Latvia’s Foreign Minister Baiba Braže, speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers at the European Council building in Brussels on May 11, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

Fire and smoke rise at the Tuapse oil refinery near the Tuapse port, following a Ukrainian drone attack, according to Russian officials, in Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai, Russia, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video released on April 20, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Social media via Reuters

A firefighter works at the site of a residential building which was hit during overnight Russian drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, April 11, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A major Russian drone and missile attack on civilian areas of Ukraine killed four people and injured at least 27, officials said Tuesday (March 24, 2026).

Moscow’s army stepped up efforts to break through Ukrainian front-line defence in what could be the start of an anticipated spring ground offensive.

Russia fired almost 400 long-range drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said, in its biggest attack in weeks. The onslaught continued into Tuesday (March 24, 2026) morning as dozens of drones targeted the capital Kyiv during daylight.

Russia also launched 23 cruise missiles and seven ballistic missiles at Ukraine during the night, hitting at least 10 locations across the country, according to the air force.

Ukrainian civilians have endured relentless barrages since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour more than four years ago.

U.S.-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv over the past year have brought no respite, with Russia rejecting Ukraine’s offer of a ceasefire and in recent weeks the Iran war has diverted international attention from Ukraine’s plight.

Russia intensifies front-line attacks

On the roughly 1,250-kilometer front line snaking along eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, the short-handed defenders have been bracing for a new offensive by Russia’s bigger army as the weather improves.

The Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian troops in recent days have made simultaneous attempts to break through defensive lines in several strategic areas.

“Fierce fighting unfolded along the entire line of contact,” Mr. Syrskyi said Monday (March 23, 2026) on the Telegram messaging app, with Russia launching 619 attacks in four days.

“The occupiers are attempting to bring up new units and are preparing to continue attacks,” Mr. Syrskyi said, adding that Ukraine had deployed reinforcements to counter the assaults.

It was not possible to independently verify the battlefield claims.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Mr. Syrskyi’s report backed up its assessment that Russia’s spring-summer offensive is now underway.

Russia escalated its strikes from March 17 and has moved heavy equipment and more troops to the front line, the ISW said late Monday.

Each year, as the weather improves, Russia has moved its grinding war of attrition up a gear. However, it has been unable to capture cities and has made only incremental gains across rural areas. Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine. That includes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.

Ukrainian soldier says front line situation is tense but not critical

A Ukrainian soldier fighting near the city of Lyman in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, whose complete capture is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main invasion goals, said Russian forces have intensified assaults in recent days but failed to achieve a breakthrough, despite increasing bombardments and repeated ground attacks.

Russian troops had earlier sought to isolate Lyman by targeting logistics routes before escalating their offensive, according to the soldier, who gave only his call sign King, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian units repelled initial assaults, destroying advancing Russian columns and inflicting significant losses in armoured vehicles and personnel, he said.

In response, Russian forces have increased airstrikes on the town, including the use of powerful glide bombs. “The situation is tense, but not critical,” King said.

Drones allow Ukraine to fend off Russian ground attacks

Ukraine has developed advanced drone technology to make up for its shortage of infantry.

Amid the West Asia conflict, Kyiv is offering Ukraine’s battle-tested drone defences to the U.S. and Gulf partners, hoping to trade that know-how for scarce Patriot air defense missiles it needs to fend off Russia’s barrages.

Ukraine has also used its domestically produced long-range drones to hit areas of Russia that support Moscow’s war effort. Russian air defence intercepted 55 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russian regions, the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry reported Tuesday (March 24, 2026).

Published – March 24, 2026 10:22 pm IST

Ukraine and Russia swapped over 300 prisoners following “productive” talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday (February 5, 2026), as a U.S. mediator conceded that “significant” work lay ahead in the quest for a broader deal to end the war.

The negotiations are the latest bid in diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting — Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, with hundreds of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their homes and much of eastern and southern Ukraine left decimated.

As talks were underway, large swathes of the Ukrainian capital were still without heating in sub-zero temperatures, after successive Russian strikes knocked out energy supplies to hundreds of apartment blocks in Kyiv.

Also Read | Russia bombards Ukraine with drones and missiles a day before planned peace talks

“Today, delegations from the United States, Ukraine, and Russia agreed to exchange 314 prisoners — the first such exchange in five months,” U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said on social media during the second day of talks in Abu Dhabi.

Russia’s Defence Ministry later confirmed the two sides changed 157 prisoners each.

While Mr. Witkoff described the negotiations as “detailed and productive,” he dimmed hopes for a breakthrough, saying “significant work remains.”

On Wednesday (February 4), Kyiv had described the first day of negotiations as “substantive and productive”.

Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev also said talks were going well. “There is definitely progress, things are moving forward in a good, positive direction,” he said.

But there was no update from any side on the contentious issue of territory, or any sign of concession from Moscow, which entered the talks refusing to compromise on its key demands.

The Russian Envoy also slammed what he called attempts from European nations to “disrupt the progress,” without elaborating.

In a rare official admission of battlefield losses, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday (February 4) that at least 55,000 of his country’s troops had been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022 — a figure lower than many independent estimates.

Russia has not disclosed how many of its soldiers have been killed. Tracking of obituaries and family announcements by the BBC and independent Mediazona outlet has found the names of more than 160,000 Russian soldiers killed in the conflict.

‘Concrete steps’

Ahead of the two-day talks, Russia launched its latest massive attack on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, leaving many people without power and shivering through temperatures as low as -20C.

