Here is the situation on Thursday, March 28, 2024.
Fighting
- At least one person was killed and 19 injured after Russia attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, with what officials said could have been a new type of guided bomb.
- Other parts of the country also came under Russian attack with a further three deaths reported from shelling and drone attacks in the south and northeast, among them a 12-year-old boy. A ballistic missile strike on the coastal territory of Mykolaiv injured eight people.
- Ukraine’s air force chief Mykola Oleshchuk said Russia launched 13 Iranian-designed Shahed drones, 10 of which were brought down in Kharkiv, Sumy and Kyiv regions.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops in the northeastern Sumy region bordering Russia, where he met soldiers recovering from injuries and visited newly built defence lines, including trenches, dugouts, firing and command and observation posts.
Politics and diplomacy
- A Russian court sentenced Lyusya Shtein, a member of Pussy Riot and a former municipal deputy in Moscow, to six years in prison in absentia after she criticised the invasion of Ukraine on social media.
- A military court in Russia’s northern Komi region jailed 35-year-old Nikolai Farafonov to six years in prison after he was found guilty of “public incitement to commit terrorist acts” for publishing “videos and messages” calling for the burning of military recruitment offices.
- Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to use his influence with Russia to bring about peace in Ukraine. Rutte, on a visit to Beijing, said Moscow could not be allowed to win the war in Ukraine because it would be dangerous for the rest of Europe and also for China.
- Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will begin a two-day visit to India on Thursday to discuss “global issues”. Kuleba will meet Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi and also hold talks with India’s deputy national security adviser, India’s foreign ministry said. Like China, India has not explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had detained two agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence agency in Kyiv and Odesa, accusing them of passing on information on the location of sensitive military targets.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s allies to speed up deliveries of warplanes and air defence systems following Wednesday’s Russian attacks. “Bolstering Ukraine’s air defence and expediting the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine are vital tasks,” he said in a statement on social media.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin told a group of military pilots that plans by Ukraine’s allies to send Kyiv F-16 fighter jets would not alter the situation on the battlefield. He said the F-16s would be legitimate targets, wherever they might be.
- Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Poland would double its contribution to a Czech-led plan to buy ammunition for Ukraine. Sikorski declined to say how much Poland was contributing.
