Ukraine launched more than 280 drones at Russia overnight, Russia’s State news agency reported.

Around 90 drones were shot down in the southern Rostov region, its governor Yuri Slyusar said.

At least 27 drones launched towards the capital were intercepted, Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

The US Treasury Department has removed two Russian citizens from its sanctions.

Russian citizens Yurii Korzhavin and Lidiya Korzhavina have been removed from the US sanctions list, the Treasury Department said in an update yesterday.

The move comes as the Trump administration temporarily eased curbs on Russian oil transit and purchases to ease supply pressures, after the US-Israeli war with Iran drove a surge in global crude prices.

Russia has reportedly offered to stop intelligence-sharing with Iran if the US agreed to do the same with Ukraine.

Moscow has stepped up intelligence sharing and military coordination with Tehran since US and Israeli strikes on Iran began three weeks ago, including reportedly supplying coordinates of American military assets in the region.

Washington, however, rejected the quid pro quo last week, two people familiar with the matter, told the Financial Times.

Nearly 30 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the Russian capital and the surrounding region overnight, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said.

Throughout the latter part of yesterday and during the early hours of today, swarms of Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow, the mayor said, adding that the artillery units were intercepted by Russia’s defence units.

Emergency services responded to the crash sites, and no casualties were reported, he said.

Czech authorities said Friday they were investigating a fire at a warehouse of a company that makes drone technology as a suspected arson linked to terrorism.

The fire broke out in an industrial zone in the city of Pardubice, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Prague, causing no injuries, police said.

LPP Holding confirmed a fire in one of its buildings. It said it was cooperating with the investigation and declined further comment.

The French navy on Friday intercepted and boarded a tanker in the Mediterranean Sea that President Emmanuel Macron said is linked to Russia’s sanctioned shadow fleet shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

According to the French maritime authorities for the Mediterranean, the tanker Deyna is suspected of operating under a false flag designation. The interception took place in the Western Mediterranean and was carried out in cooperation with allies, including the United Kingdom, which monitored the ship, the authorities said.

“This operation aimed to verify the nationality of the vessel,” which was flying the flag of Mozambique and was coming from the Russian port of Murmansk, the maritime authorities said in a statement. The documents found onboard “confirmed doubts about the validity of the flag,” they said.

Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv — who worked for decades to establish an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church that was free from Moscow’s religious authority, a schism that foreshadowed the Russia-Ukraine war — died Friday. He was 97.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced his death, citing the “exacerbation of chronic diseases.”

Filaret had a more limited role in recent years as the cultural and religious divide between Ukraine and Russia widened into full-scale warfare. But his legacy includes a long and partially successful effort to gain recognition of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdiction.

“The person and numerous good deeds of the late Patriarch Filaret rightfully occupy a special place in the modern history of both the local Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Ukraine as a whole,” said Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv, who leads the OCU.

Ukraine has begun the compulsory evacuation of children from the city of Sloviansk, in a sign that the security situation is deteriorating in one of the country’s main remaining strongholds in the Donbas area.

“I signed an order for the compulsory evacuation of children from certain areas of Sloviansk that are most vulnerable to enemy strikes,” Governor Vadym Filashkin wrote on Telegram

.Russian forces have been slowly advancing to the north and east of Sloviansk, and are about 20 km (12 miles) from the edge of the city at various points of the front line of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Sloviansk is one of several towns and cities which remain under Ukrainian control in an urban “fortress belt” in the eastern region of Donetsk, which comprises part of the Donbas. Russia sees control of the entire Donbas, known for its coal mines and heavy industry, as its key military goal.

Ukraine has deployed interceptor units to protect critical and civil infrastructure in five Middle Eastern countries, Ukraine’s security council secretary Rustem Umerov said after a visit to the region.

“Work is also underway to expand coverage areas,” Mr Umerov wrote on X.

Russia’s security services are set to bolster protection for senior military figures following a spate of series of assassinations and attempted killings, which Moscow attributes to Ukraine.

The announcement from the head of the FSB security service comes after Lieutenant-General Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of the GRU military intelligence, was shot three times in his Moscow apartment building on 6 February.

Ukraine has denied any involvement in the incident.

State media quoted FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov confirming Alexeyev’s recovery and stating that security for such high-ranking officials would “of course” be tightened.

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