Here is the situation on Wednesday, March 12:
Ceasefire Negotiations
- Senior United States and Ukraine officials met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for nine hours of discussions, which concluded with Kyiv agreeing to a 30-day immediate truce and measures towards lasting peace with Moscow, as announced in a joint statement from the US and Ukraine.
- Following the talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the next move is with Russia.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the truce as a positive development and urged the US to convince Russia to accept the agreement.
- After the high-profile meeting, Washington announced that military aid suspensions on Ukraine were lifted and intelligence sharing with Kyiv would resume, confirmed by Pavlo Palisa, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office.
Military Operations
- Russia declared that its forces have taken back 12 settlements and over 100 square kilometers (38.6 square miles) of territory in the Kursk region from Ukrainian troops who invaded Russia in August 2024.
- In response to Ukraine’s drone strike on Tuesday, three people died and 18 were injured in Russia.
- The death toll from a Ukrainian attack on a shopping center in Kursk increased from three to five, according to Governor Alexander Khinshtein.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that its military captured the village of Dachne in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
- Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin reported that six people, including two children, were killed, and seven others were wounded in Russian strikes.
Politics and Diplomatic Efforts
- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that Feridun Sinirlioglu, visiting secretary-general of the OSCE, will be taken to a site in Moscow where Ukrainian drones were downed during a Tuesday raid, as reported by RIA Novosti.
- Zakharova also asserted that Ukraine’s drone strike on Moscow showed that Kyiv was losing on the battlefield and resorted to attacking civilian areas.
- Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov visited troops in Kursk, awarding medals to soldiers for evicting Ukrainian forces from the area, as announced by the Defence Ministry.
