Closing summary
It is now 8pm in Kyiv, and that concludes today’s Ukraine war live blog. Thanks for following along. Here is a summary of today’s events:
Nato has criticised Russia for its “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Reuters reports.
Kyiv has reacted to Russia’s plans in Belarus by calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations’ Security Council.
In a statement, Kyiv’s foreign ministry described Russia’s plans to station nuclear weapons in Belarus as “another provocative step” by Moscow that undermines “the international security system as a whole”. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said the Kremlin has taken Belarus as a “nuclear hostage”. Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak accused Vladimir Putin of violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and resorting to “scare” tactics.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has cautioned Belarus against hosting Russian nuclear weapons on its territory. Borrell tweeted: “#Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation & threat to European security. Belarus can still stop it, it is their choice. The EU stands ready to respond with further sanctions.”
The United States has not seen any indication that Russia has yet moved nuclear weapons to Belarus, national security council spokesman John Kirby said Sunday. “We have not seen any indication that he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) has made good on this pledge or moved any nuclear weapons around,” Kirby told CBS.
Three people were reported injured and three residential buildings were damaged following an explosion in the town of Kireyevsk in Russia’s Tula region. Law enforcement has attributed the blast to a Ukrainian Tu-141 Strizh UAV drone “packed with explosives”. None of the people hurt in the blast are believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries, Reuters reported, citing Russian news agencies.
Russia and China are not creating a military alliance, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in a televised interview broadcast. Putin stated that the two countries’ military cooperation was transparent, news agencies reported.
The UK Ministry of Defence says that since the start of March 2023, Russia is likely to have launched at least 71 Iranian-designed Shahed series one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicle (OWA-UAVS) against targets across Ukraine. It says Russia is likely launching Shaheds from two axes: from Russia’s Krasnodar Krai in the east and from Bryansk Oblast in the north-east.
Ukraine will no longer resort to “dangerous” monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.
Ukrainian refugees are increasingly being targeted for sexual exploitation with an increase in interest in pornography claiming to feature refugees from the war-torn country, according to research by Thomson Reuters.
Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence Hanna Maliar went on Facebook to urge Ukrainians to not openly discuss details about the country’s upcoming offensive. “On live broadcasts, don’t ask experts questions [in the vein of] ‘how is the counter-offensive going?’, don’t write blogs or posts on this topic, and don’t discuss military plans of our army publicly at all. We have one strategic plan – to liberate all our territories. And as for the details – that’s simply a military secret,” Maliar wrote.
The head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant next week to assess the serious security situation there, the IAEA said. Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the nuclear safety and security dangers at the Russian-held plant were “all too obvious”.
Russia fired on a humanitarian aid delivery point in the city of Kherson on Saturday, injuring two civilians, according to the Ukrainian military. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said: “Russian occupiers continue shelling the places where civilians are provided with aid.”
The top commander of Ukraine’s military has said that his forces are pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut. Separately, Britain’s defence ministry said the months-long Russian assault on the city had stalled, mainly as a result of heavy troop losses. British military intelligence also said Russia appeared to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine, Associated Press reported.
Several buildings were damaged but no one was injured following the detonation of a naval mine that hit some coastline facilities in Odesa, according to the Odesa city council. The Kyiv Independent quoted authorities as saying that no one was injured.
Russian oil company Gazprom reduced gas exports to the EU through Ukraine by 15%, the Kyiv Independent reports. On 24 March, Gazprom recorded a gas transit flow of 42.5m cubic metres. A day later, the volume decreased to 36.2m cubic metres.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have displayed a united front against authoritarian regimes as Biden visited the Canadian capital days after the leaders of China and Russia held a Moscow summit. Reuters reported that images of Biden and Trudeau standing side by side in Ottawa on Friday announcing agreements including on semiconductors and migration represented a counterpoint to the scene in Moscow days ago.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, spoke by phone with Putin and thanked him for his “positive attitude” in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the Turkish presidency said on Saturday. It said the two leaders discussed steps to improve Turkish-Russian relations, and developments regarding the war in Ukraine, and that Erdoğan expressed the importance of ending the conflict through negotiations as soon as possible, Reuters reported.
