Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 752

Summary for Saturday, 16th March 2024 - DAY 752

• Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the border, killed two people on Saturday, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
  
  
• Ukrainian drones struck two Rosneft oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, leaving one facility on fire on Saturday, the region’s governor said. The Volga river region’s Syzran refinery was on fire, Dmitry Azarov said on Telegram. His comments also confirmed an attack on the Novokubyshev refinery. Workers at both plants had been evacuated and there were no casualties, Azarov claimed.
  
  
• A Russian ballistic missile attack hit civilian infrastructure in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday, killing at least 20 people – including rescuers – and wounding more than 75 in Moscow’s deadliest attack in weeks, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called the attack “vile”. A three-storey recreational facility was destroyed in the attack, as well as at least 10 private houses, the southern military command said. Saturday was declared a local day of mourning.
  
  
• Voters in Russia headed to the polls across the country’s 11 time zones on Friday in a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule until at least 2030. Putin is running against Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, Leonid Slutsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov of the New People party. Two anti-war candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova were barred from running by the electoral commission.
  
  
• Voting is also taking place in the four occupied regions of Ukraine which Russia claims to have annexed despite its forces only partially controlling the territory. Ukraine has said the election there is illegal. Speaking at a meeting of Russia’s security council, Putin accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt the voting process and people in the border regions with “a number of criminal armed actions”. Putin said the attempts to break into Russia did not succeed. He said the acts would not go unpunished.
  
  
• Germany’s chancellor, France’s president and Poland’s prime minister met in Berlin and, in a public briefing, said Europe was united and determined in its support for Ukraine. Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk also said they would use frozen Russian assets to purchase more weapons for Ukraine on the world market. The meeting follows tensions between France and Germany over Russia.
  
  
• One person was killed by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian city of Grayvoron in the Belgorod region, the governor said on Telegram. Earlier, Russia claimed it had thwarted attempts by Ukraine to stage cross-border raids into the territory, but produced no evidence to support this, while a senior Ukrainian intelligence official claimed that Kursk and Belgorod regions were “active combat zones”.
  
  
• Two people were reported killed and five injured by Russian shelling in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region overnight to Friday, with houses and cars damaged. As well there were missile strikes in the Kharkiv, Poltava and Donetsk regions.
  
  
• The EU is set to agree sanctions on several people seen as involved in the mistreatment and death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony, three diplomats said on Friday.
  

Putin’s party hit by cyberattack as armed Russian troops oversee voters in occupied Ukraine

Kyiv says Russian soldiers are intimidating civilians in the occupied territories into voting

Russia’s governing party said it was hit by a cyberattack on Saturday, the second day of presidential elections, as the Kremlin accused Ukraine of trying to disturb the voting process to curry favour with its Western allies.
The ruling United Russia party, for which Vladimir Putin acts as its de facto ruler but is not representing in these elections, claimed it faced a widespread denial of service attack – a form of cyberattack aimed at paralysing web traffic – and had suspended non-essential services to repel it.

State news agency RIA quoted a senior telecoms official as blaming the cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western countries. They did not provide evidence to substantiate this claim.

It proved the latest in a string of Russian claims that Ukraine and its Western allies were trying to disturb the presidential elections, which are widely viewed as rigged to ensure Mr Putin resumes office for a fifth term.
On the second of three days of voting, the Russian foreign ministry said Kyiv had “intensified its terrorist activities” in connection with the election “to demonstrate its activity to its Western handlers and to beg for even more financial assistance and lethal weapons”.
It comes as two people died as a result of Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod, according to local officials.

Five people were also wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a car in the village of Glotovo, about a mile from the Ukrainian border, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

He later announced that schools would be closing in the region until next Wednesday to mitigate against the “current situation”.
The latest attack followed an armed incursion claimed by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin on Tuesday in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

In Ukraine, Russian authorities alleged that a Ukrainian drone had dropped a shell on a voting station in a Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
The state-run Tass news agency quoted a local election official as reporting no damage or injuries when the explosive device landed five or six metres from a building housing a polling station before it had opened in a village about 12 miles east of the city of Enerhodar.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Ukraine, which regards the election taking place in parts of its territory controlled by Russia as illegal and void.
Footage meanwhile has shown armed Russian soldiers escorting poll workers door-to-door through the four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by Mr Putin in September 2022.
Occupation officials say the military escorts are there to protect those collecting votes but Ukraine says they are there to intimidate civilians into voting for a man that ordered the invasion of their regional homes.

