Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy says US has linked security guarantees to ceding of Donbas

The US is making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country’s eastern region of Donbas to Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters in an interview. With the US focused on its own conflict with Iran, Donald Trump is applying pressure to Ukraine in an effort to bring a quick end to the four-year war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, Zelenskyy said. “The Middle East definitely has an impact on President Trump, and I think on his next steps. President Trump, unfortunately, still chooses a strategy of putting more pressure on the Ukrainian side,” he told Reuters. “I would very much like the American side to understand that the eastern part of our country is part of our security guarantees,” he said. Russia sought to blackmail the US by offering to stop sharing military intelligence with Iran if, in return, Washington would cut off Ukraine from its intelligence data, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. Zelenskyy, who said on Monday that Ukraine’s military intelligence had “irrefutable” evidence that Russia was continuing to provide intelligence to Iran, told Reuters he had seen the data but provided no further details. “I have reports from our intelligence services showing that Russia is doing this and saying: ‘I will not pass on intelligence to Iran if America stops passing intelligence to Ukraine.’ Isn’t that blackmail? Absolutely,” Zelenskyy said. An industrial area near one of Russia’s biggest oil refineries was damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack, a Russian official said on Thursday. More than 20 drones were shot down over the northern Leningrad region, according to Governor Alexander Drozdenko. Drozdenko did not specify what part of the industrial area was damaged, but the town of Kirishi is home to one of Russia’s largest oil refineries. At least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity is at a halt after Ukrainian drone attacks, a disputed attack on a major pipeline and the seizure of tankers, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Russian attacks killed two people in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv and the region around it and a strike on the Danube port of Izamil damaged port facilities and energy infrastructure, officials said. Prosecutors in Kharkiv region, in a statement on Telegram early on Thursday, said a woman injured in an attack on the city of Kharkiv had died of her injuries in hospital. They said nine people were injured in strikes on two districts of the city, a frequent target of Russian forces, 30km (18 miles) from the border. Prosecutors also said a Russian drone had killed a man in his car in a district closer to the border. Ukrainian drone strikes killed two people on Wednesday in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, the regional governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov, writing on Telegram, said drones had killed an 18-year-old man aboard a motorcycle in a village near the border and a woman in her car in the town of Graivoron, also near the border. Belgorod has been a frequent target of Ukrainian forces during the four-year war pitting Kyiv against Moscow. Ukrainian shelling of a public building in the city of Belgorod killed four people last week. Zimbabwe said on Wednesday that 15 of its citizens had been killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the latest African country to report recruits dying on the frontlines. The information minister, Zhemu Soda, told a press conference that the 15 had been deceived into enlisting, referring to it as human trafficking. He said one recruitment method used by traffickers targeting Zimbabweans was social media. An official at Russia’s embassy in Harare declined to comment. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said on Wednesday he had given the military permission to board and detain Russian ships his government alleges are part of a network of vessels that enables Moscow to export oil despite western sanctions. Other European nations have stepped up efforts to disrupt Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of tankers used by Moscow to fund its four-year war against Ukraine. Starmer said he approved more aggressive action against the vessels because the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was likely “rubbing his hands” at the sharp rise in oil prices driven by the US-Israel war against Iran. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally, was greeted by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as he arrived on his first visit to the reclusive nation, the Korean Central news agency reported on Thursday. A ceremony welcoming Lukashenko took place on Kim Il Sung Square on 25 March, with Kim “gladly” meeting and “warmly” welcoming the Belarus leader, the report said. Lukashenko visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun – where the embalmed bodies of Kim’s father and grandfather lie in state – to pay his respects, flanked by top North Korean officials, the report said. Lukashenko laid a bouquet on behalf of Putin, it added. A Turkish crude oil tanker, the Altura, was hit by a drone 15 nautical miles (28km) off Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait after leaving a Russian port, the broadcaster NTV reported on Thursday. The Sierra Leone-flagged vessel had left Russia’s port of Novorossiysk with about 1m barrels of crude oil, according to ship-tracking data. It is sanctioned by the EU and Britain. NTV said there was an explosion on the bridge of the ship, owned by the Turkish firm Besiktas, when it was struck in the Black Sea and that its engine room took on water. Its 27 personnel were safe, NTV reported.