March 13, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

The future of Ukraine is being decided in the eastern part of the country where the fighting is “very tough,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday. The Ukrainian military said fighting around the eastern city of?Bakhmut?is relentless with Ukrainian troops clearing Russian trenches in?close-quarters combat.

Here are the top headlines:

President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s future is being decided in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting is “very tough.”

“The situation in the east is very tough and very painful. We need to destroy the enemy’s military power, and we will,” he said in his nightly address Monday. “Bilohorivka and Maryinka, Avdiivka and Bakhmut, Vuhledar and Kamyanka — and all other places where our future is being decided. Where our future, the future of all Ukrainians, is being fought for.”

Zelensky went on to say he was grateful to every soldier putting their lives on the line in these battles.

“Today, I would like to recognize the soldiers of the 92nd Separate Mechanized Brigade for their successful actions in the area of Bakhmut,” the Ukrainian president added.

A Ukrainian soldier signs a 'V' for victory as he receives training on Leopard 2 battle tanks at the Spanish army's training center of San Gregorio in Zaragoza on March 13.

The first group of Ukrainian soldiers training to operate and maintain Spain’s Leopard 2A4 tanks will finish their instruction this week, the Spanish Ministry of Defense said in a statement Monday.

The first group includes 10 complete crews and support staff, consisting of 55 soldiers in total.

Some more context: Spain agreed to send six of its Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks to Ukraine, part of a coordinated effort with Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal and the Netherlands, to supply Kyiv with around 80 Leopard 2 vehicles. Germany will supply Ukraine with 18 of the more advanced Leopard 2A6 variant.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, left, walks with Belarus President Alexander?Lukashenko?during a welcoming ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on March 13.

The visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to Iran is “in some ways, an extension of the deepening relationship between Iran and Russia,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Monday.

Belarus’ leader, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, met in Tehran on Monday with President?Ebrahim?Raisi, according to Belarusian state media, and the two “signed a roadmap for comprehensive cooperation between the countries for 2023-2026.”

The US has been encouraging Chinese President Xi Jinping to speak directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the White House said Monday, amid reports the Chinese leader would hold a call with Zelensky.?

He said the US had encouraged that conversation “publicly” as well as “privately to the PRC.”

Sullivan added that American officials have “spoken with our Ukrainian counterparts today,” and that Ukrainians had not officially gotten confirmation there would be a phone call or a video conference with Xi.?

“We hope there will be. That would be a good thing because it would potentially bring more balance and perspective to the way that the PRC is approaching this, and we hope it would continue to dissuade them from choosing to provide legal assistance to Russia,” Sullivan added.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin speak to journalists on February 28, as they visit the site of a residential building damaged by a Russian missile strike late November, in the town of Vyshhorod, outside Kyiv, Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to open two war crimes cases related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and issue arrest warrants against “several people,” according to the New York Times (NYT) and Reuters, citing current and former officials with knowledge of the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.???

According to the NYT, the cases would represent the first international charges to be brought since the start of Russia’s war and come after months of work by special ICC investigation teams.???

The first case the ICC is set to open is about Russia’s alleged abduction of Ukrainian children. The second is on Russia’s “unrelentingly” targeting civilian infrastructure, including water supplies and gas tanks, according to the NYT.???

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s first step is to present his charges to a panel of pretrial judges, who will decide whether legal standards have been met for issuing arrest warrants or whether investigators need more evidence, the NYT reported.???????

In a response to a request from CNN on the NYT’s reporting, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor said that they “provide no comment on this report.”??????

The ICC chief visited Ukraine last month to probe Russia’s attacks on power and other infrastructure.

Khan told reporters during the visit that “we see clearly a pattern, I think, in terms of the number, scale and breadth of attacks against the power grids of Ukraine. And we need to look at why that’s taking place; are they legitimate targets or not; and whether or not they are targeted for other reasons.”

When asked whether the court’s process may be too slow to meet the expectations of the Ukrainians, the top prosecutor said: “What people want are not Pyrrhic victories.”???

