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(LONDON) — Russia launched no long-range strike drones into Ukraine on Monday night and into Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said, marking the first night since December 2024 in which zero such craft targeted the country.

Ukraine’s air force reported two missiles launched into the southern Zaporizhzhia region, both of which were shot down. The air force sent out no drone warnings during the night.

The air force also said that Russia attacked frontline communities in Zaporizhzhia with five guided bombs on Monday evening, killing one person and injuring five others.

The absence of attack drones represented a notable departure from recent weeks, which have seen Russia launch massed drone attacks — often of more than 100 drones in the course of a night — against Ukrainian cities.

“There were no strike UAVs,” Andriy Kovalenko — the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council — wrote on Telegram. “We are monitoring the situation, but this doesn’t mean anything yet.”

Both Kyiv and Moscow have continued to launch massed cross-border drone strikes in recent months, despite U.S. efforts to facilitate a ceasefire and eventual peace deal to end Russia’s 3-year-old invasion of its neighbor.

Last week, all three parties — the U.S., Ukraine and Russia — said they agreed to pause any attacks in the Black Sea and freeze strikes on energy infrastructure. Both Kyiv and Moscow have since accused the other of violating the pause on energy attacks.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces downed three Ukrainian drones overnight over the territory of its western Bryansk region. The ministry also alleged that Ukrainian drones targeted energy facilities twice over the previous 24 hours.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha also accused Russia of attacking energy infrastructure, telling journalists Monday that a strike on a facility in the southern Kherson region left 45,000 residents without power.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly cited Russia’s near-nightly bombardments as evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin has no real interest in the ceasefire and peace being proposed by President Donald Trump and his administration.

In a Sunday evening video address, Zelenskyy reported “more strikes and shelling” in seven Ukrainian regions. “The geography and brutality of Russian strikes, not just occasionally, but literally every day and night, show that Putin couldn’t care less about diplomacy,” he said.

“For several weeks now, there has been a U.S. proposal for an unconditional ceasefire,” Zelenskyy added. “And almost every day, in response to this proposal, there are Russian drones, bombs, artillery shelling and ballistic strikes.”

In recent days, Trump hinted at frustration with Moscow, telling reporters he was “very angry” at Putin after the Russian leader again criticized Zelenskyy and called for his removal in favor of a transitional government.

Trump added he would consider applying new sanctions on Russia’s lucrative oil exports and on any nations purchasing its oil. China and India are among the most significant customers for Russian oil products.

The president later told reporters on Air Force One that his administration was making significant progress toward ending the war. Asked about his relationship with Putin, Trump responded, “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word.”

Asked if there was a deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump suggested there was a “psychological deadline.”

He added, “If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it.”

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(WASHINGTON) — As a U.S. team of experts heads to Myanmar to assist in recovery from the devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people in Southeast Asia on Friday, international teams, including those from China and Russia, are filling the void in the U.S. absence.

The U.S. said Monday that it would provide $2 million in aid and a small U.S. Agency for International Development emergency response team has been deployed to assess the situation in Myanmar, but officials said that it had not yet been able to enter the country as of Monday morning.

While the dollar amount of initial aid is in line with what the U.S. has pledged in the past, the overall pace of the response has been slower. In the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake in Morrocco, for example, a USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team was deployed just hours later, although Morrocco did not ultimately ask for DARTs.

That same year when Libya endured catastrophic floodings, DARTs were deployed the same day. And when a major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria that same year, the DART teams were also launched just a few hours after the disaster hit. In both cases, the DARTs took a few days to get on the ground.

The U.S. response comes amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the federal government and dismantle USAID, laying off thousands of employees, revoking funding for more than 80% of its programs and closing its headquarters, although those efforts are being is being challenged in multiple court cases.

On Friday, the State Department announced it was officially shuttering the agency and taking over “many of USAID’s functions and its ongoing programming.”

The State Department has pushed back on the assessment that cuts to USAID have limited the earthquake response, but officials say there has been at least some logistical impact caused by the reorganization, rather than a lack of funding.

“I would reject the notion this is obviously a result of the USAID cuts and that kind of funding,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Monday. “We’re certainly in the region.”

