Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,161

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, April 30:

Fighting

• Swarms of Russian drones attacked the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Dnipro late on Tuesday, killing at least one person and wounding at least 38, including two children, officials said.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence also said it had captured the Ukrainian village of Doroshivka in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
• The governor of the Ukrainian province of Sumy said Russian troops are trying to carve out a buffer zone in the northeastern region, which borders Russia’s Kursk, but have “not had any significant success”.
• Earlier on Tuesday, officials said Russian drone attacks overnight killed a 12-year-old girl in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region and wounded three people in the capital, Kyiv.
• Ukrainian officials also ordered the evacuation of seven villages in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region which used to be remote from the front lines but are now under threat as Russian forces close in.
• In Russia, a Ukrainian drone slammed into a car on a highway in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, killing two people and wounding three, according to the governor there.
• Earlier in the day, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it destroyed 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, with 40 of them downed over the border Kursk region.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the country lost almost half its domestic gas production during the winter due to Russian attacks, and is still making up for the shortfall through imports.

Diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again called on Russia to agree to a complete and unconditional ceasefire, after Moscow declared a three-day truce, from May 8-10, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies in World War II.
• Zelenskyy also told a summit in Warsaw that Russia was “preparing something” in Belarus this summer, using military drills as an excuse.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the United States would step back as mediator unless Russia and Ukraine delivered “concrete proposals” on ending the three-year war.
• A spokesperson for Rubio also said that Washington was seeking a “complete, durable ceasefire and an end to the conflict”, not a “three-day moment so you can celebrate something else”. The US has said that this week will be “critical” for peace efforts.
• The comments came as Russia rejected Ukraine’s proposal to extend the three-day truce to 30 days, saying it would be “difficult to enter into a long-term ceasefire” without first clearing up a number of “questions”.
• At the Security Council, the UN’s political affairs chief, Rosemary DiCarlo,  welcomed the intensified efforts to bring the parties to negotiations, saying they “offer a glimmer of hope for progress towards a ceasefire and an eventual peaceful settlement”.
• France and the United Kingdom praised US mediation, while criticising Russia. Moscow rejected allegations that Russian forces had targeted civilians in Ukraine, while Kyiv said it could not accept peace at just any cost.
• France also accused Russia’s military intelligence of staging cyberattacks on a dozen French entities including ministries, defence firms and think tanks since 2021 in an attempt to destabilise the country.

Politics

• An investigation by the European nonprofit Forbidden Stories found that Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity, was tortured and had organs removed before her body was returned.
• A Russian military court sentenced a man to 27 years in jail for attempting to kill army pilots with poisoned alcohol and cakes at a graduation party on Ukrainian orders.
• Ukraine has detained defence officials suspected of supplying the army with faulty mortar shells.
• Latvia has sentenced one of its citizens to six years in prison for fighting for Russian forces in Ukraine, according to the Latvian prosecutor’s office.

Source

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Al Jazeera and news agencies