“As a prosecutor we are officers of the court. We are not here to get a round of applause by a conjuring trick. Whenever we do move, (people) should have confidence that this is not a political process,” he continued.????

More background: Earlier this month, CNN?reported?on 15-year-old Arina Yatsiuk, one of 345 Ukrainian children who disappeared since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, according to official Ukrainian statistics.???

The Ukrainian government says many of the?missing children?have been forcibly taken to Russia. The Russian government doesn’t deny taking Ukrainian children and has made their adoption by Russian families a centerpiece of propaganda.????

One senior Ukrainian official told CNN on Monday that they have been pushing the ICC for some time to seek arrest warrants against Russian individuals in relation to the war in Ukraine.????

“Ukraine has been pushing for Russian officials involved in war crimes to be prosecuted by the ICC, up to and including (Russian President Vladimir) Putin who is ultimately responsible,” the official said.???

The fighting around Bakhmut is relentless with Ukrainian troops clearing Russian trenches in close-quarters combat, according to the Ukrainian military.?

Wagner assault units are sustaining “significant losses” as the Russian mercenary group advances from several directions around the besieged eastern city, a top Ukrainian military commander said.

Wagner’s chief said his troops are nearing the city center but the Ukrainians are “fighting for every meter.”

Here are more of the latest headlines:

Russia continues to be the “most acute threat” to the UK’s security, Britain’s government said in a review of its security approach published on Monday.?

The report, called the “Integrated Review Refresh 2023,” announced an expansion in defense investment by 5 billion pounds (around $6 billion) over the next two years.??

“What has changed is that our collective security now is intrinsically linked to the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine,” the review – which is an update on one published in 2021 – said.?

In the long term, the UK would aim to increase its “baseline commitment of spending” on defense from 2% of GDP to 2.5%, the review said.??

Regarding Russia, the review said that the UK’s objective would be “to contain and challenge Russia’s ability and intent to disrupt the security of the UK, the Euro-Atlantic and the wider international order.”?

On China, the report announced a doubling of funding “to build China capabilities across government to better understand China and allow us to engage confidently where it is in our interests to do so.”?

In response to the increase in defense spending, Tobias Ellwood,?chair of the UK’s Defense Select Committee, told Sky News on Monday that Russia and China “would be breathing a sigh of relief that we have not invested further in our armed forces at this time.”??

Speaking to UK parliament about the report, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that “on every continent of the world, the United Kingdom walks taller today than it has done for many years.”??

The hold of a UN-chartered vessel is loaded with Ukrainian wheat to be delivered to Kenya and to Ethiopia, at the port of Chornomorsk on February 18.

Russia and the United Nations have agreed to a 60-day extension of the Ukraine grain deal after negotiations in Geneva, Russian state news agency RIA reported on Monday.

“Our Russian interdepartmental delegation has just completed another round of talks with UN representatives led by UNCTAD Secretary General R. Greenspan and OCHA head M. Griffiths,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said at a briefing on Monday, according to RIA.

The diplomat added Moscow had agreed to extend the current grain deal, which lasts until March 18, for an additional 60 days.?

“But just for 60 days,” Vershinin said. “Any further grain policy will depend on actual —based on not what’s said but what’s done — progress on the normalization of our agricultural exports, including bank payments, transport logistics, insurance, unfreezing of financial activities and the continuation of ammonia supply through the Tolyatti-Odessa pipeline.”

Why are grain exports so important? Ukraine and Russia are both significant suppliers of food to the world. Before the war, Ukraine – known as one of the globe’s breadbaskets – would export around three-quarters of the grain it produces. According to data from the European Commission, about 90% of these exports were shipped by sea, from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. The war and its impact on grain exports therefore has major implications, particularly in the global South which relies heavily on them.

CNN’s Rob Picheta,?Jomana Karadsheh,?Radina Gigova?and?Tim Lister contributed to this post.

