Ukrainian troops storm from Kharkiv to the Russian border. Russia has probably given up the Kessel target in eastern Ukraine. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.

8:02 a.m .: In the western Russian region of Kursk on the border with Ukraine, several buildings have been set on fire and damaged, according to the authorities. “Today, at five o’clock in the morning, the border village of Alexeyevka in the Glushkovo district was shelled with heavy weapons,” Governor Roman Starovoit said on Tuesday. Accordingly, three houses, a school and a vehicle were damaged. There were no injuries.

According to Russian information, it is an attack from Ukraine. The fire was returned by the border guards. There was initially no comment from Ukraine. After the start of the Russian war of aggression at the end of February, Russian areas near the border have also come under fire in recent weeks.

7:14 a.m .: Vladimir Putin is apparently now heavily involved in the combat strategies in the war in Ukraine. Putin makes “operational and tactical decisions that a colonel or a brigadier general would otherwise make,” the British “Guardian” quotes unspecified Western military sources as saying.

The Russian President continues to work closely with General Valery Gerasimov, the commander of the Russian Armed Forces. Recently there had been reports that Gerasimov was wounded and that he had been sidelined. The experts could not confirm these reports, according to the “Guardian”.

A Colonel (US Army) or Brigadier General (British Army) usually commands a brigade composed of several battalions. Putin is said to be involved in the decisions surrounding the current offensive in Donbass. However, the Russians did not manage to achieve decisive breakthroughs there either.

05:37: Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters are still holding out in the besieged Asov steelworks – the last bastion in Mariupol. 260 of them could be evacuated on Monday. They were taken to Russian territory and are said to be able to return to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech: “When the light comes, the darkness is overcome.” Nothing symbolizes this phrase better than this photo of a Ukrainian fighter from the Azov Steelworks.

Zelenskyj continued: “We hope that we can save the lives of our boys. I would like to underline: Ukraine needs its Ukrainian heroes alive. That is our principle.”

5:13 a.m .: The eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum (48,000 inhabitants) is currently one of the most important theaters of war. Currently, the Ukrainian army is continuing its attacks on Russian positions in the region. The Ukrainian general staff recently announced that on Monday they had succeeded in destroying a Russian ammunition depot in Izyum.

Attacks by Ukrainian fighters continue to put pressure on the Russian supply line. In doing so, the Ukrainians are destroying Russian plans for further offensives in the area.

On Monday, Putin’s troops are said to have carried out ground attacks in Lyman, Bakhmut, Kurakhove, Shandrygolove and around the major city of Donetsk. However, these should all have proven to be ineffective.

3:29 a.m .: The Yavoriv military training area near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv is currently used by the United States to train Ukrainian fighters. Recently, the Russian army fired half a dozen rockets at the base. According to information from the US Department of Defense, however, there were no casualties.

On March 13, Russian shelling killed 40 people there. 135 other military personnel were injured.

1:26 a.m .: The area around the city of Lviv in western Ukraine was again the target of an air raid on Monday, according to Ukrainian information. The attack was aimed at a military facility in the Yavoriv district on the border with Poland, local military chief Maxim Kositsky wrote in his news channel on the Telegram chat service. Mayor Andriy Sadoviy stressed that there was no confirmed information about rocket hits in the city and thanked the air defense.

In mid-March, a Russian airstrike hit the military training area in Javoriv, ​​killing 35 people according to Ukrainian sources. In Yavoriv, ​​Ukrainian soldiers had trained with Western instructors in recent years.

11:24 p.m .: After weeks of blockade, a good 260 Ukrainian soldiers have left the Azov steelworks in Mariupol, according to the authorities. Among them were 53 seriously injured, said the Ukrainian general staff on Facebook on Monday. 211 other Ukrainian fighters were also brought to the town of Olenivka, which was occupied by Russian troops. They are said to return later in a prisoner exchange. The seriously injured were transported to the city of Novoazovsk. The evacuation of the other defenders of the Azovstal Steelworks is still in progress.

“Thanks to the Mariupol defenders, we got critically important time to form reserves, redeploy forces and get help from our partners,” Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar wrote on Facebook Azovstal was not possible, the most important thing now is to save the lives of the Mariupol defenders.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized in his daily video address that Ukraine needs its heroes from Mariupol alive. The port city of Mariupol was surrounded shortly after the Russian invasion in February. Russian troops gradually took control, but the last Ukrainian defenders of the city holed up in the huge steelworks with several underground floors.

The Russian troops did not risk any storming attempts, but blocked all accesses. Hundreds of civilians had already been evacuated from the factory premises in the past few days. There were long negotiations about the withdrawal of the soldiers, some of whom were seriously injured, and who had hardly any supplies or water left.

9:04 p.m .: The Kremlin has been claiming for weeks that the flagship “Moskva” sank due to a storm off the Ukrainian coast. Now the Ukrainian army has released audio evidence that they fired at the warship with two R-360 Neptun anti-ship missiles and sank it. This makes the Moskva the largest sunk warship since World War II.

In the audio recording, one of the ship’s crew members can be heard yelling that the “Moskva” was hit twice and has “two holes below the waterline.” In addition, the connection to the bridge was interrupted and the ship was already tilting about 30 degrees to the side. The crew member goes on to say, “There is no way to move. We will try to carry out a crew rescue.”

Moscow has so far reported one dead and 27 missing crew members. According to media reports, the losses are significantly higher. According to the Lithuanian Defense Minister, there were 485 crew members on board, including 66 officers. A total of 54 crew members were rescued by a Turkish ship.

8:01 p.m .: According to Ukrainian sources, several people were killed by Russian shelling of the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk. The Russian troops would bomb the city “incessantly,” said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gajdaj, on Monday in the messenger service Telegram. “At least ten people were killed.”

Because of the ongoing shelling, access to the area and communication are currently significantly more difficult, Gajdaj explained. He urged residents not to leave the shelters.

In an earlier statement, Gaiday warned of artillery attacks on Severodonetsk and the nearby city of Lysychansk. This caused fires in residential areas. “Severodonetsk was hit hard,” he wrote, posting photos of the destruction. “We are still in the process of determining the number of damaged houses.”

The mayor of Severodonetsk, Oleksander Striuk, said about ten days ago that the city was “virtually surrounded” by the armed forces of Moscow and the pro-Russian separatists. According to him, 15,000 of the former 100,000 inhabitants were still in the city.

5:14 p.m .: A Russian attack has hit a warehouse with highly flammable ammonium nitrate in the region around the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine. The governor of the neighboring Donetsk region shared a photo of a cloud of orange smoke over fields on Telegram on Monday, but added that the explosion “poses no danger to the local population”.

The governor further announced that a “Russian shell” hit the camp. The column of smoke above the depot is frightening, but there is no reason to panic. Ammonium nitrate is a highly flammable substance used in the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer – but also as a basis for explosives. The substance repeatedly leads to devastating accidents. In August 2020, ammonium nitrate stored in the Lebanese capital Beirut triggered the devastating explosions that destroyed the port and a significant part of the city.

3.40 p.m .: After days of negotiations, the Russian and Ukrainian military have agreed, according to Moscow, to remove injured fighters from the steelworks in Mariupol. Initially, there was no official confirmation of this in Ukraine. The Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Monday that a ceasefire was in effect and a humanitarian corridor would be opened. The Ukrainian fighters were to receive medical treatment in the pro-Russian separatist-controlled city of Novoazovsk in eastern Ukraine.

The government in Kyiv had always demanded that the injured be transferred to the area controlled by Ukraine or to a third country. Already in the morning, pro-Russian separatists reported that the first Ukrainian fighters had surrendered and left the steelworks with white flags. This was later denied by the Ukrainian side.

11:02 am: Ukraine has reported another missile attack on the Black Sea coastal region of Odessa. According to the US broadcaster CNN, the local military administration announced that “as a result of a missile strike by strategic aircraft in the Odesa region, tourist infrastructure was damaged, buildings were destroyed and a fire broke out”.

Russia continued to shell the badly damaged bridge over the Dniester estuary south of Odessa, officials said. Two people were injured.

10:59 a.m.: Fighting along the front lines continues in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. According to Vadym Denysenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, the key area of ​​the Russian offensive is now the area around Severodonetsk in Luhansk. “The Russians are concentrating their forces there. This is the only place where they can progress. That will be the hottest area in the coming days,” he said on Ukrainian television on Monday. “I hope we’ll be able to fight them back.”

Denysenko added that around Izyum “the Russian attacks are suffocating” and further north “the Russians are retreating and blowing up bridges. Our forces are counterattacking.”

CNN obtained satellite images showing that three bridges west of Russia’s supply lines to Izyum were destroyed last week.

In Mariupol, Russia is continuing its massive artillery and air strikes to block and destroy the units trapped at the Azov Steel Plant in Mariupol, according to the General Staff. Several hundred wounded soldiers are still trapped in the facility.

In his daily video message late Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the government was conducting “very complicated and delicate negotiations to save our people from Mariupol, from Azovstal.”

5:16 a.m .: The Russian army has apparently given up one of the main goals in eastern Ukraine. This is the conclusion reached by the war researchers of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai. Accordingly, Putin’s troops are no longer trying to encircle the Ukrainian fighters in an area from Donetsk to Izyum.

Instead, efforts are focused on capturing the entire Luhansk region, they say. The battle for Severodonetsk is now a priority for the Russians. According to the ISW report, the army is trying to attack there from the north and south. This means that the encirclement would be significantly less than originally planned.

The Russian military leadership has apparently realized that a complete capture of the Donetsk region will not be possible. And that it is difficult to generate progress west of Luhansk either. According to the ISW, Putin’s troops no longer attacked along multiple axes. This is also related to the bitter defeat of the Russians when crossing the Donetsk River near Kreminna.

Also read: Battalion destroyed, hundreds of dead suspected – Ex-General after Russian river debacle: “It’s worse than that”

3:01 a.m .: Ukrainian troops report a symbolic success in their counter-offensive in the eastern Kharkiv region: they have at least advanced to the border with Russia at one point. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense released a video showing a dozen soldiers next to a border post in the national colors of blue and yellow on Monday night. According to the information, they belong to a volunteer brigade from the city of Kharkiv.

The Ukrainian military had already reported in the past few days that they were gradually pushing back Russian troops near Kharkiv. Russia had already withdrawn its troops in northern Ukraine after being stopped in front of the capital Kyiv. Russia is currently concentrating on the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where pro-Russian separatists have controlled some areas with help from Moscow since 2014.

02:34: According to the observers of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Russian troops are converting conquered areas into fortresses. Accordingly, Putin’s fighters are digging trenches and erecting concrete barriers in order to gain permanent control over the regions. Such incidents are reported, for example, in the west of the city of Zaporizhia, in the Mykolayiv region and near the city of Melitopol.

You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.