As of Thursday, April 17, this is the current situation:
Fighting
- A Russian drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa overnight injured three people, sparked fires and damaged homes and civilian infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
- The Russian Defense Ministry reported that their forces eliminated 26 Ukrainian drones during the night. Of these, nine were intercepted over the Voronezh area in the south, eight were brought down over the Belgorod border region, and the rest were neutralized over the Kursk, Lipetsk, and Moscow areas, along with the annexed Crimea Peninsula, according to the ministry.
- The Defence Ministry also said Russia has taken control of Kalynove village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
- The Moscow military authorities stated that they successfully thwarted seven Ukrainian drones over the Ivanovo region in Russia. This area houses one of the two Russian missile units that Kiev claims were responsible for a fatal assault on the city of Sumy, resulting in numerous casualties during the previous week.
- The Kyivan air force reported that Russia initiated nearly 100 drone assaults during nighttime raids on Ukraine. Out of these, 57 were intercepted and brought down, with an additional 34 failing to hit their intended objectives, possibly as a result of electronic warfare tactics.
- Russian glide bombs and artillery struck the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding nine others, in what Ukrainian officials described as a timed “double-tap strike”. The region’s head, Oleksandr Prokudin, said it was a “deliberate tactic by Russia” to prevent rescuing victims and to harm medics, rescuers and police officers who rushed to the scene of the first attack only to then be caught in the second strike.
- A Russian mass drone attack killed two people and injured 16 in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. Five of the injured were hospitalised.
- The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it detained nine people, including five teenagers, with more than 30kg (66 pounds) of explosives on suspicion of preparing sabotage attacks on behalf of Russia.
Attacks on energy facilities
- Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine carried out six attacks on Kremlin energy infrastructure despite a mutually agreed 30-day moratorium on energy strikes.
- The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Heorhii Tykhyi, stated during a press conference that Russia has conducted over 30 assaults on Ukraine’s energy facilities since both nations pledged in March to refrain from targeting these infrastructures.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would announce when the US-brokered moratorium on energy strikes would end.
Politics and diplomacy
- The U.S. government under President Donald Trump lowered its assessment of the financial aid given to Kiev due to Russia’s invasion, cutting it down to roughly $100 billion from an initial estimate of $300 billion, according to Bloomberg News, which cited sources knowledgeable about the situation.
- The US and Ukraine have achieved “significant headway” in their discussions regarding a mineral agreement and plan to finalize a memorandum shortly. This document would grant the US permission to access Ukraine’s reserves of rare earth elements, according to Kiev’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.
- Ukraine’s legislature approved extending martial law in Kyiv until August 6th. This move garnered support from 357 representatives, with one legislator voting against the proposal.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani plan to address Ukraine along with several other topics when the emir visits Moscow on Thursday, according to Kremlin spokesperson Peskov.
- Alexei Smirnov, who previously served as the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, was arrested on Wednesday due to allegations of fraud, according to reports from the Russian state news agency TASS.
