Ukrainian drones attacked a plant in Sterlitamak, said the head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov. According to Khabirov, several drones were shot down over the industrial zone of Sterlitamak. Debris fell onto the territory of an unnamed enterprise, causing a fire. The governor adds that all services are on site. There is no official information about casualties yet.

Billionaire Samvel Karapetyan said he has begun renouncing his Russian and Cypriot citizenships in order to run in Armenia’s parliamentary elections, local outlet News.am reported , citing remarks Karapetyan made during a court hearing in Yerevan. Proceedings in Karapetyan’s criminal case opened today, April 15, at Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Court. “I am a citizen of the Republic of Armenia, and I also hold Russian and Cypriot passports.

Alexander Vaskovsky, a Russian pro-war blogger and former member of the self-proclaimed “Supreme Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” has been detained in St. Petersburg, according to a post published on his Telegram channel on April 13. The post said an administrative protocol had been drawn up against Vaskovsky under the charge of “discrediting the army,” the result of two posts published in January 2024.

Iran used a Chinese reconnaissance satellite to monitor and target American military targets, according to a Financial Times investigation. According to leaked Iranian military documents, the TEE-01B reconnaissance satellite was acquired by the aerospace forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in late 2024.

The Leninsky District Court of Komsomolsk-on-Amur fined Chinese citizen Xin Qi 50 thousand rubles under an administrative article on organizing an unapproved rally. In a press release, he was named as an official of one of the city's enterprises.

Zara founder Amancio Ortega topped the ranking of the largest real estate owners, having formed a portfolio worth about $25 billion, Forbes reports . According to the publication, its assets include more than 200 properties in 13 countries - from office buildings and shopping centers to hotels and infrastructure projects. Thus, he beat out major developers, including Harry Triguboff and Donald Bren. In 2025, Ortega spent over $3 billion on real estate purchases in eight countries.

The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (SACL) has lifted the ban on Russian rapper Alisher Morgenstern entering the country, previously imposed by the Migration Department. The court upheld the performer's appeal, overturning the decision of the Regional Administrative Court, and also invalidated the 10-year entry ban. Lithuanian media reported this.

The supertanker Agios Fanourios I ( IMO : 9759824), which had previously turned around at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, passed through it on its second attempt and entered the Persian Gulf. This is reported by the shipping tracking platform MarineTraffic. According to the service, this is the first tanker of this class to pass through the strait in a westerly direction after the US declared a blockade. The Malta-flagged vessel belongs to the VLCC class - the largest oil tankers.

The 2nd Eastern District Military Court in Novosibirsk sentenced a minor resident of the closed city of Seversk in the Tomsk region to 6.5 years in prison for dismantling railway tracks. The court press release claims that the teenager coordinated actions with the “Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists” (BOAC) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Then, however, it turned around and headed back. By the morning of April 15, it was off the coast of the Iranian island of Qeshm, from where it began its journey. The American military threatened to intercept ships that entered either Iranian ports or Iranian coastal areas. The increased attention to Rich Starry from the United States may also be explained by the fact that the tanker and its owner, Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping Co Ltd, came under American sanctions in 2023.

In Samara, an explosion occurred near the Kommunar plant, which specializes in the production of explosives and ammunition. This was reported by the Astra Telegram channel with reference to local residents. According to residents of the urban village of Petra Dubrava, the blast wave was felt in the houses. And residents of the Koshelev-Park microdistrict and the urban village of Stroykeramika said that they heard a sound and saw a column of white smoke.

The new European biometric border control system EES, which became fully operational on April 10, caused long queues at airports in several countries - France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Greece. The Airports Council of Europe (ACI) has warned that the situation threatens to become unmanageable by the summer tourist season, writes The Guardian.

According to an investigation by the European Commission, introducing a fee for connecting third-party AI assistants to WhatsApp is tantamount to actually blocking them. EU authorities intend to force Meta to reverse this decision, reports Associated Press An investigation against Meta was opened in December 2025.

If the two sides have reached a kind of parity in destroying enemy logistics, then in strikes against air defense systems Ukraine’s Defense Forces clearly pulled ahead in March 2026, Mikhailov believes. “Russian superiority in ‘middle strike’ was noted by O’Leary as well. It was visible during the isolation of Ukrainian logistics in the Kursk Region and continued during the capture of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration.

In today's summary: In the Sumy direction, a large-scale expansion of the “gray zone” and zones of focal control of the Russian Armed Forces east of Sumy is recorded In the Konstantinovsky direction, Russian operations in the Konstantinovka area are behind the schedule for the offensive on Slavyansk In the Pokrovsk direction there is an accumulation of Russian attack aircraft in the southern part of Mirnograd In the Zaporozhye direction, the Z-channel “Rybar” reports on the advance of the