Covered bodies of victims of Russia’s missile strike on Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine, April 4, 2025

EA-Times Radio VideoCast: Defying Ceasefire Talks, Russia Demands Ukraine’s Capitulation

Friday’s Coverage: Officials Advise Trump — Don’t Call Putin

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1719 GMT:

Ukraine’s drones struck Russian fiber-optic and explosives factories on Friday night.

An official in the State security service SBU confirmed responsibility for an attack in the Samara region. Factories in the Mordovia region were also damaged.

The officials said the Samara factory “is one of the leading manufacturers of explosives in the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. As a result, the leadership of the factory have stopped their technological processes.”

The Moravia building belongs to Fiber Optic Systems, the main producer of optical fiber in Russia.

Fiber-optic drones are particularly effective in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, as they are resistant to electronic counter-measures.

UPDATE 1646 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has met the heads of the UK and French Defense Staffs, Adm. Antony Radakin and Gen. Thierry Burkhard.

“There is tangible progress and initial details on how the partner security contingent might be deployed,” Zelensky posted.

Zelensky also noted that the US Embassy’s response to Russia’s murder of 19 civilians and injuring of 74 in Kryvyi Rih, in a missile strike with cluster munitions on Friday, was “unpleasantly surprising”.

Zelensky noted that Ambassador Bridget Brink, in a social media post, refused to name Russia as the perpetrator.

Zelensky added:

Yes, the war must end. But to end it, we must not be afraid to call things by their names. We must not be afraid to pressure the one who continues this war and ignores all the world’s proposals to end it. We must pressure Russia – the one choosing to kill children instead of choosing a ceasefire. There must be additional sanctions against those who cannot exist without ballistic strikes on their neighboring nation. We must do everything in our capacity to save lives.

In contrast to Brink’s reticence about Russia, European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas posted, “Another reckless Russian attack struck a crowded residential area….Russia continues to destroy Ukraine [with] no interest in peace.”

UPDATE 0702 GMT:

Kateryna, a schoolteacher originally from Russian-occupied Melitopol in southeast Ukraine, reacts to the Trump Administration’s approach to the Kremlin:

We can see that the question of the occupied territories is not even on the table. So the outlook by this point is already pretty clear. We’re not going to see our parents any time soon.

Kateryna was among hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled from southern Ukraine, including Melitpol, as the Russians overran the area soon after the launch of their full-scale invasion in February 2022.

She had hoped to be reunited soon with her parents, who stayed behind. “Then two weeks turned into three years,” she says as she fears she will never see them again.

Like Kateryna, Maksym is with his family in Zaporizhzhia city near the frontline.

He says he feels let down by the US-Russia talks:

It’s not safe here. I don’t know a day when there hasn’t been an air strike on this town. But I chose to stay here, so that I could return….

If I had thought that this was going to happen, I would not have put my family in this kind of danger. We’d have gone to Spain or something.

UPDATE 0531 GMT:

The Trump Administration has terminated a grant for translating and publishing Ukrainian literature by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), citing a repurposing of funds “in furtherance of the President’s agenda”.

Oleh Kotsyuba, Director of Print and Digital Publications at HURI, said the National Endowment for the Humanities had notified the Institute of the cutoff.

The way that this termination affects us is that it basically limits our ability to work on these projects. We were supposed to be able to hire a part-time editor to work on the projects for the next two years, and now, because of the termination of this grant, we won’t be able to do that, which obviously puts them in jeopardy.

HURI’s publications program has published 14 volumes of Ukrainian literature in translation over the past 3 1/2 years. The NIH funding was the first federal grant for publications in more than 30 years.

UPDATE 0451 GMT:

The Trump Administration has admitted that it wrongly tried to deport some Ukrainian refugees.

The Department of Homeland Security notified the refugees that their legal status in the US was being revoked and that they needed to leave immediately. Recipients were informed that DHS was “exercising its discretion to terminate your parole”, which would end seven days from the date of the notice. Work permits would be revoked.

“Again, DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you,” the notice warned.

The DHS said on Friday that the e-mails were an “error” because of confusion around the legal protections granted to Ukrainians under the Biden Administration.

The Department did not say how many Ukrainians received the notice.

The Biden Administration’s Uniting for Ukraine program allowed around 240,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S. under humanitarian grounds, granting temporary work permits and deportation protections.

The Trump Administration has not officially ended the U4U program, but it has suspended admissions and status renewals.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia’s forces have murdered another 18 civilians, including nine children, in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

At least 61 people, including 12 children, were wounded. More than 30, including a three-month-old baby, are in hospital.

The Russians have recurrently struck the city in the Dnipropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine. On Wednesday, a missile strike killed at least four civilians and wounded 14, and nine were injured eight days ago.

Yesterday’s assault damaged residential blocks, setting fires. Ukraine’s General Staff posted:

Russian forces struck Kryvyi Rih with an Iskander-M ballistic missile with a cluster warhead, which is designed to hit a large area and a large number of people.

Zelensky responded in his nightly video address to the nation:

Russia also continued to break the ceasefire, to which it agreed last month, on attacks on energy infrastructure. A drone struck a thermal power plant in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Zelensky explained:

These strikes cannot be accidental – the Russians know exactly what they’re hitting. They know these are energy facilities that should be protected from attacks under what Russia itself promised to the American side. Every Russian promise ends with missiles or drones, bombs or artillery. Diplomacy means nothing to them.

That’s why pressure is needed – sufficient pressure on Russia so they feel the consequences of every lie, every strike, every single day they take lives and prolong the war. A ceasefire could have already been reached – it is Putin who rejects it.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed, producing no evidence, that that the strike on Kryvyi Rih targeted a military gathering.

The Ukrainian military countered the “false information”: “The missile struck a residential area with a playground.” Kryvyi Rih’s military administrator Oleksandr Vilkul noted the attacks on private residences, triggering fires at four sites and killing an elderly woman in her home.