Ukraine’s chief negotiator Rustem Umerov said Wednesday (February 4) that “concrete steps and practical solutions” had been discussed in the first day of the talks.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters fighting would persist “until the Kyiv regime makes the appropriate decisions”.

The main sticking point in the negotiations is the long-term fate of territory in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow is demanding that Kyiv pull its troops out of swathes of the Donbas, including heavily fortified cities atop vast natural resources, before any deal.

It also wants international recognition that land seized in the invasion belongs to Russia.

‘Maintain pressure’

Kyiv has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected a pull-back of forces.

The talks in Abu Dhabi are the second round of trilateral negotiations between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing both sides to negotiate an end to the war since he returned to office, boasting he could strike a deal in hours.

Mr. Zelenskyy said the U.S. President’s role was crucial, telling French television in an interview broadcast on Wednesday (February 5, 2026) that “Putin is only scared of Trump”.

Mr. Trump could use economic sanctions against Russia or transfer weapons to Ukraine to “maintain this pressure on Putin”, Mr. Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv would not compromise on sovereignty.

Russia occupies around 20% of Ukraine. It claims the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as its own, and holds pockets of territory in at least three other Ukrainian regions in the east.

Kyiv still controls around one-fifth of the Donetsk region that Moscow demands it withdraws from. Ukraine has warned that ceding ground will embolden Moscow, and that it will not sign a deal that fails to deter Russia from invading again.

Published – February 05, 2026 06:15 pm IST

Rescuers work at the site of a logistics hub of a private delivery company hit by Russian missile strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine on January 13, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Ukraine is hosting security advisers for crunch talks on Saturday (January 3, 2026) as Kyiv insists negotiations are zeroing in on a deal, while Russia claims a deadly New Year strike torpedoed the efforts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “Around 15 countries would attend the talks, along with representatives from the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), with a U.S. delegation joining via video link.”

Leaders from the so-called coalition of the willing are expected to convene in France next week after Saturday’s (January 3) talks.

The latest peace push comes after Mr. Zelensky announced in his New Year’s Eve address that the U.S.-brokered plan was “90%” ready, but cautioned that important territorial issues remain.

Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and has hit its smaller neighbour with an almost daily barrage of missiles and drones that have killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions.

Kyiv has repeatedly said, “Russia is not interested in peace and is deliberately trying to sabotage diplomatic efforts to seize more Ukrainian territory.” Russia captured the most Ukrainian land last year since launching its all-out invasion in 2022, an AFP analysis showed.

Moscow has meanwhile accused Ukraine of carrying out a “terrorist attack” and “deliberately torpedoing” a peaceful resolution after a strike on a hotel in Kherson killed 28 people celebrating the New Year. Moscow warned of “consequences,” but Ukraine said the attack targeted a military gathering that was closed to civilians.

AFP was not able to verify either account.

After U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff boasted about putting peace efforts back on track in the New Year, Ukraine ordered the evacuation of more than 3,000 children and their parents from frontline settlements in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian troops have been advancing.

More than 150,000 people have been evacuated from front-line areas since June 1, according to Ukrainian Restoration Minister Oleksiy Kuleba. Underlining the risks for civilians, authorities in Kharkiv reported on Saturday (January 3) morning that another body had been pulled from the rubble after an aerial barrage reduced multi-storey buildings to smouldering heaps.

“At least two people, including a three-year-old, were killed and another 19 people wounded,” local officials said. Under the current U.S.-backed blueprint for ending the war, Ukraine would cede parts of the eastern Donbas region and agree not to join NATO.

Mr. Zelensky said, “Last week, Ukraine was able to wrest some concessions, notably removing the provision that land seized by Moscow’s army would be recognised as Russian.” The Russian army captured more than 5,600 square kilometres (2,160 square miles), or 0.94%, of Ukrainian territory in 2025, according to an analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War, which works with the Critical Threats Project.

This includes areas that Kyiv and military analysts say are controlled by Russia, as well as those claimed by Moscow’s army. That is more land than the previous two years combined, though far short of the more than 60,000 square kilometres it took in the first year of its invasion.

Russia made its biggest advance in 2025 in November — 701 square kilometres — whereas the 244 square kilometres it gained in December was the smallest since March, the data showed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently told his citizens that the military intends to seize the rest of the Ukrainian land he has proclaimed as Russian if talks fail.

New cabinet appointees

Mr. Zelensky has shuffled his cabinet ahead of the January 6 summit in France. He announced on Friday (January 2, 2026) that he offered the Defence Ministry to his 34-year-old Minister of digital transformation, Mikhailo Fedorov.

Without explaining his decision to replace Denys Shmygal, the Ukrainian leader said he had proposed the incumbent “head another area of government work that is no less important for our stability”.

Mr. Zelensky also recently named Ukrainian Military Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov to head his presidential office. Mr. Budanov will succeed Mr. Zelensky’s most important ally, Andriy Yermak, who resigned in November after investigators raided his house as part of a sweeping corruption probe.

“At this time, Ukraine needs greater focus on security issues, the development of the Defence and Security Forces of Ukraine, as well as on the diplomatic track of negotiations,” Mr. Zelensky said.

“Kyrylo has specialised experience in these areas and sufficient strength to deliver results.” Mr. Budanov said he had accepted the nomination and would “continue to serve Ukraine”.

Published – January 03, 2026 01:00 pm IST

Vice President J.D. Vance, right, speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, as President Donald Trump listens in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 28, 2025, in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The CPC said on Saturday it had halted operations after a mooring at its Black Sea terminal was significantly damaged by a Ukrainian naval drone attack. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters