Ukraine war briefing: Russian-occupied Crimea declares ‘emergency’ as Zelenskyy’s forces step up attacks

Ukrainian president says Crimea at centre of Kyiv’s ‘policy of ensuring justice’ against Moscow. What we know on day 1,584

Authorities in Russian-annexed Crimea have declared an “emergency situation” in a bid to ease the fallout from increasing Ukrainian aerial attacks on the peninsula. Friday’s announcement came amid fuel shortages and power cuts triggered by the Ukrainian attacks on logistics chains and oil facilities across Crimea, the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine and southern Russia. Kyiv calls its stepped up air attacks fair retribution for Russia’s near-daily barrages on Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying on social media: “We are doing everything to force Russia to end the war and restore justice. And it is Crimea that is at the centre of this policy of ensuring justice.”

The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol said emergency ⁠crews had worked to ease power cuts but told residents of Crimea’s largest city to use appliances sparingly to ⁠avoid power overloads and shortages. Crimea authorities have already suspended fuel sales to private motorists, and Sevastopol introduced restrictions on operating ⁠hours for public transport, shops, cafes and street lights. The restrictions come as Russian air defences shot down 660 Ukrainian drones overnight, including over Moscow and Crimea, its defence ministry said on Friday – one of the highest figures since the start of the war. “Today, Ukraine is depriving Russia of this launchpad and drawing a line under its attempts to normalise war,” Zelenskyy said.

Two countries on Nato’s eastern flank have warned that Russia is preparing a possible “provocation” in the Baltic states or Poland in an effort to test the cohesion of the western military alliance, reports Dan Sabbagh. Western sources also fear there could be danger on the horizon because the Kremlin is coming under pressure from Ukraine’s campaign of long-range attacks on targets near Moscow and St Petersburg.

A Russian drone ⁠strike on ⁠Friday ​killed two passengers aboard a minibus in Ukraine’s south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and ⁠one person in the border Sumy region, regional officials said. Dnipropetrovsk’s regional ⁠governor said on two people ‌died and 12 were injured, including two ‌children, in the strike in Nikopol, while Sumy’s regional governor said a drone strike there killed a man in a village outside ⁠the main regional centre, also called Sumy.

An oil tanker suspected of being part of ⁠Russia’s “shadow fleet” was taken to waters near Marseille on Friday, a ⁠day after it ⁠was ​seized by France’s navy near Sicily, local authorities said. The vessel, the Deliver, ⁠is one of nine ships that have been seized across Europe since the ⁠start of 2026, all thought to have been ​used by Russia ‌to evade ‌western sanctions on its oil trade. The Russian embassy in ​France called the seizure “piracy”.

Ukraine plans to build domestic computing capacity for artificial intelligence with Kyivstar, the company said on Friday. Kyivstar said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the economy ministry at the ⁠Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdansk, while parent VEON would provide financial backing for a first phase ​that Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov said could ‌need at least 3-5 ‌megawatts of capacity and tens of millions of dollars. “The biggest consumer of Ukrainian AI ‌right now is the military,” Komarov told Reuters. “You cannot run military computing somewhere outside. It is a matter of national security.”

Ukraine and Russia swapped 160 captured soldiers on Friday, Moscow and Kyiv said, the latest prisoner of war exchange in war. Zelenskyy said the Ukrainians had all been held captive since 2022 and posted pictures on social media of the men wrapped in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flags, smiling and embracing each other. After the release Russian ⁠human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said she and her Ukrainian counterpart ⁠Dmytro Lubinets had agreed to ⁠jointly visit prisoners ​of ‌war and ‌had exchanged lists ‌of soldiers being held by both countries, Russia’s state RIA news agency ‌reported.

Former Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, once seen as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, has died at the age of 73. Ivanov ⁠was a key member ⁠of the group known as ​the “siloviki”, or strongmen, who, like Putin, had risen through the ranks of the Soviet KGB security service and wielded huge influence after Putin took power at the turn of the millennium. The Kremlin said in a statement on Friday that Putin “expressed his deepest condolences” to Ivanov’s family and friends. Ivanov helped shape Russia’s post-Soviet security state and later framed Nato’s expansion as a strategic concern for Russia.