As the war enters its 753rd day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, March 17, 2024.
Struggle
- One person was killed and another injured in the Velykopysarivska community in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, bordering Russia, according to the region's military administration.
- The attack was one of 60 shelling incidents reported in border territories and settlements, which damaged buildings including a hospital, a daycare center, a library and a gas pipeline, Sumy officials said.
- Earlier on Sunday, one man was killed and at least eight people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian officials said, following an overnight attack on the port city of Odessa.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin said his armed forces in Ukraine were “just destroying them – the enemy – right now”, after Russia claimed to have captured a series of cities and towns in eastern Ukraine.
- Ukrainian shelling in the southern Russian city of Belgorod killed two people and wounded 11 others, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
- Five people were also injured when a Ukrainian drone crashed into a car in the village of Glotovo, about 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) from the border with Ukraine, Gladkov said.
- The attack on Belgorod was one of many multi-day Ukrainian attacks that Moscow described as election sabotage.
- A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a Russian oil refinery on Saturday, which burned for hours before being brought under control.
Politics and diplomacy
- President Putin claimed victory after early election results in Russia showed he was headed for another six-year term with about 87 percent of the vote.
- Responding to the results, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Putin a “dictator,” “sick of power” and “doing everything to rule forever.”
- Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died in a Russian penal colony last month, said: “I obviously wrote Navalny's name” on the ballot, after she voted at the Russian embassy in Berlin.
- Human rights group Amnesty International has denounced Russia's attempts to “alter the ethnic composition” of Crimea by suppressing Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identities. “These policies appear to be a model for Russia's plans in other areas of Ukraine that it occupies,” Amnesty said. Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
