March 17, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has moved here.

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made an impassioned appeal to the Russian people in a video posted on social media, asking them to resist their country’s disinformation as the devastating invasion of Ukraine continues.

Schwarzenegger said he was “sending this message through various different channels” for Russian citizens and soldiers, and hoped his message about the atrocities committed by its government and military would break through. The video posted on Twitter has more than 16 million views.

“Ukraine did not start this war. Neither did nationalists or Nazis,” he said. “Those in power in the Kremlin started this war.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and government officials have made false accusations toward Ukraine as their motivations for the invasion, baselessly saying the country must “deNazify.”

“There are things that are going on in the world that are being kept from you, terrible things that you should know about,” Schwarzenegger said.
“I know the Russian people are not aware such things are happening, so I urge the Russian people and the Russian soldiers in Ukraine to understand the propaganda and the disinformation that you are being told. I ask you to help me spread the truth.”

He heavily criticized the Russian government for the invasion, saying they “lied not only to its citizens but to its soldiers” for the reasons behind the war.

Read more:

FILE - Arnold Schwarzenegger, founder of the "Austrian World Summit", talks about his dreams and actions to fight the climate crisis in Vienna, Austria, on July 1, 2021. The film icon told Russians in a video posted on social media they're being lied to about the war in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian soldiers' lives for his own ambitions. Schwarzenegger (AP Photo/Lisa Leutner, File)

Related article Arnold Schwarzenegger urges Russians to overcome government disinformation

Russian-backed rebels from the breakaway Luhansk People’s Republic in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region have taken control of government buildings in the city of Rubizhne. 

Luhansk is one of two separatist regions backed by Russia, along with Donetsk. Both regions are split between parts controlled by Ukraine and by pro-Moscow separatists.

In videos posted Thursday to the official channel of the People’s Militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), a uniformed soldier says, “We are located next to the administration of the city Rubizhne. The flag of the (LPR) is flying here now. This means for the local residents that, if the war hasn’t ended yet, then it’s in its final stages.”

In another video, the soldier is seen standing in the Rubizhne mayor’s office and is later seen placing a flag of the LPR on the roof of the government building.  After an explosion is heard, he says: “That’s more shelling, from the Ukrainian side.” 

Ongoing attacks: Shelling continues in Rubizhne, Luhansk regional administrator Serhiy Haidai said in a clip from an interview with local media.

In the clip posted to his Telegram channel late Thursday, Haidai said, “The enemy is simply destroying all the cities.”

“It’s not even selective anymore. Earlier they were shelling more or less selectively, today they are firing deliberately, quadrant after quadrant,” he added.
“People have been in basements for two weeks. Some have bomb shelters. If there’s a factory nearby, there are good, strong bomb shelters there.”

Up to 1,200 people are in some bomb shelters, he said.

Delivering aid is difficult with constant firing, he said, but added that with the help of Ukraine’s presidential office, there will be an attempt to create an evacuation corridor later in the week to deliver supplies to large cities.

Accounts of destruction: On Tuesday, Haidai said the Russian military destroyed a boarding school for visually impaired children in Rubizhne, in addition to a hospital, three other schools and “other military facilities.”  

Four people were killed during the military strike, he said.

CNN cannot independently confirm the deaths, or that the schools, hospital or facilities were hit.

Australia on Friday announced new sanctions against 11 Russian banks and government entities, according to a statement from Foreign Minister Marise Payne.

Payne said Australia will continue to work with its partners to coordinate sanctions and to “constrain funds for President (Vladimir) Putin’s unlawful war.”

“Today’s listing includes the Russian National Wealth Fund and the Russian Ministry of Finance. With our recent inclusion of the Central Bank of Russia, Australia has now targeted all Russian Government entities responsible for issuing and managing Russia’s sovereign debt,” she said.
“The majority of Russia’s banking assets are now covered by our sanctions along with all of the entities that handle Russia’s sovereign debt.”

Oligarchs targeted: Payne also announced new sanctions against Russian oligarchs Viktor Vekselberg, and Oleg Deripaska, the head of aluminum company Rusal, which owns 20% of Australia’s Queensland Alumina company.

Australia is “deeply committed to imposing high costs on Russia,” Payne said, reiterating Canberra’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and for the people of Ukraine.”

China’s Commissioner for Foreign Security Affairs, Cheng Guoping, met with Russia’s Ambassador to China, Andrey Denisov, on Thursday, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.

In a short statement released on Friday morning, China’s ​Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Cheng “briefed” Denisov on China’s “Two Sessions Meetings” and “exchanged views on China-Russian relations, counter-terrorism and security cooperation.”

There was no mention in the statement of Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Some context: The meeting comes amid claims by senior US officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken — that Russia has asked China for military support and economic assistance for its invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday, a Western official and a US diplomat told CNN the US has information suggesting China has expressed some openness to providing Russia with requested military and financial assistance as part of its war on Ukraine.

Both China and Russia have denied that Moscow asked for military assistance.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Friday, according to a White House statement Thursday.

South Korea will close its temporary embassy in Lviv due to “escalating military threats” near the western Ukrainian city, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday.

Heightening military threats near Lviv made it difficult for the temporary embassy “to function and to secure safety of its staff,” the statement said.

South Korean moved its embassy in Ukraine from the capital, Kyiv, to Lviv, on March 3.

It is also operating temporary offices in Chernivtsi, southwestern Ukraine, and in Romania, which will remain open.

As of Thursday, 28 South Korean nationals are in Ukraine, excluding embassy workers and those in the Crimean Peninsula, according to the presidential Blue House.

Though Russia’s invasion has stalled in most areas of Ukraine, troops have made progress in the south of the country by using the same tactics they deployed in Syria, said Mason Clark, lead Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

Russia’s attack on the coastal city Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped by relentless bombarding for weeks, is “ripped from the Syria playbook,” Clark said.

These tactics include “specific neighborhood-by-neighborhood targeting,” less precise weapons that take a more brutal toll, and hitting civilian infrastructure.

“They’re very intentionally targeting water stations and power supplies and internet towers and cell phone towers and that sort of thing, in a very deliberate attempt to make it more difficult for the defenders to hold out and try and force them to capitulate,” Clark said.

“It’s the same approach the Russian forces have taken in a number of cities in Syria, such as Aleppo and Palmyra,” he added. “You also then have the frankly deliberate war crimes that Russians are committing, such as targeting that drama theater in Mariupol that was housing refugees, which unfortunately tracks with what Russian forces have done in the past, both in Syria, as well as in previous wars in Georgia and Chechnya.”

The city of Aleppo was reduced to ruins during the Syrian civil war, with air offensives that killed and maimed scores of civilians. Hospitals were destroyed, and entire housing blocks reduced to rubble.

If Mariupol falls, that could be the “next major change in the war, because it’ll free up a lot of Russian forces that are currently deadlocked in that operation, including some of the best units of Russia’s Southern Military District that could potentially resume further operations,” he added.

The accounts of Russia’s military issues and ineptitude during its three-week-long invasion of Ukraine are too numerous to list.

The proof of Russia’s military problems is in a video of Russian tanks, stuck in a line, being destroyed by Ukrainians — and in reports of Russian combat deaths, which already may be anywhere from 3,000 to more than 10,000.

If those death tolls are toward the higher end — and we really don’t know — it has been noted that would mean Russian deaths to date could be more than US military combat deaths during 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, although the total death tolls from those conflicts were far greater than just US military deaths.

There are numerous accounts of Russian soldiers surprised to learn they had been sent to war.

But an incapable Russian army is not entirely good news.

“Failing militaries can be even more dangerous than successful ones,” writes Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, in The Washington Post.

It is exactly their incompetence that could make this war so devastating, she argues.

“There’s reason to worry that the ineptitude and lack of professionalism that Russian forces have displayed in the first three weeks of the conflict are making fighting considerably more brutal for civilians than a more competent military would — and increasing the prospects that the war escalates.”

Read the full analysis:

Destroyed Russian tanks are seen on a main road after battles near Brovary, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022.

Related article Analysis: Russia's bad army is horrible news for Ukrainian civilians

The Russian military continues to face logistical problems in its “faltering invasion of Ukraine,” Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Thursday. 

In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russian forces were being prevented from resupplying “forward troops with even basic essentials such as food and fuel,” due to their inability to control Ukrainian airspace and challenges on the ground.

Russian forces have been reluctant to maneuver across the country, the ministry said, but did not provide additional details on its knowledge of Russia’s strategic moves. 

“Reluctance to maneuver cross-country, lack of control of the air and limited bridging capabilities are preventing Russia from effectively resupplying their forward troops with basic essentials such as food and fuel,” the ministry said. 
“Incessant Ukrainian counterattacks are forcing Russia to divert large numbers of troops to their own supply Iines. This is severely limiting Russia’s offensive potential.”

Basketball player Brittney Griner remains in Russian custody after a court hearing Thursday that extended her detention to May 19, according to state news agency TASS.

The Phoenix Mercury star, who plays in Russia’s Women’s Premier League during the WNBA offseason, was arrested on Feb. 17, according to US Rep. Colin Allred.

According to state-owned RIA Novosti, a court advocate said she should be kept under house arrest because their jail beds are a foot (0.3 meters) too short for Griner, who is 6’9” (2.05 meters).

What we know about her arrest: The location of Griner’s detention has not been publicly revealed. She is in a cell with two others who speak English, according to TASS and the court advocate.  

Griner was accused of smuggling hash oil into the country, according to RIA Novosti. Her attorneys argued in court Thursday that “the arrest was unlawful and the measure of restraint was unnecessarily severe,” RIA reported.

Consular access: Although a State Department official told CNN the US has been denied consular access to Griner, a source close to the situation said Griner’s Russian legal team has seen her several times a week throughout her detention, and she is well.

The source added the Russian investigation is ongoing, a trial date has not been set, and Griner’s detention could be extended again in May.

Meanwhile, Griner’s friends and loved ones in the US are watching the case closely, including her former high school coach, Debbie Jackson. “I’m hopeful that the US government is working on her behalf and doing everything they can to help,” Jackson said.

China is quietly distancing itself from Russia’s sanction-hit economy.

The two states proclaimed last month that their friendship had “no limits.” But that was before Russia launched its war in Ukraine.

Here are some measures Beijing has taken in the past few weeks to distance itself from the isolated and crumbling Russian economy.

Letting the ruble drop: China’s currency, the yuan, doesn’t trade completely freely, moving instead within bands set by officials at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Last week, they doubled the size of the ruble trading range, allowing the Russian currency to fall faster. The ruble has already lost more than 20% of its value against both the dollar and euro since the start of the war in Ukraine. By allowing the Russian currency to fall against the yuan, Beijing isn’t doing Moscow any favors. Sitting on reserves: The most significant help China could offer Russia is through the $90 billion worth of reserves Moscow holds in yuan, wrote Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, in a research report on Tuesday. Sanctions have frozen about $315 billion worth of Russia’s reserves — or roughly half the total — as Western countries have banned dealing with the Russian central bank. Russia’s finance minister Anton Siluanov said this week that the country wanted to use yuan reserves after Moscow was blocked from accessing US dollars and euros, according to Russia’s state media. The PBOC has so far not made any comment about its position regarding these reserves. Withholding aircraft parts: Sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union mean the world’s two major aircraft makers, Boeing (BA) and Airbus (EADSF), are no longer able to supply spare parts or provide maintenance support for Russian airlines. The same is true of jet engine makers. Earlier this month, a top Russian official said that China has refused to send aircraft parts to Russia as Moscow looks for alternative supplies. Freezing infrastructure investment: The World Bank has halted all its programs in Russia and Belarus following the invasion of Ukraine. It hadn’t approved any new loans or investments to Russia since 2014, and none to Belarus since 2020. More surprisingly, perhaps, is the decision by the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to do the same. In a statement earlier this month, it said it was suspending all its activities related to Russia and Belarus “as the war in Ukraine unfolds.” The move was “in the best interests” of the bank, it added.

Read more:

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose during their meeting in Beijing, on February 4, 2022.

Related article 4 ways China is quietly making life harder for Russia

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Friday, according to a White House statement released Thursday.

The phone call — the first known discussion between the two leaders since November — comes after recent assertions from US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that Russia has asked China for military support in Ukraine. Beijing and Moscow have both denied the claims.

In a briefing Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration had “high concern” that China could provide Russia with military aid. 

“It is a high concern and significant concern. Our secretary of state just conveyed that and certainly our concerns about China assisting Russia in any way — as they invade a foreign country — is of significant concern and the response to that would be consequences,” Psaki told reporters. 

“I’m just not going to outline what these consequences will look like. The President obviously will speak with President Xi tomorrow and he’ll speak directly about that,” she added. 

The two leaders will also discuss other bilateral issues like managing competition between the two countries, the White House said on Thursday. Chinese state media did not mention the topics of discussion when announcing the call, only saying the leaders would “exchange views” on “issues of common interest.”

Some context: The announcement of the call comes after an intense, seven-hour meeting in Rome, between Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi. During the meeting, Sullivan warned his Chinese counterpart of “potential implications and consequences” for Beijing should support for Moscow be forthcoming, a senior administration official said.

Assistance from China would be a significant development in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It could upend the hold Ukrainian forces still have in the country as well as provide a counterweight to the harsh sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned those trying to join Russian forces in Ukraine it would be “the worst decision of your life,” in a video message posted to Facebook Thursday night.

“Long life is better than the money you are offered for a short one,” Zelensky said. He claimed Ukraine has information the Russian military is recruiting mercenaries from other countries, but said this will not help them.

Ukrainian forces are still holding all key areas of the country, he added.  

New Russian conscripts have been taken as prisoners, Zelensky said — but added, “We do not need 13 or any number of thousands of dead Russian soldiers.”

Zelensky addressed the German Parliament Thursday following earlier speeches to British, Canadian and US lawmakers. He said in his Facebook message he would continue speaking to partner states. “I feel that we are being increasingly understood. In Europe, in the world, in different countries,” he said.

In his last Facebook post, United States citizen James Whitney Hill described the intensifying bombing around where he lived in Ukraine and said, “No way out,” before authorities identified him as the American who was among the dead in the war.

The Minnesota native lived there with his partner, Ira, who is Ukrainian and could not leave because of her battle with multiple sclerosis.

Even as he detailed a chilling account of his last days in Ukraine — intense bombing, limited food and cold — he never thought about leaving “because he was not going to leave Ira’s side in her condition,” said his sister Katya Hill, who lives in the US in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The specifics around his death have not been confirmed to her, and she told CNN she is still trying to locate his body. She said her family is trying to reach Sen. Amy Klobuchar, or Minnesota, and Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

“We don’t know where my brother’s body is. So that kind of closure the family won’t have right now. So any help that somebody can let us know on that would be greatly appreciated,” she said Thursday.

“We’ll do a prayer service,” she said. “What can I say? The hardest thing that we’re going to have to go through is not having that kind of closure.”

In the meantime, she also had not yet been able to connect with Hill’s partner, Ira.

With electricity out, Hill had been reserving battery on his phone, she said, adding, “I can only assume that Ira’s mother’s phone is unable to be charged at this point.”

She remembered her brother has “the helper that people find in a crisis.”

“He had a stash of chocolate that he was keeping so he could hand out chocolates when someone … needed encouragement,” she told CNN.

Mariupol is being hit by between 50 to 100 artillery shells daily, according to the council of the besieged Ukrainian city. 

“The city has been under blockade for sixteen days, more than 350,000 Mariupol residents continue to hide in shelters and basements from continuous shelling by Russian occupation forces,” a city council statement said. 

It continued: “About 80% of the city’s housing stock has been hit, almost 30% of which cannot be restored.” 

The statement, which was released early Thursday evening, said information about casualties from the attack on the theatre being used as a shelter was still being clarified. 

Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya directly addressed his Russian counterpart during the UN Security Council on Thursday about the women, children and elderly killed by Russians in Ukraine.

He continued, “If they do, we may consider how to sponsor a decision to help you deal with perpetration-inducted traumatic stress. But now, have some decency and stop the egregious manipulation of the Security Council. It is obscene.”

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia did not respond to the comments during Thursday’s Security Council meeting, but told reporters after the meeting that he does not “engage in personal exchanges” with Kyslytsya. 

“But when he asked about the eyes of children killed, I would also like to ask him whether he had any remorse when he thought about the children of Donetsk that were killed by Ukrainian forces,” Nebenzia said.

Kyslytsya also spoke to reporters after the meeting, saying there has not been any improvement in the situation in Ukraine. 

“No, there is no improvement. The actions of the Russian Federation continue to be very brazen and the atrocities are taking place every day, unfortunately,” Kyslytsya said.

Ukrainian refugees were met with celebrations in Germany and Israel for the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Purim is the celebration of the story of Queen Esther of Persia. The story is recounted in the Megillah, also known as the Book of Esther in the Bible. Children often wear costumes to dress up as key characters from the Purim story.

Here are a few visuals from the celebrations in Berlin and Nes Harim this year.

Eight out of nine agreed evacuation corridors functioned as planned Thursday, including one out of Mariupol, the Ukrainian government says. 

The minister responsible, Iryna Vereshchuk, said almost 800 private cars left Mariupol Thursday, with more than 2,000 people making it through Russian-occupied territory to the city of Zaporizhzhia by mid-evening. 

It is the first time in many days that a corridor out of Mariupol had been agreed, though Vereshchuk made no mention of whether a planned humanitarian convoy destined for the besieged city had been allowed to leave Berdyansk by Russian forces.  

Elsewhere, 36 tons of food and medicine were delivered to the towns of Hostomel and Bucha, to the northwest of Kyiv, as well as three villages to the northeast of the capital — areas which have seen some of the worst Russian artillery and rocket fire. 

One planned corridor, between Kharkiv and Vovchansk, close to the Russian border, failed to operate due to shelling by Russian forces, Vereshchuk said. 

More than 320,000 citizens have returned home to help Ukraine fight since Russia began its invasion, according to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Most of them are men.

