Russia war latest: Putin’s forces launch daytime assault on Ukrainian city with hundreds of drones

Over 400 drones were launched at the country in broad daylight
Russia has launched more than 400 drones at Ukraine in a daytime attack, injuring 10 people in the western city of Ternopil, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.

Ukraine's air force said the onslaught took place between 8 am and 3.30 pm local time as air force units downed or neutralised 388 of them in the north, south, centre and west of the country.

It follows a Ukrainian attack on a major oil refinery in the Black Sea port city of Tuapse for the fourth time in two weeks.

The overnight strike caused a fire but there were no injuries.

Meanwhile, Russian drones struck the Ukrainian port city of Odesa overnight, injuring at least 20 people and damaging residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, including a kindergarten.

Russia said it would implement a temporary ceasefire around Victory Day on 9 May regardless of Ukraine’s response.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the truce “will be implemented” and that “a response is not, in fact, required”.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the proposal as insufficient, saying Ukraine supported a longer-term ceasefire rather than “a few hours of security for a parade in Moscow ”.

Rishi Sunak: Ukraine is a 'valuable partner' in the new age of war
Rishi Sunak has said the Iran war demonstrates the value of Ukraine as a key ally to the UK.

In an article for The Times, the former prime minister said Ukraine boasts “the most advanced defence tech industry in the world”, making them a “valuable partner” for the UK.

He wrote: “The Iran conflict has confirmed that the nature of warfare has changed, and Ukraine is the western-aligned nation that knows best how to fight in this new way.”
Zelensky and Slovakia PM discuss Ukraine's EU accession
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he ​discussed Ukraine's accession ‌to the European Union with Slovakia's prime ​minister Robert Fico ​in a conversation on ⁠Saturday.

Drone kills 2 in Kherson minibus strike as Russia claims front-line progress
Two people were killed after a Russian drone attacked a minibus in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, local officials said Saturday, in the latest barrage of civilian areas, a hallmark of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Seven people were also wounded in the attack, regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Hours later Russia attacked another minibus in Kherson, wounding the driver, he said.

On Ukraine's Black Sea coast, a Russian strike damaged port infrastructure in the city of Odesa.

No casualties were reported.

Fighting reaches outskirts of Ukraine's stronghold Kostiantynivka
Russian troops are inching towards the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, trying to establish a foothold close to a heavily defended area, Ukraine's top army official said on Saturday.

Kostiantynivka, along with other cities, forms a ⁠so-called fortress belt in the country's east - an area well fortified by the Ukrainian military.

"We are repelling the Russian occupiers' persistent attempts to gain a foothold in the outskirts of Kostiantynivka using infiltration tactics.

Counter-sabotage measures are going `on in the city," Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's `army chief, said on the Telegram app.

A Ukrainian battlefield mapping project called DeepState shows Russian troops control an area around ⁠only one kilometre (0.6 mile) from the city's southern outskirts.

Small chunks of `Kostiantynivka in the southeast are marked as a grey zone, meaning neither Ukraine nor Russia has full control over them.

Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday its forces ‌had taken control of Novodmytrivka, just north of ‌Kostiantynivka.

Moscow's top general Valery Gerasimov said in April that troops were advancing in the north and south of the city.

Russia's oil spills onto streets after Ukraine targets refinery in Tuapse
Ukrainian drones have hit the oil refinery and export terminal in the Black Sea town of Tuapse on four occasions in just over two weeks, sparking fires that prompted local evacuations and sent up massive plumes of smoke.

The town is roughly 450km (280 miles) from the front lines.

In a video posted by local governor Veniamin Kondratyev after the third attack on 18 April, an emergency official said boiling oil products had spilled onto the street, damaging cars.

Ukraine said on Thursday that it hit an oil pumping station in Russia's Perm region, more than 1,500km (900 miles) from Ukraine, two days in a row.

Russian media reported the attacks, though Perm governor Dmitry Makhonin said only that drones had hit industrial facilities.

Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, one of Russia's largest oil and gas export terminals, was hit three times in the space of a week in late March.

It is more than 800km (500 miles) away from Ukraine.

In a broadcast several weeks later, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko declared that the area around St Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, was a "front-line region" due to aerial threats.

US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany
The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Nato ally Germany , the Pentagon announced on Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between President ⁠ Donald Trump and Europe.

Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German chancellor Friedrich Merz , who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the two-month-old war.

A senior Pentagon ⁠official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ​recent ⁠German rhetoric had been "inappropriate and unhelpful."
Russia targets Ukrainian cities in overnight strikes
Several strikes were reported from Ukraine after Russian forces launched overnight drone attacks targeting energy infrastructure, regional officials said.

The strikes targeted Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Odesa Oblasts, officials said.

Russia targeted port infrastructure in Izmail, a city in southern Odesa Oblast.

In Mykolaiv, Russian forces hit the energy infrastructure with Shahed-type attack drones, said Vitaliy Kim, head of the regional military administration.

In Kryvyi Rih, Russian drones targeted an infrastructure facility overnight, Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih Defence Council, said.

Explosions were heard across the city, according to local residents.

No casualties were immediately reported in the attacks, according to the preliminary assessment.

Ukraine's attacks on Tuapse sparks concern for 'serious environmental consequences'
Russian president Vladimir Putin warned of "serious environmental consequences" after attacks on Tuapse refinery while insisting things were under control.

Officials warned that high levels of benzene, a carcinogen found in oil products, had been recorded in the air while fires burned and urged residents to limit time outdoors.

Residents also widely reported "black rain," oily droplets falling on their skin and clothes.

Local news outlets posted images of stray dogs and cats with their coats stained gray.

Oil spills along the coastline have coated birds and fish, and Russian media recently circulated images of beached dolphins.

Those images are shocking to Russians accustomed to vacationing on the Black Sea coast.

Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense, said there could be long-term consequences for human health and the region's ecosystem.

“There is a lot of oil in the sea," he said.

"In the next few years, every storm will be bringing more oil pollution onto the coast.”
There has not yet been a public backlash to the strikes, as authorities wage a crackdown on dissent.

But that could change as the damage spreads.

"I think a lot of people understand that there is a very big difference between what Putin says and what regional authorities are saying, and what's really going on," Slivyak said.

Ukraine's long-range drones stretch Russia's defenses
The ability to strike key infrastructure deep inside Russia has highlighted Ukraine's growing military capabilities and put pressure on Moscow's overstretched air defences.

It has also forced more Russians to confront the consequences of a war their government claims to be winning.

Ukraine's defence ministry says its forces have more than doubled the range of their deep-strike capabilities since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The increased range also allows drones to attack locations from different directions, complicating countermeasures.

“Drone attacks have so far been a very successful case of leveraging simple technologies and domestically assembled technology to attack Russia in places that, at the start of the war, they just would have never expected to be attacked," said Marcel Plichta, a PhD candidate in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews.

“This capability just didn't exist" four years ago, he said.

Vessel carrying grain Ukraine says stolen by Russia will not unload in Israel, Kyiv says
The vessel carrying grain that Ukraine says was stolen from areas occupied by Russia will not unload in Israel, Ukraine said on Thursday, after Kyiv requested Israel to seize the cargo.

Ukraine's prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, said on the Telegram app that the vessel, Panormitis, left Israel's territorial waters and departed into neutral waters following "a range of procedural measures taken by Ukraine".

"On the basis of the materials provided by the Ukrainian side within the framework of international legal cooperation, the competent Israeli authorities have begun to process the request," he said.

Israel's foreign ministry said, however, that Ukraine's request for legal assistance, submitted late on Tuesday, "contained significant factual gaps and did not include any supporting evidence".

In the meantime, the ministry said, it was informed that the vessel that was supposed to enter the port next week had decided to depart from Israel's territorial waters.

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