(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has placed on indefinite paid leave the attorney who argued on behalf of the government on Friday in a lawsuit brought by a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in error, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Sources said Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, was told by officials at the DOJ that he was being placed on leave over a “failure to zealously advocate” for the government’s interests.
“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Saturday. “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
The government is seeking to appeal an order from the judge who presided over Friday’s hearing and ordered the department to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia by Monday.
In Friday’s hearing, Reuveni repeatedly struggled when pressed by Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for details surrounding Abrego Garcia’s deportation — and why the administration claimed it could not facilitate his return to the United States.
At one point in the hearing, Reuveni was asked by Xinis under what authority law enforcement officers seized Abrego Garcia.
Reuveni said he was frustrated that he did not have those answers.
“Your honor, my answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating, and I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you on a lot of these questions,” Reuveni said.
(WASHINGTON) — Tens of thousands of protesters mustered in cities and towns across the country on Saturday to sound off against the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government and its polices.
Carrying homemade posters and chanting “Hands Off,” the protesters came out to the more than 1,200 rallies nationwide despite rain in many cities, according to organizers.
Several Democratic heavyweights, including some members of Congress, joined the protests and urged the public not to stand for what they called the administration’s mismanagement and breaking with constitutional norms.
“Our founders wrote a Constitution that did not begin with ‘We the dictators,'” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the crowd gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
He slammed the administration for several of its policies, including President Donald Trump’s implementing of tariffs on nearly every country.
“Their tariffs are not only imbecilic — they’re illegal, they’re unconstitutional, and we’re going to turn this around,” he said.
Paul Osadebe, a lawyer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, spoke during the rally in Washington and said he’s been asked by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to take a buyout offer.
Osadebe, a union steward with AFGE Local 476, told the crowd the oligarchs do not “value you or your life or your community.”
“We’re seeing that they don’t care who they have to destroy or who they have to hurt to get what they want,” he said.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., echoed his statement with a warning that it will get worse.
“They would have us believe if we gave them all of control, everything would be OK,” he said. “But breaking news, they have the control, and look at where we are now: massive inequality across the country.”
Similar energy and rhetoric were present at other “Hands Off” protests.
“The federal administration thinks this country belongs to them — and that they’re above the law,” organizers of the Boston rally said. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on — our rights, our health care, our data, our jobs, our services — and daring the world to stop them.”
There were no reports of any major disturbances or arrests at any of the rallies.
The White House did not have any immediate comment about the events.
(WASHINGTON) — The IRS started a new round of layoffs on Friday beginning with the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
Overall, the agency is planning to cut nearly a quarter of its workforce with the cuts beginning Friday, sources familiar with the plans said.
“This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities,” according to the email, which added that the layoffs will “result in staffing cuts across multiple offices and job categories.”
The civil rights office will be effectively shuttered by the move, with the remaining staffers moved into the Office of Chief Counsel, according to the email.
The agency had previously drawn up plans to cut roughly 18% to 20% of the 100,000-person workforce by the middle of May.
The email sent to IRS employees Friday said the reduction in force will “be implemented in phases” and noted that employees will be offered early retirement incentives starting next week.
The agency also recently put approximately 50 IT security staffers on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the move, as the agency faces pressure to make workforce cuts and demands for data-sharing across the federal government during tax season. The Trump administration has said workforce changes will not affect staff directly working to process tax returns.
However, there are concerns that the layoffs may still cause delays.
“The bottom line: Forever, it has been an absolute rule of thumb that you keep things stable during filing season. Because it’s delicate,” one former IRS commissioner told ABC News. “And the idea that nearly 10% of the entire IRS workforce is being laid off right in the middle of filing season is extremely risky.”
Earlier this year, more than 4,000 IRS employees accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer. The agency also fired more than 6,600 probationary employees but has been forced to reinstate them under court orders.
It’s not clear if members of those two groups of employees will be targeted in the new reductions in force.
Several senior agency leaders, including the chief human resources officer, acting commissioner and acting general counsel, have resigned or been demoted since January.
The IRS and the White House did not respond to a requests for comment from ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — After about six hours of amendment votes, the Senate approved a budget blueprint Saturday morning by a vote of 51-48.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins cast votes against the resolution. Every other Republican in the chamber voted for it, and every Democrat voted against it.
The resolution only needed a simple majority of votes to pass, so it now heads to the House for further consideration.
