Here is the situation on Wednesday, April 3, 2024.
Fighting
- Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian forces had captured 403 sq km (156 sq miles) of territory since the start of the year and last month, secured control over five towns and villages in eastern Ukraine.
- Ukraine rejected Shoigu’s claims, saying its troops continued to defend Tonenke and Nevelske, which Shoigu mentioned among the settlements taken by Russia.
- At least 18 people, including five children, were injured after a Russian missile attack damaged a college and a kindergarten in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
- About a dozen people were injured after Ukrainian drones struck several industrial sites in the Russian region of Tatarstan, about 1,300km (800 miles) from the front lines, including Russia’s third-largest oil refinery and a factory producing Shahed drones.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a bill lowering the mobilisation age for combat duty from 27 to 25 years old.
- Russia named Sergei Pinchuk as the new commander of the Black Sea Fleet after a spate of Ukrainian attacks on its military ships.
Politics and diplomacy
- Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, told the Reuters news agency that there were “hallmarks of genocide” in Russian crimes across Ukraine, including the mass killings of civilians in Bucha outside Kyiv in 2022. Kostin said such crimes should be tried domestically and by the International Criminal Court.
- A Moscow court sentenced Pyotr Verzilov, a Russian-Canadian activist and independent news site founder, to eight years and four months in prison for social media posts criticising the Ukraine war. Verzilov, 36, rose to prominence as the unofficial spokesperson of the feminist opposition group Pussy Riot and left Russia in 2020.
Weapons
- NATO foreign ministers will meet on Wednesday to discuss a proposal for a 100 billion euro ($107bn) five-year fund to provide aid for Kyiv that would give the security alliance a more direct role in coordinating the supply of arms, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine.
- Germany’s Defence Ministry said Berlin will provide Ukraine with 180,000 rounds of artillery shells through a Czech-led plan to buy ammunition for Ukraine.
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had seized 70 kilos (154 pounds) of home-made explosives and explosive devices “hidden in icons and ready for use” following a cargo inspection near the Latvian border. It alleged the explosives had been sent from Ukraine through multiple European Union countries.
