health,” she said, adding that medical assistance in the detention center was “minimal.”

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Russia is looking at removing the Taliban’s designation as a terrorist organization, Meduza reported on 1 April.

The country’s foreign ministry is currently “working through the issues” and a final decision will be made by the Kremlin.

The announcement came on the same day that Russian state news agency TASS said the Taliban had been invited to participate in the “Russia – Islamic World: KazanForum,” scheduled for May.

Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba is heading to The Hague today for bilateral talks with his Dutch counterpart Hanke Bruins Slot, the ministry said.

Mr Kuleba’s visit to the Netherlands comes just days after he returned from a diplomatic meeting in India where he said he went to advance Kyiv’s vision of the path to peace in Ukraine and to strengthen ties with India.

The Ukrainian leader will attend a ministerial conference where Volodymyr Zelensky’s seven-point peace formula “Restoration of Justice” will be discussed. The talks will also review the results of documenting and investigating crimes committed by the Russian occupiers on the territory of Ukraine, the foreign ministry said.

Ukraine hopes to hold a summit of world leaders without Russian participation in the coming months to advance its blueprint for peace, a “formula” that calls among other things for the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory.

“Particular attention will also be paid to further steps toward the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” it added.