March 21, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

US Ambassador John Sullivan met with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday and “demanded that the government of Russia follow international law and basic human decency to allow consular access to all US citizen detainees in Russia, including those in pre-trial detention," according to the US Embassy in Moscow.

The demand comes as WNBA player Brittney Griner and former US Marines Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed are being detained in Russia.

State Department principal deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter said Friday that the US Embassy in Moscow "continues to press, thus far unsuccessfully still, for consular access … for all detainees and that includes Ms. Griner.”

“We’re deeply concerned about our inability to access any of these US citizens in recent months,” Porter said.

CNN has reached out to the State Department and US Embassy about the Russian MFA’s account of the meeting.

Russian forces are beginning to have “inventory issues with precision-guided munitions,” a senior US defense official told reporters on Monday. Precision-guided munitions refer to missiles that target a specific location, as opposed to “dumb bombs,” which do not have the technology to focus on a specific target.

The inventory issues around their precision-guided munitions supply are why “you’re seeing the increasing use of what we would call dumb bombs,” the official added. 

Some of their precision-guided munitions are “failing to launch, or they’re failing to hit the target, or they’re failing to explode on contact,” the official said.

They have used “quite a bit” of their “cruise missile, air launch cruise missile” supplies and have seen a significant “number of failures” of those munitions, the official said. 

CNN previously reported Russia has relied far more heavily on less sophisticated, so-called "dumb" bombs than it has on its arsenal of precision-guided munitions in its punishing war on Ukraine. 

A senior NATO intelligence official said on Monday that signs are pointing to a stalemate emerging in Russia’s war on Ukraine, with Russian ground forces remaining stalled and Russian combat aircraft unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine.

“If we are not in a stalemate already, we are rapidly approaching one,” the official told reporters during a briefing at NATO headquarters. “And it's quite a thing to say when you consider the disparity in strength when this fight began.” 

“You don't get to this point if you didn't make a series of mistakes,” the official added.

The official noted a stalemate is particularly dangerous, however, given how Russia has resorted to using less precise, more brutal weaponry against civilian targets since its campaign stalled. 

Russia is not backing down either, despite their losses, the official said. In the last few days Russian forces have continued to assemble reinforcements and attempt to improve the logistical support in both Kyiv and the southern operational directions, the official said. The Belarusian government, meanwhile, is “preparing the environment to justify a Belarussian offensive against Ukraine,” the official added. Ukrainian officials have been warning publicly that Belarus might join the war.

It remains NATO’s assessment that Russia’s top goal is still to capture the Ukrainian capital and force a change of government there, as well as force Ukraine to adopt a neutral position with NATO and demilitarize. “I don’t think [Putin] has backed off any of his goals,” the official said. 

Boris Romanchenko, 96, survived four Nazi concentration camps, but his life was ended last Friday by a Russian strike on Kharkiv, according to the Buchenwald memorial institute.

The institute said in a series of tweets that according to his grand-daughter, Romanchenko was living in an apartment block in Kharkiv that was hit during a Russian attack.

The group said Romanchenko had survived the concentration camps at Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen during World War II. It said it was "stunned" by news of his death.

Romanchenko worked "intensively on the memory of Nazi crimes and was vice-president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee," the institute said.

In 2012, Romanchenko attended an event recalling the liberation of Buchenwald, where he read an oath devoted to "creating a new world where peace and freedom reign,” the memorial said.

In 2018, a Kharkiv newspaper reported on his visit to Buchenwald on the 73rd anniversary of the camp’s liberation by US forces, saying, “The event was attended by the last surviving Buchenwald prisoners from Ukraine and Belarus — Borys Romanchenko from Kharkiv, Oleksandr Bychok from Kyiv and Andriy Moiseenko from Minsk.”

A new curfew will go into effect in Kyiv starting Monday at 8 p.m. local time. Meanwhile, shelling has continued in the capital this morning and at least eight people were reported killed in an attack on a shopping center.

Here are more headlines from today in the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

The US has seen increased Russian naval activity in the northern Black Sea, according to a senior US defense official.

