Ukraine-Russia conflict newest: Macron warns robust motion wanted if Putin continues to ‘refuse peace’

A Ukrainian drone damaged Russian railway tracks in the southwest Krasnodar region, local authorities said on Monday.

“There were no casualties, and no fire occurred,” the administration of the region said on Telegram.

Russia’s defence ministry earlier reported that its air defences shot down19 Ukrainian drones overnight, four of which were over the Krasnodar region.

Russian defences shot down 19 Ukrainian drones overnight, Moscow’s defence ministry said on Monday.

Thirteen of the drones were destroyed over the Sea of Azov bordering southwest Russia, and the rest of the drones were downed over the Krasnodar and Bryansk regions and over the Crimean Peninsula.

Moscow does not alway reveal the total number of drones fired by Kyiv’s forces.

Russia claimed it had captured the village of Basivka in Ukraine’s Sumy oblast in March this year, but Ukrainian officials have now denied the report, calling it part of a “disinformation campaign”.

While Moscow said the move could disrupt Ukrainian supply lines, Kyiv confirmed ongoing border clashes but insisted its forces were repelling Russian assault groups.

“Russia continues its disinformation campaign regarding the seizure of settlements in Sumy Oblast or the breakthrough of the border,” border guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko told Ukrainian Pravda.

Tanks and deeply personal items donated by Ukrainian refugees – including a hamster cage, house keys from a bombed home in Mariupol, and drawings by an 11-year-old girl – are at the heart of what is believed to be the UK’s largest exhibition on the Ukraine war, now open at The Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.

Opened by Ukraine’s ambassador, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the exhibition includes many artefacts of symbolic value. “It’s about the personal stories,” the museum’s exhibitions manager, Luke Clark, told BBC News.

“If you come here and you take anything away from this exhibition, it’s hopefully that you’ll have hope for those people who are still out there [in Ukraine], the people who are still in the UK and the hope that they will go home.

“We want to give as much hope to those people as possible.”

The exhibition is due to last for two years.

Restarting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — currently occupied by Russia — would be unsafe and extremely difficult under wartime conditions, according to Ukraine’s nuclear energy chief, Petro Kotin.

He warned that restarting even one reactor during the war is “impossible” due to a lack of cooling water, personnel, and power.

If Ukraine regains control, it could take two months to two years to safely bring the plant back online after full demilitarisation and safety checks, the chief executive of Energoatom said, according to The Guardian.

Russia has said it intends to restart the plant when conditions allow, but experts have raised serious safety concerns, especially given the degraded infrastructure, risk of mines, and untrained staff.

In February this year, Alexey Likhachev, head of Russian nuclear operator Rosatom, said it would be restarted when “military and political conditions allow”.

Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said Moscow and Washington could resume contact this week, according to TASS.

Dmitriev is the Kremlin’s international economy envoy and last week became the most senior Russian official to visit Washington since the start of the war in Ukraine.

He told Channel One television, that there were “positive dynamics” but cautioned that “there are undoubtedly still a large number of enemies of Russia in the American government”.

Dmitriev, who also heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said that “there is now a fragile hope that dialogue has been restored”, while stressing the need to counter what he described as “information attacks” – a phrase typically used by Russian officials to refer to critical international media reports.

According to the Center for Civil Liberties — a Ukrainian rights group that won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize — more than 20,000 Ukrainian civilians are currently held by Russia in occupied territories and within Russia itself — a number also cited by Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets.

The group has claimed that there is a growing body of evidence that reveals that thousands of civilians are being held in Russian custody – often without charges or under dubious accusations such as terrorism and espionage.

The “People First” campaign, launched in January by the Center for Civil Liberties alongside the Russian group Memorial (also a Nobel laureate), is demanding that the release of all civilian captives be prioritised in any peace talks.

“While politicians discuss natural resources, possible territorial concessions, geopolitical interests and even Zelensky’s suit in the Oval Office, they’re not talking about people,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties told the Associated Press.

Memorial says it has verified at least 1,672 Ukrainian civilians in Russian custody, though the real number is believed to be far higher. “There’s a larger number of them that we don’t know about,” Oleg Orlov, co-founder of Memorial said.

An American citizen awaiting trial in Moscow for allegedly assaulting a police officer has been forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital following a court order.

A Moscow court approved the involuntary admission of Joseph Tater to a psychiatric hospital following a medical evaluation on 15 March, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Doctors reportedly described him as exhibiting “tension, impulsivity, persecutory delusions, and a lack of awareness about his condition”.

Mr Tater’s defence lawyer, who has appealed his forced hospitalisation, said that the officials were trying to “isolate the defendant from society”, Tass quoted him as saying.

Human rights groups have long condemned Russia’s use of psychiatric facilities against dissenters — a tactic that echoes Soviet-era practices. Mr Tater’s case adds to a growing list of Americans detained in Russia on criminal charges.

Mr Tater was arrested last year in August.

The 46-year-old had said at the court hearing in September last year that he had sought political asylum in Russia as he was being persecuted by the CIA.

US president Donald Trump renewed his call for a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war on Sunday, urging Russian president Vladimir Putin to stop the violence.

“We are talking to Russia. We would like them to stop,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One.

“I don’t like the bombing, the bombing goes on and on, and every week thousands of young people being killed.”

His comments come after president Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to amp up pressure on Russia after it launched its latest deadly air raid on Kyiv.

“Putin does not want to end the war, he is looking for ways to preserve the option of reigniting it at any moment, with even greater force,” Zelensky said in his evening address yesterday.

“That’s exactly why all forms of pressure on Russia must continue: strengthening our ability to defend ourselves, maintaining sanctions, and ensuring that diplomacy – any conversation with Moscow – leaves them no opportunity to kill.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian attacks from the Black Sea on Sunday show why Moscow is refusing an unconditional ceasefire.

He said that “they want to preserve their ability to strike our cities and ports from the sea”.

He said that a ceasefire at sea is crucial for security and peace, suggesting Vladimir Putin does not want to end the war.

“He is looking for ways to preserve the option of reigniting it at any moment, with even greater force.”