Russia and China have “clearly” aligned themselves on propaganda and disinformation regarding the war in Ukraine, and the United States and the West have not invested enough over the years in countering such disinformation, a senior State Department official said Monday.

The official said that China and Russia “have spent tens of billions of dollars” on disinformation over the years, and “we, I believe, are just coming to grips as a country and as a society.”

“I think it’s been talked about, but I don’t think that we have yet put the resources and energy behind it that we should. And that doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried,” the official said, adding that it’s only in “recent years that we’ve all come to see the dark side of the communications revolutions in digital technology.”

The US official noted that the war in Ukraine has helped awaken the West to the issue, saying, “when democracies are aroused, as they have been from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the democracies have shown their power this last year.”

“The autocracies are weaker as a result of the last year. So I believe that when aroused that we will succeed, but we have not been sufficiently aroused,” the official said.

They described Moscow and Beijing as having “an echo chamber” and “a feedback loop” of spreading the false narratives about the war, and said, “they try to get more and more attention by sharing narratives.”

The official suggested these disinformation efforts were de facto state-sponsored, because “in Russia and China, we generally believe that the major media operations are well aligned by their governments.”

The official added that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with countering foreign disinformation, put out a report several years ago that found the Russian government “operates disinformation at the highest levels of government” and the “Chinese propaganda system is operated at the highest levels of government.”

The official said that the head of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) at the State Department would be traveling to Eastern Europe “where there are operations that repeat and promulgate Russian disinformation,” and will engage with governments there on how to “shut it down or mitigate it or limit it,” instead of “waiting for these people to repeat it and promulgate it.”

Aerial view of the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, on September 24, 2017.

The Pentagon’s $842 billion 2024 budget request does not include additional funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia due to the unpredictability of the conflict’s longevity, officials said?as they briefed?on?the details of the request.?

A senior defense official told reporters?on Friday?that the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2024 budget request has $300 million for Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative “that has always been in the budget,” but otherwise there is “not other Ukraine funding in here.”

The official emphasized that the absence of additional funding “in no way shape or form means that it is not important to us.”??

Some more context: Since Russia’s invasion more than a year ago, the US has given roughly $30 billion in assistance to Ukraine. The White House’s budget,?released last week, included $6 billion from the Pentagon and State Department for Ukraine and other European allies.?

While the Pentagon’s budget request may not include additional funding specifically for Ukraine, it does include an almost $6 billion increase in munitions funding which is “sort of informed and pressurized on the ground side by the Ukraine fight and the things that we’ve been giving to Ukraine,” according to the official. It also invests almost $5 billion to “adapt capabilities to the evolving threat” in Europe.?

But the official specified that in the new budget request, the focus is on weapons “more for the broader strategy for a higher-end fight.”?

“They’re not ground?munitions,” the official said. “You’ll see Naval strike missile, standard missile, AMRAAM, things like that.”

Indeed, the items falling under the multi-year contract requests are the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER).

Asked why the Pentagon wasn’t able to get the same kind of contracts for things like the Patriot missile system and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLR) — which are in high demand in Ukraine — the official said it’s “harder than it looks” to get a multi-year contract.

The munitions request within the massive budget include $5.6 billion for ammunition, $17.3 billion for tactical missiles, $7.3 billion for strategic missiles, and $0.6 billion for technology development. It also includes over $1 billion for the munitions industrial base in an effort to “modernize and expand capacity.”

The budget request, released Monday, prioritizes China as the US’ “preeminent pacing challenge,” and allocates just over $9 billion to Pacific deterrence, investing in “new missile warning” and construction, as well as training and information sharing with other partners in the region.

The European Union Council on Monday announced it had extended sanctions placed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine for a further six months.??

The sanctions, which will remain in effect until September 15, 2023, target “those responsible for undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” the council said in a?statement.??

The current sanctions apply to 1,473 individuals and 205 entities, and include travel restrictions, the freezing of assets, and a ban on making funds or other economic resources available to the listed individuals and entities, it added.??

