Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 379.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
Russian forces bombarded cities throughout Ukraine overnight with rockets of various types. Eight Shahed UAVs supplied by Iran also struck the country. Kyiv and Odesa have suffered electricity blackouts. The number of killed and wounded is still unclear.
Kharkiv region. Russia also fired 15 S-300 anti-aircraft missiles at Kharkiv and its metropolitan area. The missiles primarily struck electricity facilities but recorded direct hits on the city’s civilian infrastructure as well.
Kherson. Russian attacks on Kherson today killed four civilians, two of them waiting at a bus stop, and brought public transportation to a halt.
Ukraine brought home 130 servicemen in a prisoner-of-war exchange on March 7. Those repatriated included members of the armed forces and national guard, some of them Mariupol and Bakhmut defenders. “Most of them are seriously injured,” said Andrii Yermak, chief of Ukraine’s office of the president. “As President Volodymyr Zlenskyy says, the state must take care of each of them and will do it.”
Through a crowdfunding project called “Gift for Putin,” Czech contributors have raised enough funds for the purchase of 15 Czech-made Viktor mobile anti-aircraft systems for Ukraine. The systems, effective against low-level targets, are expected to arrive in the country by the end of the month. According to the program’s web site, the key goal of the campaign was to “close the skies over Ukraine to Putin’s murderers.”
Shortly before his March 8 meeting with European Union Defense Ministers, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO member states have provided Ukraine 150 billion euros in aid since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. That sum includes 65 billion in military aid. NATO previously has not made public the extent of its aid to Ukraine in the past year. Stoltenberg also emphasized the need to increase ammunition production and replenish the alliance’s stockpiles of ammunition.
Yulia Payevska, a Ukrainian paramedic who treated people day and night in besieged Mariupol before falling into Russian hands, received the International Women of Courage award along with 10 other prominent women at a White House ceremony on March 8. While aiding the evacuation of women and children from war-torn areas, Payevska secretly documented Russian atrocities committed during the 2022 siege of Mariupol and since her release has continued to raise her voice in support of her people, peace and independence for Ukraine.
Dmytro Kotsiubailo, 27, known by the call sign “Da Vinci,” was killed in a battle near Bakhmut on March 7. Then a battalion commander in the 67th Mechanized Brigade, he received the Hero of Ukraine award on November 30, 2021, the youngest soldier to achieve this distinction. President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy eulogized Kotsiubailo as one “whose personal history, character, and courage have forever become the history, character, and courage of Ukraine.”
By Daria Dzysiuk, Alan Sacks