Here is the situation on Friday, March 14:

Fighting

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers still in the country’s western Kursk region, where Kyiv’s troops have clung on for more than seven months in one of the key battles of the war after making a daring cross-border incursion.
• Putin told a news conference that the situation in Kursk was “completely under our control, and the group that invaded our territory is in isolation”.
• Ukraine’s military leadership has denied their forces are being encircled but said the remaining troops in the Kursk region are adopting better defensive positions.
• According to the Russian military, Ukraine now holds less than 200 square kilometres  (77sq miles) in Kursk, down from 1,300sq km (500sq miles) at the peak of the incursion.

• Maps published by Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian source that charts the front lines of the war, show a dramatic shrinking of Ukrainian-held territory in the past week but little change in the past 24 hours.
• Ukraine’s general staff said that five Russian attacks in Kursk have been repelled and clashes were continuing in four locations.
• A Russian war correspondent reported heavy Ukrainian artillery fire on Kursk’s Sudzha town, which Russia recaptured on Wednesday.
• Combat is reported to be ongoing on the periphery of Sudzha as some Ukrainian soldiers try to fight their way out of Kursk and back into the neighbouring Sumy region of Ukraine, The Associated Press (AP) news agency said.
• Video clips from Sudzha, published by Russian media and military bloggers, showed scenes of devastation from the seven months of fighting, with burned-out vehicles, roofless buildings and mountains of rubble.

• Ukrainian soldiers and commanders fear that Russia’s air superiority will enable them to wipe out the logistics routes vital to sustaining the soldiers who are still in Kursk, the AP reports.
• To retreat from Kursk, Ukrainian soldiers must walk dozens of kilometres to get back into Ukraine while avoiding Russian forces.

Ceasefire

• President Putin said he agrees in principle with a United States proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, but cautioned that terms are yet to be worked out.
• “The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin told a news conference in Moscow. “But there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk about it with our American colleagues and partners and, perhaps, have a call with President Trump and discuss it with him.”

• Putin said Russian forces were moving forward along the entire front line and that the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not seek to use it simply to regroup.
• “How can we and how will we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will control [of the ceasefire] be organised?” Putin said. “These are all serious questions.”
• US President Donald Trump said there were “good signals” coming out of Russia and offered guarded optimism about Putin’s statement. Trump said Putin had “put out a very promising statement, but it wasn’t complete”.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy characterised Putin’s response to the ceasefire plan as “manipulative”, saying “at this moment he is, in fact, preparing to reject it”.
• Zelenskyy said in his evening video message to the nation that Putin did not dare to tell Trump openly that he wants the war to continue.

• The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said his country would not agree to a frozen conflict with Russia, where a ceasefire is not properly resolved and where fighting rumbles on with occasional eruptions.
• David Lammy, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, said it would be “wrong” for Putin to place conditions on a ceasefire, and a pause in fighting would be a “first step” to allow talks to start on “a full settlement” to end the war.
• Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow to discuss the ceasefire plan. Top Kremlin aide, Yuri Ushakov, said Witkoff would meet Putin when the president “gives the signal”, Russian news agencies reported.

• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Europe and Ukraine will be “done for” if Russia comes to an agreement with the US on a ceasefire. Lukashenko said Moscow and Washington would hold Europe’s fate “in their hands”.
• Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said, “If Russia rejects this test and fails, it will be clear who wants war and who wants peace.”
• Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Putin in a phone call that his kingdom remains committed to facilitating dialogue and supporting a political resolution to the Ukraine crisis, the Saudi state news agency reported.

Military

• The US is poised to resume shipments to Ukraine of long-range bombs known as Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) after they were upgraded in order to better counter Russian electronic jamming techniques, two people familiar with the weapon told the Reuters news agency.
• The munitions will arrive amid reports that Ukraine’s supply of similarly-ranged Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) has been depleted.

• Sweden announced a new military aid package worth 3 billion Swedish krona ($294m) to strengthen Ukraine’s artillery capabilities, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reports.
• Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guard member who caused an international uproar when he leaked highly classified US documents about the war in Ukraine, used his court-martial hearing to describe himself as a “proud patriot” who was only “exposing and correcting the lies perpetuated by the Biden administration”.

Politics and Diplomacy

• German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the importance of Western unity, despite tensions with the US over its approach to Russia, at a Group of Seven (G7) meeting of foreign ministers in eastern Canada.
• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praised Trump when the two met in the Oval Office saying he welcomed the president’s efforts to get fellow members of the military alliance to step up their defence spending.

Sanctions

• The US Treasury confirmed that a licence allowing a wind-down of energy transactions with Russian financial institutions expired as scheduled this week under stiff sanctions imposed in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
• The Biden administration granted the licence on January 10 to clear remaining transactions as it banned energy financing deals with Russian banks, including Sberbank, VTB and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.