KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Poland is drawing on Ukraine’s expertise in battle-tested drone warfare, establishing joint military training programs and manufacturing projects, officials from Warsaw and Kyiv announced Thursday, just over a week after Russian drones entered Polish airspace and exposed NATO’s vulnerability to a new generation of uncrewed systems.
Drones used for defense and attack have taken a central battlefield role in the more than three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, transforming how wars are waged, and countries are keen to master the new and quickly developing battlefield technology.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal said he and his visiting Polish counterpart Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz signed a memorandum to create a joint working group for uncrewed systems.
Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said Thursday in Warsaw that over the previous night there was “increased activity of Belarusian and Russian drones which tried to cross into Polish airspace.” None of the drones made it, but he said the border will stay closed until Poland is sure there will be no further provocations.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces are fighting back against an 18-month Russian push on the front line in Donetsk that seeks to complete Moscow's capture of the entire eastern region and has made creeping advances over open countryside.
Ukraine’s recent Donetsk counteroffensive has retaken around 160 square kilometers (60 square miles) of land and seven settlements, with almost 100 Russians taken prisoner, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday after a visit to the area.
Ukraine is short-handed against Russia’s bigger army. Russia has over 700,000 troops on the front line now, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday at a meeting with leaders of his country’s political parties.
Ukraine and Poland, meanwhile, will jointly test new methods of intercepting drones, exchange military experience in the field of drone warfare, and work to ensure more compatibility between the Ukrainian and Polish armed forces, Shmyhal wrote on Telegram.
Last week’s Russian incursion into Poland, which caused NATO to send fighter jets to shoot down the drones, heightened tensions in Eastern Europe about Moscow's territorial ambitions. The war between Russia and Ukraine has continued despite months of U.S. efforts to stop it, including a U.S.-Russia summit meeting in Alaska.
NATO announced it was strengthening its defensive posture on its eastern flank bordering Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Moscow, meanwhile, showcased its conventional and nuclear military power in long-planned exercises with Belarus that fueled Western concerns about Russia's intentions.
The Ukrainian and Polish government ministers also signed in Kyiv an agreement to work together more closely on defense.
“We are taking our security cooperation to a new level in response to Russian terror, which threatens Ukraine and other European countries,” Shmyhal said.
Ukraine’s air defenses shot down or jammed 48 out of 75 Russian drones launched at the country overnight, the air force said Thursday.
Rail infrastructure was again hit, part of a recent pattern of strikes.
Zelenskyy said Wednesday that strikes on energy and railway infrastructure are meant to disrupt supply lines and create social tension.
Ukraine has been developing long-range drones and missiles that seek to take the battle to Russia instead of just defending itself from the invasion.
Two Ukrainian drones attacked the neftekhim Salavat oil refinery, owned by the state oil company Gazprom, in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, starting a fire, Gov. Radiy Khabirov said Thursday. There were no casualties, he said.
The target was more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Ukraine.
An official in Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed to The Associated Press that it carried out the refinery attack.
The drones struck the primary oil refining unit at the complex, and a large fire broke out, according to the source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the operation.
Ukraine has increasingly taken aim at Russia’s refineries. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, with revenue from the sector crucial for its war effort. Sustained Ukrainian drone strikes as well as a seasonal rise in demand recently have brought shortages at the pumps.
Associated Press journalist Claudia Ciobanu in Berlin contributed.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
FILE -A worker carries part of a combat drone at Fire Point's secret factory in Ukraine on, Aug. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
A drone carrying a bomb flies over during joint Russian-Belarusian military drills at a training ground near Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are rushing higher worldwide, and oil prices are easing Wednesday as hopes build that the war with Iran could end soon. That's even though some of the signals investors saw as hopeful are already under dispute, and several prior bouts of optimism in financial markets quickly got undercut by continued, fierce fighting in the war.
The S&P 500 rose 0.8% and added to its leap from the day before, which was its best since last spring. That followed even bigger gains for stock markets across Europe and Asia, including an 8.4% surge in South Korea, which were catching up to Wall Street’s rally from Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 357 points, or 0.8%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% higher.
Oil prices also fell back toward $100 per barrel after President Donald Trump claimed shortly before Wall Street began trading that Iran “has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
“We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
Trump had also said the night before that the U.S. military could end its offensive in two to three weeks. That added to optimism following a couple tenuous signals of hope from earlier Tuesday that Wall Street latched onto, including a news report quoting Iran’s president as saying that it has “the necessary will to end the war” as long as certain requirements are met, including “guarantees to prevent a recurrence of aggression.”
The worry on Wall Street has been that the war may last a long time and keep oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf out of global markets, which could create a brutal blast of inflation.
But hope has been quick to reverse to doubt on Wall Street, triggering manic swings back and forth for financial markets since the war with Iran began. Trump has also made statements that lifted markets, only to see the gains quickly disappear after increasing his military threats against Iran. Investors say Trump’s statements are becoming less impactful for financial markets.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, called Trump’s claim about asking for a ceasefire “false and baseless,” according to a report on Iranian state television.
And oil prices remain high, even if they’ve eased so far this week. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, was sitting at $101.83 following its declines, which is still up from roughly $70 before the war began.
U.S. gasoline prices rose again overnight to a national average of $4.06 per gallon, according to the auto club AAA.
Iran, meanwhile, hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait’s airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran as the fighting continued. Iran also continues to hold a grip on the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes during peacetime.
“De-escalation hopes have given markets a lift, but we think the effects of the war would, in many cases, persist even if the war did end soon,” Thomas Mathews, head of markets, Asia Pacific at Capital Economics, said in a research note Wednesday.
“It’s worth thinking through how markets might fare if the war were to end ‘very soon,’” he wrote. “Do markets have further to recover if sentiment continues to improve? The answer is almost certainly yes.”
The White House said Trump will deliver a public address Wednesday evening on the Iran war.
On Wall Street, the majority of stocks rose, with Big Tech powering the move higher. Gains of 2.5% for Alphabet and 1% for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
They helped offset a 14.3% drop for Nike, which fell even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said it gave some lackluster financial forecasts.
Hasbro fell 3.8% after the toy company found someone had gained unauthorized access to its computer network and is working to assess the full impact.
In stock markets abroad, indexes leaped more than 1.5% in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Asian markets had even bigger gains.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 5.2% after a survey by Japan’s central bank showed business sentiment for major Japanese manufacturers improved despite worries about the Iran war.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said U.S. retailers made more money in February than economists expected. A separate report said U.S. manufacturing growth last month was slightly faster than economists expected.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.31% from 4.30% late Tuesday.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.
James Conti works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Philip Finale works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader reacts near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A screen displays financial information on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
