Closing Summary
It is slightly past 8pm in Kyiv. Here are today’s key developments:
Russia has bombarded Ukraine over 40,500 times since its invasion of the country last February, according to Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko. The shelling has destroyed over 152,000 residential buildings since the war began, Euromaidan reports Klymenko saying.
Russia has listed the World Wildlife Fund as a foreign agent. According to the Russian justice ministry, the Washington DC-based conservation group, “under the guise of protecting nature and the environment ... tried to influence the decisions of the executive and legislative authorities” and “hindered the implementation of industrial and infrastructure projects,” the Associated Press reports.
Russian missile strikes targeted “critical infrastructure” in Zaporizhzhia, the Kyiv Independent reports. The strikes launched on Saturday are likely to have come from S-300 air defence missiles, the outlet reported the Zaporizhzhia oblast military administration saying.
Bakhmut has become a “killing zone” that is probably highly challenging for Russia’s Wagner mercenary forces trying to continue their assault westward, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. Its latest intelligence update said that over the past four days, Wagner group forces had taken control of most of eastern Bakhmut, while Ukrainian forces held its west and had demolished key bridges over the Bakhmutka river, “which now marks the frontline”.
Three civilians were killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Saturday, and another died in Donetsk, regional officials said. Reuters reported the governor of Kherson oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, as saying three people, including an elderly woman, had also been wounded. “Today the Russian occupiers have hit Kherson again, on Mykolayivsky road near a shop, debris from a shell killed three people,” he told Ukrainian TV.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, dismissed reports that a “pro-Ukrainian group” carried out a high-profile attack on the Nord Stream pipelines late last year. Speaking to former Portuguese minister Bruno Macaes in an interview with the New Statesman, Kuleba said “it is the first time that I’m hearing a story of a secret pro-Ukrainian or Ukrainian group that is able to conduct operations of that scale and sophistication.”
Canada has announced a ban on imports of Russian aluminium and steel products, with the aim of denying Moscow revenues to fund its war in Ukraine. The imports were worth almost C$250m (US$180m/£150m) in 2021, according to the latest government data.
Moscow has accused foreign countries of fomenting mass protests in Georgia, likening them to an attempted coup designed to sow tension on Russia’s borders. Agence France-Presse reported that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said several days of demonstrations in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, reminded him of a Ukrainian uprising that ultimately brought down a Kremlin-friendly presidency in 2014.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met the Georgian president, Salome Zourabichvili on Friday, and they hailed Tbilisi’s dropping of a “foreign agents” bill that had triggered a political crisis in the country. “They welcomed the government’s recent decision to withdraw the two draft laws,” the White House said in a statement.
Iran has reached a deal to buy advanced Su-35 fighter planes from Russia, Iranian state media said on Saturday, expanding a relationship that has seen Iranian-built drones used in Russia’s war on Ukraine. “The Sukhoi-35 fighter planes are technically acceptable to Iran and Iran has finalised a contract for their purchase,” the broadcaster IRIB quoted Iran’s mission to the United Nations as saying in New York.
The UK government has written to Olympic sponsors urging them to pressure the International Olympic Committee over its proposal to allow Russians and Belarusians to compete at next year’s Paris Games, British media reported on Saturday. The IOC is facing a mounting backlash after setting out a pathway in January for competitors from Russia and its ally Belarus to earn Olympic slots through Asian qualifying and to compete as neutral athletes in Paris, Reuters reported.
Most of Kyiv’s power supply had been restored, Ukrainian officials said, after Russia’s latest missile and drone barrage targeting critical infrastructure on Thursday. Power supplies were fully restored in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, private provider DTEK said, while about 60% of households in Kharkiv city that were knocked off grid were also back online, Associated Press quoted authorities as saying. Significant damage remained in the Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions in Ukraine’s north-west and north-east.
Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, made an unannounced visit to Kyiv and met President Zelenskiy on Friday. They attended a service at St Michael’s Golden Dome cathedral in memory of Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a well-known Ukrainian military commander.
Thousands of people gathered in Kyiv to attend the funeral of Kotsiubailo. Nicknamed Da Vinci and hailed as a national hero and symbol of resistance, he was killed near Bakhmut on Tuesday, aged 27.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Have a good evening.
Russia has bombarded Ukraine over 40,500 times since its invasion of the country last February, according to Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko.
The shelling has destroyed over 152,000 residential buildings since the war began, Euromaidan reports Klymenko saying.
Meanwhile, 66,300 criminal proceedings of war crimes committed by Russian forces have been registered since February 2022.
Russia shelled Ukraine over 40,500 times since Feb. 2022, according to Ukraine's Interior Minister Klymenko
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 11, 2023
Over 152K residential buildings were destroyed. 66,300 criminal proceedings have been registered regarding the war crimes committed by Russian military, Klymenko said.
