WAR IN UKRAINE: March 1, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 371
Overnight , the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine from the north with four "Shahed" drones: all of them were destroyed by air defense forces, the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported.
Over the course of the past day, Russian troops shelled the Kherson region 86 times, Kherson nine times. Five people died, seven were injured.
The Russian Federation, most likely, started launching kamikaze drones from the Bryansk region, and not only from the Krasnodar region, as before, according to British intelligence. This shortens the flight time to Kyiv.
Meanwhile, ferocious fighting is under way for Bakhmut, where Ukrainian defenders have been confronted with wave after wave of Russian attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, as the military reported yet another increase in assaults on the city - RFE/RL
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko – a close ally of Vladimir Putin – on Wednesday, in a state visit that comes as the West warns China against providing lethal aid for Putin’s war in Ukraine - CNN
Ukraine has denied any involvement with a series of drones that flew into Russian territory -- including one that got to within 100 kilometers of Moscow, reportedly near an energy facility
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on March 1 that he will not meet the Russian or Chinese foreign ministers at this week's meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in New Delhi, charging that Moscow was not serious about ending the war in Ukraine.
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that he invited Zelensky to participate in the Alliance summit in Vilnius in July. He expressed hope that new steps and measures and long-term support for Ukraine will be agreed upon at the summit
James Rubin, coordinator of the Center for Global Engagement, said Russia and China are spending billions of dollars to manipulate information, and added that Beijing operates on a global scale and spends more than Moscow. According to him, China repeats and spreads Russia's assertion that the war "unleashed NATO."
Required listening…
This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay on CBC Radio…
Global affairs rundown: alliances, interference and a year of war in Ukraine
One year since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the conflict is drawing more of the world in, including China. A recent meeting between China's top diplomat and Russian President Vladimir Putin has NATO allies worried that the two superpowers are becoming too close, and that China is considering selling arms to the Russian military. Meanwhile, China is also facing criticism in Canada for allegedly meddling in the last two federal elections. Global affairs analyst and Atlantic Council senior fellow Michael Bociurkiw joins Chattopadhyay from Kyiv to discuss what the global landscape looks like one year into the war, and what we should make of China's actions. Listen here