Here is the situation as it stands on Sunday, February 26, 2023:
Fighting
- Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has said forces of his Wagner group had captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday. The claim could not be independently confirmed.
- Ukrainian military reports suggest that villages near Bakhmut have remained under Kyiv’s control.
- Russian authorities detained more than 50 people at antiwar demonstrations in 14 Russian cities on February 24, according to the Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War.
Diplomacy
- Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies have strongly condemned Moscow for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement at the G20 meeting in India.
- Russia’s senior diplomat to the United Nations has accused the West of “cowboy” methods and “arm twisting” ahead of last week’s UN General Assembly vote demanding Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
- French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will visit China in early April, in part to seek Chinese help with ending Russia’s invasion.
- The United States marked the anniversary of Russia’s invasion with $2bn in weaponry aid for Kyiv and new sanctions against Russia aimed at undermining Moscow’s ability to wage war.
- A senior Belarusian official was quoted as saying the country, a close Russian ally bordering Ukraine, has as many as 1.5 million potential military personnel outside its armed forces.
- Russia has halted supplies of oil to Poland via the Druzhba pipeline, Daniel Obajtek, chief executive officer of Polish refiner PKN Orlen, said on Saturday.
- Ukraine plans no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian attacks and has been able to amass some power reserves, the energy minister said on Saturday, after months of interruptions caused by bombings.
