Translated material
Chronicle of the war with Ukraine. Day 27
22:28
Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov in an interview with CNN called fake reports of labor camps for refugees from Ukraine, reports TASS.
Earlier, the Mariupol authorities claimed that the residents of the city were taken to Russia under the pretext of evacuation, and there they issued “papers obliging them to stay in a certain city” with the obligation to find employment at the place of work indicated on them.
There was no confirmation of this information.
20:23
The French company Total announced the suspension of activities in Russia.
19:38
Journalist Alexander Nevzorov was charged with disseminating knowingly false information about the actions of Russian troops (paragraph “e” of Part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, the maximum punishment is up to 10 years in prison), reports the Investigative Committee of Russia .
“According to the investigation, on March 9, 2022, on his public page on the Instagram social network banned in the Russian Federation and on March 19, 2022 on his YouTube channel, Nevzorov published deliberately false information about the deliberate shelling by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of a maternity hospital in the city Mariupol. The publications were accompanied by inaccurate photographs of civilians affected by the shelling,” the ministry said in a statement. The investigation has not yet established the whereabouts of Nevzorov.
19:31
Rosobrnadzor postponed the all-Russian verification work from spring to autumn, explaining this decision with “risks of the spread of coronavirus.” This is reported by TASS with reference to the press service of the department. Verification work is now planned to be carried out from September 19 to October 24, 2022.
On March 20, the Rotunda wrote that St. Petersburg schools were postponing test papers due to a shortage of paper. On March 1, the Finnish chemical company Kemira, which produces sodium chlorate for whitening paper, announced the cessation of supplies to Russia, after which the suspension of "operations" in Russia was announced by Sylvamo, the manufacturer of SvetoCopy paper.
18:33
Google has begun moving its employees out of Russia, although there are no plans to close the company's office in the country yet, Bloomberg reports , citing sources familiar with the situation.
The Moscow office of Google, according to the agency, employed 244 people, and this month the company helped those interested in moving.
18:01
Hromadske reported on the release of its journalist Viktoria Roshchina, who was detained by Russian security forces.
This afternoon, a video appeared in which Roshchina says that she was detained while checking documents in Berdyansk, when she was on her way to Mariupol as part of a humanitarian convoy from Zaporozhye. The reason for this was the photos of Russian technology on her phone.
“The Russian side explained to me that a trip to Mariupol is life-threatening, since it is blocked. In Berdyansk, I was provided with housing and food, decent living conditions. During this time, I did not observe hostilities and protests. I have no complaints against the Russian side, the actions of the Russian armed forces, with a high degree of probability, may have saved my life and health, ”Roshchina says to the camera.
According to Hromadske, this recording was a condition for the release of the journalist. The TV channel promises to reveal the details of Roshchina's detention in the near future.
The journalist was detained last week while traveling to Mariupol to cover events in the city, which is surrounded by Russian troops.
17:30
Siemens has suspended the contract for the supply of new Sapsan trains to Russian Railways, . RIA Novosti reports
Oleg Belozerov, General Director of Russian Railways, clarified that the train maintenance agreement is still in effect.
17:14
Ukrainian photojournalist Max Levin disappeared near Kiev, said . his friend Markiyan Lyseyko
The journalist went to the Kyiv region in his car. On March 13, he was stopped near the village of Guta-Mezhigorskaya in the Vyshgorod district on the way to the village of Moshchun. At 11:23, the last message came from his phone, after which Levin stopped communicating.
“Later we learned that intense fighting was going on in these areas and, presumably, he could have been wounded or captured by Russian troops,” Liseyko writes on Facebook.
Levin made documentaries about the conflict in Donbass. He has worked for Ukrainian and foreign media, including Reuters, Associated Press, BBC.
15:48
More than 3.5 million people fled from Ukraine from the war, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Of these, more than two million crossed the border with Poland.
15:21
Oriflame is suspending investments and reducing online sales in Russia "due to a number of operational and legal challenges," the company said .
The suspension will affect investments in marketing, training and events; also, unregistered customers will no longer be able to place an online order.
15:15
In Kherson, protesters against the Russian invasion were again dispersed. According to Suspilne Kherson, this time the military used tear gas.
14:36
The State Duma immediately adopted in the second and third readings a bill criminalizing fakes about the actions of Russian authorities abroad, for example, diplomats, TASS reports .
