March 28, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

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

President Joe Biden briefly speaks with reporters as he returns to the White House in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday he’s concerned about Russia’s plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Moscow will complete the construction of a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by the beginning of July, Putin told state broadcaster Russia 1.

Former Vice President Mike Pence also weighed in Tuesday on Putin’s plans.

He argued it’s “absolutely essential that we continue to give Ukraine what they need.”

“We don’t allow Putin to distract the world or diminish support through his threats of moving tactical nuclear weapons,” Pence said. “We just need to remain strong and stand with the Ukrainians.”?

The situation in the contested eastern city of Bakhmut remains “under control,” with the commander of the country’s ground forces taking control of the city’s defense, the Ukrainian military said.

The military also said in an update Tuesday that the heaviest combat is concentrated in several zones in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and its units have repelled the latest efforts by Russian forces to advance. Over the last day, the General Staff said it repelled 24 Russian attacks.

Here are other headlines:

International assistance: Britain and Poland on Tuesday announced plans to build two temporary villages in Ukraine with housing for people who have been forced to flee their homes due to Russia’s invasion. And on Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the government will receive an additional $2.5 billion from the US as a grant to help with state services such as salaries and benefits. The budgetary support is part of a US pledge of $9.9 billion to assist the Ukrainian economy in 2023 and is separate from military assistance.?

Olympic developments: The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board on Tuesday issued a recommendation to international federations and international sports event organizers that athletes “who?actively support the war cannot compete.” But earlier on Tuesday, IOC President?Thomas?Bach defended plans to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in international competitions.?

Military defense increases: The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday the production of individual types of ammunition will increase seven to eight times by the end of the year. But Western analysts have expressed skepticism that Russia’s military-industrial capacity and supply chains can be accelerated so quickly. In Ukraine, the government announced Tuesday that three new companies financed by donations are ready to deploy Ukrainian-made drones for combat.

Data decisions: The US decided Tuesday to not share data under a key nuclear arms control treaty in response to Russia’s announcement that it will not do so either. Meanwhile, the US decision to fly its surveillance drones further south over the Black Sea?after a?Russian jet collided with a US drone?earlier this month?“definitely limits our ability to gather intelligence” related to the Ukraine war, a senior US military official tells CNN.

U.N. atomic energy chief Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks to Associated Press before visiting Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant during an interview in Dnipro, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 28, 2023.

Military action is increasing around Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said Tuesday.

Speaking from Dnipro in Ukraine, ahead of a visit to the plant, Grossi said the situation “is not getting any better.”

The power plant has been “in blackout repeatedly,” Grossi added.

The director general’s visit will be his second to the plant and his first since the IAEA established a permanent presence at the site in September last year, the agency said in a statement Saturday.

“I want to see what the situation is for myself, talk to the management there, which is the Russian management,” Grossi told CNN.

Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy monopoly, Rosatom, said Tuesday that Russia is ready to discuss the situation at the plant with?the head of the IAEA.

The IAEA chief said the current risk level at the plant is “extremely high and it’s totally unpredictable, precisely because we are in a combat zone.”

On Monday, Grossi met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was visiting the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions. Later, in his nightly address on Monday, Zelensky thanked Grossi for his support.

CNN’s Anna Chernova and Sarah Dean contributed reporting.

The Ukrainian government announced that three new companies financed by donations are ready to deploy Ukrainian-made drones for combat.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister for innovations, development of education, science and technology, said that the creation of the drone companies would bring “a completely new approach to management, training and doctrine of drone usage.”

Fedorov said the companies will have pickup trucks, attack helicopters and Starlink terminals. All the drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, are made in Ukraine.?

Drones have played a substantial role – in both attack and reconnaissance modes – for the Ukrainian forces over the past year.

Fedorov said the equipment was purchased by private donors.

More than $1.5 million was raised through the sale of 100,000 packets containing salt from a mine at Soledar, a town that was captured by fighters of the Russian private military company Wagner in January.

Soldiers of a Russian army unit who complained to President Vladimir Putin about their “criminal” commanders and being forced into suicidal combat situations are now under interrogation by the military prosecutor’s office, according to an independent Russian media outlet, ASTRA.

ASTRA said it had spoken with relatives of the men, who serve with the Storm detachment of a brigade of the 8th?Russian army.?

Last week, the men stated in a video that they had been confined in trenches in the village of Vodiane near Donetsk. They were subsequently sent to Donetsk, according to ASTRA.?

Two of the units have vanished and “have allegedly already been put on the wanted list as having left the unit without permission,” ASTRA says, quoting relatives of the soldiers.

The video message last week, addressed to Putin, showed about 20 men of the Storm detachment who said men were thrown into trenches “littered with corpses.”

They also claimed in the video that “barrier troops” – which are also known as troops that prevent any unit from retreating – “were put up against us and did not let us leave our positions. Now they don’t let us go anywhere at all, they promise to destroy us,” the soldiers said. “We are in danger.”

The soldiers said they had never seen their leadership or official orders. “The leadership of the fifth brigade is a criminal group,” one said.

Commander of the Ukrainian army, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, gives instructions in a shelter in Soledar, the site of heavy battles with the Russian forces, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine on January 8, 2023.

The Ukrainian military says the situation in Bakhmut remains “under control” – with the commander of the country’s ground forces taking control of the city’s defense.?

The Ukrainian Land Forces, in a Facebook post, said Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi “is constantly on the front line with his subordinate units. Together with their commanders, they coordinate actions that will prevent the enemy from realizing their plans.”

An unofficial Telegram channel of the soldiers of the 46th?separate airmobile brigade said that the defense of the city relied upon holding the village of Ivanivske, a few kilometers to the west.

“The surrender of Ivanivske would dramatically worsen the situation in the area of the (Bakhmut) Airplane [a monument in the south of the city],” it said.

Losing Ivanivske would also yield “physical control over the road to Chasiv Yar,” it said, and would “allow our rear and flank to be attacked from the south.”

The Telegram channel added: “Despite the increase in the intensity of artillery and air support for the Wagnerites, it is noticeable that the orcs [Russians] have not had any success for several days.”

?A major in the Bakhmut area, Makysm Zhorin, said on Telegram late Tuesday that “Bakhmut has been shelled all day long.”

“As before, the biggest pressure is inflicted on the residential areas. Our guys are fighting for every house, but it is very difficult to hold back so many occupiers. The flanks are holding, no one is letting the Russians surround the city.”

The United States announced it supports the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression — a significant development in the push to hold top Kremlin officials accountable for the war in Ukraine.

The announcement of US support for the development of such a body “in the form of an internationalized court that is rooted in Ukraine’s judicial system, with international elements,” in the words of a US State Department spokesperson, comes after Ukraine and other countries have for months pushed for the creation of the mechanism.?

Some more context: Although there are a number of different bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC) which can prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, they do not have the ability to prosecute the crime of aggression.

As such, Ukrainian Ambassador-at-Large Anton Korynevych in December argued that these existing mechanisms do not do enough to ensure that the decision-makers in Moscow face punishment for their war against Ukraine.

“Legally, currently, there is no international mechanism, which can investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” he explained.

Read more about the announcement here.

A Russian propaganda video purportedly showing the Ukrainian military firing at a car with a mother and child after hearing the woman speaking Russian has been debunked as fake, a CNN analysis shows.?

The staged footage starts with a man wearing a Ukrainian military uniform stopping the car for “violating traffic rules” before telling the woman in the car: “Scumbag, give me your documents.”

After hearing the woman speak Russian, the man in uniform calls her a “pig, stupid scumbag” and fires several rounds with his rifle, scaring the child in the car.?Both the woman and the child can be heard screaming.?

The dashcam video was shared widely on Russian Telegram accounts and even on official Twitter accounts, such as the Russian ministry of foreign affairs and the Russian embassy in London.?

However, open-source analysts on Twitter (@Tatarigami_UA, @PStyle0ne1?and?@EjShahid) geolocated the footage as well within Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.??

A CNN analysis confirmed the location as?on the outskirts of the city of Makiivka, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the front line.

Local people even went to the site and took a picture of the tree branches, which have a distinctive shape, further corroborating the geolocation of the video.

A pro-Russia Telegram channel with more than 300,000 subscribers, Veteran Notes,?admitted that the video is fake.?

After being debunked by the open source community, Russia’s official ministry of foreign affairs Twitter account took down the video, without acknowledging the incident was fabricated.

The Russian Embassy in the UK still had?the video up as of 12 p.m. ET.

The Ukrainian military said in an update Tuesday that the heaviest combat is concentrated in several zones in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and that its units have repelled the latest efforts by Russian forces to advance.

The General Staff said “the towns of Bilohorivka, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Mariinka and their outskirts remain at the epicenter of the fighting” and that Ukrainian Defense Forces “repelled 24 enemy attacks in the above areas over the last day.”

Russian forces control access to both Bakhmut and Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine on three sides. They have made marginal gains in recent weeks but have been unable to encircle Ukrainian troops in either place. Most of the eastern front lines have changed little in the first three months of the year.

Away from the Donbas area, the General Staff said that a missile strike on the town of Bohodukhiv in Kharkiv region had injured civilians and damaged houses.

What Ukraine says is happening in other areas: The military said Russian forces had continued to fire across the border at settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as at towns and villages in the Kharkiv region.?

The General Staff also said that Russian forces – while on the defensive on the southern Zaporizhzhia front – had fired at a number of settlements.?

It said that the Ukrainian air force had carried out “five strikes on the areas of concentration of occupiers’ personnel and military equipment over the day. Missile and artillery units hit a command post, an area where enemy manpower, weapons and military equipment were concentrated, and an ammunition depot.”

Ukraine's Prime Minister?Denys?Shmyhal?attends a news conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 3, 2023.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the government will receive an additional $2.5 billion from the United States as a grant to help with state services such as salaries and benefits.

The budgetary support is part of a US pledge of $9.9 billion to assist the Ukrainian economy in 2023 and is separate from military assistance.?

Shmyhal said the funds would come through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association.

He said the aid would be used “to pay salaries to our rescuers, teachers, doctors, to help pensioners, internally displaced persons, people with disabilities and low-income families.”

More on US aid to Ukraine: The US disbursement is part of a broad international program of support for the Ukrainian economy. Shmyhal noted that since the beginning of the year, Ukraine had obtained almost $5 billion in support from the EU and more than $2 billion from the United States. There is also a new package of assistance agreed with the IMF of $15.6 billion.

In February, the United States began disbursing $9.9 billion in direct budget support to the government of Ukraine. The grant announced Tuesday is the second installment. Last year, the US provided $13 billion in budget support.

Ukraine has forecast a budget deficit of $36 billion in 2023, with almost all government revenue being devoted to the war effort.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, center, speaks during an IOC executive board meeting where the issue of Russian athletes will be discussed, in Lausanne, on March 28, 2023.

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board on Tuesday issued a recommendation to international federations and international sports event organizers that athletes “who?actively support the war cannot compete.”

The IOC executive board issued the following six points in its recommendation today, including that athletes with a Russian or a Belarusian passport “must compete only as Individual Neutral Athletes” and “teams of athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passport cannot be considered.”

The recommendation also says that “sanctions against those responsible for the war, the Russian and Belarusian states and governments, must remain in place.”

IOC President Thomas Bach had said the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in 2024 Olympics was “not considered” during the Tuesday meeting.

Earlier on Tuesday, Bach had defended plans to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in international competitions.

The IOC’s executive board will also be meeting Wednesday and Thursday.

More than 300 active and former fencers?wrote the IOC?Tuesday urging?the organization to?uphold sanctions against Russian and Belarusian athletes, saying that allowing them entry back into international competitions would be “a catastrophic error.”

More on the IOC’s stance: In February 2022, the IOC executive board recommended that International Sports Federations and sports event organizers “not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions.”

But in January 2023, the IOC outlined a multi-step plan for Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate at the upcoming 2024 Summer Games in Paris and the 2026 Winter Games in Milan, which was met by criticism from the United States, Canada and?several?European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.

Russian and Belarusian athletes have been competing as neutrals in some international competitions.

CNN’s Sammy Mncwabe contributed reporting to this post.

Russia will not provide the United States with data?on its nuclear forces?that is shared semi-annually under a key nuclear arms control treaty, and in response, the US will not do so either, a top Pentagon official and a National Security Council spokesperson said Tuesday.??

Moscow’s move not to provide the information comes after President Vladimir Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, the only bilateral agreement left between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. The US has strongly condemned Russia’s suspension, which the NSC spokesperson called “legally invalid.”

“Yesterday, we had a further interaction with Russia, pressing them on the upcoming end of the month, there is due a semiannual data exchange every six months, under the treaty, we exchange data on kind of high-level numbers,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb said at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing.?