“Our boys don’t give up, so we need to help, we need to fight for our country. Ukraine must be free, like all people,” the State Border Guard Service said in a tweet Thursday.

Viktor Tereshchenko, mayor of Velykoburlutska in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Kharkiv, has been captured by Russian forces according to a video message from Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv Regional State Administration head, on Thursday.

“We have news today that [the Russians] captured the head of the Velykoburlutska community, Viktor Nikolaevich Tereshchenko. Such people need to have security. Victor Nikolaevich was kidnapped simply from his workplace and taken to the local police station. They are holding him and will not release him,” Syniehubov said.

The locals condemn the act, he added, and said he is working to free the village leader as soon as possible.

“Soon our occupied territories will be ours again,” he said.

While Russian forces have not taken Kharkiv, they “continue their terror against the civilian population, in particular against the heads of territorial communities of Kharkiv region today,” Syniehubov said.  

This comes a day after the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, who had been captured by Russian forces, was freed as part of a prisoner swap.

At least 12 people have been killed and 34 people have been injured in at least 43 attacks on health care facilities in Ukraine, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. 

There are health workers among the casualties, Tedros said in his remarks to the UN Security Council. 

“Attacks on health care are a violation of international humanitarian law – anytime, anywhere. They deprive people of urgently-needed care and break already strained health systems. That is what we are seeing in Ukraine,” Tedros said. 

Mental health services are also being greatly affected by the conflict, with more than 35,000 mental health patients in Ukrainian psychiatric hospitals and long-term care facilities, “which are facing severe shortages of medicines, food, heating, blankets and more.”

Tedros said the war in Ukraine is also exacerbating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. 

“Declining rates of testing since the start of the conflict mean there is likely to be significant undetected transmission. And with less than 40% of the adult population fully vaccinated, this increases the risk of large numbers of people developing severe disease,” Tedros said. 

WHO has sent about 100 metric tons of medical supplies to the region, including “oxygen, insulin, surgical supplies, anesthetics, and blood transfusion kits – enough for 4,500 trauma patients and 450,000 primary health care patients, for one month. Other equipment, including oxygen generators, electrical generators and defibrillators have also been delivered, and we are preparing to send a further 108 metric tons,” Tedros said.

Although WHO has more critical supplies ready for UN convoys attempting to enter regions in Ukraine, they have not been successful, the director-general said.

“For example, the UN convoy to Sumy that included a WHO truck carrying critical medical supplies was unable to enter. Loads ready for Mariupol remain in staging areas and cannot proceed. Access to these, and other areas, is now critical,” Tedros said. 

Tedros ended his remarks by stating that while Ukraine is “rightly the focus of the world’s attention,” he urged the council “not to lose sight of the many other crises in which people are suffering,” including millions of people still suffering in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen. 

Even though the US House passed a bill last week to impose a ban on Russian energy imports, Senate sources say it’s unlikely their chamber will move on the measure.

That’s because senators view the issue as essentially moot after US President Joe Biden took executive action to ban the imports.

Moreover, Sen. Joe Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, has contended that the House bill is weaker than the executive action — so they see little reason to move on a measure viewed as falling short of the current policy.

The Senate, however, will move quickly — likely next week — to pass the House’s bill that would nix Russia’s and Belarus’ normal trade status with the United States. That measure passed the House overwhelmingly Thursday afternoon. 

The US citizen killed in Chernihiv Thursday has been identified as James Whitney Hill, born June 27, 1954, in Minnesota.

The name was provided to CNN by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister.

Hill was among several people killed when Russian artillery opened fire on civilians in the city, according to city officials.

Earlier today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed a US citizen had died in Ukraine but he said he had no additional details to share.

The US House just passed a bill that suspends normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus — the latest effort by US lawmakers to inflict economic pain on Russia for its unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine

The final vote was 424-8 with strong bipartisan support for the legislation, which will next head to the Senate.

Republicans Chip Roy of Texas, Tom Massie of Kentucky, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin voted against the bill. 

It was introduced by House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, along with the panel’s ranking GOP member, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas.

Neal and Brady said in a joint statement on Thursday, “We must do all we can to hold Putin accountable for senselessly attacking the Ukrainian people and undermining global stability. The suspension of normal trade relations is an essential part of our effort to restore peace, save lives, and defend democracy.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in floor remarks Thursday morning that he would work quickly to move the bill through the Senate once it passed in the House and that he expected the legislation would have “broad bipartisan support.”

“Both parties remain united in sending Putin a clear message: His inhumane violence against the Ukrainian people will come at a crippling price and today’s step by the House is another way we’re making that come true,” Schumer said. 

More context: Approval of the legislation by the House comes one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional appeal in a virtual address to Congress for increased US assistance as the country faces deadly ongoing attacks from Russia.

US President Joe Biden announced last week that the US, along with the G7 and European Union, would call for revoking “most favored nation” status for Russia, referred to as permanent normal trade relations in the US. The status means two nations have agreed to trade under the best possible terms, which can include lower tariffs and fewer barriers to trade, Biden said. Such a move requires approval from Congress.

Russian shelling has hit Kharkiv’s giant Barabashova market, setting off a series of fires, according to officials in the eastern Ukrainian city.

Videos show huge plumes of black smoke emanating from several parts of the market, suggesting the complex suffered multiple strikes.

Emergency services say 70 people are involved in efforts to extinguish the fires, which spread to several nearby houses.

One emergency responder tackling the blazes was killed, the city mayor announced. 

The market — billed as one of the largest in the world — covers an area of 300,000 square meters, according to a tweet by Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

Western leaders and security agencies are spending huge amounts of resources on getting into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s head. It’s a futile exercise — at times when the West has thought Russia’s war in Ukraine might be losing steam, Putin has doubled down, sending his forces to bomb maternity hospitals and shelters harboring children.

Now, an apparent pause in the advancement of Russian troops has the West guessing: Has Russia’s war effort stalled? Or is it a tactical regrouping?

Either way, an incendiary Stalinesque speech on Wednesday night in which Putin called Russians opposing the war “traitors” marked a change in tone and a sign that not all is going to plan, experts said. Perhaps more worrying, many observers saw it as a sign that the head of the Russian state, facing setback in Ukraine, would take a vengeful turn at home and crack down more forcefully than ever on any sign of dissent.

While some Russians support the war, many others are protesting against it in the streets, fully aware they will be rounded up by heavily armed police even for the most peaceful of demonstrations. The Russian state has made mass protests illegal, and now, insulting the military is against the law. Still, people show up in groups, while others demonstrate entirely alone. Even lone protesters have been detained, social media videos have shown.

A journalist who jumped on camera on a state-controlled news program, holding an anti-war sign, has become a cause celebré for free speech in Russia. A renowned ballerina has left the Bolshoi. Russian prisoners of war are calling Putin out for using propaganda to justify the war.

Putin, who has enjoyed consistently high ratings in Russia, is now turning to a strategy of intimidation to keep Russians on side, experts said. His speech Wednesday hinted darkly that those Russians who do not side with him were, in essence, traitors — chilling words in a country where mass political repressions and the Gulag system are still within living memory.

Read the full analysis here.

Ukrainian officials are blasting Israel’s policy on Ukrainian refugees, saying they are “denying shelter” to people in danger because of refugee quotas.

“Russia is committing genocide of Ukrainians, killing thousands of civilians, while the Israeli Government inspects each and every refugee from Ukraine with a fine-toothed comb,” the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel posted in a statement on Facebook. “We urge those who takes decision to cancel policy of quotas and other artificial obstacles towards women and children fleeing war-torn Ukraine. 

Israeli officials have defended their policy. Israeli Population and Immigration Authority Director Tomer Moskowitz told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper “[T]he world is full of trouble. Terrible things happen all the time, and I’m not being cynical. But does that mean that we have to take in people indiscriminately? I am the guard at the country’s gate and I can’t open it to everyone.”

Under Israel’s “Law of Return,” any Jew, or anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, is eligible for Israeli citizenship along with their families. There is no limit to the number of Ukrainians who can enter under the “Law of Return,” and Israeli officials say they are preparing for a wave of up to 100,000 Ukrainian and Russian citizens eligible to enter the country.

Israeli citizens are also eligible to apply for entry permits for their non-Jewish Ukrainian family members with no quota. 

Aside from those two groups, Israel has instituted a 5,000 person quota of Ukrainians without family connection but must apply for permission first.  

Refugee family members of Israeli citizens and those with no connections will initially be issued three-month tourist visas, which may be changed to work permits if the war lasts longer. 

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk told CNN that on Wednesday night 12 Ukrainian citizens were turned away at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport and sent back to Poland for not having entry permits.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote in a Facebook post that “The recent decisions of the Israeli leadership aimed at restricting the admission of Ukrainians, to put it mildly, are surprising. We consider the suspension of visa-free travel and the introduction of the system of electronic permits of the [Interior Ministry] to enter Israel to be an unfriendly step for the citizens of Ukraine, which needs to be corrected immediately.”

The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel wrote on Facebook that they’ve asked Israeli authorities to allow Ukrainians with Israeli relatives to invite them in without prior approval, and an alternate mechanism that will allow Ukrainians with friends in Israel who can host them to enter as well.

