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A fresh wave of large-scale reciprocal strikes between Russian and Ukrainian forces over the overnight period into Saturday has left at least 10 civilians dead and dozens more injured, officials from both nations confirmed this weekend. The outbreak of violence coincides with a high-stakes diplomatic visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Istanbul, where he is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the global spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Shortly after touching down in Istanbul, Zelenskyy released a statement via the messaging platform Telegram outlining the goals of his trip. “We are working to strengthen our partnership to ensure the real protection of lives, advance stability, and guarantee security in Europe and the Middle East. Joint efforts always yield the best results,” he wrote.

According to a public statement released by the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched a massive drone assault on Ukrainian territory overnight, dispatching 286 attack drones across the country. Ukrainian air defense systems successfully intercepted and destroyed 260 of the incoming unmanned aerial vehicles before they could reach their targets.

The deadliest single attack of the wave was recorded in Nikopol, a city in Ukraine’s southern Dnipropetrovsk region. Regional military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha confirmed that five civilians — three women and two men — were killed in the strikes, with another 19 people left wounded. The assault also caused significant damage to local civilian infrastructure, destroying market stalls and a neighborhood retail shop.

In Sumy, a northeastern Ukrainian city located just kilometers from the Russian border, a separate missile strike left 11 civilians wounded, Ukraine’s National Police reported. The attack targeted residential areas, damaging multiple private homes, civilian vehicles, and critical public utility networks.

In Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a downed drone sparked a blaze on the ground floor of a three-story mixed office and warehouse building, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported. No fatalities or injuries were recorded at that site.

Overnight into Saturday morning, a Russian drone strike targeted a civilian passenger car traveling along the Kostyantynivka–Druzhkivka highway in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Kostyantynivka City Military Administration head Serhiy Horbunov confirmed that the attack killed one civilian woman and left a second woman wounded.

The Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement Saturday defending its strikes, claiming that all attacks targeted “long-range air- and ground-based precision weapons, as well as strike drones” against “military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

Ukrainian counterattacks on Russian and Russian-occupied territory also caused civilian and military damage over the same period. Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-appointed head of occupied Luhansk region, claimed that Ukrainian strikes targeted local railroad infrastructure and private residential buildings, killing an entire family of three: two adult parents and their 8-year-old child.

Ukraine’s domestic security agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), claimed responsibility for a targeted drone strike on a key metallurgical plant in Alchevsk, a Russian-occupied city in Luhansk. The plant supplies critical components to Uralvagonzavod, a major Russian state-owned manufacturer of military tanks and railroad cars. In a post on its official Facebook page, the SBU reported that the strike successfully halted all production at the facility, damaging blast furnaces, core production workshops, distillation columns, gas transit pipelines, and electrical substations that power the site. Russian officials have not yet issued an official response to the SBU’s claim.

On the Russian side of the border, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that its air defense forces intercepted and shot down 85 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula, and the Black Sea overnight. Russian regional officials confirmed civilian casualties from the downed drones that struck populated areas.

In Russia’s southern Rostov region, which shares a long border with Ukraine, regional governor Yuri Slyusar confirmed one civilian was killed and four more were injured by a Ukrainian strike. The attack sparked two separate blazes: one at a warehouse operated by an unspecified logistics firm, and a second on a dry-cargo ship sailing under a foreign flag several kilometers off the regional coast. In the city of Tolyatti, located in Russia’s Samara region, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev reported one civilian was wounded, and the strike damaged the roof of a residential apartment building, shattered windows across multiple units in the area.

As regional conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States escalates, the Iranian government has launched a broadened crackdown on exiled opposition voices, leveraging collective punishment of family members still residing in Iran and asset seizure to silence dissent, according to multiple activists who spoke to the Associated Press. This latest wave of repression comes amid a long-running government campaign against internal dissent that accelerated during nationwide anti-government protests earlier this year, which the regime responded to with a near-total internet blackout that has complicated the work of international rights monitors tracking the crackdown. Independent watchdogs estimate that Iranian security forces have killed thousands of protesters since the mass demonstrations began.

The rising tensions with the U.S. and Israel have led Iranian authorities to harshly increase pressure on any individual found communicating with foreign media or overseas opposition figures, and that coercion has now spilled across borders to target exiled activists through their loved ones at home. Multiple exiled dissidents shared firsthand accounts of the regime’s tactics with the AP, painting a clear picture of the collective punishment strategy.

