March 27, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

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

Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov and Commander of the Air Assault Forces Maksym Myrhorodskyi pose for a picture in front of British Challenged 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 Monday, March 27.

It’s past midnight in Kyiv, where multiple explosions were reported. They were initially heard in Obolon and Sviatoshynskyi residential districts Monday night, according to Vitaliy Klitschko, the city’s mayor.

“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.

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

Here are the latest developments:

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

In the Sviatoshynskyi residential 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 region 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 from the Kyiv region military administration read. 

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.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy thanked the secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for his support and accused Russia of nuclear blackmail over its control of one of Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). 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 Zaporizhia 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 Slovyansk, 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.

In this photo provided by Swedish Coast Guard, the release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea on September 28, 2022. A fourth leak was detected in the undersea gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe, after explosions were reported earlier that week in suspected sabotage.

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 towards the idea.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the frontline city of Nikopol, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, on Monday, according to his office.

Nikopol is on the bank of the Dnipro river and sits across from Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located.

The city is constantly shelled by Russian forces from across the river. 

Ukrainian authorities have concluded search and rescue operations on the site of Russian missile strikes in Sloviansk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk region military administration, told national broadcasters on Monday.

At least two people were killed and 32 were injured in the strike on the eastern city in the Donetsk region. 

“Those whose home was destroyed are provided with the list of possible temporary dwelling places, offered to evacuate,” he added.

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, speaks during a session at the Congress centre during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2023.

Russia’s decision to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus “aims to subjugate Belarus and violates its constitution,” said Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Monday.

Discussing the situation in Ukraine, Tsikhanouskaya called Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko “a full accomplice in the war” and the one who “fulfills all the orders of Putin.”

She also claimed that Lukashenko can’t take credit for the fact that Belarusian troops haven’t been sent to Ukraine.

“It’s a call of people of Belarus who are against this war and our soldiers who don’t have anti-Ukrainian moods,” she went on. “They don’t want to kill or to be killed on the battlefields for the ambitions of these two leaders.”

According to Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko is “responsible for crimes of aggression against Ukraine and has to be called a sponsor of terrorism.” 

The opposition leader noted that Belarus is “overlooked at the moment” due to the conflict in Ukraine and “not all the politicians understand the role of Belarus in regional peace and security.”

She emphasized that people of Belarus “are fighting not only against Lukashenko’s regime but also against hybrid occupation of Russia in Belarus.”

Ukrainian military personnel receive armored maneuver training on German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks at the Spanish army's training centre of San Gregorio in Zaragoza on March 13, 2023. 

Ukraine has received its first British main battle tanks, along with other donated Western-made armored vehicles, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced Monday.

“Today, I had the honor to test the newest addition to our armored units together with the commander of the Airborne Forces, Major General Maksym ‘Mike’ Myrhorodskyi, and our paratroopers,” Reznikov said in a Facebook post. 

He specified that they received Challengers (main battle tanks) from the United Kingdom, Strykers (infantry fighting vehicles) and Cougars (infantry mobility vehicles from the mine-resistant ambush-protected family) from the United States, and Marders (infantry fighting vehicles) from Germany.

Reznikov went on to thank Ukrainian allies for their continued support.

He added that the “new equipment will keep good company with its ‘brothers’ on the battlefield.”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany had also delivered sought-after German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

“Germany and the Netherlands have jointly delivered howitzers and ammunition and are just preparing, together with Denmark, to deliver Leopard 1 main battle tanks to support Ukraine,“ Scholz said, adding that Germany had “just now delivered“ also the “very modern” tanks.

Some background: The arrival of the Leopard 2 tanks comes after months of debate. German officials wavered on sending the tanks to Ukraine, saying they were waiting for the US to send its own M1 Abrams to Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly pleaded for countries to stop arguing about sending the tanks.

“We have talked hundreds of times about the shortage of weapons,” he said during a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in January. “We cannot go only on motivation.”

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the origin of the tanks that arrived Monday in Ukraine.

