Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,113

Here is the situation on Thursday, March 13:

Fighting

• Ukrainian officials say Russia fired a slew of missiles and drones overnight, with one attack on Kryvyi Rih killing a 47-year-old woman and injuring nine others, while an attack on Odesa killed four.

• Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 74 out of 117 drones launched by Russia overnight. Another 38 drones did not reach their targets likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures, the military added in a statement on Telegram.

• Russia’s defence ministry said it downed 77 Ukrainian drones overnight: Thirty drones were intercepted and destroyed over the western Bryansk region; 25 more were downed over Kaluga; and others were intercepted over the regions of Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov and Belgorod.

• Russia has claimed major gains in the Kursk region with Russia’s Ministry of Defence reporting the capture of five more villages, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that “the dynamics are good”.

• Russia’s defence ministry said it had taken full control of Sudzha, a town in the Kursk region that fell to Ukrainian troops last August. Home to around 5,000 people before the fighting, Sudzha was the largest settlement Kyiv seized at the time.

• Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that Russian forces had retaken about 1,100sq km (386sq miles) of territory in Kursk, including 24 settlements over the past five days.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said in televised remarks while visiting troops in Kursk that the “region will soon be completely liberated from the enemy”. It was Putin’s first visit to the region since Ukraine launched its major incursion there in August of last year.
• Putin also said that any Ukrainian fighters captured in the Kursk region would be treated as “terrorists” and would not be protected under the Geneva Convention’s provisions for prisoners of war, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.
• Military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces have begun withdrawing from Kursk, losing their hard-won foothold inside the Russian region.

• Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had prevented a series of attacks against military and civil servants, the Interfax news agency reported. According to the FSB, “Ukrainian special services” planned to send explosive devices in parcels by mail.

Ceasefire talks

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expects “strong steps” from the United States against Russia if Moscow does not accept the 30-day ceasefire proposal, which Ukraine agreed to in talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
• US President Donald Trump said that reaching a truce is now “up to Russia”.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was hoping for a positive response from Russia, and that if the answer was “no”, then it would tell Washington a lot about the Kremlin’s true intentions.
• “Here’s what we’d like the world to look like in a few days: Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing … and the talking starts,” Rubio told reporters.
• Russia has reportedly presented Washington with a list of demands for a deal to end the Ukraine war and reset relations with the US.
• The Reuters news agency quoted sources saying the demands were similar to previous Kremlin terms for ending its war, including no NATO membership for Kyiv, recognition of Russia’s claim to annexed Crimea and four Ukrainian provinces, and an agreement that no foreign troops would be deployed in Ukraine.

Politics and diplomacy

• A “very broad consensus” is emerging among European nations on boosting Ukraine’s long-term security through the Ukrainian armed forces, French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said after a meeting with the defence ministers of Britain, Germany, Italy and Poland.
• Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz also welcomed a “real unity of the continent”, referring to the threat from Russia.
• United Kingdom Defence Secretary John Healey said Britain and its allies knew that “we must step up” and re-arm. “We are looking to build a coalition,” he said. “We are accelerating this work.”
• US State Secretary Rubio said that an expected minerals deal with Ukraine would give the US a “vested interest” in Ukraine’s security, although, he said, “I wouldn’t couch it as a security guarantee”.
• The Polish foreign minister confirmed that US weapons are flowing back to Ukraine through Poland after the US lifted its pause on military aid to Kyiv.

• Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has called on the US to transfer nuclear weapons to its territory as a deterrent against future Russian aggression, the Financial Times reported. “The borders of NATO moved east in 1999, so 26 years later there should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east. For me this is obvious,” the FT cited Duda as saying in an interview. It would be safer if those weapons were already in the country, Duda said, adding that he had discussed the proposal with President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.