In the meantime, it was Chinese teams that arrived 18 hours after the quake and more than 400 Chinese personnel are now on the ground in the region. Beijing has in sent planes full of supplies, providing $14 million in aid. China also has multiple teams in Thailand.

It’s a propaganda win for China, showing it can be a reliable partner when its neighbors are in crisis.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Monday posted on X photos and videos of Chinese workers on the ground, rescuing survivors and delivering supplies, saying, “China, a friend in need.”

At the site where a 34-story building collapsed on Sunday in Bangkok, a group of U.S. military personnel were coming and going from the search area throughout Monday. The American team is working with Israeli soldiers to seach for survivor, sending drones into areas too dangerous for rescue workers to reach.

“We’re learning a lot from the Americans, and they’re bringing in a lot of good equipment,” said Choktong Issarangkool, one of the volunteers in the rescue and search teams who is also acting as a translator for the American teams.

Thais are grateful for the American assistance, something this region has become accustomed to following a natural disaster: U.S. aid teams have always been among the first on the ground to help.

State Department officials said discussions regarding a more extensive response to the earthquake are ongoing, including the possibility of sending a DART team, although it might be smaller than in past efforts.

“Our disaster experts, including those based in Bangkok, Manila and Washington, D.C., continue to monitor the situation with coordination with U.S. government counterparts in the region,” Bruce said.

She emphasized that the $2 million of initial support would be implemented through partner organizations that were already working in the impacted areas.

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(LEICESTER, UK) — Paleontologists are marveling over the unique fossil of a marine species that predated the dinosaurs, according to new research.

The fossil, dated to about 444 million years ago, contained a new species of arthropod that fossilized inside-out, according to a paper published in the journal Palaeontology last week.

The discovery was described by researchers as a “legless, headless wonder,” according to a statement from the University of Leicester.

The “exceptionally preserved” euarthropod was found with its muscles, sinews, tendons and guts all preserved in “unimaginable detail,” said Sarah Gabbott, a professor at the University of Leicester’s school of geology and lead author of the paper, said in the statement.

“Remarkably her insides are a mineralised time-capsule,” Gabbott said, adding that the specimen’s head and legs were lost to decay over hundreds of millions of years.

The new species was dubbed “Keurbos susanae,” or “Sue” — after the mother of the woman who discovered it. Researchers are certain it is a primitive marine arthropod, but the precise evolutionary relationships remain “frustratingly elusive,” Gabbott said.

The fossil was located on Soom Shale, a band of silts and clays about 250 miles north of Cape Town, South Africa. At the time the strata was laid down, a “devastating” glaciation had wiped out about 85% of Earth’s species — one of the “big five” mass extinctions in Earth’s history, the researchers said.

But the marine basin where Sue was found was somehow protected from the worst of the freezing conditions and provided shelter for a community of “fascinating” species, according to the paper.

“This fossil is just so beautifully preserved there’s so much anatomy there that needs interpreting,” Gabbott said. “Layer upon on layer of exquisite detail and complexity.”

The sediments that trapped the specimen were extremely toxic, the researchers said. The water contained no oxygen, but hydrogen sulphide — described as not only “stinky” but deadly — was dissolved in the water, the researchers said.

An unusual chemical alchemy may have been responsible for the unique way Sue was fossilized, the researchers hypothesized.

About 85% of the animals on Earth today are arthropods — including shrimps, lobsters, spiders, mites, millipedes and centipedes, the paper stated.

The downside to Sue’s unique fossilization is it makes it hard to compare the specimen with other fossils of similar species of the time.

“So it remains a mystery how she fits into the evolutionary tree of life,” according to the researchers.

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(PABRADĖ, Lithuania) — Three of the four U.S. Army soldiers who went missing during a training mission near Pabradė, Lithuania, last week were found dead on Monday, but the search is ongoing for the fourth soldier, the Army said.

Their identities were not released.

The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the soldiers were in when they went missing was removed from a swamp early Monday morning after six days of work to retrieve it, the Army said.

The soldiers, who are all based in Fort Stewart, Georgia, went missing on Tuesday during a training exercise, the Army said.

On Wednesday, their 63-ton-vehicle was found submerged in about 15 feet of water and “clay-like mud” in a training area, the Army said.

