Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘no longer has upper hand’ in war, says ex-CIA chief

Russian attacks on two cities in Ukraine’s southeast on Tuesday killed seven people and injured more than two dozen others, ⁠officials said, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of escalating strikes instead of agreeing to an Easter ceasefire.

A small FPV (first-person-view) Russian drone smashed into a bus approaching a bus stop in Nikopol’s city ⁠centre, Oleksandr Ganzha, the governor of ​the ⁠eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said on the Telegram app.

Four people were killed, and at least 16 ⁠were injured, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“When such terror against people ​and ⁠lives occurs daily, blocking new ‌sanctions against Russia, attempting to weaken existing ones, and trading with Russia all look bizarre,” he said on X.

The ‌images from the site he ‌shared showed the burnt bus with smashed windows. Three bodies lay on the pavement nearby as rescuers were helping the injured.

In the southern ⁠city of Kherson, less than 5 kilometres (3.11 miles) from the frontline, a non-stop half-hour Russian attack on a residential area killed three elderly people and injured seven more, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials and human rights organisations have accused Moscow’s troops of deliberate and ‌systemic FPV drone attacks on civilians, in particular ​in Kherson.

“In Kherson, civilians are effectively subjected ‌to constant so-called ‘safaris’, with casualties ⁠every day,” Zelensky said, commenting on the Tuesday attack.

Russia ⁠denies targeting civilians, but hundreds of thousands have been killed and ‌injured in its ​strikes since Moscow launched the ‌full-scale aggression against its neighbour ​in early 2022.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has said that he thinks the US stance for supporting Ukraine is “very valuable” for Hungary as vice president JD Vance visited.

Mr Orban, who is up for re-election, said he’d discussed the Ukraine war with the US vice president.

Hungary, which has broken with most European Union countries by refusing to assist Ukraine with financial assistance or weapons to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, has remained firmly committed to purchasing Russian energy despite EU efforts to wean off such supplies.

In November, Hungary received an exemption from US sanctions on Russian oil and gas after a White House meeting between Mr Orban and Mr Trump.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban offered last year to help Russian ​President Vladimir Putin “in any way”, such as by hosting a summit in Budapest to settle the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported, citing the transcript of a phone call.

A Hungarian government spokesman did not immediately respond to a ⁠request for comment and for the release of the transcript of an October 17 call between the two leaders reviewed by Bloomberg, but not verified by The Independent.

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.

Orban, a eurosceptic nationalist in power since 2010, faces his toughest re-election ⁠bid of the past 16 years on ​12 April.

Orban has fostered warm ties with Putin despite the Ukraine war, and maintained Hungary’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas. Citing a dispute ⁠with Kyiv over a war-damaged oil pipeline, Orban has also blocked the implementation of ​a European ⁠Union loan to Ukraine agreed ‌back in December.

The cordial conversation between Orban and Putin took place as US President Donald Trump agreed to a second summit on the war in Ukraine to ‌be hosted in the Hungarian capital.

In the phone call, ‌Orban calls Putin a friend, noting that their close ties date back to a 2009 meeting in St Petersburg.

“But yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in ⁠any way — there is a story in our Hungarian picture books where a mouse helps a lion,” he tells Putin according to the transcript. “I am ready to help immediately … In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”

The Kremlin said on Tuesday there were a huge number of requests for Russian energy ⁠from a range of different places amid a grave global energy crisis that was shaking the foundations of the oil and gas markets.

The US and Israeli war against Iran has triggered an energy crisis for the global economy by trapping a large volume of oil in the Gulf due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most vessels.

The crisis ⁠comes just as European consumers were trying to end their ​reliance ⁠on Russian energy to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, and as Russia itself looks set to cut its output in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure. President Vladimir ⁠Putin has suggested switching supplies more swiftly away from European customers if they do not want Russian energy.

