Ukrainian and Russian forces launched air strikes on each other’s territory overnight on March 15-16, causing damage, death, and injuries, even as US and European leaders continued their drives for a cease-fire in the war that drags deeper into its fourth year.
Moscow’s forces also continued their drive on the battlefield to push Ukrainian forces out of Russia’s Kursk region, although Kyiv denied its troops have been encircled there.
Also inside Russia, Belgorod regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said three people were injured when Ukrainian drones hit a private home in the town of Gubkin, igniting a fire at the site.
Reports of attacks and casualties cannot immediately be confirmed because of the nature of the violence at sites on both sides of the border.
Voronezh Governor Aleksandr Gusev in Russia’s southwest said air defense units in three districts had destroyed more than 15 Ukrainian drones. He added that there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Authorities in Russia’s Rostov region also reported Ukrainian drone strikes, although details were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, reported that “in Nikopol, the Russians killed a 70-year-old woman by shelling the city with heavy artillery. She died on the spot.”
In Chernihiv, local authorities said Russian drones had hit a five-story building, destroying the top two floors. Casualty figures were not immediately available, with officials saying rescue services were at the site.
Ukrainian media also reported a number of explosions were seen near the capital, Kyiv, after authorities issued a warning of possible drone attacks in the region.
The deaths, injuries, and damages came as British Prime Minister Keir pledged on March 15 that a “willing” coalition of Western countries will draft plans to protect Ukraine if a cease-fire deal is reached.
At a news conference after a virtual meeting with leaders from 25 other countries and entities on March 15, Starmer said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Yes, but” response to the US cease-fire proposal is “not enough.”
“If Putin is serious about peace, it’s very simple: He has to stop his barbaric attacks on Ukraine and agree to a cease-fire,” Starmer said on the video call, which included leaders of European nations as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but not the United States.
Participants also included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
“We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table,” Starmer told reporters.
As Russia, the United States, and Ukraine wrangle over US President Donald Trump’s proposal for an immediate 30-day cease-fire, Starmer said Western states must maintain pressure on Moscow and be prepared to “defend” any peace deal.
“We will build up Ukraine’s own defenses and armed forces and be ready to deploy as a ‘coalition of the willing’ in the event of a peace deal, to help secure Ukraine on the land, at sea and in the sky,” he said in a statement after the meeting.
“My feeling is that sooner or later, he’s going to have to come to the table and engage in serious discussion,” Starmer said of Putin. But, he added, “we can’t sit back and simply wait for that to happen. We have to keep pushing ahead, pushing forward, and preparing for peace and a peace that will be secure and that will last.”
Starmer said militaries of the “coalition of the willing” would meet in Britain on March 20 “to put strong and robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security.”
Britain, France, and other countries have said they could send peacekeepers to Ukraine if a cease-fire agreement is reached.
Starmer has called on Washington to offer a security “backstop” to those forces in an effort to deter further Russian attacks, and he said US support is crucial: “I’ve been clear that it needs to be done in conjunction with the United States.”
“We are talking to the US on a daily basis,” Starmer said, adding his national-security adviser had returned from the United States on March 15.
“If Russia finally comes to the table, then we must be ready to monitor a cease-fire to ensure it is a serious and enduring peace,” Starmer said in the statement. “If they don’t, then we need to strain every sinew to ramp up economic pressure on Russia to secure an end to this war.”
After the video call, Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s Western backers to set out “a clear position on security guarantees,” including a potential force to be deployed.
“Peace will be more reliable with European contingents on the ground and the American side as a backstop,” he wrote on X.
Following a discussion with Starmer on March 14, French President Emmanuel Macron also said Russia must accept the cease-fire proposal.
Macron’s office said he would host new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Paris for a meeting on March 17, Carney’s first foreign trip since taking office on March 14. Carney also plans to visit Britain during the week.
Ukraine agreed to the cease-fire proposal at a March 11 meeting between senior US and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia, and a special envoy for Trump, Steve Witkoff, subsequently discussed it with Putin in Moscow.
On March 13, Putin said Russia agrees with the idea of a cease-fire but added that “there are nuances” and that it “should lead to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of this crisis.”
He said questions that must be addressed include what happens in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been losing ground in recent weeks after a surprise incursion last August, and who might monitor the cease-fire. Russia has said the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable, casting a shadow over Western plans for a potential deployment.
In addition, Putin’s mention of “root causes” suggested Russia may seek to secure agreement on several long-standing demands such as a Ukrainian commitment to neutrality, limits on the size and strength of Ukraine’s military, and even a pullback of NATO forces from countries in the former Warsaw Pact.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said after Witkoff’s meeting with Putin that Moscow was “cautiously optimistic” and that a conversation between Putin and Trump after Witkoff relayed “all the information” about Russia’s position to Trump.
In a social media post, Trump said the discussions were “very good and productive…and there is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end.”
Kyiv, however, cried foul. In a post on X on March 14, Zelenskyy accused the Kremlin of trying to “complicate and drag out the process.”
“Russia is the only party that wants the war to continue and diplomacy to break down,” he wrote.
Ukraine also denied Putin’s claim that Ukrainian forces were “isolated” in the Kursk region and had no way out other than surrender or death.
“Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on March 15. “There is no encirclement of our troops.”
He said Russian forces were accumulating nearby for what he said was likely to be an attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, which border Russia’s Kursk region, adding: “We are aware of this, and will counter it.”
In a statement on March 14, the Ukrainian armed forces general staff said reports of “the alleged ‘encirclement’ of Ukrainian units…in the Kursk region are false and fabricated,” adding: “There is no threat of encirclement of our units.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after seizing Crimea and fomenting war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in 2014 following the downfall of a Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president whose decision to scrap a plan for closer ties with the European Union and turn to Russia instead stoked massive protests known as the Maidan.
Trump has made ending the war a prominent goal. He called Putin weeks after taking office in January and subsequently sent senior officials to meet with Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia.
The US administration’s refusal to promise Ukraine concrete security guarantees has been a source of tension in the relationship between Washington and Kyiv, which is wary of Trump’s efforts to mend US-Russian ties.
Amid the push for peace, air attacks and fierce fighting on the ground have continued.
Ukraine’s biggest private energy provider, DTEK, said on March 15 that Russian air strikes caused “significant” damage to its energy facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions and that some consumers in both regions were left without power.
