March 19, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

US officials confirmed to CNN that Russia launched hypersonic missiles against Ukraine last week, the first known use of such missiles in combat.

Here's what we know about the weapon:

Why were they used?

What are hypersonic missiles?

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday told his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “shakes the foundation of international order” and required a stronger response.

The two leaders were meeting in India’s capital New Delhi to improve economic partnerships and strengthen security amid the Ukraine crisis.

Modi did not comment directly on the situation in Ukraine, but acknowledged that geopolitical incidents were “presenting new challenges.”

Both countries are members of Quad — an informal security grouping that includes the United States and Australia as well.

But India is the only country from the group that has not explicitly condemned Russia’s attacks, calling repeatedly instead for “an immediate cessation of violence.”

Japan meanwhile has backed its condemnation of the Russian invasion with sanctions on Russian officials and oligarchs.

During the news conference Saturday, Kishida also announced a $42 billion investment in India over the next five years, adding to Japan’s ongoing support toward infrastructure development in India.

A Ukrainian attack on an airfield in the south of the country last week killed a Russian general, according to the Ukrainian military's General Staff.

Amid heavy fighting between the cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson, Ukrainian forces carried out an attack on the airport at Chornobayivka, just north of Kherson, on Wednesday.

The airport was occupied by Russian forces and served as a forward command post of Russia's 8th Guards Combined Arms Army, according to Ukrainian officials.

Images and video geolocated by CNN showed three helicopters and multiple vehicles on fire at the airport.

Soon after the attack, Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said, "Burning enemy helicopters in Chornobayivka in the Kherson region is a demonstration of what is now happening to the occupying forces."

Ukraine's General Staff later said, "according to preliminary data" Russian Lieutenant-General Andrei Mordvichev, commander of the 8th Guards, had been killed.

CNN cannot independently verify the Ukrainian claim. Ukraine says that five Russian generals have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in “total panic” over the idea of a revolution in Moscow, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a Conservative Party conference in Blackpool Saturday.

Johnson said Putin was “frightened” of Ukraine because of the country’s free press, free elections, democracy and open markets, and feared the Ukrainian model’s “implicit reproach to himself.”

Artem Datsishin, a ballet dancer with Ukraine's National Opera House, has died after being injured in Russian shelling, according to social media posts from his friends and colleagues. 

Tatiana Borovik, who said on social media that she is a friend and colleague of Datsishin said he was injured on Feb. 26 in the Russian attack and later died in hospital.

"Farewell my dear man !! I can't express my heartache that is overwhelming me! May your memory be bright!!" she wrote on Facebook Thursday. 

CNN could not confirm the circumstances of Datsishin’s death.  

Datsishin was a "beautiful artist, a long-term soloist of the ballet corps" and "a wonderful man," Anatoly Solovyanenko, stage director at the National Opera of Ukraine said in a Facebook post Thursday. 

Alina Cojocaru, a former Royal Ballet dancer from Romania, told CNN affiliate ITN that she was dance partners with Datsishin when she was training in Ukraine. 

On Saturday, former Royal Ballet stars Alina Cojocaru and Ivan Putrov will reunite and be joined by several other international dance starts for a fundraising gala called "Dance for Ukraine" at the London Coliseum. 

While Ukraine’s army reported little in the way of offensive operations by Russian forces around Kyiv and in parts of the south on Saturday, further east fighting continued to rage.

Two children were killed in the town of Rubizhne after being pulled from the rubble of a residential building pummeled by Russian artillery fire, the emergency services said. 

A woman also died in the same building collapse; her daughter survived and was in a stable condition.

Some context: Rubizhne is part of a cluster of small towns and villages that remain in Ukrainian hands but lie close to two breakaway pro-Russian statelets inside eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army’s most recent assessment of the war makes clear they are seen as a current focus of Russia’s campaign in the east — to link the two strongholds around Luhansk and Donetsk with territorial gains made to the northwest in the region around Kharkiv.

Saturday’s daily update from the army’s central command — released in the early afternoon — reported a series of Russian offensives with “the main efforts focused on attempts to capture Severodonetsk, Rubizhne and Popasna.”

Further deaths and destruction: On Friday, four people were killed and ten others injured as Russian artillery opened up across a series of communities in the region, local Ukrainian authorities said. 

Regional head Serhii Haidai said a total of 54 buildings had been hit, including 19 apartment blocks and two health care centers.

Some 23 towns and villages were without gas supplies and 26 were without electricity by the day’s end.

Many of those wounded in recent days were among 700 people evacuated through a humanitarian corridor on Saturday, Haidai reported. 

In the early morning hours on Sunday in Ukraine, these are the latest developments in the war:

Mariupol residents forced to go to Russia against their will: Residents of Mariupol are being taken to Russian territory against their will by Russian forces, according to a statement from the Mariupol City Council.

Captured Mariupol residents were taken to camps where Russian forces checked their phones and documents, the city council said. They were then redirected to remote Russian cities.

The besieged city is under almost constant bombardment, according to a major in Ukraine's army, and residents are rationing food and water as bodies are left in the streets.

More than 6,600 people evacuated via humanitarian corridors: At least 6,623 people were evacuated via humanitarian corridors from besieged Ukrainian cities on Saturday, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in President Volodymyr Zelensky's office.

Tymoshenko said 4,128 people, including 1,172 children, were evacuated from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia.

Russia hopes military operation in Ukraine ends with security guarantees: Russia hopes its military operation in Ukraine will end with a “comprehensive agreement” on security issues and Ukraine agreeing to neutral status, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday.

Russia hopes its military operation in Ukraine will end with a “comprehensive agreement” on security issues and Ukraine agreeing to neutral status, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a Saturday media event. 

Lavrov said Moscow is “ready” to look for guarantees of security and “to coordinate them for Ukraine, for the Europeans and, of course, for ourselves beyond the expansion of the North-Atlantic treaty.”

Lavrov believes Russia’s cooperation with China will “get stronger” in the face of western sanctions because "at a time when the west is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, we -- as two great powers -- need to think how to carry on in this world."

The view was echoed at a separate event in Beijing on Saturday. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said Western sanctions against Russia were getting "more and more outrageous," according to Reuters.

Although China has expressed concern about the war in Ukraine, Beijing has fallen short of condemning the Russian invasion. Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden during a video call Friday, “the Ukraine crisis is something we don't want to see.”

A mother covered her one-month-old baby with her body while their home was being shelled in Kyiv, according to a Facebook post from National Children's Specialized Hospital Ohmatdit on Friday.

The child was unharmed, but the mother sustained multiple injuries, the post said.

The child's mother and father were at home feeding their baby in the early morning hours when their building was shelled. They heard the sounds of shelling throughout the night getting closer and closer, the hospital said.

The father was treated for scraping wounds to his leg and the mother underwent surgery for her injuries.  

A picture of the family in the hospital shows the mother feeding her baby with a large bandage around her head while the father looks on.

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