March 8, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Speaking in a video posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for committing to a new “Marshall Plan” for Ukraine and indicated the West will form the support for the plan.

The Marshall Plan was an initiative to rebuild Western Europe immediately after World War II in an attempt to stave off Communist influence, according to the US Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute.

“We are already expecting tough decisions from the European Union. Sanctions. Against Russia. For this war. For this aggression, which its authors will regret. They will. For sure. That is why it is so important that the Russian leadership realizes that the world will follow the example of the United States, Great Britain, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan and other free countries. So, the world cannot be fooled. Sanctions cannot be avoided," Zelensky added.

The Ukrainian president also said he is grateful to the UK for offering to phase out the import of Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022. Zelensky's comments come just hours after he spoke via video to the British Parliament.

Zelensky went on to thank Russian citizens who support peace saying: “I am grateful to those Russians who support us, take to the streets and fight. They are fighting daily for us and for themselves. Because they are fighting for peace.

"The war must end. We need to sit down at the negotiating table — honest, substantive, in the interests of the people, not obsolete murderous ambitions,” Zelensky said.

Bank of Russia announced new procedures for withdrawing funds from foreign currency deposits between March 9 and Sept. 9, 2022, limiting cash withdrawal to the equivalent of $10,000, Russian state media RIA reports.

During the period of this temporary order, the currency will be issued in US dollars, regardless of the currency of the account. Conversion of other currencies to USD will be at the market rate on the date of issue. Russia’s Central Bank notes that citizens can continue to keep funds in foreign currency deposits or accounts, RIA adds.

Currently, 1 Russian Ruble is equivalent to $0.0078 in US dollars.

A top State Department official said Tuesday that “Russia is trying to up the ante and broaden its demands” regarding the Iran nuclear deal “and we are not playing ‘Let's Make a Deal.’”

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland’s comments come after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier in the day that Moscow remains engaged in the effort to salvage the Iran nuclear deal, despite a recent demand by the Russian foreign minister for written guarantees that sanctions imposed for its invasion of Ukraine will not its impact future dealings with Tehran.

Nuland said “no” when asked at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing if the administration has provided any written guarantees to Russia that their trade, investment or military cooperation with Iran will not be subject to sanctions.   

In his public comments, Blinken has stressed that the Ukraine and Iran nuclear deal issues are "totally different" and "not in any way linked together.” 

Nuland said the US is not negotiating with Russia “vis-à-vis” Iran and echoed the top US diplomat that Russia and the US share the “same strategic objective” when it comes to efforts to salvage the nuclear deal: to ensure that Iran is never able to get a nuclear weapon.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Tuesday that while Hungary condemns Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it doesn't support sanctions against Moscow covering ban on Russian energy imports.   

The extension of the sanctions to the Russian energy sector would represent a “disproportionately large burden” for Hungary, he said.  

Most of Hungary’s oil and natural gas imports come from Russia, and 90% of Hungarian families heat their homes with gas, Orban said, stressing that the Hungarian economy “simply cannot function" without Russian oil and gas.

In a brief response to Russia's new ceasefire announcement, the Ukrainian Armed Forces noted that "the Russian side announces a 'silence regime' for the opening of humanitarian corridors tomorrow, March 9, from 9:00 am in Kyiv."

In a Telegram post, the Armed Forces said that "Russia will request that Ukraine agree on the routes and opening hours of humanitarian corridors and notify representatives of foreign embassies, the UN, the OSCE, and the Red Cross by 02:00 in Kyiv on March 9."

But it ends: "It is difficult to trust the occupier."

More on Russia's announcement: Russia announced a new ceasefire starting at 10 a.m. Moscow time (9 a.m. Ukrainian/2 a.m. ET) Wednesday, saying it’s ready to provide evacuation corridors from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol, along with other towns negotiated with the Ukrainian side.

Russian media reported the ceasefire parameters quoting the Russian Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.

An apartment building and a major textile factory in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, were destroyed by Russian military strikes, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said in two video messages posted to Telegram.

Sukhomlyn said that a dormitory, which was used by retired Army soldiers and civilians, was destroyed. He did not have any information on fatalities from the military strike at this time. 

In another video, Sukhomlyn said that a textile factory in the city, which manufactures roughly 70 percent of all cotton wool in the country, was destroyed by Russian military strikes.

Since the start of the Russian invasion, more than two million people have fled Ukraine. The European Union is being told to brace for as many as five million Ukrainian refugees, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported from Kyiv.

Moving forward, the question stands: how are other European countries going to handle the steady influx of refugees?

Poland alone has seen 1.2 million refugees cross its border, and as Skopec notes, the Polish government itself has offered an outpouring of support.

"They're helping them get access to shelter, to clothes, to food," he told Cooper.

As for Skopec's organization specifically — Project HOPE — the emphasis is on the most immediate, basic needs, including medical services for refugees upon arrival. 

