Russians and Ukrainians who have started illegal businesses in Sri Lanka with free tourist visas have sparked outrage over "whites only" posts on social media. All Ukrainian and Russian citizens were then ordered to leave the country or reapply for visas by March 8.

Chairman of the Russian Security Council, ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, at the youth festival in Sochi, said that Ukraine belongs to Russia and showed an enlarged map of the borders of the Russian Federation. It divides most of Ukraine between Russia, Poland, Romania, and Hungary, and lists a portion the size of Kyiv Oblast as "Ukraine."