Each week we complete the required readings of our coverage of the Ukrainian war, from news and reports to analysis, visual guides, and opinions.
Russia tightens control of the Donbas
Peter Beaumont reported this week on Russia’s advances in the Donbas region, and Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Moscow has “the upper hand” in fighting in the east of the country, as defending forces withdrew. ‘some of their positions.
Amid reports that Lyman, the site of a major railway junction, had been largely occupied, the Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces were also advancing on Sievierodonetsk, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, which is part of the southern part of the Donbas, said that now only 5% of the region remained in Ukrainian hands, below 10% just over week.
The President of Ukraine has also given an overview of the level of losses suffered by his forces in the Donbas. “Today, between 50 and 100 people could be killed here in the most complicated area, in the east of our country,” said Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Two sisters support their mother to board an emergency evacuation bus in the Donbas region Photo: Alex Chan Tsz Yuk / SOUP Images / REX / Shutterstock
The plight of Mariupol survivors
Shaun Walker has written about the horrors suffered by the remaining residents of Mariupol, after the end of the devastating siege of the Russian city for months.
He spoke with Svitlana and Vitaly, a couple who lost almost everything, including their unborn baby, before being forced on a tiring and humiliating journey through so-called “filtration” procedures, followed by a forced deportation to Russia.
“There’s nothing,” Vitaly said bitterly. “Nothing. Is over. Mariupol is over. “
Meanwhile, Andrew Roth reported on Russia’s deployment of mobile propaganda vans with large-screen TVs at the captured humanitarian aid points in the captured city as the Kremlin advanced efforts to integrate the newly occupied territories south of Ukraine.
“The practice of ‘there is nothing to eat, so feed them lies’ is gaining momentum,” wrote Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol. It is “cynicism of the highest level.”
A man rides a bicycle down a street damaged by the Mariupol bombing. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
The Guardian documents Russia’s use of illegal weapons
While prosecutors are investigating alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, journalists Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Koshiw and photographer Alessio Mamo revealed evidence they discovered on the ground: cluster bombs, darts and unguided missiles in residential areas.
On March 1, a Russian Air Force plane dropped a series of 250 kg Soviet-era FAB-250 bombs on Borodyanka, north of Kyiv, explosives designed to hit military targets such as enemy fortifications and bunkers. The bombs fell on at least five residential buildings, splitting them in two. Dozens of bodies were found under the rubble when the Russians withdrew.
Bellingcat, a non-profit online journalism collective dedicated to the investigation of war crimes, reviewed some of the images collected by the Guardian and confirmed the presence of cluster bombs in Russian-occupied cities and towns. Weapons, banned in more than 100 countries (but not in the US, Russia or Ukraine), were released in areas without military personnel and without military infrastructure.
‘I lost everything’
Ivan Mishchenko in the ruins of his farmhouse. Photography: Alessio Mamo / The Guardian
Lorenzo Tondo met Ivan Mishchenko, a farmer from a small village in the north of Kyiv, whose situation reflects that of hundreds like him and has worsened food insecurity around the world.
Their businesses were devastated by a war that has unleashed economic devastation on the country and threatened to starve elsewhere. And like other Ukrainian farmers, the few hectares of Mishchenko’s surviving wheat fields cannot be harvested due to fuel shortages in the region and after its harvester and other machinery were destroyed by bombing.
“The war will lead to an absolute shortage of grain and perhaps famine,” Mishchenko said.
The last child leaves Kutuzivka
Daniel Boffey reported on eight-year-old Tymofiy Seidov, the last child in a ruined village in northeastern Ukraine who was evacuated with his family from the basement where they lived for three months after a benefactor read its location in the city. Guardian.
Timofiy Seidov and his drawings in the basement of Kutuzivka. Photography: Ed Ram / The Guardian
Tymofiy did not want to leave his underground home in Kutuzivka, east of Kharkiv, because of the Russian fire, but his mother, Rita Sotnikova, gently persuaded him to leave on Sunday.
The evacuation of the family was made possible after a Guardian reader with connections to Ukraine Now, a non-profit organization, contacted them to offer logistical assistance.
Our visual guide to the invasion is regularly updated and can be found here.