Editor’s Note
This article details the expansion of U.S. sanctions on April 8, 2022, targeting key Russian industrial sectors in response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Russia’s largest military shipbuilding and diamond mining firms were targeted by the United States on April 8, 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with troops crossing the border from Belarus and Russia. Moscow’s forces have since been met with “stiff resistance” from Ukrainians, according to U.S. officials.
Russian forces retreated last week from the Kyiv suburbs, leaving behind a trail of destruction. After graphic images emerged of civilians lying dead in the streets of Bucha, U.S. and European officials accused Russian troops of committing war crimes.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “largely stalled on all fronts,” the U.K. Ministry of Defence said on March 17, 2022.
The Ukrainian resistance “remains staunch and well-coordinated,” the update said. “The vast majority of Ukrainian territory, including all major cities, remain in Ukrainian hands.”
A Ukrainian official claimed on March 16, 2022, that Russian airstrikes destroyed a theater in the besieged city of Mariupol where civilians were taking shelter.
The number of victims from the bombing of the Donetsk Regional Theatre of Drama “is impossible to count,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk Region administration, said in a Facebook post.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during an address that hundreds of people were hiding in the theater and that the death toll is still unknown.
In his latest national address on March 28, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are “ongoing.”
Zelenskyy said he addressed both the U.S. and all the relevant states in regard to creating a new union he called U-24. He said that the new alliance will ensure that aggressors receive a coordinated response from the world.
