Live blog: Russia strikes kindergarten, college in Ukraine's Dnipro — Kiev

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

1818 GMT –– Ukraine has said a Russian missile strike on its central city of Dnipro wounded at least 18 people, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying rescue efforts were underway after a college and kindergarten were hit.

"Dnipro. Already 18 injured," Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergey Lysak said on social media, adding that five of those taken to hospital were children.

Zelenskyy said in his daily evening address that "rescue operations are currently underway" after "buildings of the college and kindergarten were damaged".

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1748 GMT –– Zelenskyy says Ukraine is delivering 'longer-range responses' to Russian attacks

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil refinery 1,300 km (800 miles) from its own borders, that his country was answering Russian strikes with "longer-range responses."

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy did not refer directly to the attack on the Russian region of Tatarstan, but said such responses were just as important as helping Ukrainians who were suffering from enemy attacks.

"Equally important is that the Russian terrorists are receiving responses to their strikes," he said . "Each time, longer-range responses."

1739 GMT –– NATO chief floats 100-bn-euro fund to arm Ukraine

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has proposed creating a $108B, five-year fund for Ukraine in a push to get the alliance more involved in sending weapons to Keiv, officials have said.

NATO foreign ministers will hold preliminary talks on the plan in Brussels Wednesday as they seek to forge a support package for Ukraine by a July summit in Washington.

"Foreign ministers will discuss the best way to organise NATO's support for Ukraine, to make it more powerful, predictable and enduring," a NATO official said.

1450 GMT –– ‘Ukrainians require justice now, not in distant future’: Foreign minister

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said that his people need justice for Russia’s actions now as the more than two-year-long conflict continues.

“Let me be frank. Ukrainians require justice now. Not in the distant future. They do not want to hear that justice will be served. They want to see it already served. Not only on the battlefield but in the courtrooms and real decisions as well,” Kuleba said at the Restoring Justice for Ukraine international conference at The Hague.

Expressing that he knows international justice takes time, Kuleba urged every effort possible to serve justice and deliver tangible results, whether in "small or big steps."

1245 GMT –– Wounded toll in drone attack on central Russia rises to 13: ministry

The number of wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's central Tatarstan region - around 1,100 kilometres (690 miles) from the Ukraine border - rose to over a dozen, local health officials have said.

Tatarstan's health ministry said on social media that "13 people were wounded, including students and two minors" in the town Yelabuga, on the Kama river in the east of the republic.

1231 GMT –– Ukraine at 'critical moment,' Blinken warns in Paris

Ukraine is at a "critical moment" in its war with Russia and urgently needs more Western support, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, bemoaning the stalemate in Congress over a multi-billion dollar military package for Kiev.

"It is absolutely essential to get Ukrainians what they continue to need to defend themselves, particularly when it comes to munitions and air defences," Blinken told reporters during a visit to France.

"It's another reason why the supplementary budget request that President (Joe) Biden has made to (the US) Congress must be fulfilled as quickly as possible."

1207 GMT –– Europe 'not at war, not going to be': EU foreign policy chief on Russia-Ukraine war

Europe is "not at war and not going to be," the EU foreign policy chief has assured as the Russia-Ukraine war passed the two-year mark.

Speaking to the Spanish TV channel La Sexta on Monday, Josep Borrell said: "We are not at war and we are not going to be, but we must increase our defence capabilities."

"There is a war in Eastern Europe that does not seem to be coming to an end," Borrell said, calling on Europeans to understand that their peace is an "exception."

"The world is a violent world," he added.

1118 GMT –– Russia will find out who ordered deadly concert shooting: Putin

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will find out who was behind last month's attack on a concert hall near Moscow that killed at least 144 people.

"We will definitely get to those who ultimately ordered it," Putin told a meeting of Interior Ministry officials. "We paid a very high price, and the entire analysis of the situation must be extremely objective and professional."

Russia says it has evidence the attackers had links to Ukraine, which Kiev has denied and the United States has rejected as nonsense.

1046 GMT –– Russia says seized 400 square km of Ukrainian land

Russia has said its forces had captured 400 square kilometres (150 square miles) of Ukrainian territory this year.

Moscow secured its first territorial gains in almost a year in recent months, as Kiev struggles with manpower and ammunition shortages amid delays to vital Western aid.

"Since the start of the year, 403 square kilometres ... have come under our control," Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said, referring to gains in the Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia regions that Moscow claimed to have annexed in 2022, despite not fully controlling them.

"Russian armed forces continue to push Ukrainian units westwards," Shoigu told a meeting of Russia's military chiefs, according to a transcript published by the defence ministry.

1034 GMT –– Russian spy chief says US intelligence on attack was too general: Ifax

Russian spy service chief Sergei Naryshkin has said that the United States did sent Moscow intelligence on a potential attack but that it was too general, the Interfax news agency reported.

1012 GMT –– Shoigu says Russia is pushing Ukrainian forces westwards

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that the army was pushing Ukrainian forces westwards.

Shoigu said that after the failure of its 2023 counteroffensive, Ukraine had tried to gain a foothold on various fronts but had not achieved its goals.

Russia claimed its first significant victory in nine months with the capture of Avdiivka in February. Shoigu said groups of Russian troops "continue to push back the Ukrainian formations" towards the west.

0812 GMT –– Ukraine says it hit Russia's long-range drone production site

A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Tatarstan region has hit a facility where Russia produces long-range "Shahed" attack drones that it uses to bomb Ukraine, a Kiev intelligence source told Reuters news agency.

