On March 15, Sean Penn was missing from the 98th Academy Awards, held at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles. Penn, who bagged the Best Supporting Actor award for One Battle After Another, skipped the huge prestige to catch up with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine

Russia and Ukraine traded rival claims of battlefield gains as the four-year war intensified. Kyiv said its forces pushed Russian troops back in the Dnipropetrovsk region, while Moscow claimed advances in Donbas. Meanwhile, Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities continued and US-brokered peace talks were postponed