Russia-Ukraine war updates: Russia condemns EU’s frozen assets plan

This live page is now closed. You can stay updated and follow our coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine here.

You can also read more about what critics think of Putin’s election success here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of some of today’s key events:

• Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova says Moscow will continue to demand a transparent investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions.
• Russia has tortured and arbitrarily detained people in occupied Ukraine, creating a “climate of fear” and suppressing Ukrainian identity, according to a UN report.
• The United States has imposed sanctions on two people and two companies it accused of supporting disinformation efforts directed by the Russian government.
• Indian Prime Minister Modi says he spoke to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about strengthening India-Ukraine relations.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that Ukraine had received the first 4.5 billion euro ($4.88bn) tranche from a European Union bridging finance programme.

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry has announced that Lithuania has allocated 35 million euros ($38m) to buy ammunition for Ukraine via the Czech initiative.

“We are grateful to our Lithuanian friends for their strong support!  Ukraine appreciates your efforts to bring victory closer,” the ministry wrote on X.

Lithuania has allocated €35 million to procure ammunition for Ukraine within the Czech initiative.

We are grateful to our Lithuanian friends for their strong support! 
Ukraine appreciates your efforts to bring victory closer.
🇺🇦🤝🇱🇹@Lithuanian_MoD pic.twitter.com/m2o5UFWhLK

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 20, 2024

A Russian court has sentenced a St Petersburg woman to eight days in jail for writing “no to war” on a ballot paper during the country’s election where Putin was re-elected.

Putin warned in his victory speech that Russians who spoiled their ballot will “have to be dealt with”.

St Petersburg’s Dzerzhinsky district court said it ordered Alexandra Chiryatyeva to be jailed for eight days and fined 40,000 rubles ($433).

The court said she was guilty of hooliganism and “discrediting the Russian armed forces”.

“Chiryatyeva took a voting ballot and with a red marker wrote ‘no to war’ at the back of it before placing it in the ballot box,” the court added. “In this way, Chiryatyeva damaged state property and discredited the Russian armed forces.”

Putin won 72.3 percent of the votes at polling stations abroad during last week’s presidential election, and the state-run RIA news agency cited the electoral commission as saying.

Russians living abroad, including many who have fled Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, were able to vote at Russian embassies and consulates.

Putin won his fifth term as leader of the country after securing 87.3 percent of the total vote.

The US is pressing Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International to drop plans to buy a 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 bn) stake from a Russian tycoon, several people with direct knowledge of the talks told the Reuters news agency.

Raiffeisen is buying the stake in Vienna-based Strabag from a company the construction group identified as controlled by Oleg Deripaska.

In recent weeks, senior US Treasury officials have highlighted their concerns about the transaction in meetings with the bank and Austrian authorities, the unnamed sources said, pointing out that Deripaska is sanctioned.

Two people told Reuters that if the bank goes ahead with the deal and it is proven to violate US sanctions, Washington could impose penalties on it.

Due to the US’s stance on the deal, one person said Austrian authorities would hold off on giving it the green light, while another said the bank itself was preparing to drop the deal.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova says her country will continue to demand a transparent investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions in September 2022, the state news agency TASS reports.

“We will wait for the investigation’s results. Even if the West fails to complete a probe, there’s one going on here. On the international stage, we will continue to continuously emphasise the need for transparency,” she told Sputnik radio.

Zakharova suggested that the US, specifically President Biden, was the most likely to benefit from the blasts at the two pipelines in the Baltic.

Before the sanctions, she said, Russia “and European Union countries achieved fantastic results, building true and practical integration in the economic field, including in the energy sector”.

“This was precisely one of the reasons why the United States … started to target those ties,” she added.

Germany and Sweden, which last month dropped its investigation into the explosions, found traces of explosives relating to the incident, suggesting it was a deliberate act.

Russia has tortured and arbitrarily detained people in occupied Ukraine, creating a “climate of fear” and suppressing Ukrainian identity, according to a UN report.

The report, which the UN Human Rights Office said was based on more than 2,300 interviews, accused Moscow of “committing widespread violations” of human rights law.

Russia has imposed its “language, citizenship, laws, court system, and education curricula on the occupied areas,” while suppressing a Ukrainian identity, the UN office said in a release accompanying the report. “From the onset, Russian armed forces, acting with generalised impunity, committed widespread violations, including arbitrary detention of civilians, often accompanied by torture and ill-treatment.”

Russia had tried to suppress Ukrainian identity among children, replacing the curriculum in schools with a Russian one which sought to “justify” Moscow’s invasion, the report added.

Peaceful protests have met “force” from the Russian army, which has restricted free expression and pillaged homes and businesses, it said.

The United States has imposed sanctions on two people and two companies it accused of supporting disinformation efforts directed by the Russian government, the US Treasury Department said, as Washington increases pressure on Moscow.

Washington has repeatedly warned of Moscow’s efforts to sow disinformation and instability in democratic countries and the sanctions come amid serious tensions between the US and Russia over the war in Ukraine and a host of other issues.

Indian PM Modi says he spoke to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about strengthening India-Ukraine relations.

“Conveyed India’s consistent support for all efforts for peace and bringing an early end to the ongoing conflict. India will continue to provide humanitarian assistance guided by our people-centric approach,” Modi wrote on X.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is reportedly expected to visit India next week.

Had a good conversation with President @ZelenskyyUa on strengthening the India-Ukraine partnership. Conveyed India’s consistent support for all efforts for peace and bringing an early end to the ongoing conflict. India will continue to provide humanitarian assistance guided by…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 20, 2024

We reported earlier that Indian PM Narendra Modi held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine.

The Indian government said in a statement that Modi reiterated India’s “consistent position in favour of dialogue and diplomacy as the way forward” in the conflict and that the leaders agreed to deepen bilateral ties.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that Ukraine had received the first 4.5 billion euro ($4.88bn) tranche from a European Union bridging finance programme.

“This strengthens our economic and financial stability,” Shmyhal said on X.

Last month, the EU approved a four-year 50 billion euro ($54.20bn) financing programme for Ukraine, which Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said would help the government to finance high-priority social and humanitarian needs.

The Finance Ministry also said the next 1.5 billion euro ($1.63bn) tranche from the EU was expected in April, provided Kyiv met all required conditions for the financing.

After fruitful discussions in Brussels, I'm pleased to share good news. Today we received a first tranche in amount of €4.5 billion through the Ukraine Facility Exceptional Bridge Financing. Grateful to @vonderleyen for her invaluable support. This strengthens our economic and…

— Denys Shmyhal (@Denys_Shmyhal) March 20, 2024

Vote rigging in the Russia-occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions harks back to the decades of similar practices documented in Russia that included coercion to vote, ballot staffing, and “carousels” – when groups of people are bussed to dozens of polling stations.

This reporter, accompanied by an independent election monitor in a northern Moscow suburb during the 2012 presidential vote, witnessed the arrival of several busloads of men, some of them visibly drunk, who loudly said they “only vote for Putin”.

Hours later, the same men arrived at a different polling station, this reporter observed.

Read the full story here.

Five others were injured in the attack after a Russian attack hit an eight-storey building and a factory, the head of the investigative department of regional police said.

“A regular printing house, a furniture and paint products factory [were hit],” Serhiy Bolvinov, the head of the unit, said on Facebook.

The attack also sparked a fire across more than 1,000sq metres (10,764sq feet), he said, adding that the number of casualties could rise.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev says “eliminating” French troops in Ukraine would not be difficult for Russia’s armed forces, the state news agency TASS reports.

“Actually, for the success of our cause, it would be nice if the restless French dispatched a couple of regiments to ‘Banderaland.’ It would be very problematic to hide such a number of servicemen, so systematically eliminating them would not be the most difficult task but surely the most important one. But just think of the beneficial knock-on effect!” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Medvedev added that it would “be a good lesson for other rambunctious fools in Europe” to see France’s defeat.

His comments come after Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin said on Tuesday that France was preparing a contingent of about 2,000 soldiers to go to Ukraine.

Let’s bring you up to speed on some of the latest developments.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia will ensure the security of its border regions following frequent Ukrainian attacks.
• The Kremlin says the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s proposal to use frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine would undermine international law.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal welcomed the EU deal on farm exports and said it would allow Ukraine to support its producers and maintain its export levels.

• Pope Francis has renewed calls for peace through negotiations as he condemned the conflict in Ukraine.

• Russia slammed the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) decision to ban its athletes from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics in July.

Russia’s Defence Ministry says its forces had cleared Ukrainian forces from the Russian border village of Kozinka, state news agency RIA reported.

Ukrainian forces have made several attacks on Kozinka in the Belgorod region and nearby frontier settlements in recent weeks.

The governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region says Russian shelling has killed at least two people in overnight attacks that also wounded other people in central Ukraine.

“Russian forces attacked various civilian cars in the Kherson territorial community,” Oleksandr Prokudin said. “Preliminarily, two men were killed as a result of the shelling.”

In the northeastern region of Sumy, another person was killed in shelling, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

The region was hit by 136 attacks in 24 hours that damaged several homes as well as a “school and a kindergarten, a hospital, a shop and a lyceum building”.

Russia says it is ready to discuss “issues of strategic stability” with the United States but only as part of a broader debate.

“Washington is offering to have dialogue only on US terms,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters when asked about media reports the US had proposed talks with Russia and China.

She added that the US had lost control over arms it had supplied to Ukraine, making it difficult for Moscow to agree to arms talks with Washington.

The Kremlin, which accuses the US of fighting against Russia by supporting Ukraine, says relations with Washington have never been worse.