Here is where things stand on Sunday, April 12:
Fighting
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The acting mayor of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy said at least 31 people were killed in a Russian missile attack. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a global response to the attack. “Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and aerial bombs. What’s needed is an attitude toward Russia that a terrorist deserves,” he said.
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Ukraine’s air defence units have intercepted and destroyed 43 drones out of 55 launched by Russia overnight targeting northern, southern and central areas of Ukraine, the air force said. But it did not say what happened to the drones that escaped destruction.
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A Ukrainian F-16 pilot was killed in combat, according to the military, in the second such incident since the delivery of the precious United States-made fighters to Ukraine to help fight Russia’s invasion.
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A Russian-guided bomb struck a house in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk, injuring four people and possibly trapping three more under rubble, Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
- Russia’s air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones over the Rostov region and one over the region of Belgorod, its Ministry of Defence said on social media.
- Ukraine is seeking solutions to repair the damage caused by a Russian drone attack on the confinement vessel at the stricken Chornobyl nuclear power plant, Environment Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said.
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Russia’s Defence Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out five attacks on its energy infrastructure over the past day, a violation of a US-brokered moratorium on such strikes.
Politics and diplomacy
- US President Donald Trump said talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine may be going OK, but “there’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up”.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Trump seems to understand much more about what is going on in Ukraine than any European leader, adding that the US leader understood the need to address the root causes of the conflict to resolve it.
- German refinery in Schwedt town on the border with Poland is struggling to adapt to processing other raw materials, prompting calls for the return of Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline.
- Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Russian counterpart, Lavrov, discussed efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war during their meeting over the weekend, a diplomatic source said.