US sees no indication that Russia moved nuclear weapons to Belarus
The United States has not seen any indication that Russia has yet moved nuclear weapons to its neighbor Belarus, national security council spokesman John Kirby said Sunday, according to AFP.
“We have not seen any indication that he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) has made good on this pledge or moved any nuclear weapons around,” Kirby told CBS.
Three people were reported injured following the explosion in the town of Kireyevsk in Russia’s Tula region, which law enforcement has attributed to a Ukrainian drone.
“A Ukrainian Tu-141 Strizh UAV was the cause of an explosion in the town of Kireyevsk, Tula region,” the Tass news agency quoted a law enforcement agency source as saying, according to Reuters. “The drone was packed with explosives.”
None of the people hurt in the blast are believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries, Reuters reported, citing Russian news agencies.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cautioned Belarus against hosting Russian nuclear weapons on its territory, warning the move may trigger additional sanctions.
In a Sunday tweet, Borrell said: “#Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation & threat to European security.”
“Belarus can still stop it, it is their choice,” he added. “The EU stands ready to respond with further sanctions.”
On Saturday, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced an agreement reached with Belarus will see Moscow stationing tactical nuclear weapons on its smaller neighbors’ territory.
Here are some images coming to us over the wires.
More details are emerging about the reported explosion in the town of Kireyevsk in Russia’s Tula region, where two people suffered shrapnel wounds.
The crater was caused by a drone, the Tass news agency quoted law enforcement as saying, Reuters reports.
Three residential buildings were also damaged following the explosion, a regional security agency said.
Updated
Kyiv calls Russia's tactical nuclear weapons plans 'another provocative step'
More reaction from Kyiv on plans by Russian president Vladimir Putin to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
In a statement, Kyiv’s foreign ministry described it as “another provocative step” by Moscow that undermines “the international security system as a whole”.
The ministry said:
Russia once again confirms its chronic inability to be a responsible steward of nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence and prevention of war, not as a tool of threats and intimidation.
It demanded a UN security council session and called on the Group of Seven countries and the European Union to warn Belarus of “far-reaching consequences” if it accepts the Russian weapons.
The Ukrainian statement added:
Ukraine calls on all members of the international community to convey to the criminal (P)utin regime the categorical unacceptability of its next nuclear provocations and to take decisive measures to effectively deter and prevent any possibility of the aggressor state’s use of nuclear weapons.
Updated
Two people have suffered shrapnel wounds following an explosion on Sunday in the town of Kireyevsk, about 220km (140 miles) south of Moscow, the Tass news agency cited emergency services as saying.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but it left a crater in the centre of the town, in the Tula region, Reuters reports.
“The explosion sounded at 1519 (1219 GMT). Two victims, born in 2002 and 2006, have shrapnel wounds. Emergency services are on the scene,” Tass quoted a local emergency services representative as saying.
“There is a crater. This explosion was in the heart of the city,” the representative added.
The representative said the injuries were not life-threatening and that investigators were working at the site.
Updated
Several nearby buildings were damaged but no one was injured after a naval mine detonated after hitting some some coastline facilities in Odesa, according to Odesa city council.
The Kyiv Independent quoted authorities as saying that no one was injured.
Updated
Ukraine fans have been gathering near Wembley, in north London, ahead of this evening’s UEFA Euro 2024 Group C qualifying match against England:
Updated
Summary
It is just after 4pm in Kyiv. Here is a summary of events so far.
Nato has criticised Russia for its “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Reuters reports.
Kyiv has said Russia was holding Minsk as a “nuclear hostage” after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to ally Belarus, Agence France-Presse reports.
Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations’ Security Council over Russia’s announcement that it would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Ukrainian refugees are increasingly being targeted for sexual exploitation with an increase in interest in pornography claiming to feature refugees from the war-torn country, according to research by Thomson Reuters.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak has accused Vladimir Putin of violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and resorting to “scare” tactics.