“We hope that the government, whose nation experienced the refugee life throughout its existence, will embrace those, who are saving their own lives and lives of their children - looking for a temporary shelter from horrors of war,” the embassy wrote. 

Oil prices surged on Thursday back above $100 a barrel on renewed concerns about the war in Ukraine disrupting Russia’s energy supplies.

After sinking below $94 a barrel earlier this week, US crude soared 8% to $102.65 a barrel in recent trading. Brent crude spiked 9% to $107 a barrel. 

The swift rebound in oil prices will be watched closely by leaders in Washington and Wall Street because high energy prices threaten to exacerbate inflation and slow down the economy.

Energy traders blamed Thursday’s spike on growing pessimism about a resolution between Russia and Ukraine being reached in the near term.

“The mood has darkened a little bit,” said Robert Yawger, vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities. “It sounds like this is going to be a dragged-out situation.”

The recent drop in oil prices was driven in part by hopes for a potential ceasefire. The longer the war goes on, the bigger the threat to Russia’s oil flows.

“Given Putin’s actions in recent times, we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst of the Americas at Kpler.

The International Energy Agency warned Wednesday that a staggering 30% of Russia’s oil production could be knocked offline within weeks, exposing the world economy to a potential supply crisis.

“The implications of a potential loss of Russian oil exports to global markets cannot be understated,” the IEA said in its monthly report. 

Despite Thursday’s rebound, oil prices remain well below their recent peaks. US crude spiked to a nearly 14-year high of $130.50 a barrel on March 6, while Brent hit nearly $140 a barrel. 

Gasoline prices are only inching lower, drawing criticism of the energy industry from the White House. The national average for regular gas dipped to $4.29 a gallon on Thursday, according to AAA. That’s down by two pennies from Wednesday and four pennies from the record high of $4.33. 

Russian forces in Ukraine should respect international humanitarian law, protect civilians and refrain from damaging and destroying civilian infrastructure, said Janez Lenarčič, European commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management. 

“Access has been in many places, sporadic at best or non-existent,” and Russia is “not providing for unimpeded access for humanitarian supplies and humanitarian workers to people in need,” Lenarčič said in a statement to journalists on Thursday.

Aid agencies delivering aid from the EU face “difficulties reaching some of the besieged cities,” he said, adding that they have “difficulties reaching the population, which is trapped in the zones of active conflict.”

He blamed the Russian forces for this, saying they “are not living up to their international legal obligation.”

Speaking at the European Union’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) in Brussels, where the EU coordinates the collation and delivery of humanitarian aid from across all 27 EU countries, the commissioner said, providing aid to Ukraine was “the largest ever civil protection operation” since EU’s disaster response mechanism was established in 2001. 

“This aggression has caused a humanitarian disaster of proportions that we have not seen since World War II. The needs of people in Ukraine are enormous,” he said.

The ERCC, which operates 24 hours a day, is currently coordinating “food, medicines, medical equipment, ambulances, mobile hospitals, firefighting equipment, firefighting trucks, fuel” for delivery to Ukraine, he added.

The commissioner said that he expects the number of refugees to keep growing if the invasion continues.

“We now have one million refugees per week. So if this goes on 10 more weeks, yes, we could reach the figure of 15 million people,” he said.

US Senate Democrats are drafting a plan to go after the credits American companies enjoy for the taxes they pay in Russia.

Current law allows US companies to obtain a credit for their taxes paid overseas. There are four countries where companies don’t enjoy the credit — Iran, North Korea, Syria and Sudan.

Democrats are proposing adding Russia to the list.

“Senate Democrats are exploring legislation to add Russia to existing laws that already deny foreign tax credits for taxes paid to North Korea and Syria. American companies that continue to do business in Russia should not receive US tax benefits that offset taxes paid to Putin’s regime,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden said in a statement.

The two attacked Koch industries over the issue, after the conglomerate run by billionaire Charles Koch, said it’s planning to stay in Russia even as hundreds of Western companies have scaled back operations there following the invasion of Ukraine.

“Koch Industries is shamefully continuing to do business in Putin’s Russia and putting their profits ahead of defending democracy,” the two Democrats said. “The noxious stench of Trump still hangs over Koch Industries.”

In an on-camera interview Thursday, Wyden said: “I’m also talking to my colleagues about taking away tax breaks where, in effect, American taxpayers are subsidizing Russian war machine.”

Shelling by the Russian military has left Kharkiv’s sprawling Barabashovo market on fire, with massive smoke plumes rising from the blaze, according to the mayor.

Video posted from outside the market showed the billowing smoke. CNN has geolocated and confirmed the authenticity of the video.

In an address posted to his Telegram, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said that one rescue worker with Ukraine’s State Emergency Service died while attempting to fight the fire at the market.

Ahead of US President Joe Biden’s call on Friday with China’s Xi Jinping, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China bears “responsibility” to use its influence with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine.

“We continue to call on all nations, especially those with direct influence with Russia, to use whatever leverage they have to compel Moscow to end this war of choice. We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support,” Blinken said.

“Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter. And we’re concerned that they’re considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine. President Biden will be speaking to President Xi tomorrow and will make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression and we will not hesitate to impose costs,” he said.

A US citizen was among several people killed in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv on Thursday, Ukrainian police said. 

The US State Department confirmed the death and offered condolences to the family. 

“Out of respect to the family during this difficult time, we have no further comment,” a spokesperson added.

Asked about the death during a State Department briefing, US Secretary of State Antony Binken said he could confirm an American citizen was killed, but had no “more details” beyond that.

A Ukrainian police statement said the deaths were the result of Russian artillery fire on the city.

Chernihiv, to the northeast of Kyiv and close to the Russian border, has seen some of the most intense shelling from Russian forces since the war began more than three weeks ago.  

Earlier Thursday, regional head Vyacheslav Chaus said more than 50 bodies had been brought to the city’s morgue on Wednesday. Among those killed were more than 10 people lining up to buy bread.  

In a separate statement Thursday, Ukraine’s emergency services said that in the process of clearing rubble from a building damaged in previous strikes, they discovered the bodies of a family of five, including a 12-year old girl and 3-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.  

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agrees with President Joe Biden’s remarks that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” as Russian forces continue to attack civilian areas in Ukraine.

“They stepped up their bombardment with the goal of breaking the will of the people. Yesterday, President Biden said that in his opinion, war crimes have been committed in Ukraine. Personally, I agree. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. After all the destruction of the past three weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing otherwise. The consequences of Moscow’s war are being felt around the world,” he said.

Blinken also said that US experts are in the process of documenting and evaluating potential war crimes in Ukraine.

“We’ll make sure that our findings help international efforts to investigate war crimes and hold those responsible accountable,” he said.

Russian forces “continue to want to conduct a siege of Kyiv,” a senior US defense official told reporters on Thursday, based on troop movements and the types of weapons Russian forces are moving from the rear “to join their advancing elements.”

While Russian forces have not moved closer to Kyiv’s city center over the last 24 hours, the US has observed that Russian forces are moving some forces “from the rear to join their advancing elements,” and “some of those forces, some of those capabilities are artillery, long-range artillery,” the official said.

Because of that, “it appears” that Russian forces “continue to want to conduct a siege of Kyiv,” the official added, “cause that’s what you want to use artillery for.”

“They clearly are trying, particularly around Kyiv to improve their ability to hit the city from afar with munitions,” the official said.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi honored Ukraine Thursday by reciting a poem about the country written by U2 singer Bono.

“Ireland’s sorrow and pain
Is now the Ukraine
And Saint Patrick’s name now Zelensky,” the poem read in part.

Pelosi delivered the poem at an annual luncheon at the Capitol that celebrates the US’ relationship with Ireland. The California Democrat said just before reading the poem that it was sent to her earlier Thursday by Bono, an Irish rock star who is U2’s lead singer and lyricist.

US President Joe Biden, who attended the luncheon, said during the event that Ireland has “stepped up” in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine, and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “murderous dictator.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday German feels “obliged to do everything to give diplomacy a chance and end the war” in Ukraine.

Scholz, whose comments followed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the German parliament, said that he was “deeply” touched by what Zelensky said. 

Echoing similar remarks by western leaders, the German leader also stressed that the conflict is “Putin’s war” and that the Russian president “bears the sole responsibility.” 

Scholz said that the aid for Ukraine shall contribute to make “the resilience of the Ukrainians as strong as possible“ and that “the international community found precise means to heavily damage Russia, so that this war already will have dramatic effects on Russia.“ 

The German leader also said his country is making long-term plans for Ukrainian refugees and recognized the that it is “a huge challenge to take in Ukrainians.” Germany wants to find a solution instead of discussing financing for weeks and months, said Scholz, while stressing that “we want to do it well.“

Further developments of the war will determine how to integrate Ukrainians in Germany Scholz added. “We may not repeat the mistake that this is only temporary. We must plan on integration into kindergartens, schools and job market,“ the chancellor emphasized. “If people will go back, then there will have been a bridge and friendships created between Ukraine and Germany.“

About 30,000 civilians have now left the southeastern city of Mariupol en route to Zaporizhzhia since Russia’s invasion began, according to a post on the Telegram channel of Mariupol city council.