Footage published on state media site Readovka showed soldiers “helping people express their will” in the recently-occupied city of Avdiivka. The area has been razed to the ground after five months of heavy bombardment.
In Russia, meanwhile, the head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, said that in the first two days of voting there had been 20 incidents of people trying to destroy voting sheets by pouring various liquids into ballot boxes, as well as eight cases of attempted arson and a smoke bomb.
Former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev decried those carrying out the attacks as “traitors”.
“All scoundrels who commit crimes at or near polling stations (arson, vandalism, etc.) must remember that they can be held accountable,” he wrote on the Telegram messenger service. “They are traitors, and their actions can be classified much more strictly.”
Ms Pamfilova, the top election official, said that people who try to disrupt voting could face up to five years in prison. She said, without providing evidence, that Ukrainian intelligence and its “accomplices and handlers” – a reference to the West – were behind the rash of protest actions seen so far at polling stations.

Russia's Belgorod Oblast under fire after warning of attack on military facilities

More on the Ukrainian attacks on Russia:

A man and a woman died in the attack in Belgorod and three other people were wounded, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

Five people were also wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a car in the village of Glotovo, some 2km (1.25 miles) from the border, Gladkov said.

Also on Saturday, a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil refinery belonging to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, regional governor Dmitry Azarov said. He said an attack on another refinery was thwarted. No casualties were reported.

The attacks come a day after a Russian assault on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed at least 20 people. The ballistic missile attack blasted homes in the southern city on Friday, followed by a second missile that targeted first responders who arrived at the scene, officials said.

Forty people are still in the hospital following the attacks, Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Saturday.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, promised a “just response” to the attack in a video address Friday evening.

Ukraine’s security service attacks 3 Russian refineries in Samara Oblast overnight

The plants reportedly process about 25 million tons of oil per year, which is nearly 10% of Russia’s entire oil refining capacity.

Russian border region closes malls and schools as Ukrainian attacks escalate

The city of Belgorod pictured on March 10. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

All schools and colleges in parts of the Russian region of Belgorod will be closed Monday and Tuesday following an increase in Ukrainian attacks on the territory, the region’s governor has announced.
Shopping malls will also be closed Sunday and Monday, Vyacheslav Gladkov added in a statement on Telegram. The affected districts lie alongside the border with Ukraine. The city of Belgorod itself is also subject to the closures.
The frequent attacks have brought the war in Ukraine to Russians largely isolated from the conflict.
Ukraine’s Spy Chief Kyrylo Budanov said Saturday that Russians are among the sabotage groups attacking the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk, which borders Ukraine.
“This is a story about how Russians solve this domestic issue. We may like some of them more, others less. But still, both are Russians,” Budanov said.
He added, during a broadcast, that attacks would continue.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the attacks on the Belgorod and Kursk regions have been largely unsuccessful and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being constantly updated on the situation, Russian state news RIA Novosti reported.
In his earlier statement, Belgorod’s governor Gladkov said “the situation is quite difficult both in the city and in Belgorod district. Naturally, the issue of safety is the most important for all of us.”
“It is clear that teachers, nannies and technical staff are all worried,” he said.
Schools and colleges in the affected districts have effectively been closed from Tuesday evening last week, when Gladkov announced students would undertake what he called “days of self-learning” through Friday. At the time of the announcement he said he hoped schools would be able to resume normal activities on Monday.

A man rides a bicycle near a damaged market pavilion hit by recent shelling in the town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region of Russia on March 11. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Ukraine has been attacking the Belgorod region off and on since the first half of 2023 but scaled up shelling and strikes most about a week ago.
As in other parts of Russia, people in Belgorod are voting in a poll widely expected to see Vladimir Putin returned to power as president.
Voting continued for a second day on Saturday, with authorities having arrested several Russians for carrying out acts of civil disobedience.
On Saturday, Gladkov also said two people were killed in early morning attacks, including a truck driver whose vehicle was hit by a shell.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post on its own Telegram channel Saturday that Russian forces had repelled attempts by Ukraine fighters to infiltrate Russia in several locations, saying it had carried out “a complex fire attack on concentrations of enemy manpower and equipment.”
Also on Saturday, a Ukrainian source told CNN that Ukraine’s security service (SBU) carried out drone strikes on three oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region.
The three refineries – which all belong to the Rosneft oil company – are sited along the Volga River at Novokuibyshevsk, Samara, and Syzran, and are located up to 1,000 kms from Ukrainian-held territory.
Local residents in Belgorod have been posting videos to regional social media platforms showing explosions in the city and fires burning outside residential buildings where Ukrainian strikes have taken place.
In one video a woman is heard telling her mother she is scared to leave her apartment.
Earlier in the week Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters on Tuesday mounted a cross-border attack in Belgorod while Belgorod city suffered heavy drone strikes and shelling.
At least five people have been reported killed in the last week, according to a CNN count, and several dozen wounded.

Approximately 200 evacuated from northern Sumy Oblast

About 200 people, including 26 children, were evacuated from the Velyka Pysarivka hromada in northern Sumy Oblast of Ukraine.