Responsibility will be the same as under the new article about fakes about the Russian army. It carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
14:19
From 50,000 to 70,000 IT specialists have left Russia, according to the Russian Association for Electronic Communications. In the worst case, according to the association, more than 100,000 specialists will leave in the second wave.
13:46
Actress Maria Mashkova, daughter of actor Vladimir Mashkov, in an interview said to the interview with CNN that her father accused her of betrayal for her anti-war position. The journalist Farida Rustamova drew attention .
“He asked me to return to Russia immediately, to be with my daughters, to be a good Russian woman, to ask for forgiveness for the betrayal, to be with the Russians and help fight the Ukrainian Nazis,” Maria Mashkova told the TV channel. She added that she was not sure she would be able to return to Russia.
On March 18, actor Vladimir Mashkov spoke at a rally-concert in Luzhniki in support of the annexation of Crimea and Russian troops in Ukraine.
13:36
The Investigative Committee opened the first criminal case in Moscow about fakes about the Russian army, according to the Network Freedoms project, which drew attention to one of the case cards on the website of Moscow courts.
According to the card, on March 18, the Presnensky Court of Moscow sent the suspect Sergei Klokov to the pre-trial detention center. A case was brought against him under paragraphs “a”, “b” and “e” of part 2 of article 207.3 of the Criminal Code (dissemination of knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces by a group of persons using their official position for reasons of political hatred). According to this composition threatens from 5 to 10 years in a colony.
What exactly was the reason for the criminal case is still unknown. Considering the qualification of a “group of persons”, it is likely that there are or will appear other persons involved in the case.
Prior to this, those accused in criminal cases of fakes about the army were assigned a milder measure of restraint in the form of a ban on certain actions.
Updated at 14:30. Added information about Klokov's place of work.
13:16
Change.org has temporarily hidden the names of the signatories and commentators of the petitions from Russia, reports . RBC
“The Change.org team is responsible for the safety of the people who use our platform. <...> We understand that it is very difficult to conduct public campaigns, especially in this difficult time,” the company explained.
In Russia, two petitions have been the most popular lately: against the war in Ukraine and demanding the resignation of Ramzan Kadyrov . The first petition, launched on Change.org on February 24, was signed by 1.2 million people, the second by more than 270,000 users.
13:01
Vasily Shpak, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, proposed creating cyber troops in Russia and a state defense order in this area, reports . RIA Novosti
“As a proposal - on the creation of cyber troops and on the creation of a state order in terms of defense and security to our developers in this area, where they could, without receiving a reprieve [from the army], but having received employment and developing their professional competencies, benefit their country, developing its patriotic qualities in itself,” said the Deputy Minister at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications. “After that, I hope they would think ten times before leaving their homeland in pursuit of a long ruble in foreign companies.”
12:54
The United States is sending Soviet-made air defense equipment to Ukraine, which it secretly acquired decades ago, as military aid, writes The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials.
As the newspaper notes, the United States has been acquiring such Soviet equipment for decades to study it and help train the US military.
12:49
Already the second Tomsk resident was fined for "silent support" of the anti-war action on March 6, reports . OVD-Info
“Taras Maksimovich Kuznetsov, being in a group of citizens who gathered at the rally, realizing that those gathered were united by a single plan to undermine confidence in the decisions of the state authorities of the Russian Federation to conduct a special operation to save Donbass, expressed tacit support for the illegal goals of the event and solidarity with active participants,” — stated in the administrative protocol.
The court fined Taras Kuznetsov 30 thousand rubles. Last week, on March 16, Stanislav Karmakskikh was fined 45,000 rubles with the same wording.
Both were found guilty of discrediting the Russian military (Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).
12:40
The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov announced that he would sell the Nobel Peace Prize Medal in order to transfer the proceeds from the sale to a fund to help Ukrainian refugees.
Muratov urged the auction houses, which are ready to put the medal up for auction, to respond. He received it at the end of last year.
12:27
Abroad, due to sanctions, 78 aircraft of Russian airlines were arrested, the Ministry of Transport reports .
12:24
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 651 residential buildings have been destroyed and 3,780 houses have been damaged, said Roman Primush, deputy head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.
The scale of destruction, according to him, is actually much greater - the statistics do not take into account the territories captured by the Russian military. Also, only those objects are taken into account, where rescuers can assess the amount of damage without endangering their lives.
