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Zelenskiy: Russia has launched almost 900 guided bombs in attacks on Ukraine in March
Russia has launched 130 missiles of various types, more than 320 Shahed attack drones and almost 900 guided bombs in attacks on Ukraine so far this month, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Tuesday.
Russia and Ukraine have increased aerial attacks as Moscow’s troops advance on the frontlines and Kyiv faces a shortage of manpower and weapons.
In March, Russia concentrated airstrikes on Odesa, targeting the Black Sea port city and region almost every day, according to Reuters. Two ballistic missiles reportedly killed 2 people and injured over 70 others in one attack last week.
Key events
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has approved a transaction for the acquisition of 100% of the shares in gold mining company Highland Gold, according to an order published on a government website.
Highland Gold has been under US sanctions since December 2023. Putin’s order did not name the buyer.
The latest episode from the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast explores the reasons why hundreds of young Indian and Nepali men are ending up on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.
You can listen to it here:
Zelenskiy: Russia has launched almost 900 guided bombs in attacks on Ukraine in March
Russia has launched 130 missiles of various types, more than 320 Shahed attack drones and almost 900 guided bombs in attacks on Ukraine so far this month, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Tuesday.
Russia and Ukraine have increased aerial attacks as Moscow’s troops advance on the frontlines and Kyiv faces a shortage of manpower and weapons.
In March, Russia concentrated airstrikes on Odesa, targeting the Black Sea port city and region almost every day, according to Reuters. Two ballistic missiles reportedly killed 2 people and injured over 70 others in one attack last week.
In a video message, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, praised the participation of thousands of people across Russia and abroad in a noon protest on Sunday against Vladimir Putin’s rule.
“We proved to ourselves and to others that Putin is not our president. We do not elect him and we won’t be silent” Navalnaya said in the clip posted to her late husband’s YouTube channel.
“We will make sure that no one in the world recognises Putin as a legitimate president. That no one sits down at the negotiating table with him” she said.
Navalnaya, 47, who has vowed to continue Navalny’s work, took part in Sunday’s protest action from Berlin.
Shortly before his death in an Arctic penal colony on 16 February, Navalny had endorsed the idea of Russians coming out at noon on 17 March to vote against Putin, spoil their ballots or simply register their solidarity with the opposition.
Slovakia risks moving further away from the west, government critics have warned, as a report alleged that a presidential candidate aligned with the country’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, had previously sought an invitation to Russia to boost his position at home.
Slovaks will vote in a presidential election on 23 March, in what many consider to be a test for the country’s democracy and future within Europe.
Since returning to power after winning the election last autumn, Fico has shifted foreign policy in a more Russia-friendly direction and taken aim at independent institutions at home, including the special prosecutor’s office and the public broadcaster.
“Given the attempt to concentrate as much power as possible within the executive, the fight for the presidency has become all the more important,” said Tomáš Valášek, a member of parliament from the opposition party Progressive Slovakia. “[The presidency is] one of the last remaining sort of levers of power that can be a check on the power of the executive”, he said on Friday.
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Lili Bayer and Shaun Walker, here:
Russia plans to defend oil and gas facilities with missile systems
A Russian energy ministry official has revealed plans to defend oil and gas facilities with missile systems after Kyiv concentrated fire on Russian refineries and energy facilities in recent months.
“We are jointly working, including with colleagues from the Russian National Guard, to cover objects, on installing, accordingly, protection systems such as Pantsir,” Artyom Verkhov, director of energy ministry’s department for gas industry development, told a parliament meeting on Tuesday.
Ukraine has increased attacks on Russian oil infrastructure since January, hitting numerous large oil refineries in an attempt to cripple Russia’s military and halt its army’s advances.
Russian oil refining capacity shut down in the wake of Ukrainian drone attacks in the first quarter amounts to about 4.6m tonnes (370,500 barrels a day), or 7% of the total, Reuters calculations show.
Summary of the day so far…
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The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he will propose that the EU uses 90% of the revenues from Russian assets frozen in Europe to buy arms for Ukraine via the European Peace Facility fund. Borrell told reporters in Brussels he would propose that the remaining 10% be transferred to the EU budget to be used to boost the capacity of the Ukrainian defence industry. He said he would submit the proposal to EU member states on Wednesday, ahead of a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday.
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Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said that Vladimir Putin was not the legitimate president of Russia and that the official results of the election had no meaning. “We proved to ourselves and others that Putin is not our president. We did not elect him,” Navalnaya said of the “noon against Putin” protests held on the last day of the presidential election on Sunday.
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Russia appointed Adm Alexander Moiseyev as acting navy chief, replacing Nikolai Yevmenov, according to the state RIA news agency, which confirmed earlier reports of the reshuffle.
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About 9,000 children will be evacuated from the Russian border city of Belgorod and from several districts in the wider region of the same name due to Ukrainian shelling, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, said earlier today. The first group of 1,200 children will be evacuated on 22 March, Gladkov said.
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Vladimir Putin will travel to China in May for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in what could be the Russian president’s first overseas trip of his new presidential term, sources told Reuters. “Putin will visit China,” one of the sources, said. The details were independently confirmed to Reuters by four other sources, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Putin’s trip to China is thought likely to take place in the second half of May, according to one source.
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Russian attacks against Ukraine have killed four people and injured six others over the past day, damaging homes and civilian infrastructure, regional officials reported on Tuesday. Russia reportedly targeted nine Ukrainian regions – Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Donetsk, with the casualties being killed in the latter three areas.
Here are some of the latest images coming out from the newswires:
A group of EU countries, including Germany, has pushed for a green light to start membership negotiations with Bosnia, AFP reports.
The EU’s 27 leaders will debate at a summit on Thursday a proposal from the bloc’s executive to launch the talks with the Balkan country. All member states will have to agree to the move before negotiations can begin.
“We have seen clear progress towards reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past few months and we should honour that as well,” Germany’s European affairs minister, Anna Luhrmann, said at a pre-summit meeting in Brussels.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the EU’s drive to enlarge in eastern and central Europe, with its current member states agreeing in December to start talks on joining with Ukraine and Moldova.
Bosnia has been an official candidate for membership since 2022 but needed to implement a string of major reforms before getting the green light on negotiations to join the EU.
The European Commission last week recommended beginning talks with Bosnia, with the executive’s head Ursula von der Leyen saying the country had made “impressive steps”.
The push to move Bosnia closer to the bloc is backed by a string of countries including Austria, Italy, and Greece. But some – including France, the Netherlands and Denmark – appear more sceptical.
France’s Europe minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, said Paris viewed Bosnia’s efforts since becoming a candidate as “too limited”. “We must continue to encourage the Bosnian leaders to make efforts to achieve the objectives that have been set,” he said at the Brussels meeting.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out pre-emptive strikes against two groups of Ukrainian saboteurs near the border with Belgorod and Kursk regions.
In both cases, the saboteur groups were destroyed, the defence ministry said. This claim has not yet been independently verified.
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