Hossein Razzagh, a former political prisoner who escaped Iran for Europe last year, told reporters that Tehran’s intelligence agents arrested his non-political brother Ali on March 15, pulling him from his Tehran home. The only contact the family has had since was a brief, seconds-long phone call Ali made to his wife from a facility run by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. The agency has confirmed the detention is tied to Ali’s connection to Razzagh, and no further communication has been allowed, Razzagh said.

Paris-based exiled activist Behnam Chegini reported that his 20-year-old niece was detained for one week starting March 10, shortly after she returned to her parents’ home in Arak from her Tehran university, which closed amid the regional war. She was eventually released on bail but remains barred from leaving the country, and Chegini said the detention is unambiguously tied to his opposition activity: “It is at least in part because she is my niece and they know that.”

Sareh Sedighi, another dissident who fled Iran after her 2021 death sentence was overturned, said authorities seized her chronically ill mother from her home in the western city of Urmia last month. “The Islamic Republic took my mother away to make me be quiet,” Sedighi said, noting her mother requires daily insulin injections to manage ongoing health conditions. Mahshid Nazemi, a former political prisoner now based in France, added that at least one of her close friends inside Iran has been detained and interrogated repeatedly for information about her contacts with Nazemi.

Beyond detaining relatives, Iranian authorities have also begun seizing the assets of high-profile exiled critics under a new anti-espionage law passed during last year’s 12-day war with Israel. The legislation harshly penalizes any media or cultural activity deemed to support Iran’s foreign adversaries, clearing the way for mass asset confiscation. On March 31, a judiciary spokesperson announced on state television that more than 200 indictments authorizing confiscations have already been issued, with more in process.

Borzou Arjmand, a prominent Iranian actor based in California, learned through news reports that all of his domestic assets had been seized by the state. Arjmand has been unable to return to Iran since he publicly supported the 2022 anti-government protests, and authorities already froze his domestic bank accounts years ago. He has also openly backed exiled opposition leader Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah who has organized an international opposition coalition and expressed support for recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. Arjmand said the crackdown on exiles is a deliberate effort to muzzle criticism of the regime: “Pressuring exiled figures is meant so the Iranian people’s voice doesn’t reach the world.”

Iranian semi-official news outlets have published lists of other exiled public figures targeted by asset seizures, including star national soccer player Sardar Azmoun, popular musician Mohsen Yeghaneh, and prominent university professor Ali Sharifi Zarchi. Both Yeghaneh and Zarchi have publicly voiced support for anti-government protesters on social media platforms.

International human rights organizations warn that repressive conditions across Iran are deteriorating rapidly as the regional conflict continues. Iranian security and judicial officials have publicly issued warnings that any new anti-government protests will be met with immediate lethal force, and state-run media regularly announces mass arrests of people labeled as “mercenaries,” “agents” of the U.S. and Israel, “royalist thugs” or “traitorous elements,” often accused of passing information to “hostile foreign networks.”

Mahmood Amiry-Moghhaddam, director of Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights, told the AP his organization has documented hundreds of detentions across Iran since the current regional war began on February 28, relying on on-the-ground networks and official state media reports. He added that the actual total number of detentions is almost certainly far higher, as many arrests are never reported publicly. One high-profile detainee is renowned 64-year-old human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was pulled from her Tehran home by intelligence agents just weeks ago. Sotoudeh had been released on bail months earlier to receive medical treatment for chronic health conditions following a previous detention, according to her daughter Mehraveh Khandan, who lives in Amsterdam.

The full scope of judicial processing for new detainees remains unclear, after Israeli airstrikes targeted multiple buildings tied to Iran’s judicial system. Musa Barzin, a lawyer for the international rights group Dadban, said the judicial system is effectively operating at half capacity: “It’s like they are half-closed. A lot of judges are staying home.” Many political prisoners are also facing deteriorating conditions in overcrowded facilities, with growing fears of violence amid ongoing airstrikes. The wife of a political prisoner held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect her family, said the entire facility was targeted during airstrikes last year, and residents live in constant fear of new attacks. “Explosions and smoke can be heard and seen from everywhere in the city. Every time we hear a sound, we get scared,” she said.

