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A summary of today's developments
Ukraine and Russia both claimed that hundreds of enemy troops had been killed in the previous 24 hours in the fight for Bakhmut, with Kyiv fending off attacks and a small river that bisects the town now marking the new frontline.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, said 221 pro-Moscow troops had been killed and more than 300 wounded in Bakhmut.
Russia’s defence ministry said that as many as 210 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the broader Donetsk part of the frontline.
Ukraine’s military repelled more than 92 Russian assaults in five areas over the past day, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces claimed.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces did not make any advances in Bakhmut on Saturday.
The Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar, said he believed a deal allowing Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea would be extended from its 18 March deadline.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Russian representatives had not yet taken part in negotiations on extending the deal.
The National Police of Ukraine reported that Russia had launched 48 attacks against civilians in Donetsk oblast over the past day. The police said 15 cities and towns, including Bakhmut, Kostyantynivka, and Avdiivka, had come under attack.
Three civilians were killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, denouncing what he called “brutal terrorist attacks” by pro-Moscow units.
More than 40 missiles had hit the north-eastern city of Kharkiv since the beginning of the year, Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on Saturday.
Moldovan police claim to have foiled a plot by Russia-backed groups trained to cause mass unrest during a protest against the government. An undercover agent infiltrated groups of “diversionists,” among them Russian citizens, who had been promised $10,000 to create “mass disorder” to destabilise Moldova, the head of its police force told a news conference.
Ukraine’s foreign minister urged Germany in an interview published on Sunday to speed up supplies of ammunition and to start training Ukrainian pilots on western fighter jets. Dmytro Kuleba told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that ammunition shortages were the “number one” problem in Ukraine’s attempt to repel Russia’s invasion.
Switzerland is scrapping outdated Rapier surface-to-air missiles that could have been used by Ukraine to shoot down low-flying targets, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has thanked Canada for its decision to ban imports of Russian aluminium and steel products, and urged other countries to do the same.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has reportedly said there is infighting in the Kremlin’s inner circle, and that the Kremlin has in effect ceded control over the country’s information space.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, has asked Pope Francis and other religious leaders to persuade Ukraine to stop a crackdown against a historically Russia-aligned wing of the church.
Most Britons think housing Ukrainian refugees is a good thing, a study shows. Eight in 10 people who took in Ukrainians fleeing the war said they had a positive experience of hosting refugees, while most of the public think the UK should continue to take in people from war zones, according to a study.
Updated