If the House also approves the proposal, it will unlock the next step in the reconciliation process and will allow committees in both the House and the Senate to begin drafting legislation aimed at accomplishing Republican wish-list items such as raising the debt ceiling, increasing border security and extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
The final package, if Republicans can agree on it, will be able to be passed with a simple majority of votes in both chambers.
Democrats were powerless to stop the resolution from moving forward Saturday morning, but they put up a fight by forcing votes on a number of amendments, including amendments on protecting access to Medicare and Medicaid, modifying or eliminating some of Trump’s tariffs and protecting funding for caregivers for children and the elderly.
The Senate completed its vote-a-rama just after 2:30 a.m.
Though Republicans defeated the most eye-popping of the Democratic amendments, some that were offered got a sprinkling of across-the-aisle support from a handful of GOP defectors, signaling the challenges ahead in drafting legislation that’s palatable to enough Republicans to pass muster when it comes up for a final vote.
Though an amendment that would have struck the instructions governing massive spending cuts to the House Energy and Commerce Committee failed, it got the support of three GOP senators: Collins, Josh Hawley and Lisa Murkowski.
This is the budget instruction that many Democrats say presents a risk to Medicare and Medicaid funding, signaling a possible hazard on the path ahead for any package that is cobbled together. Collins has signaled that concerns about cuts in this area of the package is why she voted against the entire resolution.
Collins, Murkowski and Hawley also supported the amendment to protect funding for caregivers.
With Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, Senate Republicans will only be able to lose three members of its caucus when a final package is put together.
The Senate will return to Washington on Monday for one more week of work before a two-week recess.
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to sentence disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos to seven years and three months in prison, calling his conduct a “brazen web of deceit” that defrauded donors, misled voters, and fueled his political rise through lies, theft, and identity fraud.
The government outlined the extent of Santos’s fraudulent activity across the 2020 and 2022 election cycles in a detailed sentencing memo filed on Friday.
Prosecutors allege Santos, 35, with the help of former Campaign Treasurer Nancy Marks, falsified Federal Election Commission filings, fabricating donor contributions and inflating fundraising totals to meet the $250,000 threshold required to join the National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) coveted “Young Guns” program. Marks pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing in June.
When informed he hadn’t reached the NRCC benchmark, Santos texted an associate, “We are going to do this a little differently. I got it.”
That “different” approach included submitting fake donations attributed to family members, fictitious individuals and even identities stolen from elderly supporters, according to the filing.
In tandem, Santos was running a fraudulent political consulting firm, Redstone Strategies LLC, falsely presenting it as a registered Super PAC or 501(c)(4) nonprofit. It was neither, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors say Santos used Redstone to launder donor money, keep commissions and fund personal expenses. In one scheme, he used an elderly woman’s credit card — originally provided for a one-time donation — to charge $12,000 through Redstone’s merchant account, netting himself $11,580 after fees. He wired the money directly into his personal bank account.
When questioned by his business partner, Santos lied, claiming the woman — who suffers from a brain injury — was a consulting client, according to the filing. Between February and August 2022, prosecutors say Santos used her credit card repeatedly, attributing donations to her, her daughter, or fictitious names.
Another victim, referred to as “Individual 2” in the filing, had their credit card charged at least five times in March 2022, totaling more than $30,000 in fake campaign contributions, including some attributed to Santos’s uncle and to people who didn’t exist. These donations were strategically routed to other campaigns that were clients of Redstone, ensuring Santos earned a financial kickback while boosting his political visibility.
In July 2020, he used another victim’s credit card to contribute $28,400 to his own campaign, some under the name of a personal friend who neither donated nor gave consent, according to the filing.
In April 2022, prosecutors say Santos falsely reported a $500,000 personal loan to his campaign, enabling him to boast an $800,000 Q1 fundraising haul. He approved a press release promoting the lie and pitched the narrative in conversations with Republican leaders, including a sitting congresswoman. According to the prosecution, the loan never existed.
That lie, combined with his doctored FEC filings and a fabricated resume claiming degrees from NYU and jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, helped Santos secure Young Guns status from the NRCC in June 2022. The designation brought significant support: $103,000 in advertising, $33,000 in polling, and direct contributions from joint fundraising efforts.
However, by fall 2022, campaign staffers discovered the truth. When confronted about the nonexistent loan, Santos admitted it wasn’t real and scrambled to fill the gap by soliciting a $450,000 loan from a donor referred to as “Individual 1” in the filing. Santos wired $400,000 of it to his campaign, never reported it to the FEC, and never repaid the donor. He covered the remaining $100,000 by misappropriating more funds from the same donor via Redstone.
Santos was expelled from Congress in December 2023 and has pleaded guilty wire fraud and aggravated identity fraud.
Defense attorneys said in their own memo Santos deserves no more than two years in prison, arguing he “accepted full responsibility for his actions.”
“This plea is not just an admission of guilt,” Santos told reporters in August. “It’s an acknowledgment that I need to be held accountable like any other American that breaks the law.”
The former congressman’s sentencing is on April 30.
(NEW YORK) — U.S. consumers are going on a tariff-induced shopping spree. From furniture, to appliances, to alcohol, Americans are rushing to buy before President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are felt at the checkout counter.
Economists say the tariffs are expected to increase prices for everyday items and many are now raising the likelihood that the economy will fall into a recession.
Auto sales surged 11.2% in March as car buyers flocked to dealerships to beat the 25% tariffs on all imported cars, which went into effect April 3.
Once Noel Peguero heard about the wider tariff announcements, he said he hit the stores. The 50-year old school worker from Queens, New York, says he spent about $3,500 this past week on car parts, gardening supplies and electronics, including a 40″ Hisense television and Macbook laptop for his son.
“Now is the time to buy,” he told ABC News, adding they were items he was planning to purchase anyway but decided to buy sooner rather than later to avoid any potential price increases.
While stocking up on some items now may make sense, experts caution consumers to buy only what they can afford and not go into debt to get ahead of the “tariff effect.”
“A lot of people are dealing with diminished savings and rising debt, so they may not be in a position to make a big purchase or put together a large stockpile,” Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate, tells ABC News. “Take the long view. It might make more sense to drive your existing car for a bit longer or live with the old kitchen cabinets another year or two.”
With nearly all U.S. trading partners now subject to a 10% tariff and even higher “reciprocal tariffs” to come April 9 for about 60 trading partners that have a high trade deficit with the United States, some consumers worry that everyday items may soon not only be more expensive, but harder to find.
The mere thought conjures images of empty store shelves during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Americans were scrambling for everything from toilet paper to baking flour.
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban added to those worries this week, posting on the social-media platform BlueSky that people should “buy lots of consumables” now before prices go up.
“From toothpaste to soap, anything you can find storage space for, buy before they have to replenish inventory,” Cuban said. “Even if it’s made in the USA, they will jack up the price and blame it on tariffs.”
Experts say they don’t anticipate any shortages.
“Of course, if everyone heeded [Cuban’s] advice, there probably would be some issues, but we’re not seeing evidence this is happening at scale,” Rossman said. “Thankfully the supply chain is in much better shape than it was during the pandemic.”
With the average American household carrying about $6,600 in debt, according to TransUnion, experts say it’s important to take a measured approach and consider your long-term financial situation and goals.
“I realize sometimes people need to carry debt for various reasons,” said Rossman, “but don’t make it worse by panic buying. Rushing to make a big purchase often doesn’t end well.”
(NEW YORK) — Significant severe weather and life-threatening flash flooding continue to impact much of the mid-South up through the Ohio River Valley.
Saturday will be the final day of this multi-day high impact flood event that has wreaked havoc across portions of the Lower and Mid-Mississippi River Valley, which remains under a high risk for flooding.
With the potential of seeing another 3 to 6 inches of rain Saturday into Sunday (and locally more in some places), catastrophic flooding is likely to occur, if not already ongoing, for the places under the high risk.
Even though the threat for severe storms will gradually lessen over the weekend as this stationary front slowly pushes east, more unsettled weather will continue to erupt over the areas already hit hard by tornados and life-threatening flooding.
On Saturday, the threat for severe weather extends from eastern Texas up through Kentucky, with parts of the lower and Mid-Mississippi River Valley under the greatest threat.
Millions are under an enhanced risk (level 3 of 5), where damaging winds, large hail and several tornadoes are possible, some which could be strong. Places like Memphis, Tennessee; Shreveport, Louisiana; Lafayette, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi, all face the greatest risk of seeing the most intense storms that could generate strong tornadoes, very large hail and powerful winds.
Both the threat for severe weather and excessive rainfall will ease a bit on Sunday as this system begins to slide eastward. However, parts of the Tennessee and Ohio River Valley could see another 3 to 6 inches before this frontal boundary completely moves out of the region by Monday.
Parts of the Southeast are under a slight risk (level 2 of 5) for severe weather, where storms could generate damaging winds, hail and isolated tornadoes.
With that, thunderstorms generating heavy rainfall (with rates potentially reaching 2 to 3 inches per hour) could cause flash flooding in prone areas. A good portion of Georgia and Alabama, as well as parts of the Florida Panhandle, southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana are under a slight risk for flooding.
Following a third night of destructive storms, portions of the mid-Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys are not out of the woods yet. A stagnant frontal boundary stretching over the region will bring additional rounds of torrential rain and strong storms again on Saturday.
More than a dozen tornadoes were reported yesterday across Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.
Flood alerts stretching from Texas up through Pennsylvania remain in effect. Overnight, flash flood emergencies were issued for Cape Girardeau County and Van Buran in Missouri. Emergency management reported water rescues.
American teacher Stephen Hubbard was taken prisoner by Russian forces in Ukraine. Image via ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — The last time Stephen J. Hubbard was seen in public, he was being led handcuffed into a Moscow courtroom.
The 73-year-old American has spent roughly three years in Russian captivity. In early 2022, he was swept up by the Kremlin’s troops as they occupied parts of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion. He is believed to be the only American Russia has taken from Ukraine and put on trial.
Russia has convicted Hubbard as a mercenary fighting for Ukraine. But his family, the U.S. government and Ukrainian officials say the reality is that the elderly American was an innocent teacher.
“We didn’t even know if he was dead or alive until July,” Hubbard’s sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, told ABC News. “It’s dire. His health is dire. It’s been reported he’s passing blood. They need to bring him home.”
Hubbard is one of a string of Americans seized by Russia on dubious charges in recent years, as the Kremlin has seized hostages to use as political bargaining chips, among them WNBA star Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The State Department has designated Hubbard as “wrongfully detained” meaning the U.S. government can negotiate for his release.
In September, Russian state media reported Hubbard pleaded guilty to the mercenary charges. His sister said the allegations were absurd and that he had been forced into the guilty plea after years of torture and mistreatment.
“It’s just a lie,” Patricia said. “Steve was 70 years old, there’s no way he was a mercenary. Steve was an English teacher. It’s an excuse to kidnap Americans. Steve is nothing but a pawn for Russia.”
The State Department called on Russia to release Hubbard.
“He never should have been taken captive,” the State Department said in a statement. “The United States will continue to work for the release of Mr. Hubbard and all other Americans unjustly detained in Russia.”
Born in Big Rapids, Michigan, Hubbard briefly joined the Air Force after high school but left after three years. In the 1980s, he moved to Japan with his second wife, where he spent the next 25 years working as an English teacher, according to his sister. After the couple divorced, he and his son from that marriage moved to Cyprus, where he met a Ukrainian woman.
In 2014, he and the woman moved to Ukraine, settling in Izyum, a small, sleepy city in the country’s east. Hubbard, who doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, continued to teach English online to support himself, his sister said.
Hubbard was in Izyum when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian troops quickly overran the city and conducted one of the most brutal occupations of the war over the seven months that followed.
After Ukrainian forces liberated Izyum in September 2022, they discovered evidence of Russian atrocities — including hundreds of mass graves in a nearby forest. Soldiers had dumped bodies, with many showing signs of torture.
Hubbard was among the hundreds of civilians detained in Izyum and the surrounding villages during the Russian occupation. Ukrainian police investigating war crimes said they have been able to establish that a group of Russian soldiers seized Hubbard from his home in April 2022.
He was brought to a torture chamber in the nearby village of Balaklia, where many of those detained passed through, prosecutors in the Kharkiv region told ABC News.
A month later, Russian television aired a report featuring Hubbard from a prison in occupied Ukraine. Another video published by Mash, a channel with links to Russia’s security services, shows a zip-tied Hubbard being beaten in the back of a Russian APC.
Ukrainian prisoners of war have said they crossed paths with Hubbard at different times during his imprisonment. Ihor Shyshko told ABC News he shared a cell with Hubbard for about a month in 2023 at a prison in Pakino, around 150 miles from Moscow.