“We are going to continue to examine what are the diplomatic countermeasures [that] are appropriate,” Plumb said. “What we’re trying to do, sir, is balance both responding to Russia’s irresponsible behavior but to continue to demonstrate what we believe a responsible nuclear power’s action should be.”

The NSC spokesperson?described the decision not to provide data in response to Russia’s action “as a lawful countermeasure intended to encourage Russia to return to compliance with the treaty,” and?noted that “Russia’s failure to exchange this data will…be a violation of the treaty, adding on to its existing violations of the New START Treaty.”

“In the interest of strategic stability, the United States will continue to promote public transparency on our nuclear force levels and posture,” the NSC spokesperson said.

A screengrab of Maria Moskalyov, 12, describing the police search of her home in Russia's Tula region to Activatica, an online portal supporting grassroots activism in the country.

A Russian man whose 12-year-old daughter drew an anti-war picture at school has been sentenced to two years in prison by a court in the Tula region for his own anti-war online posts, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The man – Alexey Moskalyov – had been charged with “discrediting the Russian military” and was under house arrest after being accused of repeatedly publishing anti-war posts.

RIA Novosti said that according to the indictment, Moskalyov, “using his personal computer, posted on his page in social networks statements in the form of text-graphic publications discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

One of those posts read: “Army of Russia. The oppressors around us,” according to the court, as quoted by Russian independent news site Mediazona.

In April last year, Moskalyov’s 12-year-old daughter Masha drew a picture of Russian missiles being fired at a Ukrainian family and wrote “No to war” and “Glory to Ukraine” during her art class, according to Mediazona.

The school subsequently called the police.

On December 30, Moskalyov’s house was searched in connection with the case of repeated “discrediting” of the Russian army also based on his comments on social media.

RIA Novosti said prosecutors had requested two years in prison for Moskalyov. Moskalyov pleaded not guilty but failed to turn up to his hearing in the city of Yefremov on Tuesday.

After Moskalyov was placed under house arrest at the beginning of this month, Masha – who he was raising alone — was placed in an orphanage. RIA Novosti said the whereabouts of Masha’s mother were unknown.

In a video?published?by the independent Russian Telegram channel SOTA, lawyer Vladimir Bilienko displayed some of Maria’s drawings for her father.

“[There was] a letter for Dad. There is a big heart at the end [and an inscription] ‘Dad, you are my hero’,” Bilienko said.

According to the chairman of the commission for minors in Yefremov, Svetlana Davydova, the family had been “on a preventive list of families in a socially dangerous situation” since May last year.

More on the case: Alexander Brod, a member of the Human Rights Council, said Moskalyov did not fulfill his obligations as a father, according to RIA Novosti, adding that Maria had not attended school for a year.

RIA Novosti cited court spokesperson Olga Dyachuk as saying Tuesday: “The court sentenced him to two years in prison in a penal colony. Moskalyov was supposed to be taken into custody in the courtroom, but that didn’t happen, because he escaped from house arrest at night, the court announced the decision in his absence.”

The court acknowledged that Moskalyov had a daughter under the age of 18 as mitigation, but the prosecutor said the offense was committed during the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The Russian human rights group Memorial said that “the criminal prosecution of Moskalyov is motivated by his political views and is aimed at the involuntary termination of civil activity of critics of the authorities and intimidation of the society as a whole.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the production of individual types of ammunition will increase seven to eight times by the end of the year.

Western analysts have expressed skepticism that Russia’s military-industrial capacity and supply chains can be accelerated so quickly.

It made the announcement as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu toured enterprises in the Chelyabinsk and Kirov regions. The ministry issued video of Shoigu at a factory making large-caliber ammunition and shells.?

The Defense Ministry said that projects were being implemented to modernize and expand production capacities, as well as increase labor productivity.

It said this would increase production “to meet the needs of the Russian troops, and by the end of this year, the production of individual product samples will increase seven- to eight-fold.”

On Saturday,?Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Russian state TV that?the Russian defense industry is “developing at a very fast pace” and would produce three times more ammunition than is being supplied to Ukraine by “the igniters of conflict.”

US Air Force MQ-9 camera footage showing a Russian Su-27 flying along side.

The US decision to fly its surveillance drones further south over the Black Sea?after a Russian jet collided with a US drone earlier this month?“definitely limits our ability to gather intelligence” related to the Ukraine war, a senior US military official tells CNN.