“Russia must stop its atrocious war immediately,” it added.??

The EU’s renewal of sanctions against Russia comes after the bloc approved its 10th package of sanctions in February.

The mayor of the Moscow-occupied city of Melitopol in southern Ukraine said that Russia’s Wagner private military company has unsuccessfully tried?to recruit from among the city’s population despite stepping up efforts.

Ivan Fedorov, who is not in the city himself, told Ukrainian television that at the end of last week, occupying authorities had?begun using social media to try to recruit residents for Wagner.??

CNN has been unable to verify such a recruitment campaign but the Wagner group has stepped up recruitment efforts after sustaining heavy casualties around?the eastern city of Bakhmut.

Russian forces are suffering “significant losses” in the continued fight for Bakhmut, and troops are reportedly engaged in close-quarters combat, according to Ukrainian commanders.

Elsewhere, Russian officials have said that there are no prospects for peace in Ukraine as things stand, as well as repeating calls for an independent investigation into the explosions which knocked out the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Here are the latest headlines:

Russia’s goals in Ukraine can only be achieved by military means, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists Monday.

“For us, the absolute priority continues to be, and will always remain, the achievement of our goals. Now they can only be achieved by military means.”

The Kremlin has maintained this position for some time.

At the end of February, China published a “peace plan” for Ukraine, but Peskov said that there was no prospect of peace.

“The special military operation (the Kremlin euphemism for its war on Ukraine) continues, we are moving towards achieving the goals that were set,” he added at the time.

Head of the Chechen Republic?Ramzan?Kadyrov?attends a military parade on Victory Day in the Chechen capital Grozny, on May 9, 2022.

Pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has reiterated Chechen fighters in Ukraine will help Moscow “fight to the victorious end.”

During a visit at the Kremlin Monday, Kadyrov reported to Putin that “we in the Republic (Chechnya) are doing really well, thanks to you.”

Kadyrov told the Russian president: “The fighters of the Chechen Republic are successfully serving in the special military operation zone, we are fulfilling all your orders and aim to act to the victorious end. The residents of the region fully support the special military operation and consider it necessary to achieve its goals and objectives.”

Kadyrov has been accused by international and independent observers of gross?human rights violations?in his home territory and beyond. He leads sizeable paramilitary forces that — while formally a part of Russian security structures — have personal loyalty to him.

Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller, and Shane Boris, winner of Best Documentary Feature Film award for ’Navalny’ pose in the press room during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at Ovation Hollywood on March 12, in Los Angeles, California.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday there was “an element of politicization” in Navalny, the film that won this year’s Oscar for best documentary feature.

The film explores the plot to kill Russian opposition leader and former presidential candidate, Alexei Navalny, and won the Oscar for best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Directed by Daniel Roher and presented by CNN Films and HBO Max, Navalny charts his political rise, attempted assassination and search to uncover the truth.

An outspoken critic of the Kremlin, Alexei Nalvany is currently serving a nine-year term at a maximum-security prison east of Moscow.

Fighting continues in Bakhmut around the clock, with Ukrainian troops clearing Russian trenches in close-quarters combat, according to a Ukrainian deputy commander.

“The situation in Bakhmut is extremely tense. The enemy is trying to storm AFU (Armed Forces of?Ukraine) positions and doing everything they can to advance,” said Maj. Rodion Kudriashov, deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Detached Assault Brigade, on Monday.

“The situation is tense, but fully under AFU control. We are resorting to mobile defense and are counter-attacking the problem sections.”

A pro-Russian military blogger said?that Wagner fighters had?begun their assault on the underground part of a large metallurgical plant in Bakhmut.

“Right now, storm troopers have entered the underground communications of the Artyomovsk Metal Processing Plant (AZOM) and are breaking into the mine,” said the?blogger Alexander Simonov.

CNN could not confirm that claim.

