Good morning all, Lauren Boland here. It’s been three and a half weeks since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

We’ll be bringing you all the latest updates here today – let’s start with a quick look at the current situation:

• Russia says its soldiers have entered the centre of the besieged port city Mariupol as foreign intelligence suggests its forces are facing issues with food and fuel supply.
• In an address last night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces are blockading cities to try to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” and push Ukrainians into cooperating with them
• Russia has admitted (for the first time) to using hypersonic missiles in western Ukraine
• More than 3.25 million refugees have fled Ukraine

For the first time, Russia has admitted to using advanced hypersonic missiles in combat.

Its defence ministry has stated that it used its newest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy a weapons storage site in western Ukraine.

“The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region”, the defence ministry said.

The Kinzhal missile was one of several weapons that Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled in a state-of-the-nation address in 2018.

Ukraine’s latest assessment of Russia’s losses suggests that 200 more troops, two planes, three helicopters, and 16 tanks have been hit since yesterday.

It will take years to defuse unexploded Russian mines even after the invasion ends, according to Ukraine’s interior minister.

Minister Denys Monastyrsky told the Associated Press that Ukraine will need assistance to defuse the Russian mines in a process that “will take years, not months”.

“A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine, and a large part haven’t exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat,” Monastyrsky said.

In addition, Ukrainian troops have planted land mines at bridges, airports and other key locations to prevent Russian forces from using the infrastructure in their assault.

In his video address last night, filmed outside Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces are blockading Ukraine’s largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” in an effort to convince Ukrainians to cooperate with them.

He said Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in the centre and south east of Ukraine.

“This is a totally deliberate tactic,” Zelenskyy said.

He appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold talks with him directly: “It’s time to meet, time to speak.”

“I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow.”

PA PA

The UK’s Home Secretary is defending its decision not to remove security checks for Ukrainian refugees applying for visas.

At the Conservative Party spring conference, Priti Patel said she has been asked why the UK didn’t suspend the checks.

“Times of conflict, my friends, emphasises our need to remain watchful. I know from the briefings I receive from the intelligence and security services that instability around the world brings with it greater threats,” Patel said.

Only four years ago, the Russian military intelligence services used a chemical weapon on British soil – it happened in Salisbury, whose inhabitants would have felt completely safe.

“The truth is that a very small number of people can wreak utter havoc and Russia has a history of covert, hostile activity.”

Ukraine and Russia have agreed on 10 new humanitarian corridors, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has announced.

It includes a corridor from Mariupol, which has been under heavy attacks, and others around Kyiv and Luhansk.

The UK’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said that Britain must do even more to stop the war in Ukraine.

Speaking at the Conservative Party spring conference in Blackpool, she said: “We have seen the most horrific, horrible scenes in Ukraine.

We have seen a war in Europe for the first time in decades and we are seeing incredible bravery from the Ukrainians and deeds of valour that will be written about for generations to come.

“Britain has stepped up, now we must do even more.

“(Vladimir) Putin must lose in Ukraine, and with Britain at the forefront we will ensure he does.”

Ukrainian journalist ‘kidnapped by Russian forces’

Russian security and military forces have been accused of kidnapping a Ukrainian journalist covering the war in the east and south of the country.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office alleged that Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Russian military abducted the journalist of Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske on Tuesday in Berdyansk, an occupied port city in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region.

The statement did not identify the journalist but went on to say that the reporter’s whereabouts are unknown and a criminal investigation has been launched.

Our journalist Victoria Roshchyna is held captive by the Russian occupiers. She was reporting from hotspots in Eastern and Southern Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. On March 12, we couldn't contact Victoria 1/3 pic.twitter.com/4728hwDs72

— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) March 18, 2022

Hromadske on Friday tweeted that they lost contact with reporter Victoria Roshchyna last week.

“As we learned from witnesses, at that time the journalist was in the temporarily occupied Berdyansk.

“On March 16, we learned that the day before (probably March 15), Victoria Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB. Currently, we do not know where she is,” the outlet tweeted.

The FSB and the Russian military haven’t yet commented on the allegations.

Dozens dead after military barracks hit in south Ukraine: reports 

A rescue operation is underway after dozens of soldiers were killed when Russian troops struck a Ukrainian military barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv, witnesses have told AFP.

“No fewer than 200 soldiers were sleeping in the barracks” when Russian troops struck early Friday, a Ukrainian serviceman on the ground, 22-year-old Maxim, told AFP without providing his last name. “At least 50 bodies have been recovered, but we do not know how many others are in the rubble,” he said.

Another soldier estimated that the bombing could have killed around 100 people.

Authorities have not yet released an official death toll.

Boris Johnson: Putin felt threatened by a free and democratic Ukraine

Boris Johnson speaking at the Conservative Party Spring Forum in Blackpool. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Boris Johnson has said Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was motivated by a fear of having a free, democratic nation as his neighbour.

The British Prime Minister told the Conservative Party spring conference in Blackpool that with every day that Ukraine’s heroic resistance continues, it is clear that Putin “has made a catastrophic mistake”. 

