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The Ukrainian president condemns ‘terrible’ missile attack days after Trump envoy Steve Witkoff met President Putin in Russia.
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In a social media post, the mission alleged that though Russia claimed “special friendship” with India,…
Smoke rises in the sky over the city after a Russian drone strike amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine , onApril 12, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
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Russia and Ukraine’s top diplomats on Saturday used a high-level conference in Turkey to once again trade accusations of violating a tentative U.S.-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, underscoring the challenges of negotiating an end to the 3-year-old war.
The two foreign ministers spoke at separate events at the annual Antalya Diplomacy Forum, a day after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss peace prospects. Ukraine’s European allies on Friday promised billions of dollars to help Kyiv keep fighting Russia’s invasion.
While Moscow and Kyiv both agreed in principle last month to implement a limited, 30-day ceasefire, they issued conflicting statements soon after their separate talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia. They differed on the start time of halting strikes, and alleged near-immediate breaches by the other side.
“The Ukrainians have been attacking us from the very beginning, every passing day, maybe with two or three exceptions,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, adding that Moscow would provide the U.S., Turkey and international bodies with a list of Kyiv’s attacks during the past three weeks.
A representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry separately told state media Saturday that Moscow has been sharing intelligence with the U.S. regarding more than 60 supposed breaches of the deal by Kyiv.
Lavrov on Saturday insisted Russia had stuck to the terms of the deal.
His Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, fiercely contested that claim, saying Russia had launched “almost 70 missiles, over 2,200 (exploding) drones, and over 6,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, mostly at civilians,” since agreeing to the limited pause on strikes.
“This clearly shows to the world who wants peace and who wants war,” he said.
Russian forces hold the advantage in Ukraine, and Kyiv has warned Moscow is planning a fresh spring offensive to ramp up pressure on its foe and improve its negotiating position.
Ukraine has endorsed a broader U.S. ceasefire proposal, but Russia has effectively blocked it by imposing far-reaching conditions. European governments have accused Putin of dragging his feet.
“Russia has to get moving” on the road to ending the war, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media Friday. He said the war is “terrible and senseless.”
Lavrov on Saturday reiterated that a prospective U.S.-backed agreement, also discussed in Saudi Arabia, to ensure safe navigation for commercial vessels in the Black Sea could not be implemented until restrictions are lifted on Russian access to shipping insurance, docking ports and international payment systems.
Details of the prospective deal were not released, but it appeared to mark another attempt to ensure safe Black Sea shipping after a 2022 agreement that was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey but halted by Russia the following year.
Ukraine’s air force said a second F-16 fighter jet supplied by Western allies has been lost and its pilot, 26-year-old Pavlo Ivanov, killed.
Ukraine’s General Staff said the F-16 crashed while repelling a Russian missile strike. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday offered condolences to Ivanov’s family, saying, “We are proud of our soldiers. We will give a strong and apt response.”
Ukraine said the first F-16 was shot down last August, after it intercepted three Russian missiles and a drone.
Since last July, Ukraine has received multiple batches of the fighter jets from Denmark and the Netherlands, with U.S. approval. Their total number has not been disclosed.
Meanwhile, Russian drones killed at least two civilians in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Saturday, according to local Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukraine is seeking solutions to repair the damage caused by a Russian drone attack to the confinement vessel at the stricken Chornobyl nuclear power plant, a government minister said on Saturday. Environment minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said…
Russia editor, BBC Monitoring
Getty Images“Russians are trying to ban everything Ukrainian here: language, and also traditions. Even Ukrainian holidays are forbidden.”
This is the sorrow and fear of a rarely heard voice from within Ukraine – that of someone living in one of the Russian-occupied areas of the country. We are calling her Maria.
As the US leads efforts to negotiate peace in Ukraine, those living under Russian occupation face a brutal, repressive future.
Already, the Kremlin has put in place severe restrictions designed to stamp out Ukrainian identity, including harsh punishments for anyone who dares to disagree.
Now, there are fears that Kyiv could be forced to give up at least some of the territory occupied by Russia as part of a potential ceasefire or peace deal.
