These are the key events on day 1,143 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Saturday, April 12:
Fighting
Russia’s defence ministry said air defence units destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones within a span of 30 minutes late on Friday. The ministry said that between 10-10:30pm local time (19:00-19:30 GMT), nine drones were destroyed over Russia’s Rostov region on Ukraine’s eastern border, and four in the Kursk region on Ukraine’s northern border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the site of a deadly Russian attack on his hometown of Kryvyi Rih, one week after a Russian missile strike killed 19 people, including nine children and teenagers.
Ukrainian officials have in recent days sent Washington a list of targets it believes Russia has struck in violation of the energy infrastructure ceasefire that Kyiv and Moscow agreed to last month as part of efforts by the United States to reach a ceasefire.
Military analysts believe Russia is preparing to launch a new military offensive in the coming weeks to ramp up pressure and strengthen the Kremlin’s hand in ceasefire negotiations.
President Zelenskyy said that hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting at the Ukraine front line alongside Russian forces, and accused Moscow of dragging Beijing into its invasion of his country. “As of now, we have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia’s occupation forces,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 100 Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military against Ukraine are mercenaries who do not appear to have a direct link to China’s government, two US officials familiar with American intelligence and a former Western intelligence official told the Reuters news agency. Chinese military officers have, however, been in the theatre of war behind Russia’s lines with Beijing’s approval to draw tactical lessons from the war, officials told Reuters.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was ready to purchase additional air defence systems, adding that he discussed it with US President Donald Trump.
Ceasefire
Talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Russia lasted more than four hours, with no concrete results disclosed. According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not rule out the possibility of another phone call between Putin and Trump following the discussions.
Trump said in a post earlier on Truth Social: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people [are] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!”
Russia has rejected a US-backed proposal for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire and appears to be dragging its feet on a more limited truce in the Black Sea agreed last month, analysts said.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday, after presiding over a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels alongside British Defence Secretary John Healey, that “ongoing aggression” from Russia meant “we must concede peace in Ukraine appears to be out of reach in the immediate future”.
If a ceasefire is not achieved by the end of this month, Trump could impose additional sanctions on Russia, the US news site Axios reported, citing an anonymous source.
Ukraine could be partitioned like Berlin after World War II, President Trump’s envoy to Kyiv, General Keith Kellogg, appeared to suggest as Russia continues to hold out on accepting a truce. In an interview with The Times newspaper, Kellogg said the country could be split into zones of control, with British and French troops as part of a “reassurance force” in the west and Moscow’s forces in the east. Between them would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone.
Military Aid
European countries have promised to send billions of dollars in further funding to help Ukraine keep fighting Russia’s invasion. Ukraine’s allies pledged a record 21 billion euros ($23.9bn) of military aid for the country, with the United Kingdom Defence Secretary Healey warning that 2025 was “the critical year” for the war.
Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur said that his country is monitoring the world armaments market and sees opportunities for Ukraine’s backers to buy more weapons and ammunition.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was absent from the Ukraine donor’s forum that the US established and led for several years, although he spoke to the meeting via video.
Sanctions
A former Russian government minister who violated UK sanctions by receiving financial support from family members was sentenced to more than three years in prison in England. Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, who was appointed governor of Sevastopol in Russian-annexed Crimea by Putin, became the first person convicted of violating the sanctions put in place after the illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Estonia’s navy said it detained an oil tanker believed to belong to Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Gulf of Finland in order to check its papers.
Regional security
A reduction in the number of US soldiers in Eastern Europe would be seen as Washington moving another step closer to Moscow and a worrying sign for Europeans, according to analysts. The NBC news channel, quoting US and European sources, said this week that the US Department of Defense was looking at the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Europe.
President Putin announced billions in investments for the rearmament of his country’s navy. “In the next decade, 8.4 trillion roubles [around $97bn] are earmarked for the construction of new boats and ships for the navy,” Putin said at a meeting on navy development in Saint Petersburg, according to Russian news agencies.
Putin said the navy would develop drone and robot technology, and he claimed that 49 warships of various classes have been built in Russian shipyards in the past five years, including nuclear submarines that can be equipped with new Zircon hypersonic missiles.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sharply criticised European Union politicians against the backdrop of a rapprochement between the Kremlin and the new US administration.
Politicians such as acting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, European Union top diplomat Kaja Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were not thinking of their voters, but had put the desire to punish Russia above the wellbeing of their own citizens, Lavrov said.
