Some of Ukraine’s allies have sent Kyiv “signals” about the possibility of scaling back the country’s long-range strikes on Russia’s oil sector as global energy prices have surged, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. The Ukrainian president said he was ready to reciprocate if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine’s energy system, and that Kyiv was open to an Easter ceasefire. “Recently, following such a severe global energy crisis, we have indeed received signals from some of our partners asking about how to reduce our responses in the oil sector and the energy sector of the Russian Federation,” Zelenskyy said in a WhatsApp briefing with journalists. A Reuters source familiar with the situation said US officials had conveyed this message to their Ukrainian counterparts as part of their regular conversations, adding that the initial “signals” appeared to have come from Moscow. The US state department and the Russian embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Fresh from a four-day visit to the Middle East, Zelenskyy said he had reached agreement with some countries in the region to provide energy support to Ukraine. Over the weekend, he said he had reached a deal on diesel deliveries for a year to Ukraine, without providing further details.
Ukraine has signed a 10-year defence agreement with Bulgaria, a major arms manufacturer, covering production of drones and other weapons, Zelenskyy announced. The Ukrainian president said he was “very pleased” with the deal, signed during a visit to Kyiv by Bulgaria’s interim prime minister, Andrey Gyurov. The agreement covers “joint production, on the territory of our countries, of various types of weapons, including drones”, he said at a press conference. The length of the accord should make it possible to “systematise” security cooperation, Zelenskyy said, in particular keeping up with the rapid pace of drone technology, a key weapon in Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. Bulgaria, now a member of Nato and the EU, was part of the communist bloc during the cold war, and for decades produced ammunition and weapons to Soviet standards, which are also used by the Ukrainian army. Sofia has sent large quantities of weapons to Kyiv. Gyurov hailed the accord as the “result of long preparation”, adding: “This is not a mere formality, but a joint commitment to our Euro-Atlantic security.”
Russian attacks on central and northern Ukraine on Monday killed two people and injured more than 20, regional officials said. Near the central city of Poltava, falling debris from drones killed one person, injured three and damaged a high-rise apartment building, the regional governor Vitaliy Diakivnych said. Drone attacks and artillery strikes killed one person in the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region near the town of Nikopol, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said. Two people were injured in the town and 12 throughout the region. Russian forces launched two strikes with glide bombs in the Sumy region near the Russian border, injuring 13 people, including a six-year-old, regional governor Oleh Hryhorov said. Fifteen homes were damaged.
The US on Monday extended a deadline for the fourth time for companies to negotiate with Russia’s Lukoil about buying its foreign assets after Washington imposed sanctions on the energy company in 2025. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control extended the deadline by a month to 1 May for companies interested in buying the foreign assets that are worth about $22bn. Washington imposed sanctions in October on Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, and Rosneft, its top producer, to reduce Moscow’s ability to pay for its war on Ukraine. Interest in the assets has been shown by the US private equity firm Carlyle, the US oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp, the Abu Dhabi conglomerate International Holding Company, and the Austrian investor Bernd Bergmair, the former majority owner of an adult entertainment group that includes the website Pornhub.
Vladimir Putin’s position has not been significantly weakened by sanctions on oligarchs or specific products or sectors, the exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said. Politicians wanted to “impress their electorate” with sanctions against goods and trade, but in practice these were “unrealistic” to enforce, he added. Khodorkovsky said the west’s belief that sanctions against Russian oligarchs would motivate them to put pressure on Putin to end the war in Ukraine was based on “erroneous” understanding of the relationship between wealthy businessmen and the Kremlin. “I have been saying for the past 20 years that there are no oligarchs in Russia,” he said. “How can you reconcile oligarchy with dictatorship? If you have money without any weapons, you are just food for somebody else.”
