WAR IN UKRAINE: March 31, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 401
Ukrainian forces continued to hold their ground on the eastern front over the past day, the military said on March 30, repelling dozens of attacks in and around Bakhmut, the city in the Donetsk region that has been the focal point of Russia's offensive over the past several months.
Force will not be used to evict representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council said on March 29 after monks who have been ordered to leave the historic site refused to go - RFE/RL
Ukraine’s foreign minister on Thursday said Russia’s upcoming one-month presidency of the UN Security Council is a “bad joke.” “Russian UN Security Council presidency on April 1 is a bad joke. Russia has usurped its seat; it’s waging a colonial war; its leader is a war criminal wanted by the ICC for kidnapping children. The world can’t be a safe place with Russia at UNSC,” Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. The UN Security Council has 15 members and its presidency is held by each of the members in turn for one month, following the English alphabetical order. Russia will assume the presidency on Saturday. Under the UN Charter, all members are obligated to comply with the decisions of the Security Council, whose primary responsibility is maintaining international peace and security - Anadolu Agency
Four former executives at the Zurich branch of Russia's Gazprombank have been given seven-month suspended sentences for helping musician Sergei Roldugin, nicknamed "Putin's wallet,” deposit huge sums of money, the BBC reported. A slap on the wrist, at best, in my opinion.
Russia's intelligence services have detained a U.S. citizen working for the Wall Street Journal's Moscow bureau on charges of espionage. Evan Gerskovich was on a reporting assignment in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg when he was detained by agents from Russia's Federal Security Services, the FSB, which accused him of carrying out "illegal activities" on behalf of the U.S. government. In a statement, the agency accused Gerskovich, of "acting on an assignment from the American side, was gathering information classified as a state secret about the activity of one of the enterprises of Russia's military-industrial complex." The Wall Street Journal issued a statement denying the charges and says it is "deeply concerned about the safety" of Gerskovich - NPR