Missile attack on Kupiansk, evacuation of Ukrainians from Sudan, arrest of ex-intelligence officer: today's highlights

Shelling of Kupiansk

On the morning of 25 April, the occupiers hit the building of the Local History Museum with S-300 missiles. Ten civilians were injured. Four of them were hospitalized, the State Emergency Service said. Two people have been reported dead.

Evacuation from the capital of Sudan

The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in coordination with the Office of the President of Ukraine and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, conducted a successful rescue operation to evacuate civilians from the embattled city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

Ukraine has evacuated 87 citizens of Ukraine from the armed conflict, mostly aviation professionals – pilots, technicians, and their families.

Ukraine also evacuated citizens of Georgia and Peru. A total of 138 citizens were rescued, including 35 women and 12 children.

The case of the hijacking of a Russian aircraft

The former acting commander of one of the Special Operations Forces units, Roman Chervinskyi, will be held in custody for two months without bail. This measure of restraint was imposed by the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv.

Chervinskyi, a former employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, is involved in a case of a failed attempt to hijack a Russian aircraft. According to the Security Service, a military unit commander was killed in the shelling, and 17 other Ukrainian servicemen were wounded. Two Air Force combat fighters were also destroyed, and the runway, equipment, and buildings were heavily damaged.

Appeal of agrarians

The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club Association has sent a request to the Ministry of Economy to launch an investigation and take measures in response to the actions of several EU countries that have banned imports of Ukrainian agricultural products.

UCAB CEO Roman Slasten calls the countries' actions “discrimination against Ukrainian agricultural products”. He noted that his organization hopes to resolve the problem with agricultural exports through dialogue, but that the talks have not yielded the expected result for more than a week.

Updating school curricula

Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi has said that Ukraine needs to update school courses in Ukrainian literature and history.

In his opinion, the course of Ukrainian literature should be modernized and several other names should be added, ranging from Renaissance and Baroque literary works to contemporary writers.

Moreover, the minister sees a lot of imperial context in the current teaching of Ukrainian history. Therefore, Lisovyi suggests studying history from the perspective of the country's success.

Brain surgery

For the first time in the history of Ukrainian medicine, Lviv doctors performed brain surgery on a child with awakening – he had to be conscious during the most important part of the operation.

The patient was 15-year-old Maksym from Ternopil, who had been suffering from severe epileptic seizures since he was eight years old due to a tumor in his brain. In recent years, he even had difficulty speaking and remembering things as the tumor grew and began to put pressure on the areas of the brain responsible for speech and movement.

The situation at the frontline

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian occupiers are focusing their main efforts on conducting offensive operations in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka sectors. The Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled 36 attacks there over the last day. The fiercest fighting continues to take place for Bakhmut and Marinka.

In Mariupol Raion, Donetsk Oblast, Russia has deployed its troops in a children's camp. The occupiers are hiding behind children and teachers.

British intelligence reports that in April 2023, the average daily number of Russian casualties is likely to have dropped by about 30%. This happened after the occupiers' extremely heavy losses in January-March this year.

Men traveling abroad

In the 11 months since the start of the full-scale invasion, 96,442 men of military age have received permission to travel abroad through the Shlyakh system.

Of these, 66,474 successfully used it, while 9,373 left and did not return to Ukraine after the deadline.

Other news for the day:

• On 25 April, the High Anti-Corruption Court changed the measure of restraint for Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov in the Kraian plant case. Instead of a personal commitment, he was granted bail in the amount of UAH 30,866,000;
• The National Anti-Corruption Bureau conducts investigative actions in some structural units of the Zhytomyr Regional Administration;
• The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the deaths of two servicemen of one of the border guard detachments in Chernihiv Oblast. They allegedly drowned while sailing on a boat;
• Based on materials from the Security Service of Ukraine, the court seized Oksana Marchenko's corporate rights in Zaporizhzhia Ferroalloy Plant. The total value of the blocked assets is over one billion hryvnias;
• President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a European integration law introducing several European standards in the field of civil aviation in Ukraine;
• The Brazilian football club Batel announced that it would temporarily bear the name and uniform of the Ukrainian club Mariupol, which had to stop playing due to the war.