Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 04-23-2025

Free-speech advocates in the US are irate about news organizations caving to Trump’s threats and lawsuits. His wrath against “60 Minutes” for an interview with Zelensky is only the latest episode.

The executive producer of iconic American news show “60 Minutes” resigned this week, citing a loss of editorial independence stemming from political pressure.

Defenders of the nation’s First Amendment right to free speech have sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s vicious crusade against news outlets he doesn’t like.

Trump is again pressuring Zelensky to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – despite Russia having started the war. The White House has given Kyiv and Moscow a week to declare peace.

US President Donald Trump again urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to come to a peace agreement this week – or face the consequences of American officials pulling out of peace negotiations.

After months of failed ceasefires and peace talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this weekend that the US would give Ukraine and Russia until the end of this week to resolve the years-long war. 

The upcoming visit comes amid Washington’s signal that it may soon abandon its Ukraine peace plan due to a lack of achievement.

NATO Chief Mark Rutte is set to visit Washington between Thursday and Friday for meetings with high-ranking US officials. 

A NATO press release on Wednesday says Rutte will meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during his visit.

The ruler of Syria’s interim government, Ahmed al-Shara, does not rule out future military cooperation with Moscow despite Russia backing of the regime he helped overthrow.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara said Moscow has rejected his government’s plea to extradite ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad in exchange for continued Russian military presence in Syria.

Al-Shara, who led the group that overthrew the Moscow-backed Assad regime in December and now serves as the president of the country’s interim government, confirmed the longstanding speculation in his first-ever public acknowledgment of the conversation.

Estonia will establish a military base in Narva, right up against the Russian border, with up to 250 troops to be stationed there on a rotational basis – a show of national presence and deterrence.

Estonia plans to establish a military base in the town of Narva, located directly on the border with Russia, Estonian Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff Major General Vahur Karus said on April 23.

Narva sits on the eastern edge of both EU and NATO territory, where Russia’s presence feels close. In this town of 56,000, about 96 percent of residents are Russian speaking.

Russia’s rate of growth is still low, which is likely to be exacerbated by tariffs and lower oil prices, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) once again forecast low year-on-year growth for Russia in 2025 – projecting 1.5% of real GDP for the country, according to this April’s World Economic Outlook. 

Russia’s economy is experiencing a natural slowdown after a robust growth, and it is a result of policy tightening, with high interest rates in Russia increasing the cost of borrowing and Russia having to raise taxes to finance its budget. 

The French Foreign Legion and the Royal Welsh First Battalion were part of a team trying to capture this town of 5,000 residents Tuesday during a two-week training exercise.

Members of the French Foreign Legion and British soldiers have started a joint military exercise in northeastern France, applying urban warfare lessons from the war in Ukraine.

A French officer, perched on a British armored vehicle camouflaged with branches in the small town of Jeoffrecourt, translated commands for armored infantry troops from Britain.

Explosions hit Russia’s Alabuga special economic zone (SEZ) in Tatarstan, home to a major Shahed/Geran-2 drone factory that produced 6,000-plus kamikaze UAVs in 2024.

Explosions were reported on Wednesday, April 23 in Alabuga, Tatarstan, Russia’s largest special economic zone, where thousands of military drones have been produced.

According to Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, the drone strike targeted a factory in the city of Yelabuga, where Russia makes Iranian-licensed kamikaze drones (“Shahed” in Farsi, “Geran-2” in Russian).

In periods of increased uncertainty, investors intend to turn to “safe-haven” assets like gold – IMF economist.

Gold prices hit a record $3,500 per ounce on Tuesday, April 22,  Investing.com data showed. 

After hitting the record Tuesday, the price of gold fell by 2.2% per ounce by 7:14 a.m. on Wednesday and the US dollar strengthened by 0.28%, Investing.com showed. 

Ukraine has established a new specialized body through which all procurement under Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery programs will be conducted in an effort to increase transparency.

A decree by the Ministry for Communities and Territorial Development has created a centralized procurement body within the State Restoration Agency. This organization will handle procurement on behalf of dozens of regional bodies across the country, aiming to increase transparency and reduce corruption risks.

“We often talk about the speed of recovery. But it is just as important to ensure quality and the transparent, efficient use of resources. That’s why the centralized procurement organization within the Restoration Agency was created.”

