Weekly Russia-Ukraine war summary: Russian forces reach border checkpoint in Kursk, “chaos” in Belgorod, Putin vows to “finish off” AFU

Throughout the past week, Ukraine’s Air Force reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) the downing of 519 drones — primarily Shahed-type UAVs and others of unidentified models — out of a total of 930 launched. An additional 283 drones were “radar-lost.” Ukraine also reported two launches of ballistic missiles from the Iskander-M tactical missile system, with no recorded interceptions.

Several of Russia’s strikes on civilian infrastructure led to a high number of casualties among the civilian population:

• On the evening of March 21, a missile strike on Zaporizhzhia killed an entire family: a mother, a father, and their 14-year-old daughter. Sixteen more people were injured.
  
• On the evening of March 22, in the Donetsk Region, Pokrovsk came under fire, resulting in three deaths (1, 2). The following day, March 23, another strike killed two more people in Pokrovsk and in the town of Donet’ske (not to be confused with the Russian-occupied regional center).
  
• During a nighttime raid on Kyiv on March 23, three people were killed and ten injured. Among the victims was another family: a father and his 5-year-old daughter died, while the mother was hospitalized.
  
• A missile strike on the city of Sumy injured 101 people, including 23 children. Residential buildings, infrastructure sites, and a school were damaged in the attack.

Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported the destruction of 301 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over internationally recognized Russian territory and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. The ministry also repeatedly accused Ukraine of attacking Russian energy infrastructure in violation of an agreed moratorium (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Ukraine’s General Staff has denied all such accusations.

Mykhailo Litvin, a communications advisor to President Zelensky, accused Russia of committing at least ten violations of the “energy ceasefire” since March 18 (1, 2). President Zelensky, in turn, vowed to provide evidence of these violations to the United States.

Six people were killed in a strike on the Kreminna District of the Luhansk Region — including three employees of Russian state media outlets. In Russia’s Belgorod Region, Channel One correspondent Anna Prokofieva was killed after a vehicle she was traveling in triggered a landmine.

According to calculations by volunteers at the independent open source intelligence (OSINT) project Conflict Intelligence Team (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), at least 46 civilians were killed and 374 injured over the past week as a result of shelling on civilian infrastructure on both sides of the front.