The American “strategic deterrence posture” towards Russia remains unchanged after Russian President Vladmir Putin announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

On Saturday, Putin told Russian state television that Russia would complete the construction of a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by the beginning of July.

Since Putin’s announcement, the US has not observed signs of any specific movement of nuclear weapons or intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby.

“We’re continuing to monitor this very, very closely,” he went on. “And still, we have seen nothing that would cause us to change our strategic deterrence posture.”

Ukraine says it has repelled 41 attacks by Russian forces in the Donetsk areas of Bakhmut, Avdiivvka, and Mariinka in the past 24 hours, the military’s General Staff said in an evening update. 

“The enemy is focusing its main efforts on conducting offensive actions on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka directions,” the update also said. “The most fierce fighting continues for Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka.”

Moscow’s armies continued their assaults in the city of Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian military. Russian forces are also putting pressure on Bakhmut’s suburb Ivanivske and on locations where supply lines into Bakhmut pass. 

While the fury of conflict echoes across the eastern Donbas region, a very different war is being waged in Crimea: one of night-time explosions, sabotage and disinformation.

Reclaiming Crimea may seem like an unlikely quest for Ukraine but it is putting considerable effort into making Russia’s occupation as uncomfortable as possible. And the Russians are going to great lengths to fortify the peninsula, which they illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

That includes hiring legions of workers to build fortifications and trenches.

The Ukrainian military has been carrying out attacks in Crimea with two goals: harass the Russian Black Sea fleet and disrupt vital Russian supply lines.

Satellite imagery in February showed a substantial Russian build-up of equipment and armor at several points across northern Crimea.

Few details have emerged about Ukrainian strikes in Crimea. Only occasionally does unofficial social media video provide clues about what has been hit. And only occasionally do normally circumspect Ukrainian officials refer to any actions in Crimea.

But last week Ukraine’s Main Intelligence reported that explosions in the Crimean town of Dzhankoi were due to a strike against Russian Kalibr cruise missiles being transported via rail. It said the strike served to “demilitarize Russia and prepare the Crimean peninsula for de-occupation.”

Any Ukrainian offensive to “de-occupy” and reclaim Crimea is distant at best. Just this week, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that Russia would use “absolutely any weapon” should Ukraine try to retake Crimea.

But the Russians are taking no chances. Satellite imagery shows extensive defensive fortifications such as trenches close to or in Crimea, near the town of Armiansk, for example.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint press conference at the Kremlin on September 9, 2021 in Moscow, Russia.

Germany described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia will station nuclear weapons in Belarus as “irresponsible“ and “escalatory.”

German Foreign Office spokesperson Andrea Sasse said the announcement was a “further attempt at nuclear intimidation from Russia.”

At the same news conference, German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said the announcement is “always also part of a propagandistic approach.”  

“These are escalatory steps that are now being continued by the Russian side, at least rhetorically,” he said. “The cause, the responsibility for this conflict lies solely in Moscow.”

More background: Putin announced on Saturday Russia’s plan to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. The country neighbors Russia and is one of its closest allies, helping the country launch its initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Belarus has had no nuclear weapons on its territory since the early 1990s, when it agreed to transfer all Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction to Russia. Putin said on Saturday that Russia will maintain control over any tactical nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus.

The US State Department told CNN it would “continue to monitor the implications” of Russia’s plan but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.

“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” the US State Department said in a statement to CNN on Saturday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday visited the region of Zaporizhzhia, which remains partially occupied by Russia.

He stopped by a military hospital and met with the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and members of the military.

Earlier Monday, Zelensky announced the visit to Zaporizhzhia and posted a picture on Telegram, along with the message, “I am honored to be here today, next to our military.”

“I am thankful to each of our warriors for defending Ukraine, our sovereignty, our cities, and our children,” he added. “We will definitely win.”

During his visit to the military hospital, Zelensky commended the work of the doctors and nurses and thanked them for their service.

“You are the ones who save lives,” Zelensky said, according to his office. “I want to thank you on behalf of all of us, on my own behalf, for your very important and powerful work.”

