Latest Developments in Ukraine: March 12

10:30 a.m.:

9:42 a.m.: Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday that its forces continued to conduct military operations in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, claiming to have killed more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen over the past 24 hours, Reuters reported.

"In the Donetsk direction... more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle, 3 armored fighting vehicles, 7 vehicles, as well as a D-30 howitzer were destroyed during the day," the defense ministry said.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the defense ministry's claim.

8:55 a.m.: After fleeing his native region of Kherson, Ukrainian chef Pavlo Servetnyk ended up in New York. Now he's bringing a taste of his homeland to the Big Apple in his new life as a chef at a Ukrainian restaurant in the United States. During Russian occupation, he helped feed the people of Kherson with free bread from his bakery. Servetnyk claims Russian forces did not appreciate his humanitarian efforts and came looking for him. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.

8:06 a.m.: Oil giant Saudi Aramco says it earned $161 billion last year, claiming the highest-ever recorded annual profit by a publicly listed company and drawing immediate criticism from activists, The Associated Press reported.

The monster profit by the firm, known formally as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., came off the back of energy prices rising after Russia launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

Sanctions have limited the sale of Moscow’s oil and natural gas in Western markets. That profit, however, comes amid growing international concerns over the burning of fossil fuels accelerating climate change. Amnesty International criticized Aramco's profit due to that.

7:15 a.m.: Moldovan police say they have foiled a plot by groups of Russia-backed actors who were specially trained to cause mass unrest during a protest the same day in the capital against the country’s new pro-Western government, The Associated Press reported.

The head of Moldova’s police said at a news conference on Sunday that an undercover agent had infiltrated groups of “diversionists.”

The police official said that some had Russian citizenship and were promised $10,000 to organize “mass disorder” to destabilize Moldova during a protest held in the capital. Seven people were detained.

Several bomb threats Sunday were also reported.

6:36 a.m.: The Ukrainian military asserted on March 12 that the Russian side lost more than 1,000 troops in 24 hours as Moscow's push for the eastern city of Bakhmut continued, and Kyiv said it was determined to defend Bakhmut in part to help prepare for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

The fight for Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, has been one of the most sustained battles of Russia's year-old invasion of Ukraine despite its questionable strategic — as opposed to symbolic — worth in the eyes of many Western military observers.

6 a.m.: In early November, the administration of the Volga River city of Ulyanovsk, some 700 kilometers southeast of Moscow, announced that local middle school No. 52 had been named in honor of Major Aleksandr Shishkov, a 34-year-old graduate of the school who died on May 21, 2022, of injuries suffered in the war in Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

According to the report from the mayor’s office, Shishkov’s mother, after laying flowers at a memorial plaque honoring her son by the entrance to the school at a ceremony on October 22, said the soldiers under her son’s command “unanimously” considered him “a commander from God.” He was posthumously decorated as a Hero of Russia by presidential decree.

It was one of thousands of similar government initiatives aimed at boosting support for authoritarian President Vladimir Putin and his unprovoked, massive invasion of neighboring Ukraine at the grassroots level. But the Ulyanovsk decision dismayed many of the school’s former teachers and students, who had long associated school No. 52 with educator Radi Sharkayev, who served as its director for more than five decades.

5:22 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has left the Russian elite largely unscathed.

A Feb. 21 photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state of the nation speech shows the front two rows of the audience filled with Russian senior officials. "None of these are known to have children serving in the military," the update noted.

In many Eastern regions, however, it's a different story. There, deaths are running at a rate more than 30 times higher than in Moscow. And in some places ethnic minorities make up as much as 75% of the casualties.

4:01 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said in its latest Ukraine assessment that Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he would transform the Wagner Group into a hardline ideological elite parallel military organization after the Battle of Bakhmut.

Meanwhile, Russian forces continue to establish fortifications in Zaporizhia Oblast and Russian mobilized soldiers continue to publicize complaints that commanders treat them poorly and used them as expendable manpower.

2:07 a.m.: Ukraine's foreign minister urged Germany to speed up supplies of ammunition and to start training Ukrainian pilots on Western fighter jets.

Dmytro Kuleba told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published on Sunday that ammunition shortages were the "number one" problem in Ukraine's attempt to repel Russia's invasion.

He said German weapons manufacturers had told him at the Munich Security Conference last month they were ready to deliver but were waiting for the government to sign contracts.

"So the problem lies with the government," Kuleba was quoted as saying, according to Reuters.

Kuleba made clear he did not expect Western allies to give Ukraine the fighter jets it has been asking for any time soon.

But he said Ukrainian pilots should be trained anyway, so they would be ready once that decision was taken, the paper wrote.

If Germany were to train Ukrainian pilots, that would be a "clear message of its political engagement," he said.

1:06 a.m.: The Kyiv Independent reported that two children in Zaporizhzhia Oblast were hurt Saturday when the antitank grenade they were playing with exploded.

The boys, 3 and 11, found the object on the street and brought it home, where it detonated as they played with it.

12:02 a.m.: The first time that Vitaly Votanovsky was contacted to find out the fate of someone fighting in Ukraine for the notorious Wagner mercenary company was in November 2022.

He received a Telegram message from the aunt of 22-year-old Andrei Kargin saying that she hadn’t heard from her nephew for months since he deployed to Ukraine as part of the Russian group, and she was beginning to wonder what fate he had met.

She had filled out all the necessary paperwork to be contacted in the event of his death, but had received no word from Wagner.

Since then, Votanovsky has been contacted by numerous families about the fate of their relatives fighting as mercenaries for Wagner in Ukraine.

Since he began began tracking the graves of those killed in Ukraine, he’s found relatives for families across southern Russia and even as far away as Belarus and Kazakhstan. In most cases, the families had not been informed of the deaths and only discovered that their relatives were no longer alive after someone came across one of Votanovsky’s photos on his Telegram channel.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has his story.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.