21.03.2022, Moscow.
The Rossa Primavera News Agency publishes a summary of events in Ukraine as of 5 p.m. on March 21.
During the night, a group of Russian Ka-52 and Mi-28N helicopters destroyed eight tanks, four BMPs and three APCs of the Ukrainian army.
Russian Air Force destroyed 44 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including six Buk-M1 surface-to-air missile systems.
The Russian Air Force carried out a cruise missile strike on a training center for foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian nationalists in the Rovno Region. More than 80 mercenaries and nationalists were destroyed.
High-precision cruise missiles destroyed an ammunition depot and the headquarters of a mechanized brigade near the village of Selets in Ukraine.
Since the start of the operation, 216 Ukrainian drones, 180 anti-aircraft missile systems, 1506 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 152 MLRS systems and 592 field artillery and mortar guns have been destroyed.
In the city of Sumy, a planned provocation by Ukrainian nationalists, which had been warned about by the Russian Ministry of Defense, was carried out at night. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukrainian nationalists were behind the ammonia leak.
Kiev direction
The Russian Defense Ministry reports that Russian servicemen took control of a protected buried command post of the Ukrainian army in the village of Nikolaevka, on the outskirts of Kiev. Sixty-one Ukrainian servicemen of the command post voluntarily surrendered, more than half of them senior officers of the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has not yet officially commented on the information.
High-precision strikes in Kiev destroyed an ammunition depot and the site of the accumulation of the Ukrainian army’s artillery, which were located in one of the city’s shopping centers. Later, repeated ammunition detonations were recorded at the site of the strike. According to reports from local residents, barrel artillery and multiple rocket launchers regularly left the mall and engaged in shelling.
Zaporozhye direction
The Russian Armed Forces are amassing forces on the Zaporozhye and Donetsk directions, and convoys of Russian equipment were spotted going through Melitopol.
In the port of Berdyansk, the large landing ship of the Black Sea Fleet Orsk unloaded equipment and personnel of the Russian Armed Forces.
South direction
According to the mayor of Krivoy Rog, Russian troops are already being spotted at a distance of 10 to 40 km from the city on different directions. Kiev regime militants are preparing fortifications around the city.
The servicemen of the National Guard of Russia dispersed pro-Ukrainian provocateurs in Kherson, who wanted to hold another protest rally. Special equipment was used to disperse them, and the use of stun grenades and tear gas is reported. A total of about 100 people gathered for the rally.
In Kherson, the military command introduced a curfew from 8:00 pm to 7:00 am. Restrictions have been imposed on the circulation of weapons, and the collection of information about the movement of troops and the actions of the military administration is prohibited. Rallies, marches, meetings and pickets of citizens are also prohibited.
In Kherson, on stands with photos of the fighters participated in the punitive operation in Donbass they wrote, “Murderers of children of Donbass.”
Liberation of the LPR and DPR
Russian units advanced 4 km overnight and took control of Sladkoye, destroying scattered groups of the nationalist “Donbass” battalion.
The DPR forces are completing the elimination of the 53rd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian army, developing an offensive in the direction of Novomikhaylovka, up to 50 militants, 3 tanks, 4 BMPs and 2 artillery pieces were destroyed there overnight.
The DPR forces dislodged the enemy from Verkhnetoretskoye, a town near Gorlovka, which the Ukrainians had turned into a fortification during the war in Donbass.
The Ministry of Health, Ministry of Emergency Situations, Ministry of Construction and city and district administrations of the Republic are carrying out repair and restoration work on the building of the Central District Hospital in Volnovakha, where the roof was damaged and there was multiple damage to the premises.
The bridge in Yalta on the Mariupol-Urzuf highway was restored by experts from the DPR Ministry of Transport, and transport was allowed to pass through.
Ukraine is obliged to compensate for the damage caused to DPR citizens, including in the liberated territories, Darya Morozova, the republic’s ombudswoman, told RIA Novosti.
Mariupol
Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev said that the Russian Armed Forces suggested that the Nazis leave their weapons and leave Mariupol through a humanitarian corridor towards the territories under the control of the Kiev regime, guaranteeing that they would be kept alive. In response, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said, “The Ukrainian army in Mariupol will not lay down their weapons and will not leave the city. <…> Surrender or laying down of weapons is out of the question. We have already informed the Russian side of this.”