The Ukrainian president also met with IAEA Director Rafael Grossi who is also visiting the region to get a first-hand assessment of “the nuclear safety & security situation at the facility,” Grossi tweeted earlier.

Grossi reported a “rich exchange” with Zelensky on the protection of the plant and its staff, and said in a tweet that the president showed him the recent damage to the Dnipro hydroelectric station.

The dam is “an essential part of the system that sustains the nuclear safety of the [Zaporizhzhia] nuclear power plant,” Grossi said in a tweet.

See Grossi’s tweet about his meeting with Zelensky:

The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, paid another visit to the front lines inside the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to video geolocated by CNN.

The video was uploaded Monday and was filmed by Russian journalist Alexander Simonov. It’s unclear exactly when it was shot.

The river runs north and south through the city’s eastern outskirts.

In the video, a fighter wearing a balaclava says “the enemy is 150-180 meters to the Northwest away from us….every private house is a fortification, every five-nine story building is a fortress.”

The fighter says that on the previous day, Wagner had raided northern Bakhmut and claimed that they’d killed more than 30 Ukrainian soldiers. CNN cannot verify the claim.

“We are moving forward, Bakhmut is going to fall and we will have the victory,” he says.

Prigozhin says, “We are riding through the front line. We are looking at what we could do better, do faster.”

One of the fighters says that they are at school number five in Bakhmut. CNN has geolocated the video to that location, in the southern part of central Bakhmut.

Later, Prigozhin says from another location that he is at a cemetery in the nearby town of Soledar, and adds, “We bury the bodies of Ukrainians that we weren’t able to hand over. We take pictures, and number them in order to hand them over later.”

Prigozhin has paid several visits to Bakhmut and its immediate surroundings in recent weeks.

What both sides are saying: Both Ukrainian and Wagner officials acknowledge street-by-street fighting in the city, with the Ukrainians claiming that they have stabilized the situation in Bakhmut.

Wagner says it now controls all of a metallurgical plant known as AZOM on the northern edge of the city.

Social media video geolocated by CNN shows long rows of freshly dug graves at a cemetery in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar reserved for fighters of the Wagner mercenary group.

A woman can be heard in one of the videos saying it’s the cemetery where all the “Wagnerites” are buried, and claimed that the graves are all from the end of 2022 and the first months of 2023, but CNN cannot independently verify that.

The video shows dozens of long rows of graves — all with the same floral tribute — and is one of several to have been recently filmed at the cemetery near the city of Goryachy Klyuch. There are two cemeteries in the area that now contain Wagner graves.

Some background: The burial of Wagner fighters in the area has sparked a dispute. Earlier this month, Sergey Belopolsky, the mayor of Goryachy Klyuch, banned the further burial of Wagner fighters. Then, Krasnordar Gov. Veniamin Kondratiev overturned the ban after complaints from the head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expert mission, led by IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi, center, meet with journalists at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine, on September 1.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, is expected to visit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Ukraine this week.

In a statement released Saturday, the IAEA quoted Grossi as saying he wanted to see “how the situation has evolved since September and to talk to those operating the facility.”

Grossi also said the situation at the plant remains “precarious” despite an IAEA presence at the site for seven months, according to the statement.

He continues to work on a proposal to protect the plant, the statement said further.

The Kremlin said it will press on with plans to store nuclear weapons in Belarus, after Western leaders criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions as “dangerous and irresponsible.”

Meanwhile, there have been strikes in the Donetsk region and the battle for Bakhmut is intensifying.

Here are the latest developments:

Aftermath of strike in Sloviansk, Ukraine, on March 27.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, has updated the casualty figures from Monday’s missile strike in the eastern city of Sloviansk.

“As of 13:00, there are 2 dead, 29 wounded in Sloviansk,” he posted on Facebook, noting the developments in local time.

Kyrylenko said earlier that a number of high-rise buildings and offices had been damaged or destroyed.

City authorities said there’s one child among the injured.