“You have to ask yourself why he did it – why did he decide to invade this totally innocent country?

“He didn’t really believe that Ukraine was going to join Nato any time soon, he knew perfectly well there was no plan to put missiles on Ukrainian soil.

“He didn’t really believe the semi-mystical guff he wrote about the origins of the Russian people…. Nostradamus meets Russian Wikipedia. That wasn’t what it was about.

“I think he was frightened of Ukraine for an entirely different reason.”

“He was frightened of Ukraine because in Ukraine they have a free press and in Ukraine they have free elections.”

Johnson said that for Putin, a free and democratic Ukraine was a threat to his style of rule.

With every year that Ukraine progressed – not always easily – towards freedom and democracy and open markets, he feared the Ukrainian example and he feared the implicit reproach to himself.

Because in Putin’s Russia you get jailed for 15 years just for calling an invasion an invasion, and if you stand against Putin in an election you get poisoned or shot.

“It’s precisely because Ukraine and Russia have been so historically close that he has been terrified of the effect of that Ukrainian model on him and on Russia.”

Putin was in a “total panic” about the prospect of a revolution in Moscow, Johnson added.

Ukraine’s General Staff has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has transferred troops from Russia’s far east to Belarus to make up for casualties in Ukraine.

⚡️Ukraine's General Staff: Putin transfers troops from Far East to Belarus.

The troops are being moved from Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in order to make up for casualties in Ukraine, the General Staff said.

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 19, 2022

Poland calls for total trade ban with Russia 

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateus Morawiecki has proposed to the European Union that the bloc impose a total ban on trade with Russia, Reuters news agency reports. 

Morawiecki said he wants to sea a “trade blockade” by sea and land “as soon as possible”.

“Fully cutting off Russia’s trade would further force Russia to consider whether it would be better to stop this cruel war,” Morawiecki said.

Sky News is reporting that 127 pro-Russian saboteurs have been detained in Kyiv since the start of the war. 

Sky says the head of Kyiv’s military administration Mykola Zhyrnov said that those detained includes 14 infiltration groups.

Zhyrnov said that installing roadblocks around the capital was vital when locating and detaining these saboteurs, who are accused of infiltrating Kyiv.

“They are the basis of fortifications, engineering barriers, checkpoints for vehicles and people, and of the construction of other systems, including those for live fire,” he added.

UNICEF warns children fleeing Ukraine at heightened risk of trafficking

UNICEF has warned that children fleeing war in Ukraine are at heightened risk of human traffickers, who often seek to exploit the chaos of large-scale population movements

Over 1.5 million children have fled Ukraine since the invasion began on 24 February, with thousands more displaced within the country.

According to a recent analysis conducted by UNICEF and the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking (ICAT), 28% of identified victims of trafficking globally are children.

1.5 million.

That’s the number of children who have fled #Ukraine as refugees since 24 February, and countless others have been displaced by violence inside the country.
@UNICEF calls for strengthened measures to protect them. https://t.co/Wznjq39RMX

— Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) March 19, 2022

In the context of Ukraine, UNICEF child protection experts believe that children would likely account for an even higher proportion of potential trafficking victims because children and women represent nearly all of the refugees who have fled the country so far. 

Around 500 unaccompanied children were identified crossing from Ukraine to Romania from 24 February to 17 March.

UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia Afshan Khan said: “The war in Ukraine is leading to massive displacement and refugee flows – conditions that could lead to a significant spike in human trafficking and an acute child protection crisis.

“Displaced children are extremely vulnerable to being separated from their families, exploited, and trafficked. They need governments in the region to step up and put measures in place to keep them safe.”

UNICEF is urging the governments of neighbouring countries and other countries of destination to strengthen child protection screenings at border crossings, especially those with Ukraine, to better identify at-risk children.

Kazakh activists refused permission for protest

Activists in Kazakhstan say they were refused permission to hold a rally against the invasion of Ukraine today, as tensions over the war spill into Russia’s neighbourhood.

Kazakhstan, which enjoys traditionally cordial relations with the West, is seeking a balance between distancing itself from the Kremlin’s brutal campaign in Ukraine and not riling its northern ally.

Earlier this month Kazakh authorities allowed activists in the former capital Almaty to hold a rally against the invasion that gathered more than 2,000 people and featured chants and slogans insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But today activists showed AFP a letter from the Almaty mayor’s office refusing them permission to hold a second demonstration, explaining a square designated for demonstrations was being used for a rally in support of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instead.

Ukraine calls on China to condemn Russia’s invasion

Ukraine has called on China to join the West in condemning “Russian barbarism”, after the US warned Beijing of consequences if it backed Moscow’s attack on the country.

“China can be the global security system’s important element if it makes a right decision to support the civilised countries’ coalition and condemn Russian barbarism,” presidential aide Mikhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

🇨🇳 can be the global security system’s important element if it makes a right decision to support the civilized countries’ coalition & condemn 🇷🇺 barbarism. It is a chance to sit at the table as equals. The West must explain to Beijing how $1.6 trillion differs from $150 billion

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 19, 2022

LEGO figurines of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have raised $145,000 for Ukraine.

