Ukraine war briefing: Russian drone attack kills four in Dnipro as Zelenskyy cautious on new US minerals deal

A mass Russian drone attack killed four people, injured 19 and sparked a large fire in a hotel and restaurant complex and other buildings in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro late on Friday, the regional governor said. A high-rise apartment block and nearly 10 homes caught fire, Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram. Firefighting crews had brought the blaze in the hotel complex under control. The casualty toll was likely to rise, with three of the injured in serious condition, Lysak said in an earlier post. “It is also now known that the enemy directed more than 20 drones toward the city. Most of them were downed.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not accept any mineral rights deal that threatened its integration with the European Union but that it was too early to pass judgment on a dramatically expanded minerals deal proposed by Washington. The Ukrainian president said Kyiv’s lawyers needed to review the draft before he could say more about the US offer, a summary of which suggested the US was demanding all Ukraine’s natural resources income for years. He also said Kyiv would not recognise billions of dollars of past US aid as loans, though he did not say whether such a demand featured in the latest draft version received by a top government official. Zelenskyy said the text was “entirely different” from an earlier framework agreement that he had been set to sign with the US president, Donald Trump, before their talks descended into a televised clash at the White House last month.

Ukrainian forces have staged a little-publicised incursion into Russia’s Belgorod region, according to Russian military bloggers, just as Kyiv’s troops are losing their grip on the pocket of Russia’s adjacent Kursk region they captured last year. Several Russian military correspondents said on Friday that Ukrainian troops were inside Belgorod and fighting battles with Russian forces there. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has confirmed the reports, though Russia’s defence ministry said 10 days ago its forces had thwarted five Ukrainian attempts to push across the border in Belgorod. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said on Friday its air force had struck a border post in Russia’s Bryansk region, destroying military infrastructure in an area it had identified as the site of drone launches.

Vladimir Putin renewed his call for a “transitional administration” to be put in place in Ukraine to allow for new elections – essentially urging the toppling of Volodymyr Zelenskyy – and vowed Russia’s army would “finish off” Ukrainian troops. However, Zelenskyy dismissed Putin’s call as his latest ploy to delay a peace deal. And the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said Ukraine had a legitimate government that must be respected. It was not clear how far Putin’s idea for a UN-led temporary administration was meant to be taken seriously, reports Dan Sabbagh, given that the Kremlin clarified that he had not raised this idea in recent phone calls with Donald Trump.

The UN rights chief called for an end to the “horrific suffering” caused by attacks on civilians in Ukraine. “Recent weeks have seen intense activity around a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, which would be very welcome,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council on Friday. “Limited ceasefires that protect shipping lanes and infrastructure are a welcome step forward. What is most needed now is an end to the horrific suffering being inflicted daily in Ukraine.” Donald Trump has pushed for a ceasefire since returning to office in January, “and yet, in parallel with these talks, fighting in Ukraine has intensified, and is killing and injuring even more civilians”, Turk said. “Casualty figures in the first three months of this year were 30% higher than the same period last year.”

Ukraine said Friday it had received back the bodies of 909 of its soldiers killed during battles with Russia, in the largest such repatriation in more than three years of war. The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government agency, said it was “grateful for the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross” and that the remains had been returned from the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The EU’s commissioner for agriculture said the bloc expects to reduce farm imports from Ukraine when it renegotiates a trade deal with Kyiv set to expire in June. “Import quotas won’t remain the same as in this temporary liberalisation. So, indeed, there will be fewer imports,” Christophe Hansen told Agence France-Presse on Friday, referring to a deal struck after Russia’s 2022 invasion granting duty-free access to the bloc for Ukrainian agricultural goods.

The International Monetary Fund said on Friday its board completed a review that would enable disbursing $400m to Ukraine to be channelled for budget support. Ukraine’s economy remained resilient despite challenging conditions, the IMF said, while adding that Ukraine’s economic growth – which slowed in the second half of last year – would see a continued slowdown in 2025 due to a tight labour market and attacks on energy infrastructure.