"The situation inside Ukraine is such that the primary health care system has been devastated. Hospitals are completely out of supplies ... and just desperate for more support. People are coming after days and days of trying to travel and get into a refugee country, a hosting country. They are coming across. We're seeing exhaustion, dehydration, gastrointestinal issues and certainly a lot of emotional and traumatic issues, just in how they are being able to cope with what's happening," said Skopec, adding, "The ability to get us medical care immediately as a matter of priority, screen them, try to understand what support and assistance they need ... that's really what our top priority is right now."

With the number of refugees expected to increase in the coming weeks, Skopec is moved by the generosity of spirit he's witnessing from humans willing to provide assistance and aid to each other.

"We're seeing a huge number of people coming from around Poland, individuals out of the goodness of their heart, hoping to try to help out and provide people with rides, homes to stay in, temporary shelters, so they have [a] place to go. Really people are moving as quickly as they can through the border areas getting into major cities," he said.

Skopec went on to share a story of a woman who was dealing with a range of emotions as she fled Ukraine for a safer space.

"I met a woman today right at the border, a Ukrainian woman, who on one hand was laughing at how ridiculous it was that she was getting on the first bus she could find to a city she'd never heard of in Germany, and then the next second turns around and is just weeping at the fact that she had to leave behind her two sons and her husband, and was all alone by herself and had no idea what she was going to do, and where she was going to go," he said.

A Ukrainian refugee fled to Moldova. Here's what she said to CNN's Ivan Watson:

Victoria Nuland, the US State Department's undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, said Tuesday she believes the war will end “when Putin realizes that this adventure has put his own leadership standing at risk, with his own military, with his own people, that he is hemorrhaging the lives of the people of Russia, the army of Russia and their future to his own vain ambition.”

Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Nuland said at that point, Putin “will have to change course, or the Russian people take matters into their own hands.”

Asked what drove Putin to invade now, Nuland said such a question would have to be directed to the Russian leader, but added she believes that “over the years, President Putin's imperial ambition has grown and he is dissatisfied with the last 30 years of Russian history and has longed for some time to be the guy that helps recreate the Soviet Union, the fall of which he said was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.”

“And so I think his interior mind is now out there and for everybody to see. So that's what makes me worried that not only do we have to ensure that this Ukraine gambit is a strategic failure for Putin for Ukraine’s sake, but also for all of the other countries in the region, and his appetite has only grown with the eating. So you know, we can't allow this to stand,” Nuland said.

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced his administration is banning Russian oil, natural gas and coal imports to the US in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a step he warned could lead to a spike in gas prices at home.

Here are key things to know about Biden's announcement today:

How we got here: Sanctions on Russia's oil and gas industry had once been viewed as mostly off the table as officials in the United States and Europe worried about a global spike in prices. But pressure had been growing on Biden to act, including from Ukraine's President and American lawmakers from both parties, as Russia's onslaught in Ukraine increasingly targets civilians.

The US expected to make the move unilaterally, without its European allies, due to disagreement among European nations about whether to ban Russian energy imports. EU countries have significantly more exposure to Russian energy than the US. Not long before Biden's announcement, the United Kingdom announced that it planned to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

Americans will feel the impact at the pump: Biden emphasized in his remarks that his decision will likely hurt Americans at the gas pump.

"The decision today is not without cost here at home," Biden said. "Putin's war is already hurting American families at the gas pump. Since Putin began his military build-up at Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents and with this action it's going to go up further. I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home."

The President also warned companies against price gouging during a time of crisis.

The move comes as gas prices skyrocket in the US as Russia's invasion of Ukraine rocks the global oil market. The average price for a gallon of regular gas broke its 2008 record, hitting $4.14 on Monday, according to the Oil Price Information Service, the firm that collects and calculates prices for AAA. That breaks the previous record of $4.11 a gallon that has stood since July 2008.

Energy imports from Russia: US imports from Russia make up a small slice of American energy portfolio — roughly 8% in 2021, of which only about 3% was crude oil. White House economic officials have been engaged for more than a week as to how to manage any decision to cut off those imports, officials say. The Department of Energy reported that in the last two weeks of February, Russian oil imports dropped to zero as US companies cut ties with Russia, effectively implementing their own ban.

Impact on Russian economy: The sanctions the West has slapped on Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine had so far exempted oil exports.

Biden said the package of economic sanctions and export controls the US has already imposed on Russia has been causing "significant damage to Russia's economy," and that the value of the Russian ruble has tanked since Putin launched his attack on Ukraine.

"One ruble is now worth less than one American penny," Biden said. The President said Russia would not be able to boost the value of the ruble because the West has cut off Russian's largest banks from the international financial system.

The President noted major companies independently have suspended their services in Russia, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Ford, Nike and Apple.

"The private sector is united against Russia's vicious war of choice," Biden said.

Read more about the announcement here and see Biden's full executive order here.