Moscow still does not know who carried out the sabotage of the?Nord Stream gas pipelines, according to Russian Security Council Secretary and former security chief Nikolai Patrushev.

Speaking to the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, Patrushev said recent reports of Ukrainian involvement is questionable, affirming earlier comments from the Kremlin that media reports of a “pro-Ukrainian” group behind the attack were “hard to believe.”

Patrushev reiterated that Russia wants an objective investigation into the explosions. “Without it, the voicing of unilateral subjective versions of the terrorist attack does not explain anything,” he said.

An unnamed boat suspected by the German prosecutors’ office of possibly carrying explosives linked to the explosions last September left the Baltic Sea port of?Rostock, Germany on September 6, 2022, according to German public broadcaster ARD, citing its own investigation.

The ARD reporting cited unnamed security sources from five countries.

ARD says the boat was carrying six people: one captain, two divers and two assistant divers, all of whom were men, as well as one female doctor. Their nationalities are not known.

Ukraine has denied any involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, following a report in the New York Times citing intelligence sources who said?that a “pro-Ukrainian group” may have been behind last year’s attack targeting Russia’s gas deliveries to Europe.

Ukrainian servicemen fire towards Russian positions on the front line near the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on March 11.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense is likely using the assault on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to degrade Wagner forces in order to weaken Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company, according to Western analysis.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) commented Sunday that the Russian rate of?advance there had?slowed following the Ukrainian withdrawal from the east of the city around March 7.

It added?that the ministry had?“been increasingly restricting Prigozhin’s ability to recruit convicts and secure ammunition, forcing Prigozhin to publicly recognize his dependency on the Russian MoD.”

Prigozhin?has frequently alluded to the tension in the relationship, noting that while he had?been in and around?Bakhmut,?Defense Minister Sergey?Shoigu and the commander of the Ukraine operation, Valery?Gerasimov, had?not.

ISW also noted?that?Prigozhin?had “insinuated that the Russian MoD used Wagner to bear the brunt of the high-intensity attritional urban warfare … in order to conserve Russian conventional forces.”

After months of heavy fighting around Bakhmut, Wagner may now be running short of manpower, said the the UK Defense Ministry in its daily bulletin Monday.

Prigozhin, who has been using thousands of?convicts as infantry, has likely lost access to recruiting from prisons due to the ongoing conflict with Russia’s Defense Ministry.

“If the ban endures, Prigozhin will likely be forced to reduce the scale or intensity of Wagner operations in Ukraine,” the?UK Defense Ministry said.

“About half of the prisoners Wagner has already deployed in Ukraine have likely become casualties,” it said.

In response, Wagner has begun recruiting at sports clubs and gyms in Russia.?

Halyna Kutsenko helps other volunteers to make camouflage nets for the Ukrainian military on February 25, 2023 in Sukhyi Yar, Ukraine.

Halyna Kutsenko’s legs hurt after hours of kneeling on the floor, skillfully wrapping brown and green fabric through the holes of a net that’s stretched on huge wooden frames.

She’s making camouflage nets, the one thing she feels she can do to help Ukraine’s war effort.

“We only talk in messages. We try to exchange texts every day and it’s terrifying when I don’t get a response. Sometimes he wouldn’t reply for five days,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, volunteers from Stryzhavka, Sukhyi Yar and Torchytsia, three tiny villages about two hours south of Kyiv, have made 15,000 square meters (161,400 square feet) of camouflage nets.?

They also knitted 200 pairs of socks and made hundreds of trench candles using more than 200 kilograms (440 lbs) of paraffin.

The brain behind the mammoth operation is Sasha Vdovichenko, an IT specialist who lives with his elderly mother in a small house.

Sasha Vdovichenko at home on February 25, in Stryzhavka, Ukraine.

Vdovichenko spends hours of his free time coordinating volunteers, sourcing materials, organizing events and making sure help is sent where it’s needed the most.

He has been working with Olesia Koriagina, a Kyiv-based HR specialist and volunteer coordinator, since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.?