“Most likely, the M88 drove into the swamp,” and the vehicle “may have just gone diagonally to the bottom,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News via phone last week.

The multiday search effort was complicated by the swamp’s muddy conditions, officials said.

The Army said last week it brought in assets including “a large capacity slurry pump, cranes, more than 30 tons of gravel, and subject matter experts.”

“The Polish Armed Forces have also volunteered a unit of military engineers, which is bringing in an additional water pump, tracked recovery vehicles, other additional equipment and supplies needed along with 150 personnel,” the Army said.

On Saturday, a U.S. Navy dive team arrived at the site, joining Lithuanian divers, the Army said.

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(PABRADĖ, Lithuania) — The U.S. Army vehicle that was carrying four soldiers when it went missing near Pabradė, Lithuania, has been pulled from a swamp after six days of “relentless effort” to retrieve it, the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense said Monday.

The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle was salvaged Sunday night and the work at the site is ongoing, the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense said.

No updates about the whereabouts or conditions of the missing soldiers were provided.

The soldiers, who are all based in Fort Stewart, Georgia, went missing on Tuesday during a training exercise, the Army said.

On Wednesday, their 70-ton vehicle was found submerged in about 15 feet of water and “clay-like mud” in a training area, the Army said.

“Most likely, the M88 drove into the swamp,” and the vehicle “may have just gone diagonally to the bottom,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News via phone last week.

The multiday search effort has been complicated by the swamp’s muddy conditions, officials said.
The Army said last week it brought in assets including “a large capacity slurry pump, cranes, more than 30 tons of gravel, and subject matter experts.”

“The Polish Armed Forces have also volunteered a unit of military engineers, which is bringing in an additional water pump, tracked recovery vehicles, other additional equipment and supplies needed along with 150 personnel,” the Army said.

On Saturday, a U.S. Navy dive team arrived at the site, joining Lithuanian divers, the Army said.

“We are going to use every resource available from all our countries to find our missing soldiers,” Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, 1st Armored Division commanding general, said in a statement Saturday.

The soldiers’ families are being kept up to date on recovery efforts, the Army said.

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(BANGKOK) — A desperate search for survivors continued Sunday — from a collapsed high-rise building that was under construction in Bangkok, Thailand, to the rubble of ancient buildings in neighboring Myanmar — as a series of powerful aftershocks from Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake made it precarious for rescuers digging through debris, officials said.

The death toll in the Bangkok metropolitan region rose to 18 on Sunday, according to government officials. In Myanmar, the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake, at least 1,644 people were dead and another 139 were officially missing. At least 3,408 people were injured in Myanmar alone, officials said.

The number of deaths across the devastated region is expected to rise, officials said.

In the Bangkok metropolitan area, home to more than 17.4 million people, search-and-rescue workers were focused on a collapsed high-rise building in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok. At least 11 people, believed to all be construction workers, have been confirmed dead and another 78 people remain missing in the rubble of the 34-story Sky Villa condominium, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan administration.

More than 30 people were injured when floors of the building that was under construction began to pancake on top of each other around 1:30 p.m. local time on Friday, trapping construction workers in the debris and creating a large dust cloud that enveloped the area, officials said. The building collapsed about half an hour after the powerful earthquake, centered in Myanmar, struck.

Family members of the missing construction workers gathered near the collapsed building as search-and-rescue crews dug through the pile of debris by hand, racing against time in a search for survivors.

One brother and sister told ABC News their parents were among the workers who were in the building at the time of the collapse and are now among those unaccounted for.

American tourists Garret Briere and his wife told ABC News they never could have imagined that their first vacation to Thailand would end up being one of the most terrifying experiences of their lives.

The couple from Washington state was in the mall across the street from the Sky Villa construction site when the massive earthquake hit. Briere said he watched in horror as the building fell in the quake’s aftermath and described panicked people running for their lives away from the structure. Briere said a huge dust cloud enveloped the area.

“We ran out of the building because it started shaking,” Briere said. “I grabbed my wife’s hand and I said, ‘Don’t let go.’ Immediately, we were just covered in dust and debris, and we couldn’t see, and there were thousands of people just in a panic.”

It took just several seconds for the entire building to be reduced to a 7-story-high pile of rubble, the couple said.