A small suburban Chicago toy company has raised more than $145,000 for Ukraine by selling figurines of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pic.twitter.com/gnX8OKejPP

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 19, 2022

Russia rejects reports about cosmonauts’ yellow suits

Russia’s Roscosmos space agency has hit out at media reports suggesting that Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) wore wear yellow suits to show support for Ukraine.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’ press service said on its Telegram channel.

Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) wearing flight suits in yellow and blue colours. Roscosmos / AP Roscosmos / AP / AP

“The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from… To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

When asked about the suits during news conference from the ISS on yesterday, mission commander Oleg Artemyev said:

“Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour. The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That’s why we had to wear yellow flight suits.”

British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said a plane has been grounded in the UK because of possible links to Russia.

Today I have taken rapid action to identify and ground another plane pending enquiries about possible Russian links.

We are continuing to take decisive action against Putin and his illegal war in Ukraine.

— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) March 19, 2022

The Kyiv Independent reports that 562 Russian prisoners of war are currently being held in Ukraine.

⚡️562 Russian prisoners of war held in Ukraine.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on March 19 Ukraine is treating them according to international humanitarian law.

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 19, 2022

The village of Demydiv, in the Kyiv Oblast region, is at risk of flooding after a dam was destroyed due to ongoing fighting in the area.

If the water level continues to rise, it will prevent evacuations and the transfer of humanitarian aid to residents in the village.

⚡️Village of Demydiv in Kyiv Oblast may get flooded due to fighting.

The floods, which were caused by the destruction of a dam, may make it impossible to aid and evacuate the residents, Ukrainian state-owned television channel Dom reported on March 19.

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 19, 2022

Ukraine has evacuated 190,000 civilians through humanitarian corridors since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.

In an interview today, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said corridors in the Kyiv and Luhansk regions were open, but a planned corridor to the besieged port city of Mariupol was only partially operational, with Russian troops not allowing buses through.

Zelenskyy urges Switzerland to freeze assets of Russian oligarchs 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy giving a speech during a demonstration against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in front of the Swiss parliament building in Bern. AP / PA Images AP / PA Images / PA Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Switzerland to freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs who he says are helping to wage a war on his country from “beautiful Swiss communities”. 

His video address was broadcast to thousands of people protesting against the invasion of Ukraine in the Swiss capital of Bern. 

During his speech, Zelenskyy thanked Switzerland for its support since the invasion, but said that more could be done financially “in the fight against evil”. 

“As I wanted the Ukrainians to live like the Swiss, I also want you to be and become like the Ukrainians. In the fight against evil. So that there is no question about banks. About your banks. Where the money of all those who started this war is kept,” he said.

“It is necessary to completely freeze all the assets of these people and their accounts. It’s a big fight, and you can do it.

I want you to become Ukrainians who feel what it is like when whole cities are destroyed, peaceful cities. Destroyed on the orders of those who like to live in communities – different, European, in your communities, in beautiful Swiss communities. Who enjoys real estate in your country, and it would be fair to deprive them of this privilege. To deprive of what they are taking from us.

Switzerland, although not a member of the EU, has fully adopted the bloc’s sanctions against Russia, including freezing the wealth of oligarchs held in Swiss banks.

You can watch Zelenskyy’s speech below.

Address by President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa to the people of Switzerland 🇨🇭 ➡️ https://t.co/6ITGwq2FJq pic.twitter.com/IFRqUqi8DL

— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 19, 2022

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has compared the struggle of Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion to British people voting for Brexit.

In his speech to the Conservative Party spring conference in Blackpool, Johnson said it is the “instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom”, with the Brexit vote a “famous recent example”.

The comparison was criticised by Tory peer Gavin Barwell, who pointed out Ukraine is seeking to join the European Union.

In his speech, Johnson said: “I know that it’s the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples.

“When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.”

Apart from the bit where voting in a free and fair referendum isn't in any way comparable with risking your life to defend your country against invasion + the awkward fact the Ukrainians are fighting for the freedom to join the EU, this comparison is bang on https://t.co/j6qhtNvFYO

— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) March 19, 2022

A new satellite image shows the state of destruction of the Mariupol theater that was destroyed by a Russian air strike on 16 March.

The Russian word for “children” can be seen painted in large letters on the ground in front of the entrance.

The basement of the theater was being used by families as a bomb shelter in the besieged city with more than 1,300 people said to have been inside at the time of the attack.

Rescuers are continuing to search for people trapped under the wreckage. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says 130 people have been saved but that “hundreds” are still trapped in rubble

New #satellite imagery from this morning, March 19, 2022, of #Mariupol, #Ukraine, showing the aftermath of the airstrike on the Mariupol Drama Theater. pic.twitter.com/hgPOa9ABBE

— Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) March 19, 2022

That’s all from us today, thanks for joining us. Check The Journal for more news from Ukraine later this evening, and for live updates again from tomorrow morning.