Europe and Central Asia Overview: March 2024

Armenia-Azerbaijan: Tensions persist despite subsided clashes

There were no reported clashes along borders in March, following a flare-up in February, but the situation remained tense as Azerbaijan demanded that Armenia hand over four villages adjacent to the latter’s Tavush region. Armenia occupied the villages during the first war over Artsakh.¹ Armenia’s President Nikol Pashinyan argued for a unilateral concession to kickstart border delimitation talks² while the Azerbaijani media speculated about military options should Armenia stall.³ The discussion of the looming handover galvanized Armenian opposition. On 24 March, police briefly detained 49 members of Combat Brotherhood, a nationalist militia, en route to Tavush. The arrests prompted a retaliatory attack on a police station in Yerevan, during which two of the three assailants were injured after accidentally detonating a hand grenade. Adding to the tensions, Azerbaijan alleged an Armenian military build-up along the borders on 31 March.⁴

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Europe: Farmer protests on the wane

The number of farmer protests fell by over 70% across Europe in March compared with the previous two months. The largest number of demonstrations was reported in Poland, though there, too, their number fell by over a third. The intermittent blockade of Polish border crossings with Ukraine for trucks continued, occasionally also affecting passenger traffic. A 30,000-strong demonstration in Warsaw on 6 March turned violent, leading to several law enforcement officers injured and dozens of participants detained. The governments of Poland and Ukraine claimed progress in talks after a meeting on 28 March, while the European Union failed to agree on the terms of extension of tariff-free access for Ukrainian imports.⁵ In addition, the EU further relaxed environmental rules affecting European farmers and shelved a part of the so-called Green Deal that set ambitious emission-cutting goals.⁶ Elsewhere in Europe, farmers blocked access to a North Sea port and an airport in Belgium and staged another violent demonstration in Brussels.

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Russia: ISKP attack and intensified cross-border violence highlight unraveling internal security

On 22 March, four gunmen opened fire in a packed concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow and subsequently set it ablaze, killing 144 civilians and injuring 551 others. It became the deadliest such attack since the siege of a school in Chechnya in 2004.⁷ The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a Central Asian offshoot of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attack. Shortly afterward, Russian authorities detained four suspected perpetrators near Russia’s borders with Belarus and Ukraine. Dozens of others were later arrested in Russia and Tajikistan. Despite receiving warnings about the ISKP threat from the United States⁸ and reportedly from allied Iran,⁹ Russian authorities attempted to implicate Ukraine in the attack.¹⁰

Meanwhile, the spillover of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine onto Russia’s internationally recognized territory intensified as President Vladimir Putin secured a fifth term in office following elections held between 15 and 17 March. ACLED records nearly 700 political violence events in the country in March — over 30% more than during the previous spike in September 2023. Russian volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side resumed incursions into the Belgorod and Kursk regions on the eve of the election after a relative lull since previous significant attempts in May and June 2023. Cross-border drone strikes and shelling, mostly affecting the Belgorod region, almost doubled compared with February, leading to 28 reported civilian fatalities. The number of claimed intercepts of incoming drones and missiles almost doubled as well. Ukrainian forces also intensified long-range drone strikes on Russia’s oil and fuel infrastructure. ACLED records at least 14 such strikes — more than at any time since the invasion. Besides reaching oil facilities as far north as the city of St. Petersburg and the Nizhny Novgorod region, suspected Ukrainian drones struck for the first time oil refineries in the Samara region further east. Earlier in March, suspected Ukrainian operatives blew up a rail bridge in the region. 

See also ACLED Insight – Moscow Attack Extends Apparent Reach of Islamic State Khorasan Province and ACLED Election Watch – Boiling Under the Lid: Protest Potential Ahead of Russia’s 2024 Presidential Election

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Ukraine: Russia resumes strikes on energy infrastructure

Russia resumed drone and missile strikes explicitly targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in late March. On 22 March, a salvo practically destroyed power generation in the Kharkiv region,¹¹ knocked out the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant, and hit multiple energy sites in central, southern, and western regions of Ukraine. On 24 March, Russian missiles and drones hit an underground gas storage facility in the Lviv region. One of the missiles briefly flew over Polish territory.¹² Russian drone debris was found in Romania as a result of another barrage of strikes targeting thermal and hydroelectric power plants across Ukraine on 28 and 29 March.¹³ On 5 March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian commanders involved in the Russian strikes targeting Ukraine’s power grid from October 2022 to March 2023.¹⁴        

On the battlefield, Russian forces continued to press their personnel and ammunition advantage west of Avdiivka and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. The pace of Russian territorial gains seemingly slowed compared with the previous month despite the number of clashes remaining at similar levels as in winter. The number of clashes in the Kharkiv region almost halved in March, as Russian forces are regrouping possibly to unleash another offensive there.¹⁵ Cross-border shelling increased in the northern and northeastern regions of Chernihiv and Sumy. Russia also stepped up attacks on the southern Odesa region, killing 38 civilians in several attacks, including the 6 March missile strike on Odesa city port where Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyi hosted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. 

For more information, see the ACLED Ukraine Conflict Monitor.

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