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Upon returning to Earth, Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman stated that he had undergone such a powerful emotional experience that he asked for a chaplain to be brought to the recovery vessel. During his first post-flight press conference, the astronaut said that he did not consider himself a particularly religious person, but after the mission he could not explain his feelings any other way.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has stated that “more than a dozen” charges have been brought against him in France, each of which, he claims, carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He made this statement against the backdrop of a fresh escalation between the French public prosecutor’s office and Elon Musk over the investigation into the X platform.
In 2026, 113 shelters will be built in schools across 22 regions of Ukraine, as well as 18 underground shelters in pre-school facilities in nine regions. The government has already allocated nearly 5 billion hryvnias to school projects, with a further 972 million hryvnias earmarked for nurseries.
The Cabinet of Ministers is preparing a decision to allocate 637,964,266 hryvnias to the state-owned enterprise “Multimedia Platform for International Broadcasting of Ukraine” for the production and broadcast of content for the “Yedyni Novyny” telethon. The draft government order was published by MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal has authorised the extradition of Alexandru Belan, the former deputy director of Moldova’s Information and Security Service, who was sentenced in Chișinău to 18 months’ imprisonment for attempting to disclose state secrets. The Romanian court also ordered him to be remanded in custody for 30 days pending his handover to the Moldovan authorities.
Following the terrorist attack in Kyiv, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko stated that he supports the right of civilians to armed self-defence, particularly with short-barrelled firearms. According to him, expert discussions will take place in the near future to finalise the draft legislation on civilian firearms.
Igor Savchenko, a musician with the band “Drugoe Solntse”, was killed in a terrorist attack in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv on 18 April. His death was reported by his bandmate Marina Yurevich and subsequently confirmed by the Ukrainian media.
Словаччина оскаржить у Суді справедливості Європейського Союзу регламент ЄС про поетапну заборону імпорту російського газу. Прем’єр-міністр Роберт Фіцо заявив, що Братислава вважає це рішення шкідливим для всього Євросоюзу і таким, що було ухвалене з порушенням базових принципів союзних договорів.
Following the terrorist attack in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that he expects Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko to take personnel decisions “across the entire chain of command”. Separately, the head of state instructed that the protocols governing patrol officers’ response to such incidents be reviewed, along with the approaches to their recruitment and training.
Ukraine is preparing to revise its list of ‘migration risk’ countries in order to make it slightly easier to recruit foreign workers, against the backdrop of an acute labour shortage. Kirill Budanov made this announcement during a speech to the CEO Club, noting that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine had already been instructed to urgently review the relevant proposals.
On the morning of 20 April, the body of a city councillor was found in a car in the Primorsky district of Odessa. The police have provisionally stated that the man may have committed suicide using a firearm.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko stated that, following consultations in Washington, the International Monetary Fund has agreed that introducing VAT for sole traders is not a constructive idea at this stage. At the same time, the matter does not appear to be definitively closed, as the current IMF programme documents previously envisaged an expansion of the VAT base from 2027, and there is already talk in parliament of possibly postponing this discussion until the summer.