The epicenter of the earthquake was in Mandalay, Myanmar, the country’s second-largest city. Bangkok is about 600 miles from the epicenter.

A series of aftershocks continued to shake the region Sunday. A 5.1 magnitude aftershock struck about 17 miles north of Mandalay on Sunday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The USGS also recorded another strong aftershock as a 4.2 magnitude quake struck near Shwebo, which is about 68 miles northwest of Mandalay, earlier on Sunday.

Several videos emerged Sunday showing rescuers pulling survivors from the rubble in Myanmar. The Myanmar Fire Services Department released a video overnight showing rescuers pulling a woman alive from a collapsed building. People could be heard cheering in the background as the woman was taken to medics for treatment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Friday about the potential U.S. response to the earthquake.

“My prayers go out to the people of Burma and Thailand who are impacted by the earthquake,” Rubio wrote in a social media post. “We’ve been in contact with these countries and, as @POTUS said, stand ready to provide assistance.”

Rubio also confirmed the State Department’s teams in the affected countries were “safe and secure.”

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has suspended nonemergency consular services for the time being. The U.S. mission to Thailand has not reported any disruption in services.

ABC News’ Karson Yiu, Gamay Palacios and Preechaya Rassadanukul contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for further “tough measures” against Russia to push President Vladimir Putin into a ceasefire agreement, suggesting after another round of drone strikes that Moscow “couldn’t care less about diplomacy.”

Long-range cross-border strikes have continued throughout U.S.-mediated efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, intended as a springboard for a broader peace deal to end Russia’s 3-year-old invasion of its neighbor.

Both Kyiv and Moscow last week agreed to freeze attacks in the Black Sea and on energy infrastructure, though both have since accused the other of violating the pause on attacking energy targets.

In a Sunday evening video address, Zelenskyy reported “more strikes and shelling” in seven Ukrainian regions. “The geography and brutality of Russian strikes, not just occasionally, but literally every day and night, show that Putin couldn’t care less about diplomacy,” he said.

“For several weeks now, there has been a U.S. proposal for an unconditional ceasefire,” Zelenskyy continued. “And almost every day, in response to this proposal, there are Russian drones, bombs, artillery shelling and ballistic strikes.”

“Russia deserves increased pressure — all the tough measures that can break its capacity to wage war and sustain the system that wants nothing but war,” Zelenskyy said. “Sanctions against Russia are essential. More air defense for Ukraine is essential. More cooperation and unity among all partners is essential.”

President Donald Trump on Sunday hinted at his apparent frustration with the lack of progress toward a peace deal in Ukraine, telling NBC News he was “very angry” at Putin after the Russian leader again criticized Zelenskyy and called for his removal in favor of a transitional government.

Trump added that he would consider applying new sanctions on Russia’s lucrative oil exports and on any nations purchasing its oil. China and India are among the most significant customers for Russian oil products.

The president later told reporters on Air Force One that his administration was making significant progress toward ending the war. Asked about his relationship with Putin, Trump responded, “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word.”

“I’ve known him for a long time,” Trump said. “We’ve always gotten along well despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”

The president said he was “disappointed” by Putin’s latest attacks on Zelenskyy. “He considers him not credible, he’s supposed to be making a deal with him, whether you like him or you don’t like him, so I wasn’t happy with that.”

Asked if there was a deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump suggested there was a “psychological deadline.” He added, “If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it.”

Russia and Ukraine continued cross-border strikes through Sunday night into Monday morning.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched two missiles and 131 drones into the country overnight, of which it said 57 drones were shot down and 45 lost in flight without causing damage. The Sumy, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions were affected by the attack, the air force said in a post to Telegram.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down 66 Ukrainian drones overnight — 41 over Bryansk region, 24 over Kaluga region and one over Kursk region.

ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Tehran has rejected direct negotiations with the United States in regarding its nuclear program, responding to a letter from President Donald Trump, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

However, he added, the path for indirect negotiations remains open, the state news agency reported.

“In this response, although direct negotiations between the two parties are rejected, it has been stated that the path for indirect negotiations is open,” Pezeshkian said.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Pezeshkian stated that Iran’s response to the U.S. president’s letter was sent via Oman.

