Ukraine's General Staff published its dawn summary on Sunday. In the 24 hours to 0800 Kyiv time, Russian forces carried out 68 airstrikes, dropped 216 guided aerial bombs, used 9,360 kamikaze drones, and conducted 3,404 shellings. Ukrainian units recorded 153 combat clashes across the front. [1] Cumulative Russian personnel losses since February 2022 now stand at 1,318,220, by Kyiv's count. [1]

On the same weekend the US Treasury renewed the General License that authorises foreign purchase of Russian oil at sea. [2] The extension runs to May 16. Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev said the move covers another 100 million barrels, bringing the total under waiver across both Russian licenses to roughly 200 million. [2] President Volodymyr Zelensky did the arithmetic in a Sunday post on X: 110 shadow-fleet tankers, twelve million tonnes of crude, roughly ten billion dollars "that directly translates into new strikes against Ukraine." [3]

The paper has been tracking two ledgers. The drone count is one. The oil-waiver line is the other. Sunday places them in explicit sequence for the first time since the war began.

Kyiv specifically counted 2,360 attack drones, 1,320 guided aerial bombs and nearly 60 missiles across the past week — Zelensky's own figures, reported by Mezha from his official Telegram channel. [4] The April 16 strike on Kyiv was the week's worst: seventeen killed, including a twelve-year-old boy. [4] Russian drone strikes on Sunday morning continued across Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Kherson, and the Donetsk axis. A drone strike in Shostka was extinguished without casualties. A drone hit the Poltava district railway with no injuries. Russian forces struck Balabyne, injuring three women. [1]

The Treasury side of the ledger is just as concrete. OFAC's General License 134B, issued Friday at 12:01 a.m. April 17, authorises delivery and sale of Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products loaded onto vessels as of Friday, through 12:01 a.m. on May 16. [5] The license replaces GL 134A, which expired April 11, and extends the same architecture forward with an updated load-date. [5] Iran is excluded; Russian cargoes are not.

Zelensky's position on the waiver has been consistent. On March 13, when the original GL 134 was issued, he called it "not the right decision." [6] On April 17, responding to GL 134B, he wrote that the easing "does not reflect the real situation on the ground in the war and in diplomacy, and fuels the leadership's belief that they can continue fighting." [4] He did not name the United States in Sunday's post. He did not need to. Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Chuck Schumer, and Elizabeth Warren called the renewal "shameful and a 180-degree reversal from Secretary Bessent." [3]

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi convened drone commanders Sunday and ordered "rapid scaling of UAV innovations." [1] Kyiv's military police were reported to be enforcing a security filter between the frontline and rear areas to block the movement of weapons and contraband — a routine internal-discipline move, carried forward during a week when all three Russian vectors (drones, missiles, guided bombs) widened in volume. [1] The prisoner exchange of April 12 returned 175 Ukrainians home. [1]

The week's front-line geography is the same as last month's. Pokrovsk is the hottest axis, with Russian attempts to advance near Sukha Balka, Tarasivka, Vodyane Druhe, Yelizavetivka, and Lysivka. Northern Slobozhansky recorded one air strike; Volyn and Polissia showed no enemy offensive grouping. [1] The shape of the war has not changed. Its financing just got another thirty days.

That is the pairing the page carries Sunday. Nine thousand three hundred and sixty drones in twenty-four hours is a number. A hundred million barrels under waiver for another month is also a number. One arrived in Kyiv as fire. The other arrived in Moscow as revenue. The US Treasury attached Iran to the exclusion list and left Russia inside.

Zelensky's closing Sunday sentence named the ask. "Russian tankers must be stopped." [3] The document stamped at Treasury Friday night says the opposite.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow