With aid from the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD), Ukraine has opened a special fund for the restoration of the protective structure over the entombed reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The €30 million agreement was signed on April 26 during a Chernobyl International Conference on Recovery & Nuclear Safety, actually held at the site of the disaster that took place on that date in 1986. The "New Safe Confinement" structure has since 2016 provided a second layer of protection over the "sarcophagus" that Soviet authorities built to entomb the exploded reactor after the disaster. It was breached by a Russian drone strike on the site in February 2025.

A $106 billion EU emergency loan is now on its way to Ukraine, following the fall of Hungary's strongman Viktor Orban, who was holding it up. However, as a condition of the loan, Kyiv is obliged to re-open the war-damaged Druzhba pipeline, which sends Russian oil through Ukrainian territory to Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Germany. Kyiv is cooperating in getting the pipeline operational again—but is meanwhile drone-bombing Russian oil facilities on the Baltic and Black seas, in hopes of diminishing how much petrol Moscow will have to export through that pipeline. The strikes have caused "apocalyptic scenes" in the Black Sea port of Tuapse—air thick with toxic fumes, a huge column of smoke blotting out the sun, black rain falling from the sky. Russia, unwilling to sacrifice its own oil revenues but seeking to punish Europe for backing Ukraine, has announced that it will cut off the flow of oil from Kazakhstan through the Druzhba pipeline. (PRI, Al Jazeera, Reuters, E&E News, The Moscow Times)

Ukrainian forces have captured a Russian position using only drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted, describing the operation as a milestone in the evolution of modern warfare.

UN Special Rapporteurs on April 9 condemned an ongoing strategy by Russian authorities to silence dissent, human rights advocacy, and anti-war expression. They warned that this represents a "systematic dismantling" of civil society under the guise of protecting national security and public safety.

The European Union took a significant step toward adopting a Trump-like approach to migration when the EuroParliament approved a new law March 26 expanding the power of security agencies to track, detain and deport migrants. Amnesty International criticized the revised "Return Regulation" as "punitive" and a threat to fundamental rights. The law also allows for people to be deported to countries other than their country of origin—a controversial policy used by the Trump administration. Greece, an EU member, is even working directly with US officials to ramp up deportations.

Eclipsed from the headlines by the war in the Middle East, Russia launches a new offensive in Ukraine with an unprecedented wave of drone and missile strikes across the country—even hitting an historic monastery in Lviv. Meanwhile, two young Russian poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, remain imprisoned on "state subversion" charges related to public readings of anti-war poetry. They join other imprisoned poetic anti-war activists, such as Daria Kozyreva, and numerous artists and activists imprisoned for opposing the new dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. The recently passed Russian rocker Nikolay Komyagin, frontman for the post-punk band Shortparis, was also an icon of artistic resistance. Long known for their defiant sound, after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine they released the music video "Apple Orchard," on an anti-war theme—resulting in them being blacklisted from major venues in Russia. In Episode 320 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg places these courageous voices in the context of a dissident tradition in Russia under the dictatorships of the czars, the Soviets, and now Putin—from Leo Tolstoy to Shortparis.

Italy, Tunisia and Malta are withholding information about the true death toll from stricken vessels carrying migrants in the central Mediterranean, according to an AP report. The beginning of 2026 has been the deadliest start to a year in the Mediterranean since the UN began keeping track in 2014, with nearly 700 lives lost to date. But phone calls from people looking for missing relatives, bodies washing ashore, and other clues suggest there have been numerous "invisible" shipwrecks, and the true toll is significantly higher. (TNH)

On the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Amnesty International called on the international community to maintain a steadfast commitment to hold Russia accountable under international law for its crimes and aggression.