Local authorities in Russia's Tatarstan, east of Moscow, said earlier that drones had attacked industrial sites and that several people had been wounded.

A Kiev source said a Ukrainian drone attack had caused significant damage to a military target.

0751 GMT –– Germany to support Ukraine with 180,000 artillery shells via Czech initiative

Germany will support Ukraine with 180,000 rounds of artillery shells as a contribution to a Czech-led plan to buy ammunition for Ukraine, with a price tag of 576 million euros ($618 million), the defence ministry said.

The most pressing need for Ukraine two years after Russia's full-scale offensive has become artillery ammunition, which is running low as the sides use heavy cannon fire to hold largely static, entrenched positions along the 1,000-km (620-mile) front line.

Last month, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced a 478 million euro aid package for Ukraine, excluding the support for the Czech ammunition initiative.

0736 GMT –– Russia reports drone attacks over 1,000 km from Ukraine

Two industrial sites in the central Russian region of Tatarstan, around 1,100 kilometres (690 miles) from the Russian-Ukrainian border, were hit in a drone attack in the morning, Russian officials said.

A defence source in Kiev told AFP news agency that Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency was behind the strikes, which it said hit facilities assembling Iranian-designed Shahed explosive drones.

They did not say where the attack was launched from. If launched from Ukrainian-held territory, it would be one of the most far-reaching drone strikes carried out by Kiev's forces since the start of the fighting in February 2022.

0710 GMT –– Putin ally Patrushev says NATO is helping attacks on Russia from Ukraine

A powerful ally of President Vladimir Putin said that NATO was basically fighting Russia in Ukraine and that the US-led military alliance had helped organise strikes on sovereign Russian territory.

Putin's 2022 full-scale offensive on Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Russian and US diplomats.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin's most powerful allies, said that the 75 years of NATO history since its founding on April 4, 1949 had shown it to be a long term source of "danger, crisis and conflict."

0708 GMT –– Russia damages energy facility in drone attacks on central Ukraine, Kiev says

Russian drones targeted energy infrastructure in overnight attacks on Ukraine's central Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovohrad regions, hitting an energy facility in the latter, Ukraine's military said.

Nine drones were shot down over Dnipropetrovsk region where debris caused two fires in the regional capital of Dnipro, the governor said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, adding they had both been put out.

But a drone hit a high voltage substation in Kirovohrad region, causing a fire there, the Ukrenergo grid operator wrote on Telegram. The governor said no casualties had been reported.

0648 GMT –– Russia says seizes explosives sent from Ukraine via EU

Russia's FSB security service said it had seized dozens of kilos of explosives sent from Ukraine concealed in Orthodox Christian religious icons that transited through the European Union.

The seizure followed an inspection of cargo in the northwestern Pskov region near the Latvian border, the FSB said in a statement.

It said this was "part of the cross-border traffic of explosives from Ukraine through the European Union," adding that the cargo had passed through Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

The seized cargo comprised 70 kilos (154 pounds) of home-made explosives and explosive devices "hidden in icons and ready for use".

2219 GMT — Russia and Ukraine trade drone claims over Black Sea

Russia and Ukraine have claimed to have downed each other's drones over the Black Sea, with both sides apparently devoting increasing attention to developing and using unmanned aircraft in their more than two-year-old war.

Russia's Defence Ministry, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said its air defence units had intercepted six Ukrainian drones attempting to carry out a "terrorist attack".

The governor of Russia's border region of Belgorod, Vyachelslav Gladkov, wrote on Telegram that defence units had downed 19 airborne targets and Ukrainian shelling of the region had injured ten people.

A spokesperson for Ukraine's Air Force, Illya Yevlash, told national television that Ukrainian forces had downed a Russian "Forpost" drone, which he described as one of the most sophisticated and costly in Moscow's arsenal.

0126 GMT — Blinken in Paris for talks on Ukraine, Gaza

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia and the Israeli brutal war on besieged Gaza.

France is among the major military suppliers to Ukraine, which has faced critical shortages of arms and troops as it holds off an onslaught of Russian attacks.

The United States has been the key military backer for Ukraine, but Congress has held up a $60 billion aid package. France held an international conference in February in a bid to rally financial and military support for Ukraine.

0002 GMT — Thousands in Germany say 'no' to war in Ukraine and Gaza

Thousands of people continued to turn out for traditional peace marches in several cities across Germany on Easter as the holiday weekend tradition ended.

At Easter marches in several major German cities, people demonstrated against Russia's war in Ukraine as well as Israel's brutal war in Gaza.

They called for disarmament, peace negotiations and a stop to arms deliveries to Ukraine and Israel, according to the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Easter peace marchers also criticised German arms deliveries to Ukraine and Israel, saying it would only prolong the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

2357 GMT — Top Russian official says US dictates NATO spending

A top official in Russia's Security Council has said the United States was imposing economic obligations on its NATO partners and setting conditions for buying specific weapons and equipment.

Nikolai Patrushev told the Argumenty I Fakty news outlet the Kremlin's aims in more than two years of conflict in Ukraine remained the same as NATO continued to press close to Russia's borders.

Patrushev said the United States and Britain were exploiting Russophobia "to firmly bind other NATO states to them through economic obligations."

"The United States is profiting by increasing the capacity of the military-industrial complex and dictating to its allies the conditions for purchasing very specific types of weapons and uniforms from their manufacturers," Patrushev told Argumenty I Fakty in an interview.

For our live updates from Monday, April 1, click here.