As the war enters its 752nd day, here are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Saturday, March 16, 2024.
Struggle
- Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy condemned a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port city of Odessa, in which at least 21 people were killed and 75 injured.
- Zelenskyy said Russia would receive a “fair response” from Ukrainian forces for what he called a “vile” attack on a city that has been attacked by Russian drones or missiles almost every day this month.
- Ukrainian authorities have begun mass evacuations of communities in the northern region of Sumy, near the Russian border, after prolonged periods of intense shelling in the area, local officials said.
- Ukrainian drones attacked two oil refineries belonging to Russian state oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, Governor Dmitry Azarov said on Telegram.
- There were no casualties, but the Syzran refinery in the Volga River region was on fire, he said, while an attack on the Novokuibyshevsk refinery was thwarted.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish Ukraine for what he said was an election day bombing that hit civilian targets on Russian territory. Russians are voting in elections that end Sunday, and Putin is expected to win a fifth term.
Politics and diplomacy
- Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, said the elections in the Russian-occupied regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, were “illegitimate.”
- “Holding elections on the territory of another UN Member State without its consent is a manifest disregard for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Those elections are invalid under international law,” Kyslytsya said in a joint statement with the countries of the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and other nations.
- A UN commission of inquiry into Ukraine said it had gathered more evidence that Russia has systematically tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war, using threats of rape and the use of electric shocks to the genitals. Some Ukrainian prisoners were so hungry in Russian detention centers that they resorted to eating soap, worms and leftover dog food, according to the report.
- The Group of Seven (G7) countries warned Iran against providing ballistic missiles to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine and said they would “respond quickly” with new sanctions, including possibly banning Iran Air from Europe.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosted French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin for urgent talks on how best to support Ukraine, which lacks the military resources necessary to definitively stop the Russian invasion.
