21 April 2026

Vilnius police found a woman’s body in a parking lot today and opened an inquiry into the cause of death. Investigators are working out whether the death was violent or caused by a medical episode, because that will determine whether the case is treated as an accident or a possible crime.

Parliament today appointed Tomas Davulis as chair of the Constitutional Court. In the security debate, Stasys Buškevičius said Lithuania must speed up the build-out of national defence capacity and rely less on NATO guarantees alone. A presidential adviser also argued for focusing on one clear defence scenario, while parliament is considering Gitanas Nausėda’s proposal to involve the private sector more in road repairs. Authorities also said they had foiled Moscow’s plans in Lithuania, though few public details have been released so far.

In energy, officials are proposing to designate KN Energies’ planned 300 million euro CO2 terminal as a project of national importance. At Klaipėda port, green hydrogen production is due to begin in the coming weeks using a 2 MW electrolyser, with first-year output set at 47 tonnes. Thirty tonnes will go to a waste-collection vessel being built for the port authority, while about 2.5 tonnes are earmarked for hydrogen-powered buses planned for Klaipėda.

In foreign policy, Kęstutis Budrys said in Brussels that the EU must stay active in the Middle East without losing sight of Ukraine. In Jerusalem, he told Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar that aid delivery into Gaza needs to improve. In Kaunas, a drunk man injured a police officer.

Lithuania and Taiwan will sign an economic cooperation action plan in early June. In parliament, Ignas Vėgėlė and Rimas Jankūnas left the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union-Christian Families Alliance faction, and Vilija Targamadzė was sworn in as an MP.

Russian drones hit the Mykolaivka community in Ukraine’s Sumy region overnight, damaging homes and a hospital building. Ukrainian rescue crews and investigators are documenting the destruction for war-crimes inquiries.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said today that withdrawing from the parts of Donetsk region and a sliver of Luhansk region still under Kyiv’s control would be a strategic defeat. He tied that red line directly to peace talks, with Moscow demanding the rest of Donbas. In other overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine, at least 25 people were injured. A Ukrainian drone attack near Sumy also injured six people and damaged a healthcare facility.

Sweden’s military intelligence said today that Russia’s threat to the Baltic region will keep rising through 2030, with hybrid activity becoming more frequent and riskier. The assessment says the Kremlin is masking problems in logistics, losses and defence industry capacity while projecting a stronger battlefield picture. In the Baltic security debate, Polish experts also warned that Russia remains operationally active at sea and NATO does not control the area as an internal waterway.

Alexander Lukashenko said in Minsk that Belarus has more than 10 Russian nuclear warheads and that they are needed in wartime. The EU Court of Justice ruled today that Hungary’s 2021 child-protection law restricting content about homosexuality and gender transition for minors breaches EU law and the bloc’s core values. The European Commission, meanwhile, says there is still no physical jet-fuel shortage in the EU, even after prices jumped more than 100% in a week and airlines began trimming schedules.

The European Union launched a mission in Armenia to monitor potential Russian interference in upcoming elections. Late in the evening, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine had analysed Russia’s plans and prepared a response, and confirmed a list of further military operations.

Donald Trump said yesterday the US will not lift its blockade of Iranian ports until Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz and signs a deal. He also said seizing Iran’s uranium would be a long and complex process, while Washington says the blockade is costing Iran about $500 million a day. Iran warned it could shut the waterway again if pressure is not eased, and the US is trying to keep ceasefire talks alive after an earlier round in Islamabad ended without an agreement. Elsewhere in the US response, a former senior American official said the military campaign had failed to achieve any of its stated objectives, and a US official said Israel-Lebanon talks are due this week.

Iran hanged another man at dawn today over anti-government unrest in Tehran, with state-linked media tying him to the burning of a mosque. The execution followed death sentences handed down yesterday to two other men accused of espionage in cases rights groups say target political detainees. Iran Human Rights says at least 1,639 people were executed last year, and at least nine people have already been put to death over January’s protests.

The UN migration agency said today that 7,904 people were killed or went missing on migration routes in 2025. It said about 3,400 died on sea routes to Europe, including 1,300 in the central Mediterranean and more than 1,200 on the West Africa-Atlantic route to the Canary Islands. In Asia, Washington restricted intelligence-sharing on North Korea after comments from Seoul, and three soldiers were killed in shelling involving a tank in Japan.

In the NBA playoffs, the Atlanta Hawks beat the New York Knicks 107-106 today to level their first-round series at 1-1. CJ McCollum scored 32 points, and New York blew a 12-point fourth-quarter lead. Amazon said it will invest another $25 billion in Anthropic, deepening AWS’s push into enterprise AI.

U.S. de-escalation plans with Iran stalled after Tehran failed to respond and Vice President J.D. Vance's visit was halted. At the same time, U.S. forces boarded a tanker linked to Iran and Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Tehran.