With no end in sight, on Sunday, the Russian invasion of Ukraine entered the eleventh day. While on the one hand Russian President Vladimir Putin said his campaign in Ukraine was going according to plan and would not end until Kyiv stopped fighting, world powers on the other hand continued to look for diplomatic means to end the conflict.
Putin in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that Russia's military operation in Ukraine can be suspended only if Kyiv ceases military actions and fulfils Moscow's demands
Here's what unfolded on Day 11:
State of siege
According to AFP, Kharkiv remains in Ukrainian hands despite intense bombardments. Russian forces are also pressing an offensive through the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions although how far they have penetrated remains unclear.
There has been heavy fighting around and inside the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, where Kyiv said there was intense Russian shelling and efforts underway to extract foreign students.
Kyiv remains under Ukrainian control, despite heavy bombardments, although Western observers have pointed to a major Russian column of hundreds of vehicles outside the city stationed around the Hostomel airfield.
There has been heavy fighting in the vicinity of Hostomel but the column has made little progress in recent days.
Ukrainian forces also retain control of the northern town of Chernihiv where there have been heavy civilian casualties in recent days.
Russia has besieged the strategic southern city of Mariupol and the International Committee of the Red Cross said a new attempt to evacuate an estimated 200,000 civilians from the city had failed.
Taking the city would give Russia a chance to link forces pushing north from the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea with their forces from the east.
The famed port city Odessa remains in Ukrainian control and has been for now spared fighting. But Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was aware of intelligence that Russia planned to bomb the city.
Russian forces last week took the southern city of Kherson, just north of the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and now appear to be moving on Mykolayiv to the northwest.
The west of Ukraine remains largely spared from the fighting. The main western city of Lviv has become a hub for foreign diplomatic missions, journalists, and Ukrainians seeking safety or seeking to leave the country.
Meanwhile, some 20,000 international volunteers have traveled to Ukraine to join in the fight against invading Russian forces, a top Ukrainian official said Sunday.
Devastation in Ukraine
British military intelligence said on Sunday that Russian forces were targeting populated areas in Ukraine but that the strength of resistance was slowing the Russian advance. Russia has “targeted populated areas in multiple locations, including Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol” it said.
While Russia has continued to deny charges of targeting civilians, Viacheslav Chaus, Head at Chernihiv Regional State Administration, posted a photo of what he said was an undetonated FAB-500, a Soviet-designed 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) air-dropped bomb of the kind usually used against military-industrial facilities and fortified structures.
A fresh attempt on Sunday was made to get people out of Mariupol that failed again. Earlier an effort was made on Saturday. Both sides accuse each other of breaching a ceasefire agreement.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the civilian airport in the central city of Vinnytsia was completely destroyed by Russian rockets, in an area far from the limit of the Russian ground advance.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday claimed that he had "very credible reports" that Russia has committed war crimes.
Zelenskyy urges Ukrainians to 'go on the offensive'
In a televised address on Saturday night, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on people in areas occupied by Russian troops to go on the offensive and fight. “We must go outside and drive this evil out of our cities,” he said, vowing to rebuild his nation. “My confidence in this is reinforced by the energy of our resistance, our protest”, he said.
He has also warned that Russia is preparing to bombard the historic city of Odessa near the Romanian and Moldovan borders.
Casualties and humanitarian catastrophe
According to the Indin Express, at least 364 civilians are confirmed to have been killed in Ukraine since Russian troops invaded on 24 February, and another 759 wounded, although the true numbers are probably “considerably higher”, a UN monitoring mission said on Sunday. The updated figures, relating to casualties through 5 March, added a further 13 deaths and 52 injuries to the casualties that the monitors from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported on Saturday.
Meanwhile, over 1.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in the week since the invasion, with over half going to Poland, according to the UN refugee agency. The UN has said Ukraine is the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
Russia interfering at Ukraine nuclear power plant, says UN watchdog
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said Russian forces are tightening their grip on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, Ukraine’s largest, that they seized last week.