12:14
Fontanka spoke about the work of the Cyber Front Z office in St. Petersburg, in which employees write comments on social networks to “expose fakes on the agenda of Ukraine.” The newspaper found the office's links to the "troll factory".
The Fontanka journalist was interviewed and spent the day in this office. Even at the interview, she was told that the curators would inform in which chats and channels “refutations” would have to be written, the content of which was also determined by the curators. In total, each employee must write 200 comments per day, while in one shift - 100 people.
Candidates are offered 45 thousand rubles a month with a 2/2 schedule, but there is no official employment.
In a message from the curator of YouTube, the task of the staff is explained as follows: "The main pool of work will be to create a patriotic picture in the comments under the trending videos and in the 'politics and news' category." Comments are written not from personal accounts of employees, but from those created specifically for this work.
Fontanka drew attention to the fact that Alexei Nekrylov, who identified himself as the curator of the project in a conversation with a journalist, was an employee of companies that the Americans called involved in the "troll factory". She became known back in 2013 and was associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is called "Putin's chef."
11:41
As a result of yesterday's shelling in the Zhytomyr region, three private residential buildings were destroyed, ten more houses were damaged. There were no dead or injured.
11:29
The Muscovite complained to the police about the tenant of the house opposite, who hung a garland in the form of a Ukrainian flag on the window, reports Baza.
The police came to the call, but could not talk to the tenant who hung out the garland, because they did not open the door.
“The garland has been burning for a week now (and continues to burn in these minutes), and the police are looking for its owner,” writes Baza.
11:16
The Yekaterinburg bar Ogonyok took portraits of artists who opposed the war in Ukraine, which they hung out as a sign of their support.
Last night, the founder of the bar, Yevgeny Keksin, published a video in which he takes portraits himself, and wrote: “Bar Ogonyok is for a positive agenda and against any provocations!”.
The chairman of the HOA, to which this territory belongs, Nikita Redkin , told It's My City that the portraits attracted the attention of the district administration and the police.
“In the afternoon, they called from the administration of the Oktyabrsky district and clarified who the author of this action was and whether it was approved? Later in the evening, police officers came to deal with the banner, ”Redkin said.
Initially, the bar hung out portraits of Valery Meladze, Vera Brezhneva, Boris Grebenshchikov, Ivan Dorn, Monatik, Svetlana Loboda, Oksimiron. They all condemned the Russian invasion.
10:50
Kaliningrad journalist Aleksey Milovanov said that a sticker appeared on the door of his entrance with the inscription: "A traitor lives here."
“As well as on the entrance door of at least one participant in the rally on February 24, my good friend Oksana Akmaeva. Her son managed to see them - two people in a mask, one in a cap with the Russian flag, ” Milovanov wrote on his Telegram channel.
10:43
Roskomnadzor blocked the website of the Euronews TV channel due to coverage of the war in Ukraine, reports . Interfax
The ministry also believes that the channel called on Russians to participate in "mass (public) events held in violation of the established order on the territory of the Russian Federation."
Both the main site and its Russian version are blocked.
10:34
In Moscow, a court fined Dmitry Reznikov 50,000 rubles for participating in anti-war pickets on March 13 with a poster *** ****, reports . OVD-Info
The court recognized this as discrediting the Russian troops (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).
10:24
Komsomolskaya Pravda explained the appearance on the website of data on thousands of losses of the Russian army in Ukraine by hacking and “fake stuffing”.
An article published on March 20 stated that the Russian Armed Forces had lost 9,861 people killed and 16,153 people were injured. The KP message says that the next day, March 21, access to the administrator interface was hacked.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported only 498 dead.
10:17
Yesterday in Kherson, at a pro-Ukrainian rally, the Russian military brutally dispersed the protesters. The military threw stun grenades and opened fire.
In Kharkov, after a shell hit a residential building, 96-year-old Boris Romanchenko, who was a prisoner of Buchenwald, died.
The Ukrainian authorities reported the abduction by the Russian military of the head of the village of Tsirkuny in the Kharkiv region and the mayor of Berislav in the Kherson region.
The BBC Russian Service found out that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, at least 557 soldiers from Russia have died.
In Moscow, a court recognized the company Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as an extremist organization. The decision will not apply to the messenger.
Kirill Kleimenov, the head of the channel's information programs directorate, accused Marina Ovsyannikova of betrayal and cooperation with the "English embassy", who broke into the live broadcast with an anti-war poster.
Cover photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine