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Ukraine has fought off 36 Russian tanks in the western Donetsk region, according to a think tank, in what is believed to have been one of Moscow’s biggest armoured vehicle assaults of the war.
Citing a Ukrainian serviceman, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Kyiv’s forces repelled 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles as part of a Russian battalion-sized mechanised assault near the key town of Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast on Saturday.
The ISW added that geolocated imagery shows a large number of destroyed and damaged Russian armored vehicles and tanks, with the Ukrainian serviceman reporting that Moscow lost at least 20 in the failed attack.
It comes as Kyiv’s military administration reported five hypersonic Zircon missiles are among the 180 weapons Russia has fired at the Ukrainian capital city since the start of this year.
Meanwhile, Russian shelling from Kharkiv to Lviv killed five people across Ukraine on Sunday.
Vladimir Putin’s forces launched 23 missile attacks and 61 airstrikes, as well as 41 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems, Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces said. It said a total of 49 combat encounters took place along the frontline.
Russia looking to remove Taliban’s designation as terrorist organization
Russia is looking at removing the Taliban’s designation as a terrorist organization, Meduza reported on 1 April.
The country’s foreign ministry is currently “working through the issues” and a final decision will be made by the Kremlin.
The announcement came on the same day that Russian state news agency TASS said the Taliban had been invited to participate in the “Russia – Islamic World: KazanForum,” scheduled for May.
Ukrainian foreign minister heads to The Hague today
Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba is heading to The Hague today for bilateral talks with his Dutch counterpart Hanke Bruins Slot, the ministry said.
Mr Kuleba’s visit to the Netherlands comes just days after he returned from a diplomatic meeting in India where he said he went to advance Kyiv’s vision of the path to peace in Ukraine and to strengthen ties with India.
The Ukrainian leader will attend a ministerial conference where Volodymyr Zelensky’s seven-point peace formula “Restoration of Justice” will be discussed. The talks will also review the results of documenting and investigating crimes committed by the Russian occupiers on the territory of Ukraine, the foreign ministry said.
Ukraine hopes to hold a summit of world leaders without Russian participation in the coming months to advance its blueprint for peace, a “formula” that calls among other things for the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory.
“Particular attention will also be paid to further steps toward the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” it added.
Ukraine’s drones can fly over a thousand kilometres, says Ukrainian minister
The Ukrainian drones attacking Russian oil infrastructure have a range spanning hundreds to a thousand kilometres, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said.
“Most of the drones that attacked Russian oil refineries have a range of 700 to 1,000 kilometres, but now there are models that can fly over 1,000 kilometres,” the minister said in an interview with German news website Welt.
He added that Ukraine plans to build more than a million drones this year and has already managed to increase the production of long-range aerial vehicles tenfold compared to 2023’s production.
Mr Fedorov added that the first prototypes of artificial intelligence drones, likely in fewer units, could make it to the battlefield by the end of this year.
He added that while it is not yet clear who is winning the technological war, in some areas Ukraine is winning and in some areas “Russians are surpassing us”.
North Korea still supplying weapons to Russia, says Pentagon
North Korea continues to supply Russia with weapons, the Pentagon said last night, as the Kim Jong-un regime becomes the leading supplier of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking about the sharing of munitions between North Korea and Russia, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said: “We do assess that the partnership continues to flourish, that North Korea does continue to provide support to Russia. We’ve certainly had declassified intelligence read out to all of you. So we do believe that support continues but I don’t have anything to share in terms of, like, recent shipments or anything like that.
“It continues to grow. We see that partnership – you know, we continue to see Russia reach out to partners like North Korea, to Iran, to continue to get support for its war in Ukraine. And, you know, we continue to stand with Ukraine for however long it takes.”
Russia has used nearly 50 North Korean missiles to attack Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to Oleksandr Filchakov, the head of the Kharkiv Oblast prosecutor’s office.
In October last year, the North Korea-Russia border saw a sharp increase in rail traffic in likely signs of Kim Jong-un helping Russian president Vladimir Putin by supplying munitions, a US think-tank claimed, citing recent satellite photos.
Satellite images from 5 October showed a “dramatic and unprecedented level of freight railcar traffic” at the Tumangang rail facility, according to Beyond Parallel, a website run by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
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Ukrainian flag raised by soldiers after ‘grey zone’ towns on border reclaimed
Ukrainian flag raised by soldiers after ‘grey zone’ towns on border reclaimed
Ukraine’s border guards have raised the nation’s flag over three towns in the “grey zone” on the eastern border with Russia. Footage shared by the State Border Service of Ukraine shows flags being raised on a number of buildings in the towns of Shabelne, Pischane and Degtyarne. “The territory of the destroyed villages is densely mined, and due to constant enemy shelling, it is uninhabitable,” a statement, shared alongside the video, read. “However, border guards of the ‘Steel Border’ offensive guard brigade control the area and remind the enemy that this is our land and he has no place here.”
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Source: independent.co.uk