This escalating pressure has prompted the long-fragmented Iranian opposition movement in exile to make new efforts to unify. Shortly before the current regional war began, Razzagh and other dissidents began organizing the Iran Freedom Congress, a major opposition conference set to take place in London that aims to bring together a broad coalition of pro-democracy groups. Razzagh represents a bloc of Iran-based opposition figures including Sotoudeh and imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, and he described the gathering as a critical first step toward building a unified coalition to push for political transition in Iran.

For decades, Iran’s ruling Islamic theocracy has successfully crushed all organized internal political opposition, and activists in the diaspora say the ongoing regional war has only amplified the regime’s repression. Nazemi summed up the perilous position of ordinary Iranians caught between two sides of the conflict: “Israel and America are saying, well, if the Islamic Republic doesn’t kill you, let us bomb you. They’ve been taken hostage from both sides.”

Fresh large-scale missile and drone strikes across multiple Ukrainian regions have sent civilian casualties soaring and thrown a proposed Orthodox Easter truce into tatters, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly blaming Moscow for choosing deliberate escalation over holiday calm.

The wave of coordinated attacks, carried out with hundreds of aerial weapons, killed at least six civilians and wounded 40 more across the country. Major daytime strikes, once an uncommon tactic in the two-year conflict, have grown increasingly frequent in recent weeks, coinciding with a major stall in US-brokered peace talks after the Trump administration redirected its diplomatic and military focus to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

The scope of damage stretched across the nation. In Korosten, located in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region west of the capital Kyiv, an entire row of residential homes was leveled, forcing emergency rescue teams to dig through rubble for trapped survivors. Footage captured in Kyiv Oblast shows an incoming drone careening directly into a multi-story apartment block before slamming into the structure and igniting a large fire. In northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv, one of the country’s largest cities, a woman was killed and multiple other residents suffered critical injuries in what Kharkiv’s mayor described as “one of the biggest” single-day strikes the city has endured since the full-scale invasion began.

The attacks came just days after Zelensky proposed a temporary bilateral truce for the upcoming Orthodox Easter holiday, which is celebrated next weekend by followers in both Ukraine and Russia. “The Russians have only intensified their strikes, turning what should have been silence in the skies into an Easter escalation,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X. The Ukrainian leader added that the truce offer remains open if Moscow agrees to the pause, and he has already communicated this stance to US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. US-mediated direct peace talks between the two warring sides have already been postponed twice, with Moscow confirming negotiations are currently “on hold.” Zelensky has extended an invitation for the US delegation to visit Kyiv first before traveling to Moscow to restart momentum for diplomatic progress.

In recent days, Ukraine has carried out its own series of long-range deep strikes targeting strategic infrastructure inside Russian territory, with a particular focus on energy facilities along Russia’s northern coast. The key port of Ust-Luga has been hit by repeated drone attacks, forcing Russian authorities to temporarily suspend export operations through the terminal. Over the weekend, a senior advisor to Kyiv’s defense ministry confirmed that an overnight strike hit an industrial plant in Togliatti, southern Russia, that manufactures rubber components for Russian military equipment. Additional Ukrainian strikes targeted a power substation in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, with falling debris damaging a nearby vessel. Russian local officials confirmed the attack in Togliatti, noting one industrial worker was injured by shrapnel and a nearby residential building sustained structural damage.

While Zelensky aligned with British intelligence assessments that the eastern frontline is currently the most favorable position for Ukraine in 10 months, as Russian ground advance has slowed sharply and the threat of a full Russian breakthrough has receded, the country faces growing headwinds on multiple fronts. Zelensky confirmed Ukraine is currently prioritizing holding existing frontline positions rather than launching large-scale territorial offensives of its own.

Kyiv now faces two critical emerging risks tied to the Middle East conflict. First, a potential war-induced disruption to global oil supplies would drive up fuel prices and create severe scarcity for Ukraine, which relies heavily on diesel to power frontline tanks and military vehicles. Conversely, higher global energy prices benefit Russia, which can generate increased revenue from energy exports to fund its domestic weapons production and military payroll. Second, Ukraine faces a looming potential shortage of US-made defensive interceptor missiles capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles, as a large share of the US’s Patriot missile stockpile has been redirected to support operations tied to the Middle East conflict.

“The longer the war in the Middle East continues, the greater the risk that we will receive less weaponry,” Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv. “This is extremely difficult – perhaps one of the most challenging tasks.”