It says the current situation in Mariupol is “critical” with a Russian blockade now into its sixteenth day.

More than 350,000 residents of Mariupol are continuing to hide in shelters and basements to escape the “continuous shelling by Russian occupation forces,” with an average of 50 to 200 air strikes hitting the city each day causing enormous destruction, according to the city council, which also estimated that about “80% of the city’s housing structures are destroyed and 30% irreparably lost.”

Despite coming under continuous shelling, “dismantling of debris and rescue” is continuing as much as possible at the site of the Drama Theater and the Neptune Pool Building which was bombed on Wednesday, the council continued, adding that “information about the victims is still being clarified.”

Russian forces have now conducted “more than 1,000 missile launches” since the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official told reporters Thursday.

The US is seeing “continued naval activity in the north Black Sea off the coast of Odesa,” but there has been no “shelling over the course of the last 24 hours,” the official said.

There have been “no imminent signs of an amphibious assault on Odesa,” the official added.

Twitter said Wednesday that its interventions against Russian state media have successfully limited the reach of that content, reducing it by 30% on the platform.

The announcement follows Twitter’s effort late last month to curb users’ sharing of Russian state media content. At the time, Twitter said that users had been sharing links to Russian state outlets more than 45,000 times a day, far surpassing the number of shares by actual Russian state media accounts on Twitter. 

The company didn’t immediately respond to questions Thursday about how widely viewed Russian state media content may now be on the platform. 

Twitter began applying warning labels on Feb. 28 to all links leading to Russian state media websites, and it began demoting that content algorithmically. So far, 61,000 tweets have been labeled under the change, the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

Twitter also said Wednesday it has now begun labeling Ukrainian and Belarusian government accounts as being government-run.

Twitter has removed more than 75,000 accounts since the invasion for attempted platform manipulation and inauthentic behavior, the company added, as well as 50,000 pieces of misleading content about the war such as videos falsely purporting to show the Ukraine conflict. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to questions about how much misleading content may remain on its platform that has not been removed.

It is not clear whether all of the 75,000 removed accounts had been sharing Ukraine-related content, but Twitter said it did not detect any specific government-coordinated influence operations among them.

Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by billionaire Charles Koch, is planning to stay in Russia even as hundreds of Western companies have scaled back operations there following the invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement on Wednesday, Koch Industries announced its Guardian Industries subsidiary will continue to operate two glass manufacturing facilities in Russia that employ about 600 people. 

“While Guardian’s business in Russia is a very small part of Koch, we will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them,” Koch Industries President Dave Robertson said in the statement. “Doing so would only put our employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good.”

Beyond the two factories, Koch Industries said it employs 15 people in Russia but has no other physical assets in the country. 

The announcement came on the same day that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called on America, including business leaders, to do more during what is the “darkest time” for his country.

“All American companies must leave Russia from their market, leave their market immediately, because it is flooded with our blood,” Zelensky said during his address to Congress on Wednesday.

Koch Industries said it is complying with all sanctions, laws and regulations within all countries it operates in. 

The company condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. 

“The horrific and abhorrent aggression against Ukraine is an affront to humanity,” Robertson said. 

Koch Industries said it has provided financial assistance to employees and their families from Ukraine and humanitarian aid to those impacted in neighboring countries.

Two Ukrainian children who were awaiting adoption by an American couple are now stranded in the country as the war progresses and the adoption process is stalled.

Wendy and Leo Van Asten told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga that they are concerned for the safety and well-being of their prospective adoptive children.

“The last time we spoke to the children was with our perspective adoptive son, about three nights ago when they were heading to the bomb shelter in their building, yet again, and he said, ‘Mama, I can hear tanks firing. We’re going to the bunker,’” Wendy said.

This isn’t the first time the children, who are 14 and 15 years old, have experienced the trauma of war.

“This is not the first time that they’ve had to evacuate from a war. They were brought out of their original hometown of Donetsk in 2014 when all of that action took place over there. So unfortunately, this is not new for them. So they have been very quiet,” Leo said.

Both prospective parents are concerned about the “compounding of trauma” that the children are facing.

“They already had trauma — I mean they’ve already been having the separation from their birth family is trauma enough. A war zone — a first war zone is trauma enough and now a second one that’s much worse. This is much different. Obviously, so widespread throughout Ukraine and we are so concerned for what this is doing to them. And, of course, we’re concerned for their safety because although they haven’t received direct shelling, they have received enough that they’ve gone to the bunker every day. So we’re scared that one of those times it could be them,” Wendy explained.

Leo added that the war has stalled adoption efforts.

“Getting them out of the country is stalled and ultimately, what we would love is for them to be able to find some refuge in the United States. We’d love to have our two prospective adoptive children in our home so we can care for every need they have. But it’s stalled on their side. The Ukrainian government is not allowing children to come to the United States and honestly, right now the United States doesn’t have emergency Visas in accomplice to – place to cover these children,” he said.

Watch the full interview here:

The Department of Homeland Security has deployed refugee officers to assist with the Ukrainian refugee crisis, though it’s unclear how many will ultimately want to come to the United States. 

“We don’t have estimates of the number of Ukrainians who will seek refuge a tremendous distance away from their country, but we understand that the vast majority of Ukrainians hope to return to Ukraine,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Thursday, citing communications with European countries and information gathered directly. 

DHS is the lead federal agency coordinating domestic preparedness and response efforts related to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Mayorkas also said the administration is exploring other avenues of humanitarian relief that they can extend to Ukrainians. CNN previously reported that the administration is actively discussing how to expedite the process for Ukrainian refugees trying to come to the United States.  

Officials are also monitoring for a potential uptick in Ukrainians and Russians seeking entry at the US-Mexico border. Mayorkas said Border Patrol agents were reminded of exemptions to a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that’s allowed authorities to turn away migrants at the US-Mexico border. 

“There was guidance issued to Border Patrol agents that reminded them of the fact that individualized exceptions to the Title 42 authority held by the (CDC) is in place and can be applied to Ukrainians,” he said.

US President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “pure thug” while speaking at a St. Patrick’s Day event Thursday.

At the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon on Capitol Hill, Biden said Putin is a “murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.” 

Biden also said Ireland has “stepped up” in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine. He said the relationship between Ireland and the United States was “taking on an even more intense and cooperative forum than it ever has because of Ireland’s neutrality.” 

In their support for sanctions against Russia and for Ukraine, Biden said Ireland was also “paying a big price” for a contribution he called “not minor.” 

“Everybody talks about how Germany have stepped up and changed their notions about being more leaning forward, and they have,” Biden said, “and so has Ireland. A neutral country, Ireland has stepped up, and they’re taking the hit for what they’re doing.”  

The President also referenced his upcoming call with Chinese President Xi Jinping Friday, joking that Xi “remembers everything I’ve said.” 

“All kidding aside,” Biden continued, “he does not believe in democracy can be sustained in the 21st century.” 

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin was scheduled to attend the event, but was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday. Biden, who had just attended a virtual meeting with Martin before heading to Capitol Hill, said the Taoiseach was “really sorry he can’t be here” and that he “feels well” despite the diagnosis. 

Attempts to pull survivors out of the rubble of a destroyed theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, are being hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and the dangers of further Russian attacks, according to the former head of the Donetsk regional administration.

“People are doing everything themselves. My friends went to help, but due to constant shelling, it was not safe. People are clearing away the rubble themselves. There is no rescue operation, because all the services that are supposed to rescue people, to treat them, to bury them, these services no longer exist,” Sergiy Taruta told Ukrainian television.

Few reports on rescue efforts have emerged since the theater, which was being used as a shelter, was attacked early Wednesday evening.

Taruta said it was his understanding there were about 1,300 people sheltering in the theatre, of whom 130 people had been rescued so far, according to the latest information he had.

Earlier, Taruta said on Facebook that the building’s bomb shelter had remained intact.

All Ukrainian refugees arriving in England will be able to access National Health Service health care for free, the Department of Health and Social Care said Thursday.

Any treatment that took place since the start of the Russian invasion will be also covered for Ukrainians who fled their country to the United Kingdom. 

“As part of the UK’s offer to those Ukrainians coming to the UK, we have committed to providing full access to a range of public services, including doctors, schools and full local authority support,” the department said in a statement.

The measures introduced by the UK also cover education, benefits and the right to work, according to Home Secretary Priti Patel.

“The people of Ukraine are facing unimaginable suffering and trauma at the hands of Putin’s barbaric regime. We are providing a safe haven for some of those people and as soon as they arrive in England they will be able to access the support they need, including healthcare, education, benefits and the right to work – helping to provide some stability at a difficult time,” Patel said 

“We have acted swiftly to provide substantial humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with our international partners. Those in need of care will be treated by our incredible NHS staff as we welcome them to this country,” Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Lviv on Thursday, one day after his visit to Moscow where he met Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. 

In taped remarks, Çavuşoğlu said: “If an agreement is achieved about the issues that we see a rapprochement about, there is a possibility that two leaders can come together,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky. 

