Here is where things stand on Friday, 18 April:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems destroyed or intercepted 71 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight, of which 49 were downed in the Kursk region.
• The ministry said it seized the village of Preobrazhensky in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, state news agency TASS reports.
• Kyiv’s air force said Russia launched five missiles and 75 drones at Ukraine overnight, out of which 25 were shot down and another 30 did not reach their targets due to electronic warfare measures.

• Russian artillery shelling killed two and injured five others in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
• The death toll from recent Russian mass attacks on Dnipro rose to three while 31 others were injured. At least 15 buildings were also damaged, according to Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov.
• A Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson killed two road workers, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin said.
• Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said Ukraine had gained small pockets of land amounting to about 16 square kilometres (6 square miles) near the Ukrainian settlements of Udachne, Kotlyne and Shevchenko, all of which are a short distance from the logistics hub, Pokrovsk.

Ceasefire

• The Russian-installed management of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant said the facility was attacked by Ukrainian drones despite a mutually agreed 30-day moratorium on energy strikes.
• Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Ukraine had violated the agreement daily, claiming a total of 80 strikes so far on energy sites. According to Moscow’s Defence Ministry, 10 attacks were carried out in the past day.
• Ukraine’s largest private energy producer DTEK said Russian drone attacks destroyed its energy infrastructure in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

• A Ukrainian delegation met with representatives from the United Kingdom, France and Germany in Paris to discuss a potential ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said.
• Ukraine and the European countries also met with United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Paris to plead Kyiv’s case for an equitable ceasefire deal with Russia.
• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that a meeting between the US, Ukraine and European countries in Paris was a chance for Witkoff to inform them about the status of ceasefire discussions.
• A Russian envoy said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Witkoff was “extremely productive” but accused some countries of trying to disrupt the dialogue between the two countries.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent as an initial step towards the clinching of an agreement on mineral extraction in Ukraine, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged putting “pressure” on Russia to end Moscow’s three-year war on Kyiv.
• President Zelenskyy also said Ukraine has evidence that China was supplying artillery and gunpowder to Russia.
• Zelenskyy said Russia has reduced strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities but has started targeting civilian infrastructure instead.
• Zelenskyy also said Kyiv was prepared to buy at least 10 Patriot air defence systems from the US to protect itself from Russian attacks.
• Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zakharova said the use of a Taurus missile to strike Russia would be considered direct participation by Germany in the Ukrainian war. Her comments followed Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz’s comments expressing willingness to supply Kyiv with the missiles.