March 24, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

No decision has been taken yet on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in August, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"No decision has been made on this yet," Peskov told CNN.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are collectively known as the fast-growing BRICS economies.

Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges. The warrant relates to an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

South Africa is a party to the convention that requires the arrest of anyone for whom a warrant has been issued by the court.

Estonia has ordered the expulsion of a diplomat working for the Russian Embassy for “undermining Estonia’s security,” the Estonian foreign ministry announced in a statement on Friday. 

“The diplomat in question has been engaged in directly and actively undermining Estonia’s security and constitutional order, spreading propaganda that justifies Russia’s military action and causing divisions in Estonian society,” the statement from the ministry read.

The person in question was declared persona non grata after their activities were found to have violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. They were ordered to leave Estonia by March 29, the ministry said. 

Wagner mercenaries have begun deporting residents of the Bakhmut suburbs they control, the Ukrainian National Resistance Center (NRC) – an official body – said on Thursday.

“Militants forcefully take local residents to captured areas of Luhansk region, where they are filtered. After that, they are deported to Perm (Russia) and other remote regions of the Russian Federation,” the center said.

CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

“Locals are deported under the intention of evacuation. After that, they are assimilated in remote areas of the empire, because they are now dependent on the occupiers,” the NRC said.

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, addressed these claims on Ukrainian television Friday.

“This is one of the regular crimes of the Russian Federation. There is nothing to be surprised at, because the entire military structure of the Russian Federation is a criminal ... All of this will be recorded, documented and handed over to the relevant national and international jurisdictions,” he said.

Russian airborne troops are playing a greater role in the fighting around Bakhmut because of the growing losses of the Wagner private military company, the Ukrainian military says.

“It is not that [Wagner] are withdrawing, but that due to heavy losses they have to be reinforced by units of the regular army of the Russian Federation, primarily by airborne troops,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, told Ukrainian television Friday.

Russian forces in the area are “making several dozen attacks every day. There were 32 firefights over the last day” in and around Bakhmut, Cherevatyi said, adding that there were also air strikes launched by both fixed-wing planes and attack helicopters.

“Artillery is a much bigger factor of influence on military operations there than aviation,” he noted.

Shelling by Russian forces overnight Thursday in the northern Sumy region killed two people and caused extensive damage in four communities, the Sumy regional military administration said.

Bilopillia, Vorozhbinska, Richkivska and Mykolaivka were struck by Russian shells, it said.

Bilopillia suffered 80 hits from rockets, 20 from artillery, and was hit by an airstrike, according to the military administration.

Two people were killed and nine injured, it added.

Residential and administrative buildings were also damaged and destroyed, it said.

A quick recap: Russian fighter aircraft also launched more than 10 guided bombs against targets in Sumy overnight, Ukrainian officials said earlier. While Sumy often suffers cross-border artillery attacks, it rarely comes under such concentrated aerial bombardment.

Three people were killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Kostantynivka in the eastern Donetsk region overnight, Ukrainian authorities said.

The city has been struck with increasing frequency by Russian missiles, especially the inaccurate S-300. Kostantynivka lies about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the embattled city of Bakhmut.

The Donetsk regional prosecutor's office said that at 1 a.m. local time Friday, the Russian army fired two missiles from an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system.

One hit the building of what’s known as an invincibility point — a place where civilians can access the internet, charge devices and receive other basic needs.

Two other people were injured, it added.

Russian fighter aircraft launched more than 10 guided bombs against targets in the northern Sumy region overnight, according to Ukrainian officials.

While Sumy often suffers cross-border artillery attacks, it rarely comes under such concentrated aerial bombardment.

Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesman, said about 10 Su-35 aircraft — Russia's newest fighter jet — attacking the Sumy region with guided bombs.

Ihnat also confirmed that Iranian-made Shahed drones had been used in an attack on the southern city of Kryvyi Rih. 

Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said one Shahed was shot down but there “were also hits by five UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle). No one was killed or injured.”

Lysak did not elaborate on what was struck.

Russia is unable to honor its arms delivery commitments to India because of the war in Ukraine, the Indian Air Force (IAF) said, placing a potential strain on New Delhi’s relationship with its largest defense supplier as Moscow attempts to ramp up weapons production.

An IAF representative told an Indian parliamentary committee that due to the Ukraine war a “major delivery” from Moscow “is not going to take place.”

The admission, published in a report by India’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, is the first official confirmation by Indian authorities amid swirling rumors and reports in local media suggesting shortcomings in Russian capacity.

CNN has contacted the Russian Embassy in New Delhi but did not receive a response at the time of publishing.

The report did not mention the specifics of the delivery.

The biggest ongoing delivery is the S-400 Triumf air defense system units India bought in 2018 for $5.4 billion. Three of these systems have been delivered and two more are awaited, Reuters reported.

IAF also depends on Russia for spares for its Su-30MKI and MiG-29 fighter jets, the mainstay of the service branch, according to Reuters.

Russia is the world’s second-largest arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a large-scale effort to build up capacity to produce more weapons for the war in a move he said was “urgently needed.”

Strained relations: New Delhi has strong ties with Moscow dating back to the Cold War, and remains heavily dependent on the Kremlin for its military equipment — a vital link given the ongoing tensions along India’s shared Himalayan border with an increasingly assertive China.

The admission by the IAF is “very serious,” according to Harsh V. Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the New Delhi-based think thank Observer Research Foundation.

Read more here.

After paying a visit to the front lines in the southern region of Kherson on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed optimism that cooperation with European allies could bring a victory by the end of the year.

He warned, however, that there were still problematic areas such as delays in the supply of armaments.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is eyeing a counteroffensive in Bakhmut as Russian forces in the besieged city appear to be losing momentum, one of Kyiv's top generals said Thursday.

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