Çavuşoğlu also said his hopes for a ceasefire increased after meeting with both parties, although “it is hard to talk about it when it comes to war.”

He said Ukraine had suggested Turkey and Germany as guarantor countries in a proposed “collective security agreement.”

“In my talks yesterday in Moscow, I saw that the Russian Federation did not have an objection to this and that they could accept such a proposal,” Çavuşoğlu said. He stressed an agreement has to be acceptable for both sides and their people. 

Çavuşoğlu also said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke to Putin on Thursday. 

According to a statement by Turkey’s Directorate of Communications, “Erdoğan reiterated his offer to host Putin and Zelensky in Istanbul or Ankara” during his phone conversation with Putin, saying “consensus on some issues may require talks at leadership level.”

The Turkish president also stressed the need of “assessing the humanitarian situation on ground” and of “humanitarian corridors to operate effectively in both directions.”

Slovakian Minister of Defence Jaroslav Nad’ said Slovakia is willing to provide S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine, and they are in discussions with the US and other allies on obtaining a “proper replacement, or… a capability guaranteed for a certain period of time.”

“We’re willing to do so immediately when we have a proper replacement,” Nad’ said at a joint news conference with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “The only strategic air defense system that we have in Slovakia is S-300 system. So what would happen immediately when we decide to give it to Ukrainians is that we actually create a gap, a security gap in NATO.”

Austin said that the US is continuing to work with allies on the issue, but he did not have any announcements to make related to providing Ukraine with the S-300 system.

CNN reported yesterday that Slovakia has preliminarily agreed to provide Ukraine with the key Soviet-era air defense system to help defend against Russian airstrikes, according to three sources familiar with the matter, but the US and NATO are still grappling with how to backfill that country’s own defensive capabilities and the transfer is not yet assured. According to two of the sources, Slovakia, one of three NATO allies that have the defense systems in question, wants assurances that the systems will be replaced immediately.

The push to get more S-300s into the hands of the Ukrainians comes as Congress has been pressing the Biden administration to help Ukraine obtain the air defense system. Lawmakers in both parties, who heard from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a speech Wednesday morning, have urged the US needed to do more to help Ukraine obtain the weapons it’s seeking, particularly after the administration opposed a plan last week to provide Ukraine with Polish MiG-29 jets.

At least 21 people have been killed and another 25 were wounded when Russian forces shelled the town of Merefa, about 25 kilometers (about 15 miles) southwest of Kharkiv, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

The attack happened at 3:30 a.m. local time and destroyed a school and an arts club, the prosecutor’s office said. Ten of those injured are in a serious condition.

Civilian targets in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, have been hit by shelling from Russia since the invasion began last month.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stopped short of saying Russia was outright committing war crimes in a news conference with his Slovakian counterpart on Thursday.

Austin said recent “attacks” in Ukraine “appear to be focused directly on civilians,” and “if you attack civilians, purposely target civilians… that is a crime.”

Austin said Russia’s actions in Ukraine are “under review” by the US State Department.

“There’s a process that we’ll go through to review all of this, but we call upon Mr. Putin to cease these horrible actions; again, these are civilians not combatants and so they should not be targeted,” Austin said.

President Joe Biden yesterday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in the harshest condemnation of Putin’s actions from any US official since the war in Ukraine began three weeks ago.

Read more about war crimes and how Putin could be prosecuted here.

Russian forces attacked the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv with cluster munition rockets in three separate attacks spanning a week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday. 

According to the non-governmental organization, it interviewed six witnesses and verified dozens of social media footage, residential areas were hit on March 7, 11, and 13.

The images show four dead bodies, HRW said, and remnants of the weapons used including Uragan and Smerch cluster munition rockets — stockpiled by both Russia and Ukraine — as well as remnants and unexploded 9N210 fragmentation submunitions. The attacks “might amount to war crimes,” HRW said.  

Due to the widespread and indiscriminate damage they cause, cluster munitions are banned under international law. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are state parties to the treaties, however.

“Cluster munitions pose an immediate threat to civilians during conflict by randomly scattering submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. They continue to pose a threat post-conflict by leaving remnants, including submunitions that fail to explode upon impact becoming de facto landmines,” according to HRW.

The report details civilian accounts which describe the alleged attacks. HRW says they geolocated one image shared by a witness that places an attack in the Inhulsky neighborhood on March 11 around 1.7 kilometers (about 1 mile) from a factory which produces gas-turbines for defense technology and vessels. 

“The factory may have been identified as a potential military target, but the significant distance between the factory and the civilian objects damaged also suggests the attacks were indiscriminate,” they report.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin again reiterated that the United States will not enforce closing the skies in Ukraine, because “a no-fly zone means you’re in a conflict with Russia.”

“From a US perspective, our President, President Biden, has been clear that we would not have US forces fighting in Ukraine. Having said that, we’ll do everything within our power to support Ukraine in their efforts to defend their territory,” Austin said in Bratislava, Slovakia, after meeting with his Slovakian counterpart.

“We’ve also stated enforcing a no-fly zone actually means that you’re in combat, you’re in a fight with Russia, and that’s one of the things that we have said, that our President said we weren’t going to do, get in a fight with Russia,” he said.

“So what this really means is that in order to control the skies, you have to shut down the air defenses there on the ground. And some of those air defense systems are in Russia and so, again, there’s no easy or simple way to do this. There’s no such thing as a no-fly zone light. A no-fly zone means you’re in a conflict with Russia. So from a US perspective, we’re, again, our position remains that we’re not going to do that,” he continued.

Austin added that Ukrainian forces have successfully utilized air defense systems to deter attacks from Russia.

“So our goal has been to continue to reinforce those things that have worked for the Ukrainian forces,” he said, adding the US is talking to allies to provide support.

In his address to the US Congress yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed gratitude to Biden for aid the US has delivered so far, but he argued that more assistance is desperately needed. Zelensky specifically reiterated calls for the US to help enforce a no-fly zone in Ukraine to protect civilians.

Read more about NATO and what a no-fly zone means here.

Of all the surprises that Russian President Vladimir Putin has encountered since he invaded Ukraine last month, perhaps the biggest has been that Russia is yet to gain air superiority.

On paper, Russia’s military prowess implies that along with quick ground victories, the Russian air force should have been able swiftly to take control of the skies. Going into the conflict, Russia’s 1,391 aircraft to Ukraine’s 132 —complemented by 948 helicopters to Kyiv’s 55 — have yet to give Putin the kind of aerial dominance required to eliminate Ukraine’s resistance. Russia’s overall defense budget of $45.8 billion is almost 10 times that of its neighbor.

Experts ranging from former air force personnel to government officials believe that Russia’s failure comes down to a combination of poor preparation by Moscow, a clever use of resources based on intelligence by Ukraine and the targeted donations of arms from Western allies to Ukraine. 

“As far as I understand, they were able to save a large part of their air force by moving planes from airfields before the Russians destroyed them, based on intelligence ahead of attacks,” said Gen. Riho Terras, a former commander of the Estonian Defense Forces. 

Sophy Antrobus, research associate at Freeman Air and Space Institute and former officer in the UK’s Royal Air Force, agrees that in the early stages of the war, Ukraine appeared to take intelligent steps that are now paying dividends. 

“They’ve been clever in that they didn’t deploy all of their resources that could take down Russian aircraft. This possibly led Russia into a false sense of security, and Ukraine has been able to keep defending its air while reinforcements from allies arrive,” she said. 

Those reinforcements include S-300 anti-aircraft systems, Stingers and Javelin missiles that have been used by Ukraine so far. The presence of such missile systems marks a dramatic upgrade for Ukraine. 

Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking member on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee told CNN that S-300s, which are Russian-made, have “higher-altitude” capability than Stinger missiles, which the US has also sent to Ukraine.

“The S-300s are the high-altitude — sort of like our Patriot battery of missiles — anti-aircraft system. The fact that they are in country and more are coming is going to be very effective.” While these missile systems might be effective, there is still a question mark over how long Ukraine can hold off Russia — both in the air and on the ground. 

Read the full analysis here.

Tata Marharian, a member of the Ukrainian Volunteer Medical Battalion in Kyiv, told CNN about her difficult experiences treating wounded children, adults and elderly people this past week.

She said she’s treated a lot of people with brain damage from the shelling of cities.

“Many people are wounded, many people are dying,” she said.

The constant bombardment from Russian forces has taken a toll on her.

“You have the feeling that you have nowhere to hide, probably. And you have nowhere to run, especially when the drones are right above your head,” she said. “And you always question whether this is the drone of our army or if this is a hostile drone, and if it is, where to hide.”

Marharian said she has tried to stay strong but that she has been demoralized.

“I don’t know how much longer I can go with news of my friends and close ones being captured by Russians being wounded and dying, and it is very, very devastating,” she said.

“I also can’t even imagine the amount of money I have to spend on therapy once this all ends,” she said in a pique of gallows humor. “I’m sorry for laughing, this is a silly thought that I have.”

Marharian previously told CNN she moved from her hometown in the Donbas region to Kyiv in 2015 to study international law.