Ukrainian officials reject this, but Moscow says that at the very least it wants to fully capture four Ukrainian regions it partly controls – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Due to repression by the Russian authorities, speaking to the media and even your own relatives in occupied territories can be fraught with danger.
The Kremlin has also launched a wide-ranging campaign to force Ukrainians in occupied territories to take Russian passports. Evidence suggests that Ukrainians are being denied healthcare and free movement unless they take up Russian citizenship.
Maria (not her real name) said she was a member of an all-female underground resistance group waging a campaign of peaceful resistance in those territories, mainly by distributing leaflets and newsletters.
In an interview with the BBC’s Today programme, she used a Ukrainian proverb to describe the danger she is facing: “You have fear in your eyes, but your hands are still doing it. Of course it’s scary.”
The BBC cannot reveal her real name or location so as not to put her in danger.
The atmosphere of fear and suspicion is such that when I was trying to contact residents of occupied Mariupol, I was accused of being a Russian journalist.
“You won’t like what I’ve got to say. People like you kill if you tell them the truth,” one person told me via direct message on social media. They claimed to be from the port city, captured by the Russians in May 2022 after a bloody siege that left it in ruins.
Getty ImagesLater, I asked some Ukrainian friends if I could speak to their relatives living in occupied areas. All said no – that would be too dangerous.
Sofia (also not her real name) is from a village in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region. It was occupied on day five of the full-scale invasion of 2022, and it is an hour’s drive south of Zaporizhzhia city, a major regional centre still under Ukrainian control.
Sofia is now in the UK but her parents are still in her village and she told me about the care she needs to take when talking to them.
“About a year ago, my parents were searched by the [Russian security service] FSB. They confiscated their phones, accusing them of telling the Ukrainian army about where Russian troops were stationed. That wasn’t true, and later the Russian military told my parents that they had been reported by their neighbours. That’s why I try not to provoke anything like that,” Sofia tells me.
“I have to read between the lines when they tell me about what’s going on.”
And just speaking to them at all is becoming more difficult. Sofia says that her parents are unable even to top up their mobile phones or insure their car because they refuse to take Russian passports.
“It’s getting really awkward living without Russian IDs,” she says.
Getty ImagesYeva, whose name we have also changed, has a sister working at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.
“Whenever we move from the weather or our children on to our subjects, her tone changes,” Yeva says. “She tells me: ‘You don’t understand!’”
“What I do understand is that being a nuclear power plant worker, her phone is likely to be bugged,” Yeva tells me. She also says that her sister often repeats pro-Russian narratives when speaking to her.
Another friend, Kateryna, tells me that someone she knows in the occupied part of Kherson region was thrown into a punishment cellar for talking to her brother who had been helping the Ukrainian army. “I can’t put them at risk,” Kateryna told me when I asked to be put in touch with her friend.
According to Maria, Russian administrations have been installing surveillance systems to monitor any manifestations of dissent. “They are putting up a lot of CCTV cameras to control everybody, to find all the activists,” she says.
Numerous Ukrainian activists have been killed or disappeared under Russian occupation. According to the Ukrainian rights group Zmina, at least 121 activists, volunteers and journalists have been killed during the full-scale invasion, most of them during its first year.
Prior to the invasion, Russia had drawn up lists of activists to be arrested or killed, the group says.
More recently, Russia-installed authorities have been applying a host of repressive laws against dissenters. They can be penalised for alleged transgressions such as spreading “false information”, “discrediting” the Russian army or supporting “extremism”.
In Crimea alone, 1,279 cases have been launched so far on charges of “discrediting” the Russian armed forces, says the Ukrainian government office for Crimea. According to it, 224 people have been jailed in the occupied Ukrainian region for expressing dissent, most of them members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community.
Despite the dangers, a number of underground resistance groups are active in occupied parts of Ukraine.
Zla Mavka, which takes its name from a Ukrainian mythical creature, is a non-violent all-female movement mostly focused on distributing posters and leaflets across occupied regions.
In Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region, partisans have been targeting occupation troops and their transport while the Crimean Tatar group Atesh has been involved in reconnaissance and subversion.
