Ukraine’s frontline position is “the strongest” it has been in a year due to superiority in drones and enhanced air defence, said Andriy Sybiha, the foreign minister. Agence France-Presse said its analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) showed Russian troops made almost no territorial gains across the frontline in March – the first time this had occurred in two and a half years.

“We have minimised the Russians’ advantage in manpower through the use of drones,” Sybiha added. “For us, the situation on the battlefield is about strengthening our negotiating position. We can shoot down up to 90% of the targets that strike our cities … [Ukraine’s] position on the battlefield is indeed the strongest, or the most solid, it has been over the past year.”

Turkey is trying to revive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and bring together their leaders at the request of Kyiv, the office of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Wednesday. Erdogan told the Nato head, Mark Rutte in a meeting in Ankara that “we are working to revive negotiations and start talks at leaders’ level”.

Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, confirmed Ukraine is pushing for the face-to-face talks between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin. While Turkey was asked to facilitate, Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus. “We are … advocating for a meeting now to bring new momentum to diplomacy,” Sybiha said.

Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Putin would only meet Zelenskyy “for the purpose of finalising agreements”. The Kremlin instead appealed for the US to again send Donald Trump’s delegates Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow. The pair have repeatedly listened to Putin’s maximalist demands, to which Witkoff has appeared pliant, and produced no outcomes while declining to visit Kyiv and hear Ukraine’s side. Peskov said Russia was ready for any new talks on a settlement to the war with US negotiators “even tomorrow”.

A woman and child were killed in the Russian oil refining city of Syzran, about 1,000km (621 miles) from the border with Ukraine, after a Ukrainian drone hit their apartment building, the regional governor said on Wednesday. Russian media reports said a Rosneft oil refinery is located on the same street as the damaged building.

Russian drones attacked infrastructure in the Black Sea port of Odesa damaging berths, warehouses, railway infrastructure, port operators’ facilities and a ship, Ukraine’s deputy PM Oleksiy Kuleba said on Wednesday. Preliminary reports said no one was hurt and the port was still operating.

Kuleba said a Russian drone attack at a sorting yard at the Zaporizhzhia-Live station in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed an assistant train driver while the driver was hospitalised.

EU member states reached agreement on unblocking the urgently needed €90bn (£78bn) loan for Kyiv and a new package of sanctions against Moscow after Ukraine resumed pumping Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia, prompting Budapest to lift its veto. Jon Henley writes that Cyprus, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said member states’ ambassadors had agreed to launch “written procedures” for the final approval of the loan and the sanctions package, with formal signoff on both due by Thursday afternoon.