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A summary of today's developments
Vladimir Putin visited a command post in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Sunday. Russian state-owned news agency TASS said Putin held a meeting at a military command and control post in the Russian city. It comes after Putin traveled to Russian-occupied Mariupol by helicopter on March 18, and visited Russian-occupied Crimea.
Three civilians have been killed and another two injured by Russian shelling of a village in Zaporizhzhia, according to posts on the regional military administration’s Telegram. It says that a residential building in the village of Kamyanske in Vasylivka district was targeted in a “cynical attack”. The post warned residents to leave danger areas.
Ukraine’s armed forces have released their latest estimate for war casualties, although we cannot verify them. The country’s army now claims to have killed 164,910 Russian troops since the start of the war. Of these, they say 710 were killed in the 24 hours to Sunday morning. They also report destroying eight Russian artillery systems since Saturday.
A shortage of explosives is hampering the efforts of European countries to provide Ukraine with arms, according to a report. Industry insiders told the Financial Times that gunpowder, plastic explosives and TNT are in short supply and could delay a planned ramping up of shell production by as much as three years. It means Europe’s defence industry may be unable to meet expected EU orders for Ukraine.
Serbia’s president attacked the decision to issue an international arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, saying it will only prolong the war in Ukraine. Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, who has previously boasted of his personal relationship with the Russian leader, told reporters in Belgrade: “I think issuing an arrest warrant for Putin, not to go into legal matters, will have bad political consequences and it says that there is a great reluctance to talk about peace (and) about truce.”
