Kharkiv strike capped a week of attacks

What did the security picture look like on 20 March 2024? In Kharkiv, a Russian missile strike on an industrial area killed at least five people and injured eight others. It was the latest in a run of incidents across the region in the days beforehand.

A pattern of strikes on cities

Five days earlier, on 15 March 2024, a Russian double tap missile strike on Odesa killed at least 20 people and injured at least 73 others. Together with the Kharkiv attack, it showed missile strikes reaching two major Ukrainian cities within the same week.

Fire across the border

The violence was not confined to Ukrainian territory. On 16 March 2024, Russia said that two civilians had been killed by Ukrainian shelling in the city of Belgorod. That was the Russian account of the incident.

Nuclear plant and Transnistria

On 14 March 2024, Russian-installed officials at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar said shelling had hit critical infrastructure at the plant. They described such attacks as unacceptable. The plant lies in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which Russian forces entered from Crimea after the invasion launched on 24 February 2022. Russia declared the annexation of its Russian-controlled parts on 30 September 2022, and until then ran them through a military-civilian administration.

Further west, a drone reportedly hit a military base in Transnistria on 17 March 2024, destroying an Mi-8 helicopter. The report placed the war's effects close to a separate unresolved conflict zone.

What the week showed

Taken together, the events of 14 to 20 March 2024 covered several fronts of risk: urban missile strikes in Kharkiv and Odesa, cross-border shelling reported from Belgorod, a damaged installation at Europe's largest nuclear plant as described by its Russian-installed officials, and a reported drone incident in Transnistria. The Kharkiv strike on 20 March 2024 added to a toll of civilian casualties that had already been heavy in Odesa days earlier.