March 24, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

President Joe Biden said Friday he’s not alarmed following the high-profile meetings earlier this week between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Instead, Biden said “we’re the ones expanding the alliances.”   

The president noted that while US officials have recently warned of signs that China could be considering increasing its military support for Russia, “they haven’t yet.”  

“Doesn't mean they won't, but they haven't yet,” Biden said. “And if anything's happened, the West has coalesced significantly more.” 

Biden went on to cite increased cooperation across alliances, including through the G7, the Quad Alliance, ASEAN and AUKUS. He added he has now met with 80% of the world's leaders.

A bipartisan group of senators want the Biden administration to continue to support international investigations into alleged Russian war crimes, they wrote in a letter to US President Joe Biden.

The lawmakers said they "welcome the significant assistance" the administration has provided to document potential crimes during Russia's war in Ukraine, the letter read.

However, the letter said they acknowledge the role of the International Criminal Court in investigating such incidents and urged the Biden administration to support the ICC and to share evidence with prosecutors.

Having international investigations move forward are important so that "Putin and others around him know in no uncertain terms that accountability and justice for their crimes are forthcoming," the senators wrote in the letter.

Read the full text of the letter here.

For context:

Last week, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

The day before the announcement of the warrant, the United Nations found in a report that Russia has “committed a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” in Ukraine.

The report claims that the war crimes perpetrated by the Russians included “attacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, wilful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as unlawful transfers and deportations of children.”

The commander in chief of Ukraine’s military emphasized the difficulty of the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut during a call Friday with the head of the British Armed Forces.

Ukrainian Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi shared a Telegram post outlining his conversation with Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff Adm. Sir Tony Radakin.

Zaluzhnyi thanked Radakin, the United Kingdom and other allies for their support.

“Thanks to the help of our partners, we are holding on and will definitely win,” he said.

The battle for Bakhmut: The besieged city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region has been a focal point of the frontline fighting between Russia and Ukraine for months.

One of Kyiv's top generals this week said that Russian forces are depleted in Bakhmut, and a Ukrainian counteroffensive could soon be launched. It raised the prospect of an unlikely turnaround for Ukraine.

While experts say that capturing Bakhmut is unlikely to dramatically alter the overall picture of the war in eastern Ukraine — where little territory has changed hands in 2023 — it would hand Russia a symbolic victory and mark the first Ukrainian city it has captured in eight months.

Ukraine can rely on the United States and Canada as partners, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in an address to parliament in Ottawa alongside US President Joe Biden on Friday. 

Trudeau said like the US, Canada has provided “significant military support” to Ukraine, such as artillery, ammunition, armor and tanks. He said the Canadian armed forces have been training Ukrainian military members since 2015.

The prime minister pointed to sanctions and other economic measures put in place by the US, Canada and other allies "to continue to deplete the Kremlin's war chest.”

Trudeau called Biden a ‘’true friend to Canada,” saying that the alliance “matters more than ever in this consequential moment.”

Biden calls out Putin: Addressing parliament after Trudeau, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to meet his goals with the Ukraine invasion.

"Guess what? His lust for land and power has failed thus far," the US leader said of Putin. "The Ukrainian people's love of their country is going to prevail."

Biden echoed Trudeau's remarks about the US and Canada standing in support of Ukraine.

"Let's once more affirm that we're going keep that torch of liberty burning brightly and support the Ukrainian people," Biden said.

The president also said Moscow has failed to shake the resolve of the NATO alliance.

"Putin was certain he would have been able to break NATO by now," Biden told the assembled lawmakers.

But, he said, the US and Canada will "keep our alliance strong and united, and we'll defend every inch of NATO territory. An attack against one is an attack against all."

The United Nations has documented hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions by both Ukrainian and Russian forces since the beginning of the invasion, according to the Head of the UN Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

The UN has documented more than 600 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions carried out by Russian forces, and 91 by Ukrainian forces, since the war began on February 24 of last year up until the end of January 2023.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued Friday its latest report, which cataloged cases of civilian casualties, torture, rape, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention.

