Ukraine war briefing: Slovakia PM calls on EU to lift sanctions on Russian oil and gas | Russia

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner could travel to Kyiv in April, the Ukrainian president’s top aide Kyrylo Budanov has said, amid efforts to revive peace talks with Russia which stalled after the outbreak of war in the Gulf. “Kushner, Witkoff, Lindsey Graham – those are the ones expected to come. Who else will be there, we’ll see,” Budanov told Bloomberg, adding that the meeting could take place shortly after Orthodox Easter on 12 April. Such a meeting would mark the first official visit to Kyiv for Witkoff and Kushner, who have previously met Ukrainian representatives in the US, but have travelled to Moscow for talks with Russia.

A Russian drone hit a covered market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol on Saturday, killing five people and wounding 25, officials said. Russia has been firing aerial broadsides at Ukraine throughout its more than four-year invasion, mostly at night, but in recent weeks it has stepped up daytime attacks. The market in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region, was hit at 9.50am local time, the local prosecutor’s office said. Regional governor, Oleksandr Ganja, said in a Telegram post that three women and two men were killed.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 286 drones overnight, of which 260 were intercepted. In the city of Sumy, not far from the border with Russia, a strike wounded 11 people, the national police said. In the capital, Kyiv, a drone strike caused a fire on the first floor of a three-story office and warehouse building, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. No casualties were reported. In the partially occupied Donetsk region, a Russian drone strike hit a civilian car, killing one woman and wounding another, according to the head of the local military administration.

The Russian-installed head of the occupied Luhansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, said Ukrainian forces hit railroad infrastructure in the region and private houses, killing a family of three – a couple and their 8-year-old child.