Summary
We’re closing this blog shortly. Here is a summary of both the drone incident and other news from the war over the last 24 hours:
A Russian fighter collided with a US Reaper drone, forcing it down into the Black Sea, in what US forces called an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept. A US European Command statement said the collision happened just after 7am on Tuesday, when two Russian Su-27 fighter jets flew up to the MQ-9 Reaper drone over international waters west of Crimea. The statement said the Russian pilots sought to disrupt the US aircraft before the collision.
The US state department has summoned the Russia’s ambassador over the drone incident. The White House said the drone’s downing was unique and would be raised directly by state department officials with their Russian counterparts.
The Russian ambassador to US said the incident was a ‘provocation’. Russia’s RIA state news agency cited Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, saying, “We view this incident as a provocation”. Antonov made the comments after being summoned to the US State Department.
The Pentagon said the drone was on a routine ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) mission. US Air Force Brig Gen Pat Ryders said Russia did not have the drone. But he declined to say whether Russia was seeking the wreckage so that its military intelligence could dissect it.
Russia’s defence ministry maintained that its fighters “did not use airborne weapons and did not come into contact” with the US drone. The ministry said fighters from its air defence forces were raised into the air to identify the drone, which the ministry said was heading “in direction of the state border of the Russian Federation”.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his military chiefs have agreed to keep defending the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut. Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the defence of Bakhmut was of “paramount strategic importance”. He said: “It is key to the stability of the defence of the entire front.”
The UN was scrambling Tuesday to ensure a Ukrainian grain exports deal aimed to ease the global food crisis can continue, but its fate remained unclear days before the 18 March expiry date. Talks between top Russian and United Nations officials in Geneva ended Monday with Moscow saying it would not oppose prolonging the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative, as many had feared.
At least one person was killed and three people were injured in shelling of Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region on Tuesday morning, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The Ukrainian president said six high-rise buildings were damaged, adding: “The evil state continues to fight against the civilian population. Every strike that takes an innocent life must result in a lawful and just sentence that punishes murder.”
The Russian-installed “acting governor” of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region has said the position of the frontline in the region is stable, but that Russian forces are strengthening their positions in the area in anticipation of an attack. Speaking to Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency, Yevgeny Balitsky said: “Now all military operations are concentrated in the area of Vuhledar and Bakhmut, therefore, it is calm in our direction for the time being.”
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said his country could supply Ukraine with MIG fighter jets in the coming four to six weeks. Warsaw’s commitment to Kyiv has been important in persuading European allies to donate heavy weapons to Ukraine, including tanks.
Russian artillery ammunition shortages have probably worsened “to the extent that extremely punitive shell-rationing is in force on many parts of the front”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update. “This has almost certainly been a key reason why no Russian formation has recently been able to generate operationally significant offensive action,” it said.
Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine. The prosecutor at the court will reportedly formally open two war crimes cases and issue arrest warrants for several Russians deemed responsible for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children and the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said 32 countries have joined a coalition supporting the creation of a special tribunal against Russia for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine, the EU and the Netherlands have publicly backed the idea of a special tribunal. Russia has denied accusations of war crimes including deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilians.
AFP journalists in Eastern Ukraine have reported seeing white phosphorus fired from Russian positions on an uninhabited road leading to nearby Bakhmut.
They reported hearing whistling sounds followed by explosions caused by munitions that released small, burning balls of white phosphorus that slowly fell to the ground.
The balls set fire to the vegetation on both sides of the road on a surface equivalent to the size of a football pitch. AFP was not able to confirm if the targeted site was a position held by Ukrainian forces, but a green truck with a white cross, a sign of Ukraine’s army, was parked by a path in the burned area.
The Guardian is unable to verify these reports from AFP.
Weapons containing phosphorus are incendiary arms whose use against civilians is banned, but they can be deployed against military targets under a 1980 convention signed in Geneva.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of using them on several occasions since the start of the war, including against civilians, which the Russian army has denied categorically.