He emphasized that Iran has never avoided negotiations and blamed the United States for not fulfilling its former commitments, including terminating the former nuclear deal in Trump’s first term in 2018.

 It was the breach of commitments that caused problems on this path, which must be addressed to restore trust, the letter underscored, according to Pezeshkian.

“It will be the actions of the Americans that determine whether negotiations continue,” he added.

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(LONDON) — Ukraine has accused Russia of committing a war crime after a Russian drone struck a military hospital in Kharkiv overnight.

Ukraine’s General Staff said the strikes were a “deliberate, targeted striking” of the hospital and that it appeared soldiers being treated there were injured. It said the medical center and nearby residential buildings were damaged as a result of a “defeat of” a Russian Shahed drone.

Photos from the scene appear to show damage to the hospital, with an entrance way demolished.

Russian drones also hit apartment blocks and a shopping mall in the center of Ukraine’s second largest city, killing at least two people and wounding 25, according to Kharkiv’s governor.

“War crimes have no statute of limitations. The relevant evidence will be transferred to the bodies of international criminal justice,” the General Staff wrote in a statement on the hospital attack.

Ukrainian cites are bombed by dozens of Russian drones every night, and this weekend has seen a particularly intense wave of attacks in civilian areas of major cities. Dnipro in southeast Ukraine suffered on Friday night heavy strikes that started major fires.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said over the past week Russia had launched over 1,000 drones, nine missiles and over 1,300 guided aerial bombs, with most of Ukraine’s regions coming under attack. He said Ukraine had shot down a “significant number” of the drones and missiles.

“Russia is dragging out the war,” Zelenskyy wrote in a statement on X, saying Ukraine had shared information on Russia’s strikes with its allies and that it expects a “response from the United States, Europe and all our allies to this terror against our people.”

Russia has also intensified its ground offensive operations in recent days amid, according to Ukraine’s military, amid the ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to end the war.

Ukraine’s General Staff as well as Ukrainian military analysts report in the past few days Russia has launched some of the largest number of ground assaults since the start of the year.

“The number of enemy assaults has exceeded 200 times per day for the last three days,” Deep State, a blog account that tracks the war and is close to Ukraine’s military, wrote Friday. This is the highest three-day intensity of the year.”

It follows warnings this week by Zelenskyy that Russia is preparing to launch a major spring offensive, even as it tries to drag out negotiations with the Trump administration.

The Russian attacks are focused most of all in eastern Ukraine, in the direction of Pokrovsk, an important defensive hub that Russia has been trying to seize for more than 6 months.

Russian forces had scaled back their attacks in recent weeks in part due to poor ground conditions and apparently also worn down by extremely heavy losses. But it appears they are now renewing their offensive operations.

Ukrainian and western officials warned that President Vladimir Putin of Russia will try to use protracted negotiations as an opportunity to also advance on the battlefield, hoping to crack Ukraine’s defenses as the Trump administration weakens western support for Kyiv.

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(LONDON) — The American embassy in Syria has warned all U.S. citizens to leave the country due to “the increased possibility of attacks” during the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of March, which marks the end of Ramadan in the Muslim world.

The embassy posted a notice to its website late on Friday cautioning citizens of potential attacks targeting “embassies, international organizations and Syrian public institutions” in the Syrian capital Damascus.

“Methods of attack could include, but are not limited to, individual attackers, armed gunmen, or the use of explosive devices,” the embassy notice said. “Leave Syria now,” it added.

The State Department’s current travel advisory for Syria is at level 4 — its highest alert meaning Americans are advised not to travel to the country for any reason.

“This advisory remains in effect due to the significant risks of terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, hostage-taking, armed conflict and unjust detention,” the embassy said in its latest notice.

The U.S. embassy in Damascus suspended operations in 2012 shortly after civil war erupted between former President Bashar Assad’s regime and a patchwork of rebel groups. Assad was deposed late last year by a collection of opposition forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is now Syria’s interim president.

“The U.S. government is unable to provide any routine or emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in Syria,” the embassy wrote. “The Czech Republic serves as the protecting power for U.S. interests in Syria.”

“U.S. citizens in Syria who are in need of emergency assistance should contact the U.S. Interests Section of the Embassy of the Czech Republic,” it added.

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