Flying drones at greater distances reduces the quality of intelligence they can gather, a US military official explained, noting that spy satellites can compensate to some degree but have shorter times over targets, again reducing effectiveness relative to surveillance drones.?

After?the?Russian jet collided with a US Reaper drone?earlier this month, the US began flying its surveillance drones further south and at a higher altitude over the Black Sea than previously, placing them further away from airspace surrounding the Crimean Peninsula and eastern portions of the Black Sea.??

When CNN first reported this change, one US official said the new routes were part of an effort “to avoid being too provocative,” as the Biden administration continues to be careful to avoid any incident that could escalate into a direct conflict with?Russian forces.?The official said the drone flights would continue this way “for the time being,” but added there is already “an?appetite” to return to the routes closer to Russian-held territory.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council referred questions to the Pentagon.?

More on the US routes: In the wake of the collision with the US MQ-9 Reaper drone on March 14, US officials have repeatedly said that the US would continue to fly in international airspace. However, the new routes place those flights more than forty nautical miles from the Ukrainian coast, rather than the 12 nautical miles normally recognized as the limit of a nation’s airspace.?

According to a senior US military official, there is concern that once the US has?moved?its?flight?routes?away?from areas closer to the Ukraine coast, it will be harder to return to them and assert freedom of flight for US aircraft.?The US Navy has not sailed into the Black Sea since December 2021.

The downing of the drone marked the first time Russian and US military aircraft had come into direct physical contact since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.??

CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed reporting to this post.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach speaks at the opening of the executive board meeting of the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland, on March 28.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President?Thomas?Bach on Tuesday defended plans to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in international competitions.?

“We see this almost every day in a number of sports. We see it most prominently in tennis, but we see it also in cycling. We see it in some table tennis competitions, we see it in ice hockey, we see it in handball, we see it in football and in other leagues — in the United States, but also in Europe, and we also see it in other continents,” he added.

More background: In February 2022, the IOC executive board recommended that International Sports Federations and sports event organizers “not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions.”?

But this January, the IOC outlined a multi-step plan for Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate at the upcoming 2024 Summer Games in Paris and the 2026 Winter Games in Milan, which was met by criticism from the United States, Canada and?several?European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.

Russian and Belarusian athletes have been competing as neutrals in some international competitions.

“It’s even that the governments on whose territory the competitions are taking place, they’re issuing visas (to Russians and Belarusian athletes) with very few exceptions. In other countries, they’re even issuing working permits where it’s necessary for these players and athletes,” Bach said.

On Thursday, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced Russian and Belarusian athletes will still be excluded from World Athletics Series Events “for the foreseeable future” due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reaffirming the organization’s March 2022 decision.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits the city of Okhtyrka, Ukraine, on March 28.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has continued a tour of the country’s regions with a visit to Sumy in the north – dedicated to the defense a year ago of the city of Okhtyrka.

He recalled the shelling of a kindergarten in February 2022 and noted that Okhtyrka had suffered heavy losses and “brutal enemy attacks.”

According to the presidential website, Zelensky said, “it is a great honor for me to present Okhtyrka today with the honorary award of the hero city, the defender city, the winning city.”

“Justice is the most important thing for us today, so we will not forgive what was done against Ukrainians, against Ukraine. We will bring to justice all the murderers from the Russian Federation, terrorists and the aggressor state itself,” Zelensky said.

“We will not leave a single wound caused by this war on the body of our country. We will rebuild absolutely everything that has been destroyed,” he added.

In the past week, Zelensky has been to the area around Bakhmut and Kostiantynivka in the eastern Donetsk region, as well as to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

Britain and Poland on Tuesday announced plans to build two temporary villages in Ukraine with housing for people who have been forced to flee their homes due to Russia’s invasion.?

London pledged up to 10 million pounds (or about $12.3 million) to provide shelter and power for more than 700 displaced Ukrainians,?the UK government said in a?statement?announcing its new partnership with Warsaw.?

The two accommodation villages will be built in Lviv in western Ukraine and Poltava in the east, the statement said, adding the allies would also provide 2.6 million pounds ($3.2 million) worth of generators “to support up to 450,000 people via schools, hospitals and community centers in re-taken and frontline areas, including Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson.”?

The announcement comes as an ongoing Russian assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has left millions of people without access to electricity, water and central heating.

“Widespread power cuts, some lasting eight to twelve hours a day, have forced families to resort to desperate measures for survival, like melting snow for water and heating bricks for warmth,” the government statement said.?

It added the UK and Poland would also donate up to 2.5 million pounds?($3.1 million) to the Ukrainian Red Cross “to support those living through extreme cold in harsh winter conditions.”?

“From the pages of the Polish history we know that Ukraine is fighting not only for their freedom but also for our freedom. There is no free Europe without free Ukraine,” Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said, according to the statement.?

In response to the announcement, Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyy said that “hundreds of people have got a chance for a new life, because Russia took away their old one.”?

Ukraine’s top land commander has said that his forces are aiming to “inflict heavy losses” on Russian forces in Bakhmut with a view to launching a counterattack. Fighting has raged around the besieged city in eastern Ukraine for months.

Elsewhere, Russian officials say they are willing to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, following accusations of “radiation blackmail” from Kyiv.

Here are the latest headlines:

The?Zaporizhzhia?nuclear?power?plant?outside the city of Enerhodar in the?Zaporizhzhia?region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on November 24.

Russia is ready to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) with?the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),?Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy monopoly Rosatom said Tuesday.

Moscow is ready to negotiate “ensuring nuclear safety” and “understanding the development of the situation at the plant” during Rafael Grossi’s expected visit to the plant this week, said Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosatom’s CEO, on state TV Russia 24.

“We are open to these questions,” Karchaa said, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Some context: Russia captured the plant in early March 2022. Since then, international and local experts have warned about the possibility of a nuclear disaster that could affect thousands of people in the surrounding area.

IAEA chief Grossi tweeted Sunday saying he is on his way for a first-hand assessment of “the nuclear safety and security situation at the facility.”

On Monday, he met with?Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was visiting the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions.?

Zelensky accused Russia of nuclear?blackmail?over its control of the nuclear power plant.

“No other terrorist has reached such depths in his cynicism, in which Russia constantly seeks and finds a new bottom.”

A residential building damaged by a Russian military strike in the frontline city of?Avdiivka, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on March 20.

Authorities in the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka say the number of people willing to evacuate has increased as it comes under “almost non-stop” fire.

Up to 14 rockets hit the town every day and “someone dies every day,” said Donetsk region police, who are helping with evacuations.

In recent days a kindergarten and farm were destroyed, said police, adding that five children remain in the town.

Vitalii Barabash, the head of Avdiivka military administration, said that starting on Sunday, the town’s utilities will begin to be shut off as “more and more of the town is shelled and destroyed daily.”

“The town is being wiped off the face of the earth,” said Barabash.

Some context: Avdiivka is near the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and has also come under sustained attack by Russian forces.

On Sunday, a Ukrainian soldier also said that the situation in?Avdiivka?continues to be “difficult,” as Russian forces have increased the number of airstrikes and have been able to cut off some supply routes.

Avdiivka?is located about 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of the city of Donetsk.

Ukrainian soldiers of the 28th brigade stand together in a shelter on their position close to Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on March 27.

Ukraine’s main task in the eastern city of Bakhmut is to “deplete the enemy’s overwhelming forces and inflict heavy losses on it,” the commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces said Tuesday.

“We are now at a time when the enemy, trying to capture Bakhmut, has thrown all its best units in to achieve victory,” Col. Gen.?Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a video posted on Telegram, which shows him standing alongside troops during a visit to the area.

“We want to reach the borders of Ukraine, we want to break the enemy so that it dies – here, near Bakhmut, in other areas. The main thing is that you continue to perform your tasks in such an exemplary manner, and the main thing is that you return to your units alive and unharmed after completing them,” Syrskyi told the soldiers.

“Thanks to the heroism and professionalism of our military, skilful and coordinated actions, effective use of maneuver and weapons capabilities, we are holding the Bakhmut fortress despite various deadlines and forecasts,” he added.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said?that Syrskyi visited Bakhmut and “took a number of measures to resolve problematic issues that impede the effective performance of combat missions.”

Some context: Bakhmut has been besieged by Russian forces for months. It remains the primary focus of Russian attacks,?Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told CNN on Sunday.?

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has said that deploying Russian nuclear weapons on its territory is not against the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), according to Russian state news agency TASS.

“The training of Belarusian pilots capable of flying aircraft with specific ammunition, the modernization of such aircraft, as well as the deployment of nuclear warheads on the territory of Belarus without transferring control over them to Minsk, as well as access to appropriate technologies, do not in any way contravene the provisions of Articles I and II of the NPT,” it added.

