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Security shifts on 27 March 2023
Summary
A retrospective on a day of missile fire in Donetsk Oblast, a NATO vote in Budapest and the aftermath of a nuclear announcement.
What did 27 March 2023 reveal about the security picture in Ukraine and its neighbourhood? Three developments, one on the front line and two political, set the tone.
In Donetsk Oblast, a Russian missile strike on Sloviansk killed at least two civilians and injured 29 others. It was one more attack on civilians in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In Budapest, the National Assembly of Hungary voted 182–6 to approve Finland's accession to NATO. The vote left Turkey as the only NATO member yet to ratify Finland's membership in the military alliance.
The nuclear announcement two days earlier
The day also came in the shadow of an announcement made on 25 March 2023. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July, and that Russian forces would operate the nuclear missiles. As reported at the time, it would be the first deployment of Russian nuclear weapons abroad since 1996.
Taken together, the reports from those days placed missile strikes on Ukrainian towns alongside a step towards completing Finland's NATO accession and a declared plan to move Russian nuclear weapons into Belarus.