Ukraine repelled 38 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours, the country’s military said in a situation update on Friday evening. 

Russia is focusing its efforts in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Maryinka and Shakhtarsk areas, the military’s general staff said, adding that's where Ukrainian forces repelled more than three dozen attacks.

The general staff said Moscow’s armies were still putting pressure on the eastern city of Bakhmut, but it remained under Ukrainian control. 

“In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy continues to assault the city of Bakhmut, which is held by our defenders, as well as in the areas of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bohdanivka, Ivanivske and Stupochky in the Donetsk region,” it said. 

Russian forces are depleted in Bakhmut and a Ukrainian counteroffensive could soon be launched, one of Kyiv’s top generals has said, raising the prospect of an unlikely turnaround in the besieged city.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s land forces, said on his Telegram channel Thursday that “[Russians] are losing significant forces [in Bakhmut] and are running out of energy.”

His comments come days after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise trip to the front lines of the Donetsk region, and will raise hopes in the West that Kyiv’s contentious decision to keep troops in Bakhmut will pay dividends.

A counteroffensive has seemed an unlikely prospect for several weeks, as forces from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group bombarded Bakhmut and edged closer toward seizing control of the city.

But that effort has come at a considerable cost to manpower and resources, and now appears to have slowed.

Russian troops have launched more than 200 strikes on the area in the past 24 hours alone but are losing hundreds of men each day in their efforts, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, Serhii Cherevatyi, said later on Thursday. CNN is unable to verify those figures.

Cherevatyi said another area that was seeing intense fire was to the northeast of Bakhmut, on the front line running north from the town of Kreminna.

He added that Russian forces in the area are “making several dozen attacks every day. There were 32 firefights over the last day,” in and around Bakhmut. There were also air strikes launched by both fixed-wing planes and attack helicopters, he said, but added that “artillery is a much bigger factor of influence on military operations there than aviation.”

Read more here.

In its latest financial and diplomatic sanctions, the US is going after companies and individuals involved in the crackdown against Belarus' pro-democracy movement and the existing regime's involvement in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Biden administration on Friday sanctioned Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's personal "luxury airliner."

Lukansheko's regime "relies on state-owned enterprises and key officials to generate substantial revenue that enables oppressive acts against the Belarusian people,” Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson, a top US sanctions official, said in a statement

The US remains "committed to imposing costs" on Lukashenko's regime for its suppression of democracy and support for Putin’s war, the statement added.

Here are other individuals and entities facing sanctions:

More on the Belarus-Russia relationship: Lukashenko is a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin who permitted Russian troops to use Belarus to stage their initial invasion into Ukraine last year. The US and its allies have since then targeted Minsk with a set of sweeping sanctions. Additionally, the European Union does not recognize the results of the 2020 Belarus election and the US has called it a "fraudulent." The widespread fraud sparked mass pro-democracy protests which led to a brutal crackdown from the government. 

Russia’s Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova said on Friday that 56 Ukrainian children who are now in Crimea and Krasnodar Krai are awaiting reunification with their families.

"Currently 56 children remain in the health resorts of the Krasnodar Krai and Crimea. They are safe and in touch with their families. There is an action plan for each child so that they are reunited with family," said Lvova-Belova in a statement on her Telegram channel.

Remember: Last Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia. The ICC said that Lvova-Belova was “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation.”

Lvova-Belova dismissed the ICC’s arrest warrant against her, saying it was “great” that the international community appreciated her work for children, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

According to Lvova-Belova, to date 33 Ukrainian children have returned to their parents in Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The children were brought home by their parents or a trusted representative.

"It was not possible to immediately ensure a safe return trip for everyone, since the front line has changed significantly, [and] parents and children found themselves on different sides," she added.

Lvova-Belova said that since October last year, the Russian authorities have been "consistently assisting in the reunification of children who arrived on vacation" from areas of conflict; and from this group, more than 2,000 children have already returned to their families.

CNN's Rob Picheta and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this post.