Russian missiles kill at least 16 people in latest strike on Odesa

The strikes followed attacks on multistorey buildings earlier in March and an intensified Russian campaign around the southern port city, targeting infrastructure.

This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on March 15, 2024 shows rescuers extinguishing a fire at the site of a missile attack in Odesa.HANDOUT / AFP - Getty Images

A Russian ballistic missile attack blasted homes in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa on Friday, followed by a second missile that targeted first responders who arrived at the scene, officials said. At least 16 people were killed.
The attack occurred as Russians began voting in a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule by another six years after he crushed dissent, and as the war in Ukraine stretches into its third year.

The dead included a paramedic and an emergency service worker. At least 53 other people were wounded by the Iskander-M missiles, officials said.
At least 10 houses in Odesa and some emergency service equipment were damaged in the strike, which started a blaze, according to emergency officials and regional Gov. Oleh Kiper.
The tactic of firing a second missile at the same location, aiming to hit rescuers, is known in military terms as a double tap. Such strikes often hit civilians.
Kiper announced that a day of mourning in Odesa would be held on Saturday — the second such observance in less than two weeks.

On March 2, a Russian drone struck a multistory building, killing 12 people, including five children.
Moscow has repeatedly claimed that its forces do not target civilian areas, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.
Since last summer, Russia has intensified its attacks on Odesa, a southern port city with a population of around 1 million.
The attacks have primarily targeted port infrastructure, aiming to disrupt the export of goods after Ukraine managed to restore maritime navigation with a series of successful operations in the Black Sea.

Moscow officials have also claimed they are aiming at facilities where Ukrainian sea drones are stored for attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The Odesa region’s ports were key to last year’s international agreement that let Ukraine and Russia ship their grain to the rest of the world.
Odesa residents largely speak Russian, and the city’s past is intertwined with some of Russia’s most revered figures, including Catherine the Great, author Leo Tolstoy and poet Anna Akhmatova.
Its Orthodox cathedral belongs to Moscow’s patriarchate and — at least until the Kremlin illegally annexed the nearby Crimean Peninsula in 2014 — its beaches were beloved by Russian tourists.
Meanwhile, in the Russian border region of Belgorod, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said a member of the regional territorial defense forces was killed and two people were injured in Ukrainian shelling Friday.
Overnight in Ukraine, two people were also killed and three wounded in the central Vinnytsia region after Russia struck a building with a drone, according to regional Gov. Serhii Borzov.
The Ukrainian air force said it shot down all 27 Shahed drones that Russia launched over the Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Khmelnytskyi and Kyiv regions.

Attack on Nikopol district: two people injured and over 30 houses damaged

Ukrainians in occupied regions vote in Russia’s election at gunpoint

“Russians are pressuring residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, forcing them to take part in the so-called presidential elections through organized ‘home voting.’
Members of the ‘election commissions’ are conducting door-to-door visits to residents of the occupied cities of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, escorted by armed military personnel,” Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council reports.

Ukrainian strikes rock Russia as vote cements Putin’s grip on power

Ukrainian bombardments killed two people and set an oil facility ablaze in Russia on Saturday, officials said, on the second day of elections guaranteed to cement President Vladimir Putin’s hardline rule.

Presidential polls opened this week but voting has been marred by an uptick in fatal Ukrainian aerial attacks and a series of incursions into Russian territory by pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups.
Fresh bombardments prompted authorities to close schools and shopping centres in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, undermining the Kremlin’s efforts to isolate Russians from its conflict in its neighbour — particularly during the highly touted elections.
Putin, who cast his vote online, vowed a harsh response to the assaults and accused Kyiv of trying to “disrupt” his bid for another six-year mandate.
The governor of the Belgorod region said air defence systems had downed eight Ukrainian missiles but that two residents were killed and others injured.
“A man was driving a lorry when a shell hit him, after which the vehicle crashed into a passenger bus. The people on it were not injured,” Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on social media.
“Another woman was killed in a parking lot where she and her son came to feed the dogs. Medics are fighting for her son’s life,” he added.
In a separate post, Gladkov announced that schools and shopping centres in the city of Belgorod and some surrounding districts would close temporarily over the coming days, the second time this month.
Russia’s defence ministry earlier said it had downed rockets, missiles and drones in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk that have suffered an uptick in fatal attacks in recent weeks.