The ministry said that such practice “is not an innovation in the field of military cooperation between non-nuclear and nuclear powers.”

It also said that Belarus has been subjected to pressure from the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO allies, causing Minsk to take “forced retaliatory actions to strengthen its own security and defense capability.”?

Some context: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in an interview Saturday that Moscow plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring?Belarus.

The statement prompted strong reaction in the West including NATO denouncing the move as “dangerous and irresponsible,” and Lithuania calling for new sanctions against Russia.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov and Commander of the Air Assault Forces Maksym Myrhorodskyi pose for a picture in front of a British Challenger 2 main battle tank, US Stryker and Cougar armoured personnel carriers and German Marder infantry fighting vehicle, in an unknown location in?Ukraine, in this handout picture released on March 27.

Advanced battle tanks donated by Western allies — including Leopard 2s from Germany and Challengers from the United Kingdom — have started to arrive in Ukraine, bolstering the country’s armed forces after months of pleading for reinforcements.

On Monday, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine had received Challenger main battle tanks from the UK; Stryker infantry fighting vehicles and Cougar infantry mobility vehicles from the United States; and Marder infantry fighting vehicles from Germany.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Berlin had also delivered Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

“Yes, we delivered Leopard tanks as we announced,” Scholz said during a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Rotterdam on Monday.?

And three Leopard 2 main battle tanks donated by Portugal have arrived in Ukraine, the country’s ministry of defense said in a statement on Monday.

Some background:?The Western main battle tanks bring greater firepower and survivability at a time when tank warfare has become an important part of the conflict.

Hamish de Bretton Gordon, former commanding officer of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in the British Army, says the Challengers being sent by the UK are vastly superior to anything the Russians have, such as the T-72 tanks.

Western tanks would also allow Ukraine to conduct combined arms maneuvers if supported by infantry and artillery, and much of southern and eastern Ukraine is ideal terrain for combinations of modern Western tanks and armored fighting vehicles to spearhead a counteroffensive.

The?Leopard 2?has another advantage, given the incredible rate at which ammunition is being used in Ukraine. The ammunition for its 120 mm gun is widely available among NATO armies.

Fred Pleitgen,?Tim Lister, Matthias Somm, Vasco Cotovio, Yulia Kesaieva and Inke Kappeler contributed reporting.

A hospital in the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson was shelled by Russian forces overnight, local authorities said Tuesday.

“The enemy fired mortars at the hospital, which is located in the Dniprovskyi district of the city,” Kherson’s regional military administration said.

No civilians were injured in the attack, it added.

On Saturday, regional authorities announced that Russian shelling in Kherson left two people dead and six injured in the preceding 24 hours.

A Russian rocket attack damaged a kindergarten and a school in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Monday night, Ukrainian authorities said.

In a Telegram post, the Kramatorsk City Council said no casualties were reported. Six houses and a non-residential building were also damaged, it added.

The attack came after Russian missile strikes earlier in the day on nearby Sloviansk, which killed at least two people.

In an update Tuesday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration, revised the number of injured down from 32 to 28 in Sloviansk.

Psychologist Olha Titorovska works with client Yaroslav Repich at BlahoDar, a Slavutych rehabilitation center for people with disabilities.

As Ukraine marked a year since?Russia’s full-scale invasion, Sasha Kharitonov spent his days lying in a bed in a corner of a small room that smelled of cigarettes and had Russian TV playing in the background.

He’s 17 years old but unable to move or eat on his own because of a severe form of?cerebral palsy. He has frequent seizures and sometimes struggles to breathe.

Sasha requires round-the-clock care, but after his mother died three months ago no one was willing to take care of him. He continued to live with his disabled stepfather and step-grandmother Halyna Chernyshova, an 81-year-old woman who sometimes refers to him as “it” and who openly contemplated whether he “would be better off with his mom.”

During a visit last month to their home in Slavutych, near Ukraine’s border with Belarus, the family told CNN they had tried to find a place for Sasha in a care home but were repeatedly turned away. Many facilities were either damaged in the war or are full of patients from occupied regions.

His distant aunt, Lilia Seheda, wanted to take him in, but as the single mom of two children, it’s too much for her. Instead, she’d visit a couple times a day and help feed or change Sasha. Sometimes she’d read to him, watching his faint smile.