The director-general of the agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Sunday Ukrainian staff members are now required to seek approval for any operation, even maintenance, from the Russians, and that they have impeded normal communications by switching off some mobile networks and internet at the site.
Putin on Sunday welcomed the idea to hold a trilateral meeting of the IAEA, Russia and Ukraine and said it could be held by video link or in a third country, amidst growing global concern over the safety of the nuclear power plants in war-torn Ukraine.
Russia warns countries against hosting Ukrainian aircraft
Russia on Sunday warned Ukraine's neighbours including NATO member Romania against hosting Kyiv's military aircraft, saying they could end up being involved in an armed conflict.
"We know for sure that Ukrainian combat aircraft have flown to Romania and other neighbouring countries," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a video briefing.
"The use of the airfield network of these countries for basing Ukrainian military aviation with the subsequent use of force against Russia's army can be regarded as the involvement of these states in an armed conflict," he added.
Konashenkov also claimed that "practically all" Ukraine's combat-ready aircraft had been destroyed.
Global diplomacy
According to The Guardian, Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson has issued a six-point plan in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, has told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, that Beijing opposes any moves that “add fuel to the flames” in Ukraine. Wang called for negotiations to resolve the immediate crisis, adding that the US and Europe should pay attention to the negative impact of NATO’s eastward expansion on Russia’s security.
On Sunday, Blinken briefly stepped onto Ukrainian soil for a meeting with the foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, who said Russia would be defeated but appealed for more military assistance.
Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett vowed to continue pushing for a diplomatic solution a day after meeting Putin in Moscow. He also had a telephonic conversation with Zelenskyy the same day.
French president Emmanuel Macron too spoke to Putin on a call which lasted for 45 minutes where the latter said that Moscow planned to achieve its aims in Ukraine either through diplomacy or military means.
India's evacuation efforts
India has brought back its over 15,920 nationals on 76 flights under evacuation mission 'Operation Ganga', officials said on Sunday, while around 700 students are still trapped in Sumy. According to the officials, around 2,500 Indians were evacuated on 13 flights in the last 24 hours. They said seven flights are scheduled over the next 24 hours to bring back stranded Indians from Hungary, Romania, and Poland.
"Under Operation Ganga, so far 76 flights have brought over 15,920 Indians back to India. Out of these, 13 flights landed in the last 24 hours," said an official.
Economic fallouts
To contain the fallout of the sanction, Russia on Sunday continued to take steps to shore up the struggling economy and Russia's ruble.
To combat bulk buying, major retailers have decided via their trade organisations to limit the amounts of essential foodstuffs that can be purchased by individuals at any one time, the ministry said in a statement.
Russia may also decide to cap the prices of around 20 basic foodstuffs -- meat, fish, milk, flour, sugar, oil, cereals, butter, rice, bread, cabbage, carrots, onions and potatoes -- as an additional anti-inflation measure.
But analysts warn that rising prices are already a reality, even if there are no government statistics to reflect the trend.
The central bank has asked lenders not to release their financial statements as of February. The move was necessary "to limit the risks of credit institutions associated with the sanctions imposed by Western countries," the Bank of Russia said on Sunday.
The country's largest private lender Alfa Bank said Sunday it was "already working on launching cards on UnionPay, China's national payment system", with Russia's top bank, Sberbank, issuing a similar statement.
Russia's central bank said that Visa and Mastercard cards already issued by national banks will continue to work within Russia until their expiry, since all payments in Russia are made through a national system.
However, it warned that Russians travelling abroad would need to carry cash.
The United States said Sunday it was in "active discussions" with European nations about banning Russian oil imports as further economic penalty against Moscow for invading Ukraine, but stopped short of announcing an outright boycott.
With Western nations mulling the prospect of a boycott, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba waded into the debate to strongly call for a ban on such imports, saying Russian oil "smells of Ukrainian blood."
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