They’ve organized countless initiatives over the years, but never met in person. Every time Koriagina invited Vdovichenko to attend an event, he refused. It wasn’t until recently that she found out why:?Vdovichenko uses a wheelchair, which makes any trip outside his house difficult.?

In late February, Koriagina traveled to Stryzhavka, where Vdovichenko lives, to meet the man she says is her hero.

“None of this would happen without you,” she told him. But Vdovichenko is adamant that it’s the volunteers that deserve the thanks.?

“This is all is thanks to active people, Ukrainian citizens. They are like ants, each pulling a straw as heavy as they can,” he said.

European countries have increased their arms imports by 47% between 2013-2017 and 2018-2022, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports.??

Globally, the volume of international arms trades dropped by 5.1%, SIPRI said.?

SIPRI found that arms imports fell overall in Africa (–40%), the Americas (–21%), Asia and Oceania (–7.5%) and the Middle East?(–8.8%) – but imports to East Asia and some states in other areas of high geopolitical tension rose sharply. The United States’ share of global arms exports increased from 33 to 40% while Russia’s dropped from 22 to 16%, it said.?

The US and Russia have for the last three decades been?the top and second largest arms exporters, but the gap between those two has widened, while that between Russia and the third largest supplier, France, has narrowed.

“It is likely that the invasion of Ukraine will further limit Russia’s arms exports. This is because Russia will prioritize supplying its armed forces and demand from other states will remain low due to trade sanctions on Russia and increasing pressure from the USA and its allies not to buy Russian arms,”?said Siemon T. Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

France’s global arms exports went up by 44% during 2013-17 and 2018-22. Most of those arms went to Asia, Oceania and the Middle East, with the biggest share going to India.

A soldier of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army fires at Russian front line positions near Bakhmut, on March 11.

Wagner assault units are sustaining “significant losses” as they advance from several directions around the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, a top Ukrainian military commander said Monday.

Speaking on Ukraine’s Media Military Center Telegram channel, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said attacks by the Russian mercenary group had so far been repelled.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has admitted that Ukrainian forces are fighting fiercely for the city, which Ukraine has vowed to defend after weeks of Russian attacks left it on the cusp of falling to Moscow’s troops.

In an audio message posted on his Telegram page on Sunday, Prigozhin said: “the situation in Bakhmut is very difficult, the enemy is fighting for every meter. The closer we are to the city center, the harder the battles, the more artillery works against us, and the more tanks.”

CNN is not able to independently verify the Ukrainian military’s claims of losses for Wagner troops.

Rishi Sunak speaks during a news conference in Paris, France, on March 10.

The United Kingdom will ramp up defense spending by $6 billion to “fortify” against growing threats from Russia and China, the country’s leader announced on the eve of highly anticipated talks with AUKUS partners, the United States and Australia.

In a statement released Sunday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to use the extra spending, spread over two years, to replenish ammunition stocks, modernize the UK’s nuclear submarine program and fund the “next phase” of AUKUS, a security pact struck between the three nations in 2021.

Details of the AUKUS program are set to be revealed Monday in San Diego during a joint news conference between Sunak, US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“Hostile power” threats: Britain named China, along with Russia, as the driving force behind the need for higher defense spending.

The increase of $6 billion dollars (￡5 billion) is the outcome of “Integrated Review Refresh,” an?update to a report first published in 2021 about the UK’s foreign, defense and security spending, revised to take into account new threats.

Read the full story here.

At least one person was injured in Russia’s southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine after air defenses shot down four missiles Monday, Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel.

Gladkov made no mention of the source of the missiles.?

Authorities in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, have reported multiple attacks since Russia began the full-scale invasion of its neighbor last year.?

Ukraine has previously declined to comment on attacks inside Russia.

Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a speech in Kyiv on March 8.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday posthumously awarded Ukraine’s highest honor to a prisoner of war who shouted, “Glory to Ukraine!”?before his execution by Russian forces was captured on video.