The war has put a huge strain on?Ukraine’s health care system?and has had a particularly devastating impact on people living with intellectual disabilities and their families. Their conditions are often invisible to the general public and remain widely misunderstood in Ukraine.?The community was suffering from a chronic shortage of support services even before the Russian invasion began last February. With resources diverted towards the war effort, the few that did exist are struggling to cope.

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Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 14 of 15 Shahed drones launched by Russia into Kyiv’s airspace overnight Monday, the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said Tuesday.

Earlier, the Kyiv regional military administration said in a Telegram post that falling debris from the incident set a building on fire.

There were no casualties, Popko added.

This post has been updated with additional information.

A still image from video released by?Russia's Defense Ministry on March 28, shows what it said to be a missile ship of?Russia's?Pacific?Fleet firing a Moskit cruise missile at a mock enemy sea target in waters off Japan's coast.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet fired a pair of supersonic missiles at a mock target in waters off Japan’s coast on Tuesday morning, the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

The maneuver on Tuesday comes after Russia conducted drills earlier this month in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, with a submarine hitting a land target over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away with a Kalibr cruise missile – the same type of missile Moscow regularly uses in its?war in Ukraine.

Read more here.

Multiple explosions were reported in Kyiv late Monday night, the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said on his official Telegram channel.?

“Preliminarily, there are no casualties,” he said.?

The city’s air raid sirens were activated ahead of the explosions, the Kyiv region military administration said on Telegram.

Here are the latest developments:

Firefighters extinguish a fire in a building materials store in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on March 28.

Multiple explosions were reported in Kyiv late Monday night, the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said on his official Telegram channel.?

In the Sviatoshynskyi district, fire and rescue services are responding to the scene of a building fire, Klitschko said.?

“Preliminarily, there are no casualties,” he said.?

The city’s air raid sirens were activated ahead of the explosions, the Kyiv regional military administration said on Telegram.

“The danger in the adjacent region to the capital city remains! Air defense forces are on the alert,” the post read.?

Gas emanates from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea on September 28, 2022.

Russia failed to gain enough votes on Monday at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for its proposed resolution to investigate attacks on the Nordstream pipeline.?

Only three countries voted in favor of the proposed resolution, with 12 countries abstaining.

At least nine votes in favor were needed to pass the proposed resolution; however, the United States would still have been able to veto the move if it chose to.

US Ambassador Robert Wood told the UNSC that the US had nothing to do with the attack on the pipelines. He also questioned why Russia would attempt to pass the resolution after most UNSC members had expressed discontent toward the idea.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russian ambassador to the UN, said the truth will not be uncovered and urged the need for accountability.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits a missile-damaged area of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Monday March 27, 2023.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy on Monday thanked the secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for his support and accused Russia of nuclear blackmail over its control of Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant.

The accusations come after Zelenksy visited the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro.

“I met with IAEA head Rafael Grossi. The topic is clear: the security of our energy industry, our nuclear plants. First of all, the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which Russia still uses for radiation blackmail of the world,” Zelensky said in his nightly address from Dnipro on Monday. “No other terrorist has reached such depths in his cynicism, in which Russia constantly seeks and finds a new bottom.”

Zelensky said Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant threatened global security.?

“I am grateful to our partners, grateful to Grossi for understanding this and for supporting Ukraine in the relevant issues,” Zelensky said.?

Zelensky’s meeting with Grossi came ahead of his visit to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant later in the week.

Zelensky met with frontline soldiers, visited a military hospital in Zaporizhzhia and saw the impact of Russian shelling in Marhanets and Nikopol. He also held a Cabinet meeting in Dnipro.?

“I have just held a meeting of the Staff — for the first time away, in Dnipro. Right here — in the strategic city of the center of our country, after visiting Marhanets and Nikopol, Zaporizhzhia, the frontline positions of our warriors in the Zaporizhzhia region,” he said. “The commanders of the operational areas reported the actual situation.”

“Every commander understands that the enemy must be held accountable for every attack on our cities and villages, on our people. For Sloviansk, for Kostiantynivka and Druzhkivka, for Avdiivka and Toretsk, for all the pain of Ukrainians — and not only during the full-scale war, but also since 2014,” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine is taking part in the US-led Summit for Democracy, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday.?

Zelensky did not provide additional details on his country’s participation.

“I am thankful to everyone who helps our country protect freedom,” he concluded.