On 12 March, Ukraine accused Russia of violating the Geneva Convention. The Ukrainska Pravda website, citing the deputy commander of the local police, Oleksiy Biloshytskiy, reported that Russian forces had used banned white phosphorus munitions in Popasna in the Luhansk oblast in Ukraine.

On 13 March, another attack was launched on targets in western Ukraine. This time, Russian forces fired over 30 missiles to shell the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, Lviv oblast. The target of the attack was a military base used by the Ukrainian military to conduct most of its joint exercises with NATO countries. The Ukrainians reported that 35 people had been killed and 134 wounded as a result of the attack. Conversely, the Russian Ministry of Defence said that up to 180 “non-Ukrainian mercenaries” had been killed, and that a large consignment of weapons supplied to Ukraine by other countries had been destroyed.

According to the authorities of Mariupol, Russia was deliberately attacking residential buildings in the city, resulting in the deaths of 2,187 civilians.

City mayors who refuse to collaborate with the occupier were getting abducted. Such cases were reported in Melitopol with kidnapping of Ivan Fedorov, and in Dniprorudne, where Yevgeny Matveyev, who refused to collaborate with the army, had been kidnapped.

On 14 March 14, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 40 thousand Syrians wanted to fight on Russia’s side in Ukraine and were getting enlisted with the support of the Al-Katerji Group militia, the same that had acted as an intermediary between the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

On 16 March, the US embassy in Kyiv reported on the crime allegedly committed by the Russians in Chernihiv. Russian soldiers reportedly shot dead 10 people standing in line for bread. The Russian Ministry of Defence denied these reports.

A Ukrainian counteroffensive began in Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin. 

In Mariupol, the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre, which was used as an air raid shelter for 1,200 civilians, was destroyed in an air strike. Ukraine accused Russia of a war crime as the front yard of the theatre was marked with inscriptions “children” as signal word for civilians taking refuge there. The Russians blamed the “Azov” regiment for the attack.

On 18 March, the civilian airport in Lviv and an underground aircraft ordnance depot in the village of Delatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast in western Ukraine were bombed.

On 20 March, the Mariupol city council reported that the Russians had forcibly transferred several thousand Ukrainian citizens to camps and remote cities in Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree announcing the amalgamation of all national television channels into a single platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” in times of war.

Photo: Destroyed infrastructure of the base in Jaworów. Twitter/MichaelKofman