Ukraine's top military command unanimously favors defending the sector of eastern Ukraine that includes the besieged city of Bakhmut and inflicting maximum losses on the enemy, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening video address on March 14.
The military command's main focus was on Bakhmut during its meeting, Zelenskiy said, adding that there was "a clear position of the entire command: Strengthen this sector and destroy the occupiers to the maximum."
Russia launched a deadly missile attack earlier on March 14 on the city of Kramatorsk as Ukrainian and Russian forces remained locked in a battle for the control of Bakhmut.
A Russian missile hit an apartment building in Kramatorsk, killing one civilian and wounding three others, the Prosecutor-General's Office reported on March 14. It added that six high-rise apartment buildings were damaged in the attack.
Kramatorsk, some 50 kilometers from Bakhmut, was the scene last year of one of the worst attacks on civilians in the war, when 58 civilians were killed in April by a missile containing cluster bomblets in what Human Rights Watch has said amounted to a war crime.
The Ukrainian military said in its daily report on March 14 that despite sustaining "significant" losses, Russian forces continued to mount waves of attacks on Bakhmut and several other locations around the city in the eastern region of Donetsk.
"Over the past day, our forces repelled 102 enemy attacks.... In Bakhmut, the enemy has not paused in its attempts to capture the city," the General Staff of Ukraine's military said, adding that fierce battles were also taking place in Lyman, Avdiyivka, Maryinka, and Shakhtarsk.
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Amid the monthslong fighting for the mining city, Zelenskiy said Ukraine's future is being decided on the eastern front and vowed that Kyiv's forces will prevail.
"It is very tough in the east, very painful," Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly video address on March 13.
Ukrainian forces have been mounting robust resistance on the west side of Bakhmut against repeated breakthrough attempts by Russian mercenary fighters from the Wagner private firm.
On March 14, the Kremlin said Moscow's goals in Ukraine can only be achieved by military force.
"We have to achieve our goals. Right now this is only possible by military means due to the current position of the Kyiv regime," Russian state news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
WATCH: A Russian missile hit an apartment building in Kramatorsk, killing one civilian and wounding three others.
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Russian Missile Hits Apartments In Ukraine’s Kramatorsk
Zelenskiy described March 14 as an "emotional day" in which he recognized men and women who have come to the defense of Ukraine.
"I had the honor to present state awards to our soldiers [and] relatives of our soldiers in honor of the Day of the Ukrainian Volunteer,” Zelenskiy said.
The Ukrainian president honored 363 Ukrainian volunteers, 47 of them posthumously. He said the defenders of Ukraine had come to its defense "at the call of a pure Ukrainian heart."
Zelenskiy noted that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians volunteered after Russia launched the invasion on February 24, 2022, and since 2014 and millions of other Ukrainians have helped.
Ukraine celebrates Day of the Ukrainian Volunteer on March 14. On this day in 2014, the first 500 volunteer fighters of the Maidan Self-Defense Force arrived at a training ground to form the first volunteer battalion.
Volunteer Day was established in accordance with a decision of the Verkhovna Rada on January 17, 2017.
Meanwhile, Reuters and The New York Times said sources told them that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to seek the arrest of Russian officials for forcibly deporting children from Ukraine and targeting the country's civilian infrastructure.
The ICC did not immediately comment on the report. If confirmed, they would be the first international war crimes cases arising from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On the diplomatic front, Turkey said on March 14 that talks are continuing over the extension of an agreement that allows Ukraine to export grains on the Black Sea.
The pact brokered between Moscow and Kyiv in July by Turkey and the United Nations is scheduled to end on March 18 and can be extended only with Russia's agreement.
The Turkish Defense Ministry cited Russia as agreeing to back a 60-day extension to the deal, but Ukraine said the agreement only allows for a 120-day extension.