March 14, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

At least two people died and nine others were injured on Tuesday after a series of Russian attacks against cities across Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, according to a Ukrainian official.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said on Telegram that two people were killed and seven wounded in the city of Kostiantynivka. Homes were also damaged in the city, he said.

One person was wounded in the besieged city of Bakhmut, while the cities of Toretsk, Siversk and Kurakhove also came under fire, Kyrylenko said. 

Kyrylenko added that three rockets had hit the city of Avdiivka overnight, damaging buildings including a residential block.

Imprisoned Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny knows the CNN film about his life has won an Oscar, his daughter said Monday.

“Navalny” won best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards. The film explores the plot to kill Navalny, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, who is now serving a nine-year sentence at a maximum-security prison east of Moscow.

Navalnaya said the Oscar win is a realization of her father’s work and that everyone who “has been fighting against the Putin regime is not going unseen.”

“[It shows] we are fighting the fight and it seems like we are winning,” she said.

Directed by Daniel Roher and presented by CNN Films and HBO Max, “Navalny” highlights an investigation by CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward and journalist group Bellingcat into the former presidential candidate’s poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.

Navalny and several Western officials blamed the failed assassination attempt on the Kremlin, which has denied any involvement.

Read more here.

The artillery fire gets worse at night, so Liuba and her husband hold hands. It keeps them safe, she says with a sad nod of her head. She’s standing in what’s left of her garden after it was hit during a particularly bad night a month ago.

The shelling destroyed their neighbor’s home, throwing Liuba and her husband to the floor of their kitchen. Serhei, she says, landed with the fridge on top of him, thankfully more shaken than physically injured. Still, they will not go.

Liuba and Serhei, who gave only their first names for security reasons, are amongst the last remaining 2,500 residents of Kupyansk, a city in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region from which the front line has never strayed too far and to which the Ukrainian authorities fear it may be returning once again.

Kupyansk police chief Konstiantyn Tarasov says that ever since mid-February, the din of artillery — both the dull thud of outgoing and the sharper whistle of incoming fire — has been getting unnervingly closer. Russian positions are now less than 5 miles away from a city they occupied at the start of the invasion before losing it to Ukraine’s fall counteroffensive in September.

Read more here.

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.

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.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to open two war crimes cases tied 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.”

Read more here.

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

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

Any further grain policy after the 60-day period would depend on "normalization" of agricultural exports, he said.

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's Wagner private military company has unsuccessfully tried to recruit from among Melitopol's population despite stepping up efforts, according to the mayor of the Moscow-occupied city in southern Ukraine.

Ivan Fedorov, who is not in the city, 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.