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What 15 March 2022 showed about the widening war
Summary
A retrospective on a day of curfew in Kyiv, fighting in the south and around the capital, and escalating sanctions.
What did the war look like on 15 March 2022, three weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine? It looked like a conflict pressing on several fronts at once, with civilians, journalists and diplomats all caught up in it.
Kyiv under curfew
The Kyiv city government and the Kyiv Oblast administration imposed a 35-hour curfew starting at 20:00 local time on 15 March. The measure came during the battle for the capital and its surrounding districts. That battle, which included the fight for Hostomel Airport, had begun on 24 February 2022. It later ended with the withdrawal of Russian forces on 2 April 2022.
The fighting near the capital also had a cost for the press. Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed in Horenka, Kyiv Oblast, while covering clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces. War correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured.
South and east
In the south, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had taken full control of Kherson Oblast. It also claimed to have destroyed six Ukrainian Air Force jets, seven helicopters and 13 UAVs in the previous 24 hours. Satellite images from Planet Labs appeared to show several Russian helicopters burning at Kherson International Airport after Ukrainian forces said they had struck it. This was the second major Ukrainian attack on the airport since it fell to Russian forces on 2 March.
In Mariupol, Russian troops stormed the regional intensive care hospital and took around 400 people hostage, according to local authorities, who confirmed the damaged building was under Russian control. Meanwhile, around 2,000 private cars had left the city since a humanitarian corridor was imposed, with another 2,000 waiting to leave.
The human toll
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that over three million people had fled Ukraine since the invasion began. The figure gave a measure of the displacement three weeks in.
Sanctions and counter-sanctions
The diplomatic and economic response moved on several tracks. The United States imposed additional sanctions on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Spanish police seized a superyacht at the Port of Barcelona owned by Russian oligarch Sergey Chemezov, after the European Union had sanctioned him.
In the United States Senate, a bipartisan resolution declaring Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal passed unanimously. It also called for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Moscow answered with its own measures. Russia sanctioned U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, CIA Director William Burns and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in response to U.S. sanctions on Russian officials. It also sanctioned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, General Wayne Eyre and most members of the Canadian parliament, banning all of them from entering Russia.
Reading the day
Taken together, the reports from 15 March 2022 show a war with no single front. Kyiv was being defended under a curfew while the south saw contested airfields and Russian claims of full control. Mariupol faced a hospital seizure alongside a partial evacuation by road. Beyond Ukraine, the pattern of sanction and counter-sanction deepened, with Western governments targeting Russian and Belarusian figures and Russia targeting Western leaders and legislators in return.