Russia and China are not creating a military alliance, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in a televised interview broadcast on Sunday, stating that the two countries’ military cooperation was transparent, news agencies reported.
The UK Ministry of Defence says that since the start of March 2023, Russia is likely to have launched at least 71 Iranian-designed Shahed series one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicle (OWA-UAVS) against targets across Ukraine. It says Russia is likely launching Shaheds from two axes: from Russia’s Krasnodar Krai in the east and from Bryansk Oblast in the north-east.
Ukraine will no longer resort to “dangerous” monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.
Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence Hanna Maliar went on Facebook to urge Ukrainians to not openly discuss details about the country’s upcoming offensive. “On live broadcasts, don’t ask experts questions [in the vein of] ‘how is the counter-offensive going?’, don’t write blogs or posts on this topic, and don’t discuss military plans of our army publicly at all. We have one strategic plan – to liberate all our territories. And as for the details – that’s simply a military secret,” Maliar wrote.
The head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant next week to assess the serious security situation there, the IAEA said. Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the nuclear safety and security dangers at the Russian-held plant were “all too obvious”.
Russia fired on a humanitarian aid delivery point in the city of Kherson on Saturday, injuring two civilians, according to the Ukrainian military. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said: “Russian occupiers continue shelling the places where civilians are provided with aid.”
The top commander of Ukraine’s military has said that his forces are pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut. Separately, Britain’s defence ministry said the months-long Russian assault on the city had stalled, mainly as a result of heavy troop losses. British military intelligence also said Russia appeared to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine, Associated Press reported.
Russian oil company Gazprom reduced gas exports to the EU through Ukraine by 15%, the Kyiv Independent reports. On 24 March, Gazprom recorded a gas transit flow of 42.5m cubic metres. A day later, the volume decreased to 36.2m cubic metres.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have displayed a united front against authoritarian regimes as Biden visited the Canadian capital days after the leaders of China and Russia held a Moscow summit. Reuters reported that images of Biden and Trudeau standing side by side in Ottawa on Friday announcing agreements including on semiconductors and migration represented a counterpoint to the scene in Moscow days ago.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, spoke by phone with Putin and thanked him for his “positive attitude” in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the Turkish presidency said on Saturday. It said the two leaders discussed steps to improve Turkish-Russian relations, and developments regarding the war in Ukraine, and that Erdoğan expressed the importance of ending the conflict through negotiations as soon as possible, Reuters reported.
Updated
Ukraine calls for urgent UN Security Council meeting over 'Kremlin's nuclear blackmail'
Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations’ Security Council over Russia’s announcement that it would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said:
Ukraine expects effective actions to counteract the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail from the United Kingdom, China, the United States and France... We demand that an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council be immediately convened for this purpose.
Updated
Russia's nuclear rhetoric 'dangerous and irresponsible' - Nato
Nato has criticised Russia for its “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Reuters reports.
A Nato spokesperson said on Sunday:
Nato is vigilant, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We have not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own.
Russia’s reference to Nato’s nuclear sharing is totally misleading. Nato allies act with full respect of their international commitments. Russia has consistently broken its arms control commitments, most recently suspending its participation in the New START Treaty.
The Associated Press reports on a new recruitment campaign launched across Russia seeking volunteers to enlist troops for the war in Ukraine.
Advertisements promise cash bonuses and enticing benefits. Recruiters are making cold calls to eligible men. Enlistment offices are working with universities and social service agencies to lure students and the unemployed.
A new campaign is under way this spring across Russia, seeking recruits to replenish its troops for the war in Ukraine. As fighting grinds on in Ukrainian battlegrounds like Bakhmut and both sides prepare for counter-offensives that could cost even more lives, the Kremlin’s war machine badly needs new recruits.
A mobilisation in September of 300,000 reservists – billed as a “partial” call-up – sent panic throughout the country, since most men under 65 are formally part of the reserve. Tens of thousands fled Russia rather than report to recruiting stations.
