WAR IN UKRAINE: March 23, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 28
Russian military casualties have surpassed that of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces released the information claiming that as of March 22 the Russian military sustained 15,300 casualties. Over the ten years of the USSR’s war in Afghanistan, the reported number was 15,051 (Kyiv Independent).
Context: a huge problem faced in the battlefield by Russia is poor maintenance of vehicles, weak re-supply chains, and risky location of command and control figures. The amount of damaged or abandoned Russian military vehicles has reached the point where a scrapyard in Kyiv has been re-purposed to rehabilitate them for use by UAF.The U.S., in a sign it wants the push against Russia to go as far as possible, has added the coveted switchblade or kamikaze drones to the list of offensive weapons headed to Ukraine. The drones can be carried in a backpack and launched to attack a target.
About 100,000 civilians remain in the besiged city of Mariupol with no food, no water, no medicine and under constant bombardment, says Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. But he adds that more than 7,000 residents managed to escape on Tuesday. A US defense official said Russia had now begun firing from ships in the Sea of Azov. (BBC/CNN)
Russia doesn't rule out nukes: Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesperson has conceded that Russia has yet to achieve any of its military goals in Ukraine and refused to deny that Moscow could resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Dmitry Peskov, speaking to CNN, repeatedly refused to rule out that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an "existential threat."
Russia uses white phosphorus bombs in Hostomel and Irpin. Russian forces targeted Kyiv’ suburbs with phosphorus bombs on the night of March 22, according to Irpin Mayor Oleksandr Markushin. The use of such weapons against civilians is banned by the Geneva Conventions - Kyiv Independent. Russia has already been accused of using devastating cluster bombs, and the UK said the Kremlin had confirmed it hadused thermobaric weapons – which can rupture lungs and internal organs.
Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were taken to Russian territory.
RF forces illegally removed people from the Left-Bank district of Mariupol and a shelter facility in the sport club building, where over a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombardment, says Tetyana Lomakina, Presidential Advisor-Commissioner on Barrier-free issues.
”So far, it is impossible to confirm the exact number of persons that Russians forcibly displaced to the occupied territory or the territory of Russia. Ukraine documents all these facts and will investigate it," she stressed.
