World
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 754
As the war enters its 754th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
Fighting
- Ukrainian air defence systems shot down 17 out of 22 Russian Shahed drones that targeted nine Ukrainian regions. The attack triggered a fire in a residential building in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, but emergency services were able to evacuate residents and disable the drone’s payload before it blew up. Russia also fired seven missiles at northeastern Ukraine, including the Sumy region.
- Authorities said the intensity of ground and air attacks on the Sumy region had increased since the start of the year. The regional government said the area had been struck more than 3,000 times, compared with a total of some 8,000 strikes in 2023. The number of aerial bomb attacks had tripled and Russian saboteurs were highly active, officials said.
- Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said four people were killed after Ukrainian shelling hit a house in the village of Nikolskoye.
- Ukrainian Presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak told the Reuters news agency that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to escalate the war after the Russian leader suggested a “security zone” be established in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region to “protect” Russian territory.
Politics and diplomacy
- China, India and North Korea congratulated Putin on securing a further six-year term after the Kremlin said the long-time leader got 87 percent of the vote. The election, which was also organised in four Ukrainian territories that Russia partly occupies and claims to have annexed, was condemned by Ukraine and its European allies as “illegal” and “undemocratic”.
- Putin appeared briefly in front of a flag-waving crowd at an open-air concert on Red Square to mark the 10th anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The annexation of the Black Sea peninsula has been condemned as illegal by most countries at the United Nations.
- Russia’s state news agency TASS reported the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained a 24-year-old Russian woman in Crimea who was allegedly attempting to sabotage rail infrastructure bringing military equipment to the front line in Ukraine.
- US Senator Lindsey Graham visited Kyiv and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The two discussed the $60bn military aid package for Ukraine that is being held up by Republicans in the United States Congress. Zelenskyy said the package’s approval was “critically important”. Graham suggested that aid in the form of a no-interest loan might get more support.
Weapons
- South Korea’s Defence Minister Shin Won-sik told reporters that North Korea had shipped about 7,000 containers of weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine since the transfers began last July. Some had been sent by sea and others by rail as a result of UN sanctions on both countries, Shin added.
- The Council of the European Union ratified an agreement to increase the EU’s support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces by 5 billion euros ($5.44 billion) through a dedicated assistance fund.
- During a visit to Warsaw, Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Germany and Poland planned to work jointly on producing more ammunition for Ukraine. He did not go into detail.
World
Ukraine lawmaker, 34, fights for Kharkiv in the public square
Mariia Mezentseva is a face of the war in Ukraine.
At just 34 years old and a member of Ukraine’s parliament, her formal tasks include looking into ways Ukraine can integrate into the rest of Europe’s institutions.
But, what really has gotten her attention are her posts about her hometown, Kharkiv. It has a population of 1.3 million people, just 20 miles from the northeast border with Russia.
From the beginning, Putin has wanted to take it over. In 2022, Ukrainians pushed them back.
However, in recent months, Russian attacks have grown furious, knocking out residential areas, power infrastructure, even the city’s huge TV tower.
KEY NATO ALLY SHOCKS WITH ITS ‘SINGLE LARGEST’ PLEDGE TO UKRAINE: ‘THEY NEED OUR SUPPORT’
Moscow, in fact, made clear it has wanted to turn Kharkiv into a demilitarized zone so it would not threaten Russia.
Critics said Moscow has tried to turn Kharkiv into Aleppo, the Syrian rebel stronghold Russia flattened in its support of Assad in Damascus.
Mezentseva regularly has posted shots of damage, rescue and relief efforts in Kharkiv, branding Russian efforts “genocidal actions.”
She generally has exuded hope, especially for the recent package of U.S. military aid for Ukraine which would benefit her home area.
The package, Mezentseva said, “will serve the purpose for sure.”
Basically, for the time being at least, it will keep the city alive.
World
Zelenskyy warns of Russian nuclear risks on Chernobyl anniversary
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Friday that the safety of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine, as the country marked the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
On the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of the risks surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility, which has been at the centre of nuclear safety crisis since Russia’s invastion of Ukraine.
Even under the shadow of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Zelenskyy said Russian forces were not taking the safety of the plant seriously.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine in the first days of its 2022 invasion.
Both sides regularly accuse each other of endangering safety at the site, Europe’s largest nuclear facility.
“For 785 days now, Russian terrorists have held hostage the Zaporizhzhia NPP,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “And it is the entire world’s responsibility to put pressure on Russia to ensure that ZNPP is liberated and returned to full Ukrainian control, as well as that all Ukrainian nuclear facilities are protected from Russian strikes.”
“This is the only way to prevent new radiation disasters, which the Russian occupiers’ presence at ZNPP constantly threatens.”
The Chernobyl explosion in 1986 is considered the worst nuclear accident in history in terms of the scale of contamination and the number of victims. The detonation in the reactor zones caused radioactive contamination that directly contaminated a radius of tens of kilometres, and wind and water movement carried nuclear contamination further afield.
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