The Kremlin denies that another call-up is planned for what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, now more than a year old.
But amid widespread uncertainty of whether such a move will eventually happen, the government is enticing men to volunteer, either at makeshift recruiting centres popping up in various regions, or with phone calls from enlistment officials. That way, it can “avoid declaring a formal second mobilisation wave” after the first one proved so unpopular, according to a recent report by the US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War.
One Muscovite told the Associated Press that his employer, a state-funded organisation, gathered up the military registration cards of all male employees of fighting age and said it would get them deferments. But he said the move still sent a wave of fear through him.
“It makes you nervous and scared – no one wants to all of a sudden end up in a war with a rifle in their hands,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal. “The special operation is somewhat dragging on, so any surprises from the Russian authorities can be expected.”
Updated
Former Russian state TV editor Marina Ovsyannikova, who in 2022 interrupted a live news broadcast denouncing the Ukraine war, has said her son called her a “traitor” for her actions, adding that she may never be able to return to Russia.
Ukrainian-born Ovsyannikova, who was an editor at Channel One, burst on to the set of the nightly news in March 2022 shouting: “Stop the war. No to war.”
She also held a sign saying: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” It was signed in English: “Russians against the war.”
At the time, she was fined 30,000 roubles (£460) for ignoring protest laws. She continued protesting against the war after quitting her job at Channel One.
Last August, she was charged with spreading false information about the Russian army for holding up a poster that read “Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists” during a solo protest on the Moskva River embankment opposite the Kremlin.
She was subsequently forced to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and placed under house arrest in Moscow, where she was to await trial. She faced up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. However, she escaped her pre-trial house arrest and fled to Europe. She now lives in Paris, France, with her daughter.
Shortly after she left Russia, she said her son had told her that her decision to protest had ruined the family’s life.
She told BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg:
My son still called me a traitor, that I betrayed our family. I betrayed our country. I can say that for millions of families [this] is the same situation – war ruins a lot of families. And this is a real catastrophe because Russians have been destroyed by Putin, not only physically by him sending them to war but also on a psychological level.
Russia is now deep in depression, there is an apathy everywhere and millions of people just don’t know what the future holds.
When asked if she thought it would ever be safe for her to return to Russia, she said:
I can’t go back now. But I do see my future with Russia. My son is there, my family is there, my mum, and they don’t want to leave the country. For me, I am not indifferent to the future of this country and I will fight for the future even being outside of Russia.
Ovsyannikova said she was “ashamed” of Russia for invading Ukraine and recalling how she had “mixed emotions” before she made the 2022 protest, she explained:
A lot of factors came together. Over a long time I realised that the Russian TV became like a gigantic brainwashing machine. Secondly, I have Ukrainian roots – my father is from Ukraine. It was like this huge emotional outburst. But I didn’t really care what would happen to me later.”
Ovsyannikova had worked at the channel for nearly 20 years and admitted she had in the past “shut my eyes to it [the propaganda]”, but the war became “a point of no return”.
She said:
This propaganda is made on a very high level …These people who are working in the main media channels, they don’t really believe it. They have similar views to me, and also, you can say that people who are pro-Putin, who are convinced in him, as no more than 10 or 20%.
The arrest warrant handed to President Putin by the international criminal court could herald change, she added:
I think this is the first signal that the Russian elite should take notice of, and perhaps some kind of resistance will start within the Russian elite and they might plot against him.
At least this is some kind of hope for me.
Updated
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak has accused Vladimir Putin of violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and resorting to “scare” tactics.
On Saturday, Putin announced Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighbour and ally Belarus “without violating our international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation”, Agence France-Presse reports.
But Podolyak said on Twitter:
Making a statement about tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, he admits that he is afraid of losing and all he can do is scare with tactics …
Second. He once again states his involvement in the crime. Violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty …
Putin (RF) is too predictable.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 26, 2023
Making a statement about tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, he admits that he is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare with tactics...
Second. He once again states his involvement in the crime. Violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty...
