This week, battles continued to rage along the front lines. The war led by the U.S. and Israel against Iran affects Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Particularly, it gave a respite to the Russian economy, analysts said. Russia can also benefit from the fact that the war with Iran is sucking up expensive U.S. air defense munitions, Politico said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Monday that his government had received 11 requests for help — from the U.S. and countries in the Middle East and Europe — on how to deal with Iran’s Shaheds. Ukraine has “cards” to play and everyone understands that they are there, Zelenskyi told Irish journalist Caolan Robertson in an interview released mid-week.
Ukraine continues to hold the defensive lines. Its troops continue a counteroffensive operation in the Oleksandrivka direction, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskyi said Monday. Ukraine’s counterattacks in the south have caused cascading effects for Russian forces and may disrupt Russia’s spring-summer 2026 offensive campaign plan, the Institute for the Study of War said early in the week. Ukraine launched a record number of drones on Russia in one day between Sunday and Monday. It struck the Kremniy El plant in Russia’s Bryansk on Tuesday, marking the first use of drones to direct fire in real time since the invasion. Ukrainian drones struck the Tikhoretsk oil pumping station in southern Russia, Thursday reports said.Meanwhile, Russia is intensifying its campaign of strikes against Ukrainian ports and railway infrastructure. Russia’s aerial attacks continue to cause civilian casualties. A Russian airstrike on the city of Slovyansk in Donetsk region on Tuesday killed four people and injured 21 others. An overnight drone attack on the community of Mena in Chernihiv region on Thursday killed a 15-year-old girl and injured her parents, local authorities said.
Russia’s deportations of Ukrainian children amount to crimes against humanity, UN inquiry concludes.
In its latest report, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said the deportation and forcible transfer of children by Russian authorities, as well as enforced disappearances, represented a crime against humanity and a war crime. An unjustifiable delay in children’s repatriation amounted to a war crime, it also said.
The report, presented at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday, studied the cases of 1,205 children from five regions in Ukraine — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Kharkiv and Mykolayiv. More than 80 per cent of these children have not yet been returned. They were placed in families or institutions across 21 Russian regions and given Russian citizenship. Their profiles appeared on adoption or foster placement databases, the report says.
It also concludes that Russian authorities, “at the highest levels — including President Putin and entities directly answerable to him” had coordinated the deportations and forcible transfers.