Here is the situation on Friday, March 22, 2024.
Fighting
- At least 17 people were injured after Russia launched a wave of missiles, including two Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, on Kyiv. It was the first such attack on the capital in 44 days. Ukraine said its air defences brought down all 31 missiles.
- At least one person was killed and four injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed its forces captured the village of Tonenke about 8.5km (5.2 miles) west of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian Army General Staff said it repelled 14 Russian army attacks near six villages in the eastern Donetsk region, including Tonenke.
- Three Ukrainian-backed paramilitary groups that say they are made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin said they were continuing their cross-border attacks on the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russia handed over six Ukrainian children to Ukraine following mediation by Qatar.
- The US embassy said Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remained “strong and resilient” in a Moscow prison, nearly a year after he was arrested and accused of spying. Gershkovich, the Journal and the US government have all rejected the allegation.
- Russia’s FSB security service said it had arrested four people for plotting separate “terrorist attacks” against military sites or supporting Ukraine. Two people were arrested in the Moscow-occupied southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and the others in the Belgorod region and Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
- Alexander Byvshev, a Russian poet who criticised his country’s invasion of Ukraine in a four-line poem, has been jailed for seven years, the OVD-Info rights group said. The poem was posted on his Facebook page in March 2022.
- A court in southwestern Russia jailed two students to a combined 14 years in prison after they were found guilty of “attempted sabotage” on the railway network.
- Investigators in Kyiv detained a senior Ukrainian army official accused of embezzling some 58 million hryvnia ($1.5m) of funds meant to buy food for the country’s soldiers.
Weapons
- Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia’s production of artillery shells had risen by nearly 2.5 times in the past year, while artillery component production had soared by a factor of 22. Shoigu indicated there were more ambitious targets for this year, but did not elaborate.
- The country’s Defence Ministry said it had also begun the mass production of FAB-3000 high-explosive aerial bombs in February.
- Leading the first official visit to Kyiv by a NATO military delegation since February 2022, NATO Military Committee Chief Rob Bauer called for important aid to be delivered quickly. Bauer met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as army chief Oleksandr Syrskii for talks on the current combat situation, and the urgent need for ammunition and air defences.
- Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the country would not join a Czech-led plan to procure and deliver ammunition to Ukraine. Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Warsaw would contribute “financially and logistically” to the initiative.
- Australia said it would join an international drone coalition led by the United Kingdom and Latvia to aid Ukraine’s war effort. More details are expected to be released in the coming week.
