Ireland is to give an additional €40 million to Ukraine in response to Russia's ongoing war on that country, Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee has announced.
That comes on top of €25m donated by Ireland in February. The additional funding was announced by Minister McEntee in Kyiv, which she is visiting.
The €40m announced today includes over €26m in humanitarian assistance and almost €14m in long-term development and peacebuilding support.
A total of €2m of the funding package will be allocated to Moldova to respond to challenges relating to the war in Ukraine.
The humanitarian funding will be divided among NGOs working in the country, including the Red Cross and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, while the development aid will go toward projects such as civil protection shelters, nutrition, healthcare, human-rights monitoring, public investment programmes and progressing Ukraine's path towards EU membership.
The €25m donated in February was for the Ukraine Energy Support Fund to provide support for Ukraine's critical energy infrastructure.
Positive talks with the US - Zelensky
President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised Russia for answering his offer of an Easter truce with airstrikes today but he praised as "positive" fresh talks with US mediators aimed at resolving the four-year conflict.
Mr Zelensky held talks remotely with US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner - President Donald Trump's son-in-law - and US Senator Lindsey Graham.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also joined the call, amid ongoing tensions between Washington and some of its partners in the military alliance.
In his nightly video address after the call, Mr Zelensky thanked America for its efforts to bring peace and said the Ukrainian and US teams had agreed to strengthen a document outlining US security guarantees for any future peace deal.
"This is precisely what could pave the way for a reliable end to the war," Mr Zelensky said.
Five killed in Ukraine
A Russian drone attack killed four people in Ukraine's central Cherkasy region today, the region's governor said, while a woman was also killed in Lutsk.
"We have four dead in Zolotonosha district. This happened in an open area during an air alert," the head of the Cherkasy region's military administration, Igor Taburets, said on Telegram.
It comes as swarms of Russian drones attacked Ukraine overnight and early this morning, killing a woman and destroying a postal terminal, Ukrainian officials said.
An image posted by Ukraine's Nova Poshta mailing company showed a warehouse in the western city of Lutsk in flames, thick smoke pouring from its roof.
Russia used 339 drones in the overnight attack, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Facebook.
"We proposed a ceasefire for Easter -- in response, we're getting 'shaheds'," he said, referring to the Iranian-designed drones that Russia uses.
Food warehouses were also destroyed, he said.
With a total number of drones at about 700 during the 24 hours, this is the second such heavy attack in the last eight days, official data showed.
In an attack on 24 March, Russia launched more than 900 drones in 24 hours.
"Throughout the day, the vast majority of drones flew in from the south-east, heading west," the air force said on the Telegram app.
In the late morning, a drone strike killed a woman and badly wounded two people in an attack on a civilian car in the frontline region of Kherson, the local military administration said.
Six people were also wounded in the Poltava region, and two more were wounded in the Khmelnytskyi region, officials said.
e EU remains united, resolute and practical in its unwavering support for Ukraine.
— Helen McEntee TD (@HMcEntee) April 1, 2026
This is about defending the principles that underpin peace in Europe , a message reinforced in Kyiv yesterday, where we heard directly from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and FM Andrii Sybiha.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had taken full control of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, suggesting they had wrested control of a small sliver of land which had remained beyond their reach since 2022.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report and a Ukrainian military spokesperson said there had been no battlefield changes in the area in the last six months.
More than 99% of Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as its own in 2022 - something Kyiv and most Western countries have rejected as an illegal land grab - has long been under Russian control.
"Units of the 'West' military grouping have completed the liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic," the Defence Ministry said in a statement, using Moscow's preferred name for the region.
Luhansk is one of two regions - along with Donetsk - which make up the wider industrialised Donbas area.
The Kremlin reiterated its demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the part of Donetsk which Moscow does not control to end what it called the "hot phase" of the war, a demand Kyiv has repeatedly dismissed as absurd.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had also taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine's Kharkiv region and of Boikove in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine.
Reuters could not independently verify those battlefield assertions.
The Ukrainian leader is to hold a video call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to discuss negotiations with Russia, now stalled due to the war in Iran.
"Today will be a pretty busy diplomatic day," Mr Zelensky said on social media.
Additional reporting AFP/Reuters