Updated
Ukrainian refugees increasingly targeted for sexual exploitation, research finds
Ukrainian refugees are increasingly being targeted for sexual exploitation with an increase in interest in pornography claiming to feature refugees from the war-torn country, according to research.
Thomson Reuters has conducted the research, which has found that Ukrainian refugees may be victims of both traffickers on the ground and cyber-voyeurs.
Researchers identified an increased interest in Ukrainian pornography since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 by analysing global internet search engine traffic. They believe the increased interest online may be encouraging traffickers to act more often and with greater impunity.
The organisation has called for urgent action to strengthen protections to help keep Ukrainian women and children who are at risk from sexual exploitation safe.
The analysis of internet search trends has found views of pornographic videos claiming to show Ukrainian refugees have exploded in the past six months. A snapshot of 13 pornographic videos claiming to feature Ukrainian refugees shows they were viewed 275,000 times in January.
While there was evidence of sexual exploitation and trafficking of some Ukrainians before the war started, the latest data shows a significant increase since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Worldwide search traffic for exploitative terms such as “Ukrainian porn” have been consistently at higher levels since the February 2022 invasion.
Thomson Reuters is working with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to raise awareness about this sexual exploitation. They have partnered to launch the “Be Safe” campaign to encourage the global community to provide Ukrainians with safety information and to help them to spot the warning signs of traffickers.
Valiant Richey, the OSCE special representative and coordinator for combating trafficking in human beings, said: “This analysis shows just how crucial it is to keep women and children fleeing the war safe. The high demand from men for sexual access to Ukrainian women and girls creates an enormous incentive for traffickers to recruit vulnerable people in order to meet that demand and profit from it.
“We already found direct evidence of recruitment attempts on chats used by Ukrainians and an increase in the advertisement of Ukrainians online.”
The new data is based on “interest scores”, which relate directly to search traffic and compare a term’s popularity over a specific period.
Earlier analysis in 2022 found that global internet searches for sexually exploitative terms specifically relating to Ukrainian refugees surged following the outbreak of the war. In March 2022, research found a 300% global increase in these terms.
You can read the full report here.
Here are some images coming to us over the wires.
Here’s some more on football.
Later on Sunday, Ukraine take on England at the UK’s Wembley Stadium in a qualifying match for the men’s Euro 2024 football competition.
UK ministers offered 1,000 free tickets to Ukrainians and their sponsors to attend the match at Wembley.
Denys Dreyzer, 18, from Kherson, fled Ukraine in May 2022 and came to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
He and his family have since moved out from their hosts' home.
Dreyzer, who works as caretaker for the Ukrainian Community Centre and is studying at the University of Bolton, will attend the game with his mother and sister, who he lives with in Bradford. His father is in Kyiv.
Discussing the match, he told PA News:
I hope it will be amazing, because it’s like new fresh air to our community to watch our guys fighting to get to the Euros.
We hope this game our guys will show what we can do. And also it will be good present for our military, because they are every day fighting for our freedom.
I hope they will watch this game and this game will will make them happy.
The Azadi Stadium in Tehran can hold up to 78,000 at capacity. As Anton Miranchuk of Lokomotiv Moscow kicked off under a giant portrait of the former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini on Thursday night, let’s generously say it wasn’t quite full. Still, what crowd there was made a pretty decent noise.
There were even a few hundred travelling fans, who were rewarded when Miranchuk scored for Russia from the penalty spot. Early in the second half the Porto striker Mehdi Taremi equalised for Iran, and although the later stages disintegrated into a procession of substitutions, the visitors were ultimately a little fortunate to escape with a 1-1 draw.
Honours even on the pitch, then, which felt like a diplomatically fitting result. Over the past year, as the west has begun to close ranks, these two pariah states have found themselves locked in a pragmatic but increasingly enthusiastic embrace.
