March 11, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said Friday that the number of people who have fled from Ukraine has now hit 2.5 million.

"We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine. Millions forced to leave their homes by this senseless war," he said. 

More than 1.5 million of those who have left have gone to Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Thursday.

Over 110,000 refugees have also arrived in Germany from Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion just over two weeks ago, according to Germany's interior ministry.

German Federal Police registered 109,183 refugees -- including more than 13,270 people from the day before, Germany's interior ministry said in a statement on Friday.

However, due the absence of border checks between Poland and Germany, where most Ukrainian refugees are coming from, the actual number of incoming people could be significantly higher, the ministry added.

European Union leaders will vote Friday on doubling the bloc's financial support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Friday. He was speaking to journalists ahead of the second day of an EU leaders’ summit in Versailles, France. If approved by the leaders, this will bring the bloc’s financial support to the Ukrainian military to over $1 billion.

It wasn’t difficult to convince EU leaders to take the step, he said, which will come via the European Peace Facility scheme. Borrell said he is sure that the European Union Council will confirm the proposal this morning. 

The financial support will be “immediate,” Borrell said, “now the money flows quickly.”

On February 28, the Council of the European Union agreed to help fund the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including lethal equipment, for the first time.

The Russian army was poorly prepared for its invasion of Ukraine and is now facing many difficulties on the ground, “particularly in the logistical field and in the field of intelligence,” French armed forces spokesperson Pascal Ianni told French TV station France2 on Friday. 

“It is possible that an attack on Kyiv will be carried out in the next few days, but actually taking control of Kyiv is a whole other matter and will take a long, long time,” he said, pointing to the Russian army’s “reserve problem.”

A 40-mile-long Russian convoy had previously been advancing on the capital for days, but new satellite images released on Thursday showed that it had largely dispersed and been redeployed.

Ukraine is trying to open evacuation corridors in several regions on Friday, according to the country's Minister of Reintegration Iryna Vereshchuk.

The planned routes include:

Routes from Mariupol and Volnovakha have been repeatedly blocked or inaccessible over the past week amid heavy fighting and shelling by Russian forces. There has been more success in evacuating people from Izium, which has seen widespread destruction.

These routes have not been agreed with Moscow, which announced different routes leading into Russia.

Vereshchuk said further attempts would be made to allow people to escape fighting around Kyiv, with routes from the capital to destinations including Bucha, Hostomel, Kozarovychi and Mykulychi.

Routes were also announced near Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, opening corridors to Andriyivka, Makariv, and Borodianka.

Some context: About 100,000 people were evacuated via evacuation corridors in several parts of Ukraine over the past two days, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday.

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense said on Friday that Russian forces continue to make “limited progress” in advancing toward Kyiv — but could be preparing for a fresh attack against the Ukrainian capital in the coming days.

“It remains highly unlikely that Russia has successfully achieved the objectives outlined in its pre-invasion plan,” the ministry said in an intelligence update. “Logistical issues that have hampered the Russian advance persist, as does strong Ukrainian resistance."

Massive convoy dispersed: New satellite images taken on Thursday show a Russian military convoy northwest of Kyiv that stretched more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) has "largely dispersed and redeployed," Maxar Technologies says.

The images show that some elements of the convoy have "repositioned" into forests and treelined areas near Lubyanka, Ukraine, according to Maxar.

The detention of basketball player Brittney Griner in Russia — where she has been held for three weeks on allegations of drug smuggling — is really "unusual and extremely concerning," US Representative Colin Allred of Texas said Thursday.

Allred said the US Embassy has requested consular access to the WNBA star, "the same way they would for any American who's detained or incarcerated overseas, and that has been denied now for three weeks."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine "does loom over the entire issue" of getting Griner back to the United States, Allred added.

"For Brittany's sake, we don't want her to become a part of this kind of political battle that's going on, and we want to make sure that her rights are respected and that we are able to get access to her, and that she can ... get home as quickly as possible," Allred said.

Limited contact: Griner has been in contact with her Russian lawyer, who is "in touch with her agent and her family back home — so we do know that she's OK," Allred said. He said he has also been in contact with Griner's family through the player's agent.

CNN has reached out to Russian officials, the US Embassy in Moscow, and the US State Department for comment on Griner's consular access but has not heard back.

Read more about Griner's detention in Russia here.

At least one person was killed by explosions in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk on Friday, the city's mayor Ihor Polishchuk said on his official Facebook page.

The city's alert system "did not work at all," and the "military administration and the military will work on this issue," he added.

In the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, an airfield was also hit and the warning system didn't work, Polishchuk said.

"The Armed Forces of Ukraine did not turn it on. Why didn't they turn it on? Because the missiles were flying at ultra-low speeds or for some other reason, the military will work on it."

Major Ukrainian cities including Dnipro and Lutsk are being "subjected to devastating blows," said Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President's office on Friday.

Explosions shut down two boiler houses in Lutsk, located in the far west near the Polish border, while three major explosions were reported in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, he wrote on Twitter.

"Dnipro is also under attack," he added. "Russia's destructive war against civilians and major cities continues."

The Lutsk mayor reported explosions at an airfield in the city, according to the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN. Lutsk has not been attacked before. 

Cities under siege: Ukraine's Emergency Service said one person in the city of Dnipro died on Friday after three airstrikes in the early morning that hit a kindergarten, an apartment building and a two-story shoe factory.

The airstrikes happened at around 6:10 a.m. local time in the Novokodatskyi district of the city, the Emergency Service said. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is ready to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin directly — but "will not make any compromise to the Russian position during these negotiations," his deputy told CNN.

Though talks between the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers, held Thursday in the Turkish city of Antalya, did not yield any major breakthrough, Ukraine hadn't been too optimistic from the start, said Igor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

“This is a really good thing that they met, but unfortunately we can say that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia is not the one making the final decision. The final decision to stop war, to make a ceasefire, to withdraw troops is made by one person only," he said, apparently referring to Putin.

Zelensky ready to talk: Zhovkva said that though Zelensky was ready for a diplomatic solution, he has not heard from the Russian President personally or his aides.

“The last thing I heard from them was we have to still work under the format of two delegations … But, look, even the agreements reached during these negotiations are not held," Zhovkva said, pointing to humanitarian corridors in Ukraine that are "being kept in custody by Russian forces."

What Ukraine is willing to give: Zhovkva said Ukraine was open to neutrality "if the NATO bloc is not ready for the time being to accept Ukraine."

"But at the same time, we do need hard security guarantees for Ukraine so these awful wars, this awful aggression does not repeat in the future," he added. 

Zhovkva said Ukraine wanted to work with Putin and its neighbors to establish a system he called "the renewed security system of Europe."