Watch her interview:

The European Space Agency announced Thursday it has suspended the Russian-European Mars mission over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine. While recognizing the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States,” ESA said in a statement. 

During its meeting in Paris, ESA’s ruling council “acknowledged the present impossibility of carrying out the ongoing cooperation with (Russia’s space agency) Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission with a launch in 2022, and mandated the ESA Director General to take appropriate steps to suspend the cooperation activities accordingly,” it said.

Despite suspending the Mars mission, ESA said that the International Space Station program “continues to operate nominally. The main goal is to continue safe operations of the ISS, including maintaining the safety of the crew.”

There are currently four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut living and working on board the orbiting outpost.

In light of the situation in Ukraine, the agency’s director general will convene an extraordinary session of ESA’s ruling council in the coming weeks ”to submit specific proposals for decision by Member States,” according to the statement. 

Canada is imposing new sanctions on Belarusian leadership in response to the country’s involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly.

These new measures impose restrictions on 22 senior officials of Belarus’s Department of Defense who supported the attack on Ukraine by allowing Belarus to serve as a “launch pad” for the Russian invasion, a release from Global Affairs Canada said.

“The world is horrified to witness the senseless violence occurring in Ukraine. Just as Canada is imposing severe sanctions on the Russian regime, Belarusian leadership must also be held accountable for enabling and supporting Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attacks,” Joy said. “Canada implores (Belarusian President) Alexander Lukashenko to end his support for the Russian invasion. We will not hesitate to take further action. The world is watching.”

According to the release, Canada has sanctioned more than 500 individuals and entities from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Russian troops were stationed in Belarus — which borders Ukraine to the north — prior to the attack on Ukraine, which the two countries had claimed were for exercises. Using Belarus’ border has been strategically advantageous to Russia because its border with Ukraine is much closer to Kyiv than Russia’s, providing a shorter pathway for Russian troops to reach the Ukrainian capital.

Britain will deploy its Sky Sabre air defense system to Poland, along with 100 troops to operate it, the UK Ministry of Defence said Thursday. 

The Polish government had requested the anti-air warfare system, the UK defense ministry said on Twitter.

“Sky Sabre has unprecedented speed, accuracy, performance and target acquisition, which will significantly enhance Poland’s air defences,” it added. 

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the deployment is to help Poland “stand tall against Russian threats” as it carries “much of the burden of this war.” It will help Poland protect its airspace from “any further aggression from Russia,” he added.

According to the UK ministry, the addition of the Sky Sabre to its arsenal in December 2021 marked a “massive leap forward in the UK’s armed forces’ capability to defend itself from fast attack jet fighters, missiles and even air dropped bombs.” 

Last week, a drone flew more than 350 miles beyond Ukraine’s western border before crashing in Croatia, a NATO member country. The drone was carrying a bomb, Croatian officials said, and it’s still not clear whether it belonged to Ukrainian or Russian forces.

Another drone recently entered the airspace of Romania, south of Ukraine. And on Tuesday, Ukraine’s military said it shot down a Russian drone that had reentered Ukraine through Polish airspace.

The trio of drone incidents has amplified concerns that Russia’s war in Ukraine could spill over into NATO countries, even if unintentionally, forcing the alliance to decide how to respond — if it all — to incidents that occur inside its borders.

US defense officials say the errant drones that entered NATO territory appeared to be largely inadvertent. Since the start of Russia’s invasion, the US military has established a deconfliction line with Russia to reduce the risk of miscalculation and make sure the two militaries operating so close together don’t inadvertently clash. The US has tested the line “once or twice a day,” according to a senior defense official, but so far, it hasn’t been needed.

But NATO has tried unsuccessfully to connect with Russia via a deconfliction hotline and written letters, raising concerns about Russia’s willingness to engage as the invasion of Ukraine has spread further west toward NATO territory, senior NATO military officials said on Wednesday.

“We are trying to communicate with them of course,” one of the officials told reporters in a briefing at NATO headquarters. “But it requires two [sides] to communicate.”

Russia brought the fight closer to NATO’s doorstep last weekend with precision-guided missile strikes near Lviv in western Ukraine, targeting a military training facility just 10 miles from Poland’s border. Those attacks came one day after Russian officials threatened convoys that are providing weapons to Ukraine from the West, though a senior US defense official said the facility was not being used for security shipments.

Read the full story here.

More than 187,000 refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine have arrived in Germany, according to the German Ministry of the Interior.

As of Thursday, 187,428 refugees had been registered by German police, but the actual number of incoming refugees could be significantly higher due to the absence of border checks between Poland and Germany, an interior ministry spokesperson told CNN.

The majority of refugees arriving in Germany are women, children and elderly people, the spokesperson said.

The International Organization for Migration estimated on Monday that more 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began in late February.

There is still no information about possible fatalities or the condition of survivors after a theater building, which was being used as a shelter, was hit in the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine.

As many as 1,200 people are believed to have been sheltering in the theater when it was struck by what Ukrainian officials say was a Russian air strike early Wednesday evening. 

First reports Thursday morning from the former Donetsk regional head, Sergiy Taruta, that people were emerging alive from the rubble of the building have been backed up by Liudmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights.

“In Mariupol, the release of civilians from the rubble of the drama theatre has begun. The building withstood the impact of a high-powered air bomb and protected the lives of people hiding in the bomb shelter. Work is underway to unlock the basement,” Denisova said in a statement on Telegram.

Adults and children, she said, were coming out alive but the full extent of what had taken place remained unclear.

“There is currently no information about the dead or wounded under the rubble of the theatre,” she said.

Aerial photos of the building before it was hit clearly show the Russian word for “children” painted in huge lettering on the ground on two sides of the building. 

Denisova called the attack “an act of genocide and a terrible crime against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

Russia has denied its forces hit the building and instead accused “militants of the nationalist ‘Azov’ battalion” of blowing up the theater. 

The Azov Battalion is an ultra-nationalist militia that has since been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

Residents of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol have described the situation there as “unbearable” and “just hell.”

On Thursday, survivors began emerging from the rubble of the theater they were sheltering in after it was bombed by Russian forces yesterday, according the former head of the Donetsk region. The number of casualties is unknown.

Hundreds of civilians were thought to have taken shelter in the building amid the ongoing Russian siege of the coastal city. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are currently trapped there and as many as 2,500 civilians have died in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials estimate.

Here are the latest developments:

US President Joe Biden will speak with China’s Xi Jinping Friday about “managing the competition between our two countries as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine and other issues of mutual concern,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday.

“This is part of our ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication between the United States and the PRC,” Psaki said.

More context: A Western official and a US diplomat told CNN earlier this week that the US has information suggesting China has expressed some openness to providing Russia with requested military and financial assistance as part of its war on Ukraine.

It is not yet clear whether China intends to provide Russia with that assistance, US officials familiar with the intelligence tell CNN. But during an intense, seven-hour meeting in Rome, a top aide to Biden warned his Chinese counterpart of “potential implications and consequences” for China should support for Russia be forthcoming, a senior administration official said.

Biden and Xi’s last known conversation took place in November during a three-and-a-half hour virtual summit. The highly anticipated summit yielded no major breakthroughs — though none were expected ahead of time — and officials dismissed the notion the summit was intended to ease what has become an increasingly tense relationship.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is discussing ways to help Ukrainian refugees join family members already living in the US by providing special pathways for their admission, according to multiple sources.

Under mounting pressure to step up their efforts, Biden administration officials have been considering a range of options, including a fast-track path for those fleeing the Russian invasion as well as a special admission process into the US based on humanitarian grounds, according to one source familiar with the discussions. The proposals could potentially help hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing the violence.

More than three million refugees have fled war-torn Ukraine to neighboring countries in a span of weeks, prompting calls for more nations — and specifically the US — to take in refugees. Polish President Andrzej Duda personally asked US Vice President Kamala Harris last week to speed up and simplify the procedures allowing Ukrainians with family in the US to come to the country.

More background: Biden has faced increased pressure in the last several days to do more to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia, including from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself on Wednesday. In a speech to Congress, Zelensky called on Biden to be “the leader of the world” and said the US must do more to help his war-torn country.

For Biden, welcoming Ukrainian refugees into the United States would also help advance the notion of Western unity in the face of Russian aggression, according to one official. The President has told his team that the United States should be prepared to do its part, even as the details of how to do that have not yet been finalized.

Even as they work to identify ways to help Ukrainians, White House officials monitoring the refugee situation said they believe the crisis is still in its early stages, with the potential to dramatically expand in the coming weeks or months. There are fears among some that Poland, along with poorer nations in the region, won’t be able to accommodate a steady flow of migrants that could persist for months, according to officials.

That has added urgency to the discussions about US assistance, as Biden’s aides work to develop options that might alleviate the burden on Ukraine’s neighbors.

