These are the key events on day 1,135 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
These are the key events from Thursday, April 3:
Fighting
A Russian ballistic missile strike killed at least four people and wounded 17 in the city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown. The attack also sparked a fire in the city, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration.
Russian drone attacks overnight targeted the Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhia and Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring several others, officials said.
Two people were killed and at least 32, including two children, were injured by a Russian drone attack which hit several multistorey apartment blocks in Kharkiv, the region’s governor said. One person was also injured in a separate drone attack on Ruski Tyshky, a village outside Kharkiv.
Kyiv’s air force said Russia launched 39 drones towards Ukraine overnight, of which 28 were shot down. According to the air force, seven others failed to reach their targets due to electronic warfare measures.
Russian air defence units repelled a drone approaching Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of launching more than 30 “provocative” attacks on Russian energy facilities, despite a mutually agreed moratorium on strikes against energy facilities brokered by the United States.
According to Russia’s Ministry of Defence, Ukrainian forces attacked Russian energy facilities four times in the past 24 hours. Ukraine’s military denied the accusations, saying its troops were adhering to the ceasefire, but claimed Russia had violated the moratorium “numerous times”.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces took control of two settlements, Vesele and Lobkove, in eastern Ukraine.
Reuters news agency reports, citing war bloggers, that Russian troops have intensified their attacks in Russia’s western Kursk region to rout Ukrainian forces, including hundreds of Ukrainian troops holding out in a monastery – which it described as the last major Ukrainian foothold in the Russian territory.
US Army General Christopher Cavoli said Ukraine’s army had resolved some of its manpower shortages to fight against Russia but warned that a cut-off of US weapons to Ukraine would be severely harmful to Kyiv’s war efforts. Cavoli also said Russia lost more than 4,000 tanks during its war on Ukraine, describing the scale of the war as “awe-inspiring”.
Economy
The 10 percent reciprocal tariffs imposed on Ukraine by the United States are “difficult, but not critical”, said Kyiv’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. She also said Ukraine had an export volume of $874m to the US last year while Kyiv bought goods worth $3.4bn from the US during this period.
Russia remains patient and is not surprised by US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose new tariffs on Russian oil, said Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow’s deputy foreign minister in charge of ties with the US.
Ceasefire
Ryabov warned that there might not be a peace agreement in the war on Ukraine unless the US recognised the “belligerent” stance of the European Union and Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy, during a meeting with community leaders in northern Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, said that maintaining the country’s army size would be a top priority in peace negotiations.
Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine would not accept the recognition of Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories as parts of Russia. He suggested finding a compromise to return such territories back to Ukraine over time through diplomatic means.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha informed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio of Russia’s violation of the energy ceasefire brokered by the US.
Politics and Diplomacy
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev accused unidentified forces of trying to sow tension between Russia and the US by “distorting Russia’s position” and said meeting with the US demonstrated a “positive dynamic” between Washington and Russia.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said France, or the United Kingdom as part of the “coalition of the willing”, should take charge in engaging with Russia as part of Europe’s efforts to support Kyiv.
The US has withdrawn from the team of European and US investigators put together under the EU’s judicial body Eurojust to collect evidence of potential Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The move was inspired by a “change in priorities” within the US Department of Justice, Eurojust said.