“Now ​that the ⁠world has confidently embarked on the ‌path of a rather serious economic and energy crisis, which is growing day by day, the market and market conditions in the field of energy and energy resources have completely changed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“There ‌are a huge number of requests for the purchase of ‌our energy resources from alternative sources. We are negotiating, we are negotiating in such a way that this situation best suits our interests.”

Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, produces around 10 million barrels of crude per day and about half are exported. Russia ⁠holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves. Still, Russia may in fact have to reduce oil production because Ukrainian strikes on ports, pipelines and refineries have cut export capability by 1 million barrels per day, or a fifth of total capacity, Reuters reported last week.

Cameroon said Russian authorities have confirmed ​the deaths of 16 Cameroonians fighting against Ukraine, the first time the Central African country has spoken about the involvement of its nationals in ⁠the ongoing war.

In a statement broadcast on state media on Monday evening, the foreign ministry called on the families of the dead to make contact with ministry officials in ⁠the capital city of Yaounde.

A ​Cameroonian ⁠diplomatic note, also dated Monday and seen by Reuters, referred to the deceased as “military contractors ⁠of Cameroonian nationality” operating in a special military operation zone, ​a ⁠term Russia uses ‌to describe the war in Ukraine.

Neither the statement nor the diplomatic note specified how the 16 men ended up ‌fighting for Russia, nor did ‌they provide details on the location, timing and circumstances of their deaths.

The Russian embassy in Yaounde did not immediately respond to a ⁠Reuters request for comment.

Ukraine said in February that more than 1,700 Africans were fighting for Russia, though analysts say the true figure is likely higher.

Russian authorities have denied illegally recruiting African citizens to fight in Ukraine.

In an internal memo issued in March 2025 and ‌seen by Reuters, Cameroon’s defense minister expressed concern ​that soldiers were leaving the country to join ‌the war in Ukraine ⁠and instructed commanding officers to closely monitor their ⁠units.

Cameroon has said it does not officially deploy troops abroad outside ‌of international or ​regional mandates and has warned ‌citizens against taking part ​in foreign conflicts.

Ukrainian forces deployed British drones to bring down a Russia-controlled bridge in the Kherson part of the country in a massive operation, senior military officials said, the Telegraph has reported.

The attack, carried out early last year using a Malloy T-150 heavy-lift drone, dealt a massive blow to Russia’s ability to carry out a military offensive across the river’s right bank in Kherson, the report added.

This is the first time a drone-led operation resulted in destroying a major bridge, according to the military officials.

“Bridges are relatively easy to destroy from underneath,” Colonel Oleksii Bulakhov, the regiment’s commander said, adding that their “engineering makes them extremely robust from the outside”.

Russian satellites have made dozens of detailed imagery surveys of military facilities and critical sites across the Middle East to help Iran strike US forces and other targets, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment.

The conclusions, reviewed by Reuters, also found that Russian and Iranian hackers were collaborating in the cyber domain. They represent the most detailed account yet of how Russia has provided secret support ⁠to Iran since Israel and the US launched their assault on 28 February.

Russian satellites, the undated assessment said, made at least 24 surveys of areas in 11 Middle Eastern countries from 21 March to 31 March, covering 46 “objects”, including US and other military bases and sites including airports and oil fields.

Within days of being surveyed, military bases and headquarters were targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, the assessment said, in what it described as a clear pattern.

A Western military source and a separate regional security source told Reuters that their intelligence also indicated intense Russian satellite ⁠activity in the region and said that imagery had been shared with Iran.

Nine surveys covered parts ​of ⁠Saudi Arabia, including five over the King Khalid Military City near Hafar Al-Batin, in what appeared to be an effort to locate elements of the US-made THAAD air defence system, the Ukrainian assessment said.

Areas of Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also came under satellite surveillance twice, while ⁠places in Israel, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia did once, it said. In an emerging trend, the assessment added, Russian satellites were actively ​surveying the Strait ⁠of Hormuz, a vital waterway for a fifth of global oil ‌and LNG flows where Iran has imposed a de facto blockade to all but “non-hostile vessels”.