Meanwhile, the Yellow Ribbon movement distributes Ukrainian symbols in occupied territories.
Because of the absence of independent media in occupied parts of Ukraine, it is hard to verify the impact of such activities. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that they have caused significant disruption for occupation forces.
Maria says whole streets are lined with Russian propaganda.
“In city centres, everything is covered with Russian propaganda: billboards with Putin’s face, Putin’s quotes, people they call heroes of the special military operation. There are flags everywhere,” she tells the BBC.
The Kremlin has banned Ukrainian and independent media including the BBC, and propagandists have been despatched from Russia to set up friendly media in the occupied territories. After many professional journalists fled, they have been forced to employ local teenagers to spread Moscow’s narratives.
Pro-Russian propaganda starts early at school, where children are forced to attend classes glorifying the Russian army and join quasi-military groups such as Yunarmia (Youth Army).
One Russian schoolbook even justifies the invasion of Ukraine by falsely portraying it as an aggressive state run by nationalist extremists and manipulated by the West.
Pavlo Ivanov. Photo: Rostyslav Lazarenko on Facebook
BBC sources have reported that the F-16 fighter jet piloted by 26-year-old Ukrainian Pavlo Ivanov was likely shot down by a Russian missile on Saturday.
Source: BBC…
Photo: X/@MartinHarrisOBE
A Russian missile struck a warehouse of an Indian pharmaceutical company in Ukraine on Saturday (April 12, 2025), the Ukrainian Embassy in India said.
In a social media post, the mission alleged that though Russia claimed “special friendship” with India, it was deliberately targeting Indian businesses in Ukraine.
“Today, a Russian missile struck the warehouse of Indian pharmaceutical company Kusum in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Embassy said.
“While claiming ‘special friendship’ with India, Moscow deliberately targets Indian businesses — destroying medicines meant for children and the elderly,” it said in a post on X.
No further details on the strike were immediately available.
Earlier, the U.K.’s ambassador to Ukraine Martin Harris said Russian strikes destroyed a major pharmaceuticals warehouse in Kyiv.
He said the attack was carried out by Russian drones.
“This morning Russian drones completely destroyed a major pharmaceuticals warehouse in Kyiv, incinerating stocks of medicines needed by the elderly and children. Russia’s campaign of terror against Ukrainian civilians continues,” Mr. Harris said on X.
On its website, Kusum Healthcare said it had a presence in 29 countries, including Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan Kenya, Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Niger, Cameroon, Mali and Tanzania.
In the last few days, Russia pounded several targets in Ukraine even as the U.S. has been pushing for a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday to discuss the ceasefire in Ukraine.
Saturday marks exactly a month since Russia refused to accept a full interim ceasefire proposed by the U.S.
As Russia maintained its offensive against Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha alleged that Russia was the “only obstacle to peace”.
Mr. Sybiha, referring to US-brokered talks for peace in Jeddah, said Ukraine agreed to the proposal on ceasefire.
“Russia refused to agree, instead putting forward conditions and demands,” he said.
From March 11 to April 11, Russia fired at Ukraine almost 70 missiles of various types, over 2,200 Shahed drones, and more than 6,000 guided aerial bombs, he said.
“These were Russian responses to peace proposals,” Mr. Sybiha said.
Published – April 12, 2025 11:28 pm IST
Donald Trump. Stock photo: Getty Images
US President Donald Trump has extended the sanctions imposed by Biden against Russia in 2021.
Source: a document of the US Federal Register.
Details: Trump has extended Biden’s executive orders, which imposed a state of emergency on Russia and allowed sanctions against Russia for another year.
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“Specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation… continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For this reason, the national emergency… must continue in effect beyond 15 April 2025,” the notice says.
The document mentions that Russia continues to pose a threat to free elections and democratic institutions in the United States and its allies.
It also mentions participation in and assistance with cyberattacks against the United States, the promotion and use of transnational corruption to influence foreign governments, activities against dissidents or journalists, undermining security in countries and regions critical to US national security, and violations of established international law principles, such as respect for state territorial integrity.
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