Russian forces claim this Saturday to have taken control of the Ukrainian village of Ivanivské, near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.At the same time, two civilians were killed in a drone attack in the Russian region of Belgorod, according to the regional governor.Follow the latest information.
Follow the full coverage
Ukraine: two years of war
This live is now over.
ITALIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER TACKLES EMMANUEL MACRON
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini accused Emmanuel Macron this Saturday of putting Europe in “danger” by not excluding the possibility of sending ground troops to Ukraine. These statements are “extremely dangerous, excessive and unbalanced”, he told a meeting in Rome of nationalist and far-right European leaders organized by the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group.
“I think that President Macron, with his words, represents a danger for our country and our continent,” continued Matteo Salvini, whose far-right League party is part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government coalition. “We do not want to leave our children with a continent ready to enter World War III.”
TAKEN A NEW VILLAGE
The Russian army says it has taken control of the Ukrainian village of Ivanivské, near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which would constitute a new advance in an important area where Russia has been on the offensive for weeks.
Moscow’s forces have “liberated the village of Krasnoye”, the old Russian name for the town of Ivanivské, the Russian Defense Ministry said. At the end of February, Ukraine reported heavy fighting in the area, with Russian soldiers trying to advance towards Chassiv Yar, a key town, from Bakhmout, occupied since May 2023.
2 CIVILIANS KILLED IN THE BELGOROD REGION
Two civilians were killed and seven others were injured in a drone attack and strikes in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, according to the regional governor. “It was a difficult morning,” Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram. According to him, two districts in his region were attacked by drones; one of these attacks which occurred in the Cherniansky district left one civilian dead and two injured.
FIRE IN AN OIL REFINERY
A fire broke out on Saturday in an oil refinery in the Russian region of Samara (Volga), attacked by a drone, the regional governor said. “This night, several drone attacks on regional oil refineries were carried out,” Dmitry Azarov, governor of the Samara region, said in a regional government statement published on Telegram.
One of these attacks caused “a fire in the Kuïbyshevsky oil refinery”, he said, stressing that no casualties were to be deplored.
POINT POSITION
Over the past 24 hours, the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine has been marked by several events:
– Russia said it carried out a “massive” attack on Ukraine on Friday in response to recent attacks on its border regions. Kharkiv, the country’s second city, found itself plunged into total darkness at nightfall on Friday, without power since the morning after these bombings on energy infrastructure. Other cities were affected. At least five deaths and around thirty injured have been reported, according to the authorities.
– Russia is “in a state of war” against Ukraine, acknowledged the Kremlin spokesperson in an interview published Friday, after insisting on presenting the assault against its neighbor, launched two years ago, as a “special operation” and rejected the use of the word “war”.
– At the conclusion of a European summit in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron spoke at a press conference on Friday. He reaffirmed France and the EU’s support for Ukraine “as long as it takes and as intensely as necessary.”
– The Franco-German arms group KNDS, which notably manufactures tanks, will produce military equipment and munitions on Ukrainian soil, the defense ministers of the two countries announced on Friday following a meeting in Berlin.
GOOD MORNING
Hello and welcome to this live broadcast dedicated to the conflict in Ukraine. Find here all the current information related to this invasion, started by Russia more than two years ago.
After the deadly attack on the evening of Friday March 22 near Moscow, Ukrainian military intelligence accused the Kremlin and its special services of having orchestrated to accuse Ukraine and justify a “escalation” of the war. Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, for his part, assured that Russia “will destroy” Ukrainian leaders if they are found to be responsible for the deadly attack on a concert hall in a Moscow suburb. Ukraine had previously assured that it did not “absolutely nothing to see” with the shooting.
“Let’s be clear, Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with these events”assured Mr. Podoliak on Telegram, whose country has been fighting a Russian invasion for two years. “Ukraine has never used terrorist methods of warfare”, he added. For Ukraine, “it is important to carry out effective combat operations, offensive actions to destroy the Russian regular army” and end the invasion, the official said.
Ukraine suffered massive nighttime strikes on Friday which left at least five dead and led to large-scale power cuts, with Volodymyr Zelensky denouncing the lack of “political will” in the West to help kyiv. These attacks particularly targeted the Ukrainian energy network, leaving a total of 1.5 million people without electricity, according to the UN. The Ukrainian Energy Ministry said it had restored power to more than a million consumers.
The situation is most difficult in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city which had nearly a million and a half inhabitants before the war, with massive power and heating cuts following this attack, the “more powerful” against this city in two years of Russian invasion, according to its mayor. As night fell, Kharkiv was plunged into darkness, according to an AFP team on site.
Read also
Shooting in Moscow: Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the attack
The Russian army claimed to have acted in retaliation for recent military operations by kyiv against the regions located on the border with Ukraine, which were themselves responses to the daily bombing of Ukrainian cities. At least five people were killed and around thirty others injured, according to the authorities, particularly in the regions of Zaporizhia (south) and Khmelnytsky (west).
Danone, a French agri-food giant, announced Friday evening that it had obtained “Russian regulatory approvals required” to sell its subsidiary in Russia, over which it had already lost control, to a businessman linked to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.