In the past 24 hours, from 08:00 a.m. on March 20 until 08:00 a.m. on March 21, 466 people, including 89 children, were evacuated from Mariupol to Bezymyonnoye in the Novoazovsky district. At present, they are in the evacuation assistance point, which was deployed by the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations. A total of 3,440 people were evacuated to Bezymyonnoye between March 5 and 8:00 a.m. on March 21.
A number of neighborhoods in the west of Mariupol (17th, 16th, and, with a high probability, northern 21, 22, 23, etc.) were also taken under the control of the Russian Armed Forces and the DPR People’s Militia. In the area of the Savona cinema and the Police Academy, the Z-technique has gained a foothold. It seems that an important target will be the post-bridge. Its seizure will allow disrupting communication between the terrorists entrenched in Azovstal and the central part of the city.
Shelling of LPR and DPR territory
Thirty-three households and six civilian infrastructure objects were damaged. The total number of ammunition used by Ukrainian militants was 239. According to the DPR People’s Militia, the enemy fired at the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic using 122 mm multiple rocket launchers, 152 and 122 mm artillery, and 120 and 82 mm mortars. Areas of 16 towns and villages of the Republic came under the Ukrainian army’s fire.
Over the past 24 hours, from 09:00 a.m. on March 20 to 09:00 a.m. on March 21, 24 people were wounded as a result of the shelling of the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, previously liberated by a group of DPR troops. A total of 28 civilians were wounded in varying degrees of severity throughout the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic during that period, according to the DPR Ministry of Health.
Two people were wounded as a result of shelling in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk: one civilian on Mark Ozerny Street and another civilian on Petrovsky Square.
At the moment 150 transformer substations, 29 boiler houses, 3 hospitals, 9 schools, 13 kindergartens, and about 23,500 household customers in Petrovsky district of Donetsk are left without electric power as a result of the shelling
The Chelyuskintsev mine in Donetsk was de-energized as a result of the shelling of the Ukrainian army. There are 78 miners left in the mine. At the moment repair and restoration works are being carried out.
As a result of the shelling of Gorlovka by the Ukrainian army, 25 transformer substations, 4 boilers, 2 pumping stations, 2 kindergartens, 1 school and 3,272 customers were left without electric power. Repair and restoration work will begin as soon as the situation allows.
As a result of the shelling in Yasinovataya in the village of 18th Party Congress the water pumping station No. 1 is de-energized. Repair and restoration work is currently underway.
Political situation
Russian Foreign Ministry: Biden’s unacceptable statements about Putin put relations between Russia and the United States on the verge of severing.
A Russian court banned Facebook (organization banned in Russia) and Instagram (organization banned in Russia). The lawyer stated to the court that Meta (organization banned in the Russian Federation) changed its policy and does not allow Russophobia and calls for violence against Russians on its platforms.
The European Union is building a stockpile of iodine medical supplies and radiation protection equipment. According to the Financial Times, the European Commission is working to improve readiness in the area of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. It is claimed that measures have been taken even before the events in Ukraine.
The Chinese Red Cross is giving another 10 million yuan in humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Deputies from the A Just Russia – For Truth party have submitted to the State Duma a draft on Russia’s withdrawal from the WTO.
Ukraine’s recognition of Crimea as Russian today needs not so much the Crimeans as Ukraine itself in order to be preserved as a state, we advise them not to hesitate with this decision, Yuri Hempel, head of a committee of the Crimean parliament, told RIA Novosti.
Peskov, “There is not enough progress in the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to talk about contacts between Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky. <…> the course of the negotiations does not correspond to the situation emerging for the Ukrainian side”.
Member of the Federation Council Andrey Klishas, who expresses the sentiments of a significant part of the Russian elite, opposed negotiations with the Kiev regime, “On the eve of the anti-constitutional coup in Kiev, its future organizers signed an agreement with President Yanukovich, with guarantees from European partners. The agreement was trampled by neo-Nazis a day later. An armed coup, an unconstitutional seizure of power.”
Then there were Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, the Package of Measures, with guarantees from Western countries. Approval by the UN Security Council. Ukraine refused to comply with the Minsk agreements. It is possible to try everything again and again to negotiate with neo-Nazis, but what will be the result this time?”
The Nobel Committee, reacting to the idea of nominating Zelensky for the Peace Prize, said that it had not yet received such an application and that it could not extend the deadline for nomination (applications were accepted until January 31).
Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin supported Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. In response, the International Chess Federation disqualified Sergey Karjakin for six months. The head of the International Chess Federation is Arkady Dvorkovich, a Russian public servant and economist.
Russia refuses to negotiate a peace treaty with Japan; Russia, in response to Japanese sanctions, stops visa-free travel of Japanese to the Southern Kurils; Russia quits dialogue with Japan on establishing joint economic activities in the Southern Kurils – Russian Foreign Ministry
Mercenaries
French newspaper Le Monde publishes an interview with French mercenary Alain Beigel. A filmmaker by profession, Begel went to Ukraine together with several of his compatriots. The war was over for him before it had even begun. He was among the hundreds of mercenaries who took a “young fighter’s course” at the Yavorov training ground, a NATO training base near Lvov that was destroyed on March 13 by a Russian missile strike.
“Around 5:30 in the morning, I went out for a smoke and heard a whistle, which then grew to a crescendo, followed by an explosion, gigantic, indescribable, devastating,” Begel says, still in a state of shock. “The first missile fell on the ammunition depot, the second one destroyed the building that housed the base command.”
Fleeing the Russian missiles, the surviving soldiers of fortune gathered in the woods, where “a charismatic-looking Englishman of about 50 coolly explained to them that the situation was serious, a Russian landing was expected and those who wanted to go home could do so now. I and about 50 other people, three-quarters of whom looked like professional soldiers, decided to go home. Staying there was suicide. Ten minutes after our departure, when the survivors were trying to remove the rubble from the barracks, they were destroyed by another rocket attack… The French embassy helped me to get home from Poland,” the “survivor of hell” ends his story.
Sanctions
The Prime Minister said Bulgaria had no intention to refuse from Russian gas imports and would continue cooperating with Gazprom.
At the EU summit (to be held on Thursday and Friday), Poland intends to raise the issue of banning truck traffic to Belarus and Russia.
France 24: Global hunger threatens humanity because of the situation in Ukraine. Political tensions between Russia and Ukraine could deal a powerful blow to global food security, even a global famine.
African countries risk facing shortages of wheat and a number of food products in the next few weeks because of the conflict in Ukraine, warned Dirk Kotze of the University of South Africa, the largest university in South Africa and the African continent.
US leadership have announced that they are working on new sanctions that will affect all sectors of the Russian economy in order to curb Russia’s economic growth by half. It is stressed that the removal of sanctions pressure from Moscow will not happen under any conditions.
The USA is ready to expand sanctions against Russia, affecting more banks and sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, the White House said. The United States predicts that Russia’s economy will shrink by half due to Western sanctions. Washington will not publicly disclose what consequences await China for trying to help Russia circumvent the sanctions.
Gazprom has not reserved Yamal-Europe pipeline capacity for gas transit in April – the results of the auction.
In the unlikely scenario of abandoning Russian oil, its price could rise to $300-$500 per barrel – Deputy Prime Minister Novak. He also added that Russian oil producers have already begun to redirect oil flows from the West to the East.
Russia and Kazakhstan are creating a working group to increase oil transit to China.
The US charity organization Space Foundation removed the reference to the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin from the title of its annual educational party, writes the portal Futurism.
Reuters, citing sources, claims that EU countries are already working on the 5th package of sanctions against Russia because of Ukraine, there could be “many new names” as well as an oil embargo against Moscow. Unnamed European diplomats told the agency that the Baltic states, including Lithuania, are pushing for an oil embargo, while Germany does not want to rush into it because energy prices in Europe are already high.
In German supermarkets, vegetable oil, flour and sugar are sold in no more than three packs per hand, but the shelves are still empty.
In Italy, the prices of pasta, flour and vegetables have risen, because cheap goods due to rising fuel prices have become unprofitable to deliver.
In Spain, problems with refueling fishing boats, the monthly revenue of fishermen halved.
In Greece, farmers, whose crops can only recoup their costs, are protesting because of the lack of fuel and fertilizer.
The majority of Georgian residents believe the government’s actions in not joining economic sanctions against Russia are correct, according to Imedi TV station, commissioned by the Georgian company GORBI to conduct a sociological survey. Non-accession to sanctions against Russia was supported by 64% of surveyed citizens, while 30% found this step by Georgian government to be wrong. Asked whether the government had acted correctly in not supporting the sending of Georgian volunteers to participate in hostilities in Ukraine, 60% of respondents answered in the affirmative, while 32% disagreed with the decision.
Ukraine
On March 20, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky addressed the Israeli Knesset in a video conference and provoked a barrage of criticism in his address. Zelensky, “Dear members of the Knesset, Dear Prime Minister Bennett, thank you for your support. Ukrainian and Jewish society have always been – and I am sure they will always be – closely connected, very close. They will always live side by side, sharing joy and pain. So now I want to remind you of the words of the great Kievan woman you know well – Golda Meir. They are well known, everyone has heard them: probably every Jew, many Ukrainians, and, that’s for sure – very few Russians. We want to live. Our neighbors want to see us dead. That doesn’t leave much room for compromise. I don’t need to convince you how intertwined our histories, Ukrainians and Jews, have been in the past and now, in this terrible time. We are in different states and in completely different conditions, but the threat is the same – to us and to you. Total destruction – of the people, country, culture and even the name itself: Ukraine and Israel.” In Israel, Zelensky’s words were perceived as a lecture, an edification, and an unreasonable demand for arms deliveries. The manipulation of the memory of Holocaust victims and the reference to Babi Yar were also assessed negatively.
Simhi Rothman, a religious Zionist and member of the Knesset for Zionut Datit, “I don’t understand Ukrainian, but if the translation was accurate, Zelensky asked us to treat Ukrainians the way they treated us 80 years ago. I’m sorry, but I think we’re going to have to decline that request. We are, after all, a moral nation.”
Fox News: The IMF management has publicly expressed concern about the legality of the Ukrainian government’s spending of funds. They believe that in the period of active hostilities and the lack of proper control of creditors, the corruption component has increased manifold.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the USA, Oksana Markarova, said that Russia must leave, give security guarantees to Ukraine and pay reparations to Ukraine, “They need to stop and leave Ukraine. But we also have to talk about reparations, about security guarantees and everything else.”
“I instruct my doctors, I have always been a great humanist and said that when a person is wounded, he is no longer an enemy, but a patient. But now there is a very strict instruction to castrate all men, because they are cockroaches, not people,” said Gennady Druzenko, Maidan participant, veteran of the punitive operation in Donbass, head of the First Volunteer Mobile Hospital – the largest Ukrainian non-governmental organization that organizes the work of medical volunteers in the military conflict zone in Donbass. This was said on the air of the Ukrainian oligarch Akhmetov’s TV channel Ukraine 24, and none of the journalists had any questions about Druzenko’s statement. By the evening of March 21, Druzenko retracted his words, “Officially. First Volunteer Mobile Hospital is not castrating anyone and is not going to. It was an emotion. I apologize. We are saving a life. Period.”
Bastrykin ordered to initiate a case against the Ukrainian doctor who called for the castration of captive Russian soldiers.
Western countries
The Polish government wants to change the constitution to be able to confiscate the assets of “Russian oligarchs” and all the property of businesses and people “who are involved in supporting Russia’s activities, especially those that have been subjected to the sanctions by the European Union.”
Slovenia is returning its diplomats to Kiev, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša said, and called on other EU countries to do the same. As a reminder, the prime ministers of Slovenia, Poland, and the Czech Republic visited Kiev on March 15.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering visiting Kiev.
This week the US will transfer $1 billion worth of defense aid to Ukraine, it includes 800 air defense systems and 9 thousand anti-tank systems (800 MANPADs Stinger; 2,000 Javelin MANPADs, 1,000 light grenade launchers and 6,000 AT-4 grenade launchers; 100 drones; 100 grenade launchers, 5,000 automatic rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns, 400 rifles; 20 million small arms ammunition, as well as rocket launchers and mortars; 25,000 body armor; 25,000 helmets).
The Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed a joint statement on the urgent need to modernize Ukraine’s air defense.
Polish authorities are thinking about confiscating the property of Russian oligarchs, said Prime Minister Morawiecki. So far, he said, there are constitutional restrictions on such actions in Poland, so the initiative will go through the Sejm to become a law. As an example, Morawiecki cited the experience of Italy.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations said that she cannot foresee what decision will be made at the NATO conference and how NATO will react to Poland’s proposal. She added that the US military will not be deployed in Ukraine at this stage. Other NATO countries may decide that they want to send troops to Ukraine.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