Russian money has been pouring into Iranian mining and infrastructure projects, to the point where it is now Iran’s largest source of foreign investment. Iran has invited Russian businesspeople to Tehran to share advice on circumventing western sanctions. The two countries have linked their banking systems and embarked on joint naval drills. And last month the Russian and Iranian sports ministers signed a “memorandum of mutual understanding”, vowing to strengthen their sporting ties.
On Sunday evening, Ukraine’s footballers will step out at Wembley Stadium to a vivid fanfare: a sea of flags and bold gestures, an outpouring of affection and solidarity that has greeted them pretty much everywhere they have travelled in the last year. At exactly the same time, in St Petersburg’s Krestovsky Stadium, Russia will play Iraq in their first national team game on home soil since the start of last year’s war.
Good luck finding the game on television or tracking down a match report on the Fifa website. But seamlessly, almost imperceptibly, Russia has returned to the international football treadmill, and nobody seems overly perturbed by it.
Even Ukraine, who called for Iran to be thrown out of last year’s World Cup for its role in supplying drones to the Russian war effort, has in this instance opted for apathy over outrage. “Those countries who play Russia, an aggressor, support Russian aggression and what Russia is doing to Ukraine,” said Ukraine’s caretaker manager, Ruslan Rotan, last week. “We don’t have to think about those countries, we don’t have to pay attention to them. They are not worthy. The bottom line is, forget Russia.”
Read the full report here.
Russia and China 'not creating a military alliance' - Putin
Russia and China are not creating a military alliance, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in a televised interview broadcast on Sunday, stating that the two countries’ military cooperation was transparent, news agencies reported.
Putin also said western powers were building a new “axis”, bearing some resemblance to Germany and Japan’s second world war alliance.
Interfax quoted Putin as saying:
We are not creating any military alliance with China.
Yes, we have cooperation in the sphere of military-technical interaction. We are not hiding this.
Everything is transparent, there is nothing secret.
Updated
Russia holding Belarus 'as nuclear hostage', says Ukraine
Kyiv on Sunday said Russia was holding Minsk as a “nuclear hostage” after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to ally Belarus, Agence France-Presse reports.
“The Kremlin took Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter, adding that the move was “a step towards the internal destabilisation of the country”.
Updated
The UK Ministry of Defence says that since the start of March 2023 Russia is likely to have launched at least 71 Iranian-designed Shahed series one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicle (OWA-UAVS) against targets across Ukraine.
It says Russia is likely launching Shaheds from two axes: from Russia’s Krasnodar Krai in the east and from Bryansk Oblast in the north-east.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 26 March 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 26, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/Bq9Jwdco1f
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/ZqZOb4b4Dg
Updated
Ukraine will no longer resort to “dangerous” monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.
The head of the National Bank of Ukraine said that it had “created huge risks for macro-financial stability” when the bank was last year forced to print billions of hryvnia to plug a budget shortfall, adding that an “open conflict” with the government over the issue had been resolved.
“It was a quick remedy, but very dangerous,” Pyshnyi told the newspaper.
Reactions continue on Vladimir Putin’s announcement Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
“It’s a very significant move,” Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, told Reuters.
“Russia had always been very proud that it had no nuclear weapons outside its territory. So, now, yes, they are changing that and it’s a big change.”
Putin did not specify when the weapons would be transferred to Belarus, which has borders with three Nato members – Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. He said Russia would complete the construction of a storage facility there by 1 July.
“This is part of Putin’s game to try to intimidate Nato … because there is no military utility from doing this in Belarus as Russia has so many of these weapons and forces inside Russia,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons called Putin’s announcement on an extremely dangerous escalation.
“In the context of the war in Ukraine, the likelihood of miscalculation or misinterpretation is extremely high. Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences,” it said on Twitter.
Updated
US responds to Russia plan to station nuclear weapons in Belarus
Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Christine Kearney to bring you up to speed with the latest developments.
The US – the world’s other nuclear superpower – has reacted cautiously to Russia’s deal to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
A senior US administration official says there are no signs Moscow plans to use its nuclear weapons.
Putin likened his plans to the US stationing its weapons in Europe and said that Russia would not be transferring control to Belarus. But this could be the first time since the mid-1990s that Russia were to base such weapons outside the country.
