By Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

MOSCOW, Russia--Taking part in the meeting on socio-economic arrangements for Russian regions President of Russia Vladimir Putin stated that the special military operation is being carried out successfully, in strict conformity with the approved plan.

I must note that, encouraged by the United States and other Western countries, Ukraine was purposefully preparing for a scenario of force, a massacre and an ethnic cleansing in Donbass. A massive onslaught on Donbass and later Crimea was just a matter of time. Kiev was not just preparing for war, for aggression against Russia it was conducting it. 

 
There were endless attempts to stage acts of subversion and organise a terrorist underground in Crimea. Hostilities in Donbass and the shelling of peaceful residential areas have continued all these years. Almost 14,000 civilians, including children have been killed over this time.

Clearly, Kiev's Western patrons are just pushing them to continue the bloodshed. They incessantly supply Kiev with weapons and intelligence, as well as other types of assistance, including military advisers and mercenaries. 
 
They are using economic, financial, trade and other sanctions against Russia as weapons, but these sanctions have backfired in Europe and in the United States where prices of gasoline, energy and food have shot up, and jobs in the industries associated with the Russian market have been cut.

Imposing sanctions is the logical continuation and the distillation of the irresponsible and short-sighted policy of the US and EU countries' governments and central banks. 
 
They themselves have driven up global inflation in recent years, and with their actions caused rising global poverty and greater inequality across the world. Let me reiterate, the global economy and global trade as a whole have suffered a major blow, as did trust in the US dollar as the main reserve currency. 
 
The illegitimate freezing of some of the currency reserves of the Bank of Russia marks the end of the reliability of so-called first-class assets. In fact, the US and the EU have defaulted on their obligations to Russia. Now everybody knows that financial reserves can simply be stolen.

A massive attack against Russia has also been unleashed in cyberspace. An unprecedented information campaign has been launched through global social networks and all Western media outlets, whose impartiality and independence have proved to be a mere myth. 
 
Access to information is being restricted and people are being crammed full of all sorts of fake stories, propaganda, and fabrication, or simply put, snake oil. It even got to the point where American social media companies said straight out that it was possible to post calls for the murder of Russian nationals (http://kremlin.ru).

According to the statement of Major General Igor Konashenkov, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, units of the Russian Armed Forces are completing the defeat of the nationalist battalion Donbass. During the day Russian Armed Forces advanced 12 km.

During the day Air Force and Army Aviation destroyed 89 military facilities of Ukraine, among them: 4 command posts, 2 multiple rocket launchers, 9 artillery guns, 5 ammunition depots, 65 places of stock piled military equipment. 60 militants, 2 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 6 field artillery guns and mortars were destroyed. Russian air defense systems shot down 7 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in the air.

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 214 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,483 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 150 multiple rocket launchers, 584 field artillery and mortar guns, as well as 1,279 units of special military vehicles have been destroyed (https://mil.ru/).

During a special military operation, an officer of the Directorate General of Ukrainian Security Agency (SBU) for Donetsk and Luhansk regions voluntarily surrendered to Russian troops.

This officer was directly involved in organizing the training of sabotage and terrorist groups to work in areas liberated from the nationalists.

The SBU officer provided detailed information regarding all persons involved in conducting sabotage activities on the territory of Donbass. In addition, the SBU officer reported on terrorist attacks planned by militants of the nationalist battalion Azov in the city of Lviv against employees and facilities of diplomatic missions of the United States and other Western countries. 
 
The Kiev nationalist regime plans to present attacks on diplomatic facilities of the United States and Western countries as an alleged "targeted attack by the Russian Armed Forces". The main purpose of the provocation is to increase pressure on NATO countries to introduce a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine and provide it with more weapons (https://mil. ru/).

Western Media exposes defamation on Russia all around the World, using fake news and spreading disinformation. For example:

Journalist Dmitry Gordon reported on the creation of filtration camps for Ukrainians in Russia. According to him, people are tortured there. In fact, the SBU staged a concentration camp at the Mariupol airport. This is the so-called "Library", where people were really tortured. Former SBU Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Prozorov told reporters about this secret prison.

The Ukrainian Army claims that it does not shell residential areas. On the contrary, on March 18 Russian air defense intercepted a Tochka-U missile flying towards Melitopol. Fragments of a rocket and elements of cluster munitions (prohibited by international conventions) fell in the private sector on the outskirts of Melitopol. 
 
Several residential buildings, power lines and a gas pipeline were damaged. This was the second case within a week when the Ukrainian military attacked civilian objects. On March 14 the same type of missile was shot down over Donetsk. As a result of falling fragments of the rocket, 20 people were killed and 24 injured.