Russia is waging an intelligence war against the West – cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation are just the beginning. Here’s how it must respond now, says an American intelligence insider.

The EU Commission is inching closer to completing Ukraine’s screening process to kick off EU ascension talks – but an official decision is not expected until this fall.

The screening process to verify Ukraine’s compliance with European legal standards is going at unprecedented speed, according to European Commission spokesman Guillaume Mercier.

The screening of EU-Ukraine legislation is a part of every country’s EU accession process. 

A US-backed peace deal and a minerals pact are gaining traction, but experts say any pact Kyiv signs under pressure is invalid – and could send the global system of law and order into disarray.

When United States President Donald Trump wrote last week that he “hopes Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week” on social media, his allies were already on the ground in Europe, working behind the scenes to broker what they call a ceasefire, and what critics see as a prelude to capitulation.

The posturing comes as the US and Ukraine announced the signing of a separate document – a memorandum of intent to deepen cooperation on critical minerals. Although it isn’t a formal treaty, it is a step beyond the political promises of late.

The US economy’s scale helps it withstand recession, but trade wars dragged growth down to 1.8%, according to the IMF.

Trade wars, tariffs, and global uncertainty decreased US growth to 1.8%, which is 0.9% lower than forecasted in January 2025, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas during the World Economic Outlook press briefing on Tuesday, April 22.

While the IMF raised its estimate of recession risk to 40%, up from 25%, this isn’t the base case, and it reported that the US economy had started weakening before US President Donald Trump announced tariffs against 90 countries. 

Russian forces struck a civilian bus in the Dnipro region just hours before a high-level London meeting, which was abruptly canceled despite Ukraine’s delegation already being on site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said a deadly Russian drone strike in the Dnipro region was a “deliberate war crime,” calling for an immediate ceasefire and renewed global attention to the use of drone warfare against civilians.

According to Zelensky, a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone hit a civilian bus on Wednesday morning, April 23, in the city of Marhanets, in Dnipropetrovsk Region. The bus was transporting workers from a local mining and processing plant.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance satisfied all demand, but didn’t increase the yields much. Bond Market Insight for April 23

At yesterday’s primary auction, the MoF accepted all bids.

Demand for 14-month military bills sharply rose, probably because they were the only military paper offered at the primary bond auction. The MoF received 27 bids for UAH2.8bn and accepted them without changes in interest rates.

: A European who attempted to blow up and overturn a military train on behalf of Russian intelligence is now facing life in prison in Ukraine.

Kyiv said it has served suspicion to a European national who reportedly attempted to overturn a military train in October 2024 acting on orders of the Russian intelligence.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in its Tuesday press release that the suspect “was preparing to blow up a railway track and derail a freight train” in the Bukovina region shared by Ukraine and Romania, where he “hoped to disrupt the transport logistics of the Defense Forces in the southwestern regions of Ukraine.”

The bloodiest drone attack hit a passenger bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing nine. A Russian glide bomb hit an apartment building in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing one and injuring four.

Russian drones and artillery blasted transformers and electricity transformers in Kherson on Wednesday, ending a nearly month-long tacit agreement between Kyiv and Moscow not to hit each other’s power grids.

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the southern Kherson regional defense command, said Russian shells and heavy kamikaze drones launched from the left (east) bank of the Dnipro River “have been massively attacking one of the key enterprises of our energy infrastructure for more than a day.”

HUR combat units destroyed over 100 pieces of Russian military equipment and struck 150+ enemy fortifications on the Zaporizhzhia front, killing or wounding 152 troops in one week.

Fighters in Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) active combat units delivered a powerful blow to Russian positions on the Zaporizhzhia front over the past week, destroying dozens of enemy vehicles and inflicting heavy losses on Russian personnel, HUR’s Strategic Communications Center reported on Wednesday, April 23.

“HUR’s active combat units spent the week relentlessly setting fire to another mountain of Russia’s deadly steel,” the report states.

The Kremlin responded triumphantly after the news that Ukraine peace talks in London had collapsed, saying that talks with the US continue - but not with Kyiv or Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov commented on the collapse of scheduled peace talks between the US, Europe, and Ukraine in London, following the withdrawal of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several European representatives.

“In London, it was really about a meeting of envoys from the US and Ukraine so that the US could continue its mediation efforts. As far as we understand, [they] have not yet managed to bring positions closer on some issues, so this meeting did not take place,” according to TASS.

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The comment from the US vice president followed a similar, purported comment from Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

US Vice President JD Vance hinted at the cessation of hostilities along the contact lines in Ukraine as part of Washington’s peace proposal to Ukraine and Russia.

Vance, speaking to reporters in India on Wednesday, said Washington has delivered a “very explicit proposal” to Kyiv and Moscow, while reiterating earlier comments by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Washington would withdraw from the talks if no progress is made.

Team Trump has quietly rolled back efforts to hold Russia accountable for war crimes in Ukraine, scrapping a key coordinator role and freezing support for international investigations.

The Trump administration has taken sweeping steps to dismantle US initiatives aimed at holding Russia accountable for war crimes committed in Ukraine, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

According to the Washington Post (WP), among the most significant changes is the administration’s decision to leave an international accountability group led by the EU, disband an interagency working group, and quietly vacate a congressionally mandated position meant to coordinate US intelligence on Russian atrocities.

Some lawyers are saying the State Bureau of Investigation’s search of Svitlana Panaiotidi’s home was illegal.

The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) raided the home of ex-Deputy Minister of Economy Svitlana Panaiotidi, Panaiotidis’ lawyer Taras Poshivanyuk told Kyiv Post via text message. 

Poshivanyuk said the SBI search, still ongoing just before noon on Wednesday, was happening without a court decision.

First US top diplomat Rubio pulled out, and now other high-level participants have decided to postpone the meeting.

The top diplomats from the UK, US, France, Germany and Ukraine have postponed meeting in London on Wednesday for high-level talks on how to end Russia’s war, Sky News and other media have reported.

This decision follows from a statement made by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday that while Ukraine is prepared to engage in US-brokered peace negotiations, it is not willing to agree to Washington’s insistence that it cede Crimea and other Ukrainian regions to Russia.

FT reports Putin offered to freeze the war if Trump recognizes Crimea and blocks Ukraine’s NATO bid, but the Kremlin denies the report. However, European officials warn it may be a trap.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has proposed ending the war along the current front lines as part of negotiations with the Trump administration over a possible peace deal, according to one report, but European officials warn it may be a trap.

During an April 11 meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin told Trump’s envoy Witkoff, a former Florida real estate investor and Trump’s golf partner with no prior diplomatic experience, that Russia would be willing to drop its claims to Ukrainian-controlled areas in four partially occupied regions, according to three sources cited in the report.

If as some elements of the media reports the US is considering recognizing the annexation of Crimea it will condemn hundreds of its residents to remain as political prisoners of Russia.

According to a Sunday report in The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is proposing a so-called “peace deal” – freezing the war in exchange for recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Ukraine is expected to respond to the US proposal this week, which, according to some Washington officials, could lead to an end to the war.

The WSJ also reports that the discussions include Ukraine’s potential NATO membership and the area surrounding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.

It’s unclear whether Rubio’s absence at the UK-led talks today means any change in the White House’s expectation, but speaking to Kyiv Post, a former US official warned against “peace talk fatigue.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday abruptly cancelled plans to attend the UK-hosted high-level talks, which will kick off this morning in London, aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent reports.

In a social media post, Rubio announced that he had “a productive conversation” with his British counterpart, David Lammy, ahead of what he described would be “substantive and good technical meetings with Ukrainian and UK counterparts.”

Latest from the British Defence Intelligence.

• On Saturday 19 April 2025, Russian President Putin publicly announced a unilateral 30-hour ceasefire based on claimed ‘humanitarian’ considerations, to start at 1800 Moscow/Kyiv time and end at midnight Easter Sunday. Putin’s announcement was almost certainly intended to demonstrate a constructive approach in ongoing talks, without incurring significant costs to Russia’s battlefield position.
• Russian forces almost certainly continued to carry out some offensive military operations against Ukrainian forces during the reported ceasefire period, in breach of Putin’s own ceasefire terms. It is likely that the overall tempo of military activity across the frontline decreased. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy reported no air raid alerts on Easter Day, 20 April, and on 21 April, Putin reportedly acknowledged a decrease in military activity during the ceasefire period.

