When Bombs and Missiles Start to Fly Across NATO Borders

Donald Tusk will be visiting Budapest on 15 March to be with the leader of the Hungarian opposition Péter Márki-Zay.

EU/regional:

• 2.7 million refugees have left Ukraine with the vast majority fleeing to western neighbours. 
• Ukrainian participants have been officially invited to the Conference on the Future of Europe proceedings.
• The U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s Yang Jiechi to meet on Monday to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war. While Russia requested China’s assistance chances are that Moscow will be more isolated also from Beijing.
• A meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Defence Ministers will take place on Wednesday 16 March 2022 in Brussels.
• On 15 March the Economic and Financial Affairs Council will hold a meeting. On the agenda is the Economic consequences of sanctions on Russia, the Global minimum level of corporate taxation as well as Council priorities for the EU budget 2023.
• From 14 to 20 March 2022 EP Committee and political groups’ meetings will be held. Noteworthy topics for the region are: 15 March the Foreign Affairs Committee will debate the persisting challenges in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Chairman and members of the country’s tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, Šefik Džaferović and Željko Komšić, as well as the Speaker of the country’s House of Peoples Dragan Čović; 16 March the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee will debate with Internal Market Commissioner Breton on effectively fighting propaganda on online platforms and the role of the Digital Services Act (DSA); 17 March Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov will brief MEPs on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Subcommittee on Security and Defence and the Parliament’s EU-Ukraine delegation on the latest developments of the war in the country.
• From 14 to 15 March the Cour des Comptes (French Court of Audit) is organising an international conference focusing on civil society in Paris. This event will enable participants and speakers to discuss the future of Europe after the health crisis.

Ukraine:

• The Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, the military training ground, where numerous NATO-Ukraine training took place for years, was attacked by eight Russian missiles on 13 March. 35 are dead, 134 injured. Yavoriv’s training ground is about 25 kilometres from the Polish border and 30 kilometres from Lviv. 
• Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Snihurivka, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Dnipro, Rivne, Frankivsk, Lutsk, the suburbs of Kyiv and Zhytomyr, had been under attack during the week. Both residential buildings, and civilian infrastructure, had been shelled. The cities closest to the Russian border suffers the most: Kharkiv, Sumy, Volnovakha, and Chernihiv were bombed constantly during the week. 
• The airports in Lutsk and Frankivsk, other western regions, were also attacked this week, as well as the airport in Kropyvnytsky.
• On 11 March in the Zaporizhia region, the mayor of occupied Melitopol Ivan Fedorov was kidnapped by Russian occupiers. As the citizens of Melitopol went to protest against the terror, the occupiers also kidnapped the leader of the protests. The mayor of Dniprorudne Yevhen Matviiv was also kidnapped by Russian troops the next day. 
• In occupied Kherson around 10,000 civilians went out to protest, the Russian troops opened fire. Earlier Kherson regional council refused to announce a puppet republic.
• Thousands went out to protest in occupied Berdyansk on 13 March.
• Chornobyl is under the control of Russian troops since 24 February. Ukrainian intelligence believes Russia may prepare a false flag terrorist act in Chernobyl, either the burning of the radioactive forests in the Chornobyl zone or the explosions of radioactive materials. The transfer of monitoring data from the station to IAEA was aborted on 9 March. However, the national grid operator Ukrenergo managed to restore power to the nuclear power plant that stopped earlier and put the critical cooling system at risk. It will operate normally again, according to Deputy Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko.
• Russian occupiers at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant announced to the staff that it no longer belongs to Ukraine and it has to operate according to the orders of Rosatom, the Russian state atomiс energy corporation.
• In the Kyiv region, 67 victims were buried in a mass grave in Bucha. Some bodies were impossible to identify. Russians opened fire on the evacuation column of women and children near Peremoha, seven died. Russian troops attacked American journalists in Irpin, one of them killed. 
• Russians are expected to renew the attempts to seize Kyiv soon, the General Staff of the Armed Forces informed.
• ‘The city of Volnovakha with its infrastructure, as such, no longer exists.’’ said the head of the Donetsk Oblast military administration Pavlo Kyrylenko on March 12. Russians shelled an evacuation train, one attendant was killed, another one wounded.
• Mariupol of the Donetsk region is besieged. 2,187 civilians have already died in the city due to air raids. The civil infrastructure, including children’s hospitals, was under severe attacks. Around 400,000 are still in the city as Russians block the evacuation without water, electricity, and heating. The headquarters of Ukrainian ports has lost communication with the Mariupol port on the Azov sea. The International Committee of the Red Cross said that ‘a worst-case scenario awaits the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by heavy combat in Mariupol unless the parties reach a concrete humanitarian agreement urgently.’
• The Ukrainian Ministry of Economy estimates the damage to the country’s infrastructure at more than 119 billion dollars.

Strikes Close to Home

Poland: