Russian troops attacked the northern and southern sectors of the front in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, despite Kyiv saying that Moscow’s offensive had lost strength near the town of Bakhmut.

The latest on the war in Ukraine, day 395, LIVETEXT:

07:46A Russian spy who tried to infiltrate the ISS has been charged in the US

00:59 Joe Biden said Friday from Ottawa that Beijing “has not delivered” weapons to Russia at this stage, despite Western concerns.

00:18 US senators ask Biden to share “evidence” with the International Criminal Court

A brief summary of the latest news:

• According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, about 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, many of them elderly and disabled, are struggling to survive in dire conditions in and around the besieged city of Bakhmut.
• Russian missile strikes and shelling have killed at least seven civilians, including at least three women, in a civilian storage facility in northern and eastern Ukraine, regional officials said.
• The Ministry of Defense of Russia announced that its troops destroyed a hangar with drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Odesa region.
• Russia wants to create demilitarized buffer zones inside Ukraine around regions it has annexed, an ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, saying it may have to push further into Ukraine if such zones fail to be created.
• Estonia’s foreign ministry announced on Friday that it had decided to expel a Russian diplomat working at Moscow’s embassy in Tallinn for “causing a split in Estonian society”.
• Russia’s middle class will shrink in the coming years and social inequality will increase, economic research by Russian experts has shown, as Western sanctions and limited growth potential destroy development prospects.
• US President Joe Biden, who appeared in Ottawa with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said he would continue to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin and help Ukraine.
• The air force commanders of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark announced on Friday that they had signed a letter of intent to create a unified Nordic air defense aimed at countering the Russian threat.
• The EU wants to prioritize Russian assets worth hundreds of billions of euros as part of an unprecedented confiscation project, the operation’s coordinator, senior Swedish official Anders Anlid, explained on Friday.
• According to OVD-Info, at least 482 people have been charged under Russia’s tough new wartime censorship laws. About 136 were sent to prison.
• Xi Jinping, who made a publicized visit to Moscow this week, should also talk to Zelensky, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
• Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron will go to China together in early April. “We have to do everything we can to get Beijing on our side.”
• Diana Sosoake called the Ukrainian state “offensive and fascist”. Her reaction came in the context of Kyiv’s announcement that it would initiate sanctions against the senator, whom it considers a “threat to national security.”
• Elvira Vikhareva, one of the few opposition voices of Russian politics left in the country, was poisoned by heavy metal salts.
• A flurry of irony erupted on social media after Russia released images of the two pilots responsible for downing an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
• French DIY retailer Leroy Merlin, which has 45,000 employees in Russia, plans to transfer its operations in the country to a local subsidiary.
• The vice-president of the pro-Russian party of Moldovan oligarch Ilana Sora Marina Tauber accused the authorities of the Republic of Moldova and Romania on Friday of planning a military “provocation” on the border with Transnistria for Easter.
• Short memory of Russians: on the subject of shells with depleted uranium from the Kremlin, there were only angry reactions, but a few years ago they said something completely different.
• Denmark has invited Gazprom to take part in the removal from the Baltic Sea of ​​an object classified by Vladimir Putin as suspicious.
• The European Central Bank is pressuring Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International to abandon its highly profitable business in Russia.

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• Friday’s information about the Russian aggression was live on HotNews.ro