• Russia has not taken up Ukraine’s proposal to extend the Easter ceasefire for a 30-day period. There has been no indication that Putin has deviated from his maximalist aims in Ukraine.

Crimea has been under Russian occupation since 2014. Moscow illegally annexed the territory following a sham referendum held under military occupation.

An executive body representing Crimea’s Tatar minority has vowed to oppose any international recognition of the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian peninsula as part of Russia.

The development comes amid reports that the U.S. has pitched Ukraine a peace formula that includes, among other elements, ruling out NATO membership for the country while giving formal American recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The London meeting comes as US media reports that US President Donald Trump is ready to accept recognition of annexed land in Crimea as Russian territory.

Britain hosts a new round of talks on Wednesday involving the United States, Ukraine, and European nations amid a new US effort to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff is to visit Moscow this week, the White House has confirmed, in what would be his fourth trip to Russia since Trump took office.

The new attacks cast doubt on US President Donald Trump’s hopes for a broader ceasefire between the two sides, days after he said a “deal” could be struck this week.

Nine people were killed and six others injured early in the morning on Wednesday in a Russian drone strike on the town of Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration.

He said a bus carrying employees of a local enterprise was hit in the attack.

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• The Financial Times (FT) reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to end the war in Ukraine on the current frontlines. Kremlin officials, including Putin, have repeatedly and explicitly emphasized that Russia maintains its territorial demands over all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts, however, while also publicly signaling that Russia has greater territorial ambitions in Ukraine beyond these four oblasts.
• The Moscow Times reported that the Kremlin is attempting to use economic incentives to sway US-Russian talks about the war in Ukraine as the Kremlin is not sincerely interested in US President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war. ISW cannot independently verify Kremlin sources’ statements, but recent Kremlin behavior is consistent with the Moscow Times‘ insider reporting.
• Any potential future Russian agreement to freeze the front short of Russia’s full control of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts does not preclude future Russian aggression to achieve Russia’s more extensive territorial demands, especially if the agreement stipulates a moratorium on Ukraine receiving Western military aid.
• Kremlin officials continued efforts on April 22 to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposed temporary ceasefire on strikes against civilian infrastructure.
• The Kremlin continues to reject Trump’s stated goal of achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine before a full peace settlement to end the war – in contrast to Ukraine’s continued support for a general ceasefire.
• Russian forces continue to innovate their long-range drone strike tactics in order to offset the effectiveness of Ukrainian mobile defense units.
• Russia is reportedly recruiting North Korean citizens to compensate for labor shortages in Russia, indicating that Russian-North Korean cooperation continues to deepen.
• Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Toretsk.

A Russian woman claims Mykolaiv was bombed over “biolabs” and insists Odesa must be seized so Ukraine “has no access to the sea.”

Residents of Russia’s border regions continue to believe Kremlin-manufactured myths and justify attacks on Ukrainian cities with fabricated claims of “biolabs” and geopolitical fantasies, according to a new intercepted call released by Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR).

In the conversation between two women from Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders northern Ukraine, one of them insists that “everything was fine” in Mykolaiv and that “only the outskirts were bombed” — allegedly because “some laboratories had been built there.” She concludes: “Once those labs were smashed, it all ended.”

“After the ceasefire, we are ready to sit down in any format,” Zelensky told journalists a day before the talks in London and as US envoy Witkoff heads to Moscow.

Ukraine is ready to hold direct peace talks with Russia but only after a ceasefire is in place, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday amid new US pressure to end the three-year-old conflict.

US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff is to go to Moscow this week, the White House said, and a US envoy was to take part in new talks with European officials in London on Wednesday.

Zelensky says at least 155 Chinese are fighting in Ukraine, while intel shows that others are working in drone factories in Russia, as Kyiv accuses Beijing of supplying arms to Moscow.

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned China’s ambassador to Ukraine, Ma Shengkun, to raise “serious concern” about Chinese soldiers fighting alongside the Russian army and information that Beijing was supplying weapons to Moscow.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said that it also had intelligence that Chinese citizens are working at a drone factory in Russia. Kyiv believes that Moscow may have stolen that drone technology by collaborating with those engineers.