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China is supplying weapons to Russia, including gunpowder and artillery, and Chinese representatives are involved in weapons production on Russian territory, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Thursday, citing reporting by Ukrainian security and intelligence agencies. “We are ready to speak in detail about this,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine expects to share documentation to support the claims next week.
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Zelenskyy said: “We have finally received information that China is supplying weapons to the Russian Federation. … We believe that Chinese representatives are engaged in the production of some weapons on Russian territory … We see the cooperation between these two countries in this area, and we must acknowledge it is happening.”
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China dismissed the accusations as “groundless” in a response on Friday. “China’s position on the Ukrainian issue has always been clear,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a regular news conference. “It has been actively committed to promoting a ceasefire and ending the conflict, as well as encouraging peace talks.”
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Ukraine’s economy minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, said on Thursday that Kyiv had signed a “memorandum of intent” with Washington on a planned “investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine”. Donald Trump, the US president, said they would sign a minerals deal “next Thursday”. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told AFP that a deal was targeted for 26 April.
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Zelenskyy said Russia had reduced the number of strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities but stepped up attacks on civilian infrastructure instead. Zelenskyy told a press conference in Kyiv that in total, Russia was launching the same number of missiles and drones at Ukraine as before. “They reduced their strikes on energy. That’s a fact. But I wanted us to pay attention to this – Russia did not reduce the number of strikes, that was the strategy … by reducing [strikes on] energy, they are hitting other civilian infrastructure.”
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Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, on Thursday accused Ukraine at the security council of ignoring the energy ceasefire. In a joint statement after the council met, Slovenia, Denmark, France, Greece, and Britain urged Russia to agree to a full and unconditional ceasefire. Slovenia’s UN ambassador, Samuel Zbogar, said: “Ukraine wants peace, and has demonstrated this by agreeing to a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire five weeks ago. At the consultations today, Russia again rejected the comprehensive ceasefire and refused to make its first step towards peace.”
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Russian strikes killed two people and wounded at least 27 others overnight in Kharkiv and Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine, authorities said on Friday. “According to preliminary information, the strikes on Kharkiv were carried out by ballistic missiles with cluster munitions. That is why the affected areas are very large,” said Kharkiv’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, adding that 15 apartment buildings had been damaged. In Sumy, near the Russian border, a Russian Shahed drone attack on civilian infrastructure killed one person and injured one other, the regional military administration said.
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Top negotiators from the “E3” grouping of Britain, France and Germany are scheduled to meet again in London next week with US counterparts after Donald Trump’s envoys finally met with European foreign ministers over ceasefire efforts. “What’s new is that the United States, Ukraine and the Europeans met around the same table,” said the French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, after Paris on Thursday hosted German, British and US foreign ministers, and Trump’s friend Steve Witkoff, as well as a Ukrainian delegation.
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“The E3 are around the table and we’re doing it with a European ambition,” said a senior adviser to France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, after the talks at the Élysée Palace on Thursday. “What’s important is that we have started a process in Paris today that is positive and where the Europeans are associated.” Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said the US state department.