Oleksandr Matsiyevsky, would receive the “Hero of Ukraine” medal, Zelensky said in his nightly address on Sunday, calling him “a man whom all Ukrainians will know” and who “will be remembered forever for his bravery, for his confidence in Ukraine.”

Matsiyevsky, a sniper with the 163rd Battalion of the 119th Separate Tank Brigade of the Chernihiv Region, was executed on Dec. 30.?His body was returned home in February, but a shocking video of his execution appeared in March and was widely circulated on social media.

The Security Service of Ukraine has said it is working to identify the Russian military personnel involved in the execution, and investigating the killing under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (violation of the laws and customs of war).

Officials in Kyiv,?including Zelensky, have roundly condemned the sniper’s on-camera slaying as a war crime.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private military company Wagner, has admitted that Ukrainian forces are fighting fiercely in Bakhmut, saying they are “fighting for every meter.”

In a new audio message posted on his Telegram page on Sunday, Prigozhin said, “the situation in Bakhmut is very difficult, the enemy is fighting for every meter. The closer we are to the city center, the harder the battles, the more artillery works against us, and the more tanks.”

Russian troops continued to attack the eastern?Ukrainian?city of?Bakhmut?Sunday, Ukraine’s military?said in an update.

The city of Sloviansk, located about 59 kilometers (36 miles) northwest of?Bakhmut, was also hit, the General Staff of the Armed Services of Ukraine said in the note.

Sloviansk is among the towns noted by?Ukrainian?President Volodymyr Zelensky this week as potential next targets for Russia if Bakhmut falls.

“We understand that after?Bakhmut?(the?Russians) could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview from Kyiv. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”

There have been?no confirmed advances?by Russian forces in?Bakhmut, according to think tank the Institute for the Study of War, but the exact picture of what is happening in the?besieged eastern city?is difficult to establish.

There have been no confirmed advances by Russian forces in?Bakhmut, according to think tank the Institute for the Study of War.

The report published late Saturday said that despite Russian forces and units from the paramilitary?Wagner Group?launching continued ground attacks in the city, there is no evidence that they made any progress.

“Russian forces did not make any confirmed advances within Bakhmut on March 11.

“Ukrainian and Russian sources continue to report heavy fighting in the city, but Wagner Group fighters are likely becoming increasingly pinned in urban areas, such as the AZOM industrial complex, and are therefore finding it difficult to make significant advances,” the ISW said.

The exact picture of what is happening in Bakhmut is difficult to establish. On Saturday Wagner’s chief?said his forces were close to the city center.

Some context:?For the first time in eight months, it appears the Russians?are on the cusp of taking a Ukrainian city, albeit a small one already abandoned by more than 90% of its prewar population.

Ukrainian defenses in and around the?eastern city of Bakhmut?have been squeezed in recent weeks by a combination of intense artillery, mortar fire, and airstrikes and a substantial commitment of ground forces, both Russian regulars and fighters of the Wagner private military company.

Ukraine will fight on in the city of Bakhmut, where Russia’s advance can be compared to a burglar trying to “steal everything,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister?Dmytro Kuleba?said in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper on Sunday.

Kuleba also expressed disdain for protests in Germany calling for an end to the war and to stop the Berlin government from providing Ukraine with more weapons.

“I assure you that every single Ukrainian, even the soldier in the trenches who kills the Russian soldier who is attacking him at this very moment, wants peace more than the most peaceful protester at the Brandenburg Gate,” he said.

A group of Russian wives and mothers have called on President Vladimir Putin to stop sending their husbands and sons “to the slaughter” by forcing them to join assault groups without adequate training or supplies.

In a video shared by the independent Russian Telegram channel SOTA, the women said their loved ones had been “forced to join assault groups” at the beginning of March despite having just four days training since their mobilization in September.

The video shows the women holding a sign in Russian that reads, “580 Separate Howitzer Artillery Division,” dated March 11, 2023.

Read more here.