Since October 10, Russians have been throwing significant forces at Avdiivka, a town bordering Donetsk that has been held by the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014. The town is being effectively razed to the ground with massive artillery fire and guided aerial bombs.

Last week, Russian media brimmed with excitement over the successful launch of a Burevestnik (Thunderbird) missile. The propagandists described it with such words as “game-changer” and “unparalleled capabilities” and claimed it to be able to destroy cities anywhere in the world.

As the war is well into its second year, some Ukrainian websites have resumed spreading news which align with the key narratives of Russian propaganda and disinformation. This is a monthly digest of the news items published by the online media in the occupied territories and the Ukrainian websites which tend to manipulate public opinion.Our analysis is limited to the news items from online media which operate in the occupied territories (further referred to as “occupation news websites”) as well as from news websites operated from Ukraine.

Last week, Russian propagandists took advantage of the scandal in the Canadian parliament to promote their own narratives.Russian media appealed to the background of the former fighters of the Ukrainian “Halychyna” division which had fought in World War II as part of the German Waffen to blame Western countries of supporting the Nazi and fascists. Finally, the propagandists used the findings of the Polish prosecutor's office in the case involving the death of two Poles from a missile allegedly launched by Ukraine to claim that it is Ukraine that fires missiles at its neighbors to blame everything on Russia.

"We must recover the name of every personwho suffered from war crimes.Because a human being is not a number,"human rights activist Oleksandra Matviichuk.Dmytrivka is a small village just a few kilometres north of the Zhytomyr highway that connects Kyiv to Chop, a town near the Hungarian border. It’s the site of a dumping ground for cars that Russians shot and burned during the siege of Kyiv. It is one of dozens of dumps in the Kyiv region."After the de-occupation, about fifty cars were brought to Dmytrivka," say operatives of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine has retained law enforcement agencies that worked in the territories that are now temporarily occupied — ed.)

Last week, Russian media trumpeted the alleged confession of a German serviceman after his Leopard tank had been knocked out by the Russian forces. Such reports seem to be part of a bigger plan to convince their readership that Moscow is fighting against NATO troops. The disinformation media argued that Moscow had never betrayed the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. They vigorously denied all the claims of Russia’s isolation and insisted on a worldwide support of Putin's war. This monitoring report covers these and other topics of the disinformation spread by Russian state media and online parajournalists to manipulate public opinion.

Last week, the Russian propagandist media tried hard to tone down the success of the Ukrainian assault on a Russian ship repair base in Sevastopol. According to Russian media, the missile strikes were attributed to minor imperfections in the operation of the air defense systems.

There has been a considerable increase in the number of sources being analyzed. For example, this monitoring report contains the results of the automatic processing of approximately 400,000 news items.

Our stabilization unit (or simply “stab”) is located approximately 12 km (7.5 miles) from the front line, in one of the hottest directions. It is at the "stab" that the wounded are evacuated from their positions, wounds are treated, their breathing is restored, their condition is stabilized, and they are sent further to the hospital.As a volunteer at the Mykola Pirogov First Voluntary Mobile Hospital (VMH-1), I worked for a month at the registration desk at the stabilization unit.Translated by Dmitry Lytov & Mike LytovRead this article in Ukrainian

“The fever dropped a little, but it does not fall below 39 C (102.2 F). Today (March 20 - ed.) was the third surgery, the next one is tomorrow,” 19-year-old Dmytro Tereshchenko, a soldier of the 119th Territorial Defense brigade, separate 167th battalion with the call sign "Champion", native of Chernihiv, says by phone. “They are removing the fragments. They are in the lungs, kidneys, and stomach. The armor did not protect me at all, everything went through it,” he adds. “Doctors say, now I have two birthdays. Because people don't survive with such injuries.”Translated by Dmitry Lytov & Mike LytovЧитати українською