The official said that the US believes some of the shelling around the Ukrainian city of Odesa has been coming from these warships, but that there is still not an indication of an imminent amphibious assault against Odesa.

Russia has more than a dozen warships in the northern Black Sea, including amphibious ships, surface combatants, a minesweeper, and patrol boats, according to the official.

Some more context: The Defense Department assesses that the Russians are “near desperate” to gain any momentum in their invasion, which is why they are increasing their long-range missile and artillery bombardments that have made the war even more dangerous for civilians.

The official noted that Russian forces “haven’t achieved anything” of what the US assesses to be their objective of controlling population centers, having only taken Melitopol, Berdyansk and Kherson since the start of the invasion, and having not taken Kharkiv or Mariupol and having not made any progress towards Kyiv since last week.

However, the long-range bombardments have only hardened the Ukrainian resistance, increasing the frustration of the Russian forces, according to the official.

It is also possible that Russia is trying to gain momentum simply to increase their leverage in negotiations with Ukraine, because they do not appear to have a lot of leverage now, the official said.

At least 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Ukraine following Russia's invasion less than a month ago, the head of the United Nations' refugee agency said Sunday.

That figure accounts for almost a quarter of the country's population, which was calculated at 44 million by the World Bank in 2020.

Of those who have left their homes, the majority — 6.48 million as of March 16, according to figures provided by the International Organization for Migration on Friday — have been internally displaced since the conflict began on Feb. 24.

Others have sought refuge in neighboring countries, including Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia and Belarus.

In the first three weeks of the conflict, two million people arrived in Poland from Ukraine, according to the UN, while more than a million went to other neighboring countries.

Raouf Mazou, the UNHCR assistant commissioner, said last week that he estimated 490,000 Ukrainians had fled to Romania, 350,000 to Moldova, 280,000 to Hungary, and 228,000 to Slovakia.

Read more about this here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling out Nestlé for the Swiss company’s continued relationship with Russia.

Nestlé, the world’s largest food-and-beverage company and the maker of Gerber, KitKat and Dreyer’s ice cream, defended itself by pointing out that it has made sweeping changes since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Nestlé employs more than 7,000 people in Russia, most of whom are locals, the company has previously said.

“The fact that we, like other food companies, supply the population with important food does not mean that we simply continue as before,” Nestlé said. “We are still one of the few active food companies in Ukraine and sometimes even manage to distribute food in Kharkiv.”

The Swiss company announced on March 11 that it suspended exports of its products out of Russia except for essential foods like baby food. Nestlé also said it stopped importing Nespresso and other products into Russia, except for essential foods such as baby food, cereal, tailored nutrition and therapeutic pet foods.

Nestlé said at the time it is “shocked and deeply saddened by the invasion of Ukraine” and the company stands with the international community in calling for peace and the restoration of security and stability.  

Last week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal criticized Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider for the company’s continued presence in Russia.

“Unfortunately, he shows no understanding,” Shmyhal wrote on Twitter after saying he spoke to the Nestlé CEO. “Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenseless children & mothers. Hope that Nestlé will change its mind soon.”

The European Union will increase financial aid and delivery of weapons to Ukraine, German Finance Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday ahead of a special Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.

"We will increase financial means for the purchase of military goods to 1 billion euros, in order to make clear, we stand with full solidarity on Ukraine's side, we stand for the protection of the civil population in Ukraine," Baerbock told journalists.

Germany will also ensure that weapons sales from German producers will be carried out as quickly as possible. "Ukraine needs further weapons," she said, without providing any further details due to security concerns.

"This is about life and death, we are in the middle of a war and therefore absolute caution is needed about stating which weapons are to be delivered and where," Baerbock added.

"We are experiencing the Russian government continuing to escalate its rhetoric with regard to nuclear weapons as well as NATO territory," she said. 

Baerbock also pointed out that the alliance must prevent the war spreading to other countries. "We have a responsibility towards Ukrainians, but we also have a responsibility towards 450 million Europeans and those that are NATO members," she added. "We cannot take the responsibility that there will be more acts of war in other countries."

"We work on consequently closing sanction loopholes," she said. "Those who benefit from this war“ must be sanctioned, including their family members, Baerbock said.