– Putin vows revenge –

The ministry later said it had fought off more “attempts to infiltrate into the territory of the Russian Federation by Ukrainian militant sabotage and reconnaissance groups”.
The border attacks were a concern for voters hundreds of kilometres away in the town of Sergiev Posad outside Moscow, famous for its ornate Orthodox monastery with golden onion domes.
Casting her ballot from home with the help of election officials going door-to-door to collect votes from the elderly, 87-year-old Inessa Rozhkova said she hoped the polls would bring about an end to the conflict with Ukraine.
“Can you imagine how many people died? And now our border villages are suffering. We worry for them,” she said.
In a nearby polling station set up in the vocational school, 68-year-old Elena Kirsanova came with her husband to vote for Putin.
“They try to scare us, but this is not a nation that can be intimidated,” Kirsanova told AFP.
Putin said this week in televised comments that the spate of aerial and ground assaults by Kyiv’s forces “will not go unpunished”.
The 71-year-old has been in power in Russia since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until 2030.
If Putin completes another Kremlin term, he would stay in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century. 
He is running unchallenged, having barred two candidates who opposed the conflict in Ukraine, and around one month after his main opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison in unexplained circumstances.
The Kremlin has cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to show they are behind Moscow’s full-scale military campaign in Ukraine, where voting is also being held in occupied territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday hailed Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula — where voting is also taking place — 10 years ago from Ukraine.
“The peninsula is an integral part of the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said in a statement on the ministry’s website.

– Oil facility ablaze –

The first day of voting on Friday was however marred by acts of vandalism in polling stations, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.
And the ruling United Russia party that staunchly backs Putin announced Saturday it was suffering a large-scale hacking attack on its website.
The FSB security service also announced a spate of arrests, as polls opened, of Russians it said were aiding Ukrainian forces or planning to carry out sabotage at military and transport facilities.
On Saturday, they said they had detained a Russian man who was plotting with Kyiv’s help to set explosive devices on a railway line in the country’s central Urals region.
Ukrainian attacks on Russia have extended well beyond border regions too with Kyiv’s forces targeting oil facilities deep inside Russian territory over recent weeks.
The governor of the Samara region that lies around 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the front lines said Saturday that Ukrainian drones had targeted two oil refineries, igniting a blaze at one of them.

Death toll in Odesa attack rises to 21

Russian forces launched 10 rockets and 68 aviation strikes, carried out 89 shellings and engaged in 78 combat clashes in Ukraine yesterday, general staff of the Ukrainian armed forcessaid in its morning briefing.

Record growth in Russian men with disabilities likely due to war injuries

‘Our destroyed theatre’s heart still beats’: Mariupol’s actors return to the stage, two years on

Players who survived a Russian strike on a theatre where over 1,000 people sheltered are taking to the stage to tell their stories

Two men – ages 48 and 35 – were injured in a Russian unmanned aerial attack on the Kharkiv oblast

Nexta is reporting that there have been 11 attempts to set fire to polling stations in Russia, along with 19 cases of ballot boxes being spoiled with greenery and paint

Resistance forces set off an explosion yesterday near a polling station in Russian-occupied Skadovsk in the Kherson oblast, injuring five Russian soldiers

Russian defence ministry: Russian air defence shoots down 15 rockets

In Kyiv today, the families of Ukrainian prisoners of war gathered in Maidan Square to call for their safe return:

Closing Summary

• Attacks continued on Russia’s Belgorod oblast, with the Russian ministry defence saying that Russian air defence shot down 15 rockets today. These attacks come after a man and a woman were killed in Belgorod oblast earlier today, and another person was killed by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian city of Grayvoron.
  
  
• The death toll in the Russian attack on civilian infrastructure in Odesa has risen to 21 people after an emergency worker succumbed to injuries at a hospital. The Russian ballistic missile strike on Odesa was Moscow’s deadliest attack in weeks, wounding more than 75.
  
  
• Ukrainian drones struck two Rosneft oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, leaving one facility on fire on Saturday, the region’s governor said. The Volga river region’s Syzran refinery was on fire, Dmitry Azarov said on Telegram. His comments also confirmed an attack on the Novokubyshev refinery. Workers at both plants had been evacuated and there were no casualties, Azarov claimed.
  
  
• Resistance forces set off an explosion yesterday near a polling station in Russian-occupied Skadovsk in the Kherson oblast, injuring five Russian soldiers, the national resistance centre of Ukraine said. The explosion forced Russian administration in Skadovsk to cancel voting at polling stations and allow it only at places of residence, the centre said.
  
  
• There have been 11 attempts to set fire to polling stations in Russia, along with 19 cases of ballot boxes being spoiled with greenery and paint, Nexta reports. Russia is proposing eight-year prison sentences for those involved.
  
  
• Russian shelling killed a 51-year-old man in the Donetsk oblast and injured another, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said. Russians shelled the Donetsk oblast about 11,000 times this week, Filashkin said.
  
  
• There has been a record growth in the number of Russian men ages 31 to 59 with disabilities, the UK defence ministry said in its daily intelligence briefing. “The increase in the number of men with disabilities was most likely due to the growth in military invalids,” the UK defence ministry said. “This is almost certainly the case. A significant majority of the over 355,000 casualties that the Russian armed forces have suffered as a result of the conflict in Ukraine have been wounded personnel.”