“The day began and ended with tortures,” Shyshko said.
In addition to subjecting them to electric shocks for interrogations, guards would force prisoners to stand in uncomfortable positions and then hit them in the genitals or knock them to the ground, according to Shyshko.
The prisons were freezing, Shyshko said, and prisoners were kept on a starvation diet, fed mostly water with a few spoons of buckwheat in it. Many Ukrainian prisoners of war return from captivity looking skeletal and suffering serious health problems.
Shyshko was released in a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine last year. Photos show him gaunt and wasted after his release, with bruises and rashes from scabies on his legs. He still wears hearing aids on both ears because of damage from beatings, he said.
The conditions were even harder for an elderly man like Hubbard, whom inmates believed was subjected to harsher treatment because he was American, Shyshko said. He recalled other inmates having to carry Hubbard to a medical center because he was unable to walk properly.
“He had very damaged knees, there was practically no skin, everything was rotten,” he said. “He is an old man. And he could not understand why this was happening to him.”
Patricia said she learned which prison her brother had been in after the wife of a Ukrainian soldier tracked her down. After Shyshko’s release, he also made contact with U.S. government representatives in an effort to help Hubbard.
Ukrainian police and prosecutors have opened a war crimes case over Hubbard’s abduction. After months interviewing witnesses and checking with government organizations, they said they had no evidence he had any involvement with Ukraine’s military or any fighting. Ukrainian officials and soldiers also noted Hubbard’s health and age likely meant he would not have been chosen to fight.
“He had nothing to do with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He did not participate in the territorial defense. He is simply a civilian teacher,” Oleksandr Kobyliev, who heads the war crimes department of the Kharkiv regional police, told ABC News.
Patricia hopes her brother can be released in a prisoner exchange similar to those that have freed other U.S. citizens.
Last July, Russia released Americans, including Gershkovich, in the largest exchange since the end of the Cold War after reaching an agreement with the Biden administration. In February, American teacher Marc Fogel was freed in exchange for a Russian cyber criminal, in a swap agreed with the Trump administration.
Patricia said she is selling her house in order to buy another place with room for Hubbard to stay and recover when he is eventually freed. She pleaded for President Donald Trump to help save her brother.
“You went and got another schoolteacher, go get my brother,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”
(WASHINGTON) — After months of negotiations, a deal to turn over TikTok’s United States operations to a new company with a majority American ownership was finalized on Wednesday, according to senior administration officials.
The investors — which included Oracle, Blackstone, Andreeson Horowitz and several others — ByteDance and the Trump administration negotiated and agreed to the terms.
The plan was for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to approve the deal this week, triggering a 120-day closing period to finalize the paperwork and financing.
ByteDance would have maintained a minority ownership in the new company, under the 20% threshold required by Congress.
All that remained was for the Chinese government to approve the deal — something all sides of the negotiations expected would happen.
However, on Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced his tariffs.
Thursday morning, representatives for ByteDance called the White House to say the Chinese government would not approve the deal until negotiations could be held on Trump’s tariffs.
The deal remains in limbo, hostage to the emerging trade war between the U.S. and China.
On Friday, Trump said he is extending the deadline for TikTok to be banned or sold off by its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance.
The previous April 5 deadline will be pushed 75 days, Trump said in a post to his social media platform. It’s the second time he has pushed the deadline since taking office.
The TikTok negotiations were led by Vice President JD Vance, sources told ABC News. The deal is currently not being renegotiated with investors and the White House both standing by.
The revival appears to depend on what happens with U.S. and China negotiations on trade.
City utility workers clean up after a Russian drone attack on April 4, 2025 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The Russian army carried out around six strikes in the Novobavarskyi district. Nearly 30 residential high-rise buildings and dozens of cars were damaged. More than 30 people were injured, and 5 were killed. (Photo by Hnat Holyk/Gwara Media/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
(LONSON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for “sufficient pressure on Russia” after a day of missile and drone strikes that killed at least 23 people and as Kirill Dmitriev — the CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and an envoy of President Vladimir Putin — met with officials in the U.S.
Eighteen people were killed — among them nine children — in a Russian ballistic missile attack on the central city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, Oleksandr Vilkul — the head of the local defense council — said in a post on Telegram. Another 56 people were injured in the strike, Vilkul said.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink wrote in a post to X, “Horrified that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant in Kryvyi Rih. More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6 children. This is why the war must end.”
Zelenskyy said in a Saturday morning post to Telegram that the American reaction was inadequate.
“Unfortunately, the reaction of the American Embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such strong people — and such a weak reaction,” he said. “They are even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed children.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strike targeted a meeting of Ukrainian commanders and “Western instructors” at a restaurant in the city. Ukrainian officials disputed the Russian justification.
Zelenskyy said in a statement on Friday evening that the strike in Kryvyi Rih — his home town — hit “an area near residential buildings: hitting a playground and regular streets,” describing those responsible for the attack as “inhuman.”
The president also reported a strike drone attack in the northeastern city of Kharkiv which killed five people and wounded 34 others. Another attack in the southern city of Kherson “hit an energy facility — the Kherson thermal power plant,” Zelenskyy wrote.
“Yes, the war must end,” Zelenskyy wrote in his Saturday morning statement. “But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade. We must not be afraid to put pressure on the only one who continues this war and ignores all the world’s proposals to end it.”
“We must put pressure on Russia, which chooses to kill children instead of a ceasefire. We must introduce additional sanctions against those who cannot exist without ballistic strikes on neighboring people. We must do everything possible to save lives.”
Russia and Ukraine both launched more strikes overnight into Sunday morning. Ukraine’s air force reported 92 drones entering the country overnight, of which 51 were shot down and 31 lost in flight without causing damage. The air force reported damage in the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 49 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Artyom Zdunov — the head of the Mordovia region, to the southeast of Moscow — said in a Telegram post that a drone targeted an industrial site there. “Operational and emergency services are working on the territory,” he wrote. “According to preliminary information, there are no casualties.”
Andriy Kovalenko — the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council — wrote on Telegram that a strike by “unknown drones” targeted a military industrial complex in Saransk, the capital of Mordovia. Kovalenko said goods produced there are used “in control, communication and data transmission systems, in particular — in the deployment of secure communication channels for the Russian army and in the control of drones.”
Both Ukraine and Russia have accused the other of continuing strikes on energy facilities despite the U.S.-brokered partial ceasefire that all parties said they agreed to last month. The agreement was intended to freeze all attacks on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea, Kyiv, Moscow and Washington said.
Zelenskyy on Friday again accused Russia of violating the terms of the deal.
“These strikes cannot be accidental,” the president said. “The Russians know exactly that these are energy facilities and that such facilities should be protected from any attacks under what Russia itself promised to the American side.”
“Every Russian promise ends with missiles or drones, bombs or artillery,” he continued.
“Diplomacy means nothing to them. And that’s why pressure is needed — sufficient pressure on Russia so they feel the consequences of every lie of theirs, every strike, every single day they take lives and prolong the war.”
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also accused Ukraine of violating the partial ceasefire. Moscow passed information about the alleged violations to the U.S., the foreign minister said. On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry alleged 14 Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the previous 24 hours.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration is waiting to see whether Moscow is serious about reaching an agreement to end its 3-year-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Noting Dmitriev’s meetings in Washington this week, Rubio said, “He’ll take some messages back” to Moscow. “And the message is, the United States needs to know whether you’re serious or not about peace. Ultimately, Putin will have to make that decision.”
“If there’s a delay tactic, the President’s not interested in that,” Rubio said. “If this is dragging things out, President Trump’s not going to fall into the trap of endless negotiations about negotiations,” he added.
Washington’s messages to the Kremlin via Dmitriev were not “threatening,” Rubio said, but were instead “more of an explanation of…our timeline,” which Rubio said was a matter of “weeks.”
“It’s pretty short. At the same time as we now have seen, members of Congress have begun to file bills to increase sanctions. So there is going to be growing pressure from Capitol Hill to impose sanctions,” Rubio continued. “All these factors have been explained in the nicest way possible. Hopefully he’ll take that message back to Moscow.”
As to potential violations of the partial ceasefire, Rubio suggested some incidents were to be expected. “I think there’s things they’re not striking that they were before,” he said.
But “if all of a sudden we wake up tomorrow and the Russians are launching a massive offensive, then I think that’s a pretty clear sign they’re not interested in peace,” Rubio added. “That hasn’t happened yet.”
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman, Christopher Boccia, Tanya Stukalova and Oleksiy Pshemyskiy contributed to this report.