Hawkish Russian politicians and commentators have long-speculated about nuclear strikes, saying Russia has the right to defend itself with nuclear weapons if it is pushed beyond its limits.
“Tactical” nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains on a battlefield rather than those with the capacity to wipe out cities. It is unclear how many such weapons Russia has, given it is an area still shrouded in cold war secrecy.
Experts say the development is significant, since Russia had until now been proud that unlike the US, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders.
The senior US administration official noted that Russia and Belarus had been speaking about the transfer of nuclear weapons for some time.
“We have seen reports of Russia’s announcement and will continue to monitor this situation,” the US defence department’s press office said in a written statement.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon. We remain committed to the collective defence of the Nato alliance.”
In other key developments shortly after 9am in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv:
Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence Hanna Maliar went on Facebook to urge Ukrainians to not openly discuss details about the country’s upcoming offensive. “On live broadcasts, don’t ask experts questions [in the vein of] ‘how is the counter-offensive going?’, don’t write blogs or posts on this topic, and don’t discuss military plans of our army publicly at all. We have one strategic plan – to liberate all our territories. And as for the details – that’s simply a military secret,” Maliar wrote.
The head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant next week to assess the serious security situation there, the IAEA said. Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the nuclear safety and security dangers at the Russian-held plant were “all too obvious”.
Russia fired on a humanitarian aid delivery point in the city of Kherson on Saturday, injuring two civilians, according to the Ukrainian military. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said: “Russian occupiers continue shelling the places where civilians are provided with aid.”
The top commander of Ukraine’s military has said that his forces are pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut. Separately, Britain’s defence ministry said the months-long Russian assault on the city had stalled, mainly as a result of heavy troop losses. British military intelligence also said Russia appeared to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine, Associated Press reported.
Russian oil company Gazprom reduced gas exports to the EU through Ukraine by 15%, the Kyiv Independent reports. On 24 March, Gazprom recorded a gas transit flow of 42.5m cubic metres. A day later, the volume decreased to 36.2m cubic metres.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have displayed a united front against authoritarian regimes as Biden visited the Canadian capital days after the leaders of China and Russia held a Moscow summit. Reuters reported that images of Biden and Trudeau standing side by side in Ottawa on Friday announcing agreements including on semiconductors and migration represented a counterpoint to the scene in Moscow days ago.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, spoke by phone with Putin and thanked him for his “positive attitude” in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the Turkish presidency said on Saturday. It said the two leaders discussed steps to improve Turkish-Russian relations, and developments regarding the war in Ukraine, and that Erdoğan expressed the importance of ending the conflict through negotiations as soon as possible, Reuters reported.
More than 5,000 former criminals have been pardoned after finishing their contracts to fight in Russia’s Wagner mercenary group against Ukraine, the founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday. The Wagner group, originally staffed by battle-hardened veterans of the Russian armed forces, took on a much more prominent role in the Ukraine war after the Russian army suffered a series of humiliating defeats last year, Reuters reported.
The United Nations has said it is “deeply concerned” by what it said were summary executions of prisoners of war by both Russian and Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. A report from the UN’s office of the high commissioner for human rights said its monitors had documented dozens of the executions by both sides, that the actual number was likely higher and that they “may constitute war crimes”.
Police in Russia have placed a former speechwriter for Vladimir Putin on a wanted list of suspects, the latest step in a sweeping crackdown on dissent. The Associated Press reports that Abbas Gallyamov wrote speeches for Putin during the Russian leader’s 2008-12 stint as prime minister. Gallyamov later became an outspoken political consultant and analyst who was frequently quoted by Russian and foreign media. He has lived abroad in recent years.
Russia’s parliament speaker has proposed banning the activities of the international criminal court (ICC) after the court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accusing him of war crimes. Vyacheslav Volodin, an ally of Putin’s, said on Saturday that Russian legislation should be amended to prohibit any activity of the ICC in Russia and to punish any who gave “assistance and support” to the court.
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