Continue reading the full story here:

KRAKOW, POLAND - MARCH 13: People who fled the war in Ukraine walk towards a humanitarian train to relocate refugees to Berlin on March 13, 2022 in Krakow, Poland. Krakow, the second largest city in Poland, who accepted more than 100,000 refugees is now struggling with the new arrivals as temporary accommodations and shelters remain full. Under an emergency plan, the European Union has decided that Ukrainian refugees will have the right to live and work in the Member states up to three years, in response to what is becoming Europe's biggest refugee crisis this century. More than half of the 2.5 million Ukrainians fleeing war have crossed into neighboring Poland since Russia began a large-scale armed invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. (Photo by Omar Marques/Getty Images)

Related article Biden administration looking for ways to help Ukrainian refugees join family members in the US

US President Joe Biden labeling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” is “absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

Peskov said Biden doesn’t have the right to make such statements based on US military actions in the past.

“And most importantly, the head of state which bombed people all over the world for many years and which dropped an atomic bomb on a country [Japan] that had already been defeated — I mean Hiroshima and Nagasaki — cannot have the right to make them,” Peskov added.

When asked by a reporter on Wednesday if he was ready to call Putin a war criminal, Biden said: “I think he is a war criminal.” Biden initially said “no,” but immediately returned to a group of reporters to clarify what had been asked. When asked again whether Putin was a war criminal, he answered in the affirmative.

More background: Officials, including Biden, had previously avoided saying war crimes were being committed in Ukraine, citing ongoing investigations into whether that term could be used. Other world leaders have not been as circumspect, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said last week war crimes were being committed. The International Criminal Court at the Hague has also opened an investigation into war crimes. And the US Senate unanimously asked for an international investigation into war crimes on Tuesday. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said last week that actions committed by Russia against the Ukrainian people “constitute war crimes,” marking the first time a senior US official directly accused Moscow of war crimes since last month’s attack on Ukraine began.

After Biden delivered his assessment, the White House said the administration’s investigation into war crimes would continue.

“The President’s remarks speak for themselves,” press secretary Jen Psaki said. She said Biden was “speaking from the heart.”

CNN’s Sam Fossum and Kevin Liptak contributed reporting to this post.

NATO will not risk an escalation in the Ukraine war by intervening with military force, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at joint news conference in Berlin with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday. 

“It is the core duty of the alliance to secure the safety of all members,” he said.

Germany is sending financial and humanitarian aid, as well as military goods, to Ukraine, but Berlin has stated repeatedly that it will not send fighter jets to help Ukrainian forces in their defense against the Russian invasion. 

“The fate of people in Ukraine touches us deeply,” Scholz said following an address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the German parliament. “Putin brings horrible sufferings and death for the people in Ukraine … We are standing with Ukraine.”

Scholz added that Putin bears the sole responsibility for the deaths of young Russians in the military. “We are also touched by those many young Russians led by their own leadership oppose a senseless war,” he said.

The head of the Chernihiv region, northeast of Kyiv and close to the Russian border, has said that Chernihiv city is “suffering great losses” as it comes under a sustained attack from Russian forces.

“The enemy continues systematic artillery and air strikes of our regional center, destroying civilian infrastructure,” Vyacheslav Chaus wrote on Telegram.

“Just yesterday [Wednesday], 53 bodies of our dead citizens, killed by the Russian aggressor, were brought to the city morgue.”

Some context: Chernihiv has seen some of the worst attacks since Russia’s invasion began three weeks ago, including a strike on an apartment complex on March 4 in which at least 33 people were killed, according to officials, and an attack yesterday on a line of people queueing to buy bread.

When fighting broke out in her town of Irpin, Anastasia and her husband decided to leave – along with 19 dogs, cats and a hamster.

Anastasia told CNN she has been fond of dogs her entire life, so there was no question about whether the dogs should accompany them as they traveled on foot across the bridge to Kyiv.

“There were two dogs in their wheelchairs. Another one, without hind legs, did not want to ride in a wheelchair. He traveled part of the way in my arms, and part of the way he walked on his stumps,” she told CNN.

“I only thought that the dogs were carrying me forward and I was not sure I could slow down and stop in front of the river. Almost all the dogs are large, more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds).”

At first, the dogs were frightened by the large crowds and tried to turn back and go home, Anastasia said.

But she added that they are no longer scared of the sounds of war, having grown used to the constant noise of shelling and explosions.

A volunteer driver met the party on the other side of the bridge, taking them to safety.

“Our territorial defense helped a lot. They ran into us, took old and disabled dogs, cat carriers and a hamster and brought them out in a car,” said Anastasia.

“Unfortunately, four of my dogs got lost, but one of them was found and adopted by the territorial defense.”

Anastasia and her dogs are currently living in a small cats’ home near Kyiv. The dogs are set to be taken to Poland and the Czech Republic.

“I’m homeless, I have nothing, but the dogs are saved,” she added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday appealed to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “destroy” a wall that is separating Europe, drawing parallels between the Berlin Wall during the Cold War and Ukraine’s current position outside of the European Union and NATO.

Addressing German lawmakers via video link, Zelensky said: “We are separated by a wall. It is not a Berlin wall, it is a wall in the middle of Europe between freedom and bondage, and this wall is getting bigger with every bomb falling on Ukraine, with every decision not made for peace and that could help us. Why is this happening?”

Zelensky compared the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War to the current situation in Ukraine, saying: “The airspace was safe then but now we cannot build up an airbridge because Russian bombs and missiles are falling from the sky.”

Earlier in his address to the German Bundestag Thursday the Ukrainian president also explicitly referenced the post-Holocaust motto: “never again.”

“Every year politicians say never again. Now I see that these words are worthless. In Europe a people is being destroyed,” Zelensky said.

Some context: The appeal to German lawmakers is Zelensky’s latest address to a Western parliament, following video link speeches to the US Congress, British House of Commons and others. In each speech, he has tailored references to his audience, such as citing Pearl Harbor and 9/11 to the Americans and echoing Winston Churchill to the British.

“We asked what Ukraine can do to join NATO, to be guaranteed its security and we were told that the decision was not yet on the table,” Zelensky told the Bundestag, adding that refusing to let Ukraine join the EU was like new bricks being added to the wall.

Zelensky also condemned German businesses for having close ties with Russia, adding that economic sanctions had been implemented too late.

He acknowledged that Ukraine was, however, grateful to ordinary Germans who have supported the country, including “journalists reporting the truth and showing the evil that Russia has brought to us.”

“I am grateful to those who can look across walls,” Zelensky said as he ended his address to a round of applause and appealed to Scholz to “destroy this wall.”

The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine at 3 p.m. ET today.

The meeting was requested by the United States, Albania, United Kingdom, France, Ireland and Norway, according to a tweet from Norway’s UN Mission in New York.

The UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, the UN Refugee Agency and the World Health Organization will brief at top of the session, Norway’s mission tweeted.

Nine evacuation routes leading out of different Ukrainian cities, including the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol, have been agreed for Thursday, the Ukrainian government said.

The corridors are designed to allow safe transport of humanitarian aid into the cities, and safe passage out for residents who want to leave.

In recent days, an increasing number of private vehicles have made it out of Mariupol even though a formal corridor has not been in place. An evacuation convoy destined for the city has been stuck in Berdiansk, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the west, for days.

FILE PHOTO: An aerial view shows smoke rising from damaged residential buildings following an explosion, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine March 14, 2022 in this still image taken from a drone footage obtained from social media. Azov regiment press service/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY./File Photo

Related article 'Mariupol is now just hell': Survivors and drone footage reveal the scale of destruction

Iryna Vereshchuk, the Ukrainian minister responsible, said other corridors have been agreed in the Kyiv region, including from Borodianka to Zhytomyr, and from Shevchenkove village to Brovary.

Additionally, Vereshchuk said the government is planning to deliver humanitarian aid to the towns of Hostomel and Bucha, as well as to the villages of Semypolky, Markivtsi and Opanasiv.

Some context: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said evacuation corridors did not work on Wednesday as the Russian military did not stop shelling, disrupting the movement of residents trying to escape from Mariupol.

Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said Thursday that the Russian who bombed a theater being used as a civilian shelter in the besieged city of Mariupol is a “monster.” 

Reznikov told the European Parliament via video link that the pilot dropped the bomb despite the fact it had the word “children” written in large letters on two sides of the building.

It is not clear how many survived the attack. People have been emerging from the shelter alive on Thursday, according to a short statement posted on Facebook by the former head of the Donetsk region.

“You’ve probably already heard that this theater which was struck by missiles, a theater where 1,200 women and children were hiding,” Reznikov added to the European Parliament. 

“And you can see from the maps, from the drones that around this theater, big letters of ‘children’ were written so that the pilot of the plane which was throwing the bombs could see ‘children’, and still, in spite of that, this monster has bombed the theater.”

CNN geolocated the image and satellite images show the word “children” spelled out beside the building before it was bombed.

China endorsed remarks made by its ambassador to Ukraine on Thursday after the Chinese diplomat pledged Beijing’s political and economic support for the war-torn country.

“China absolutely supports the remarks made by the ambassador,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a regular press briefing.

“China supports all efforts that are conducive to easing the situation in Ukraine and a political settlement. [China] is ready to do its part to overcome the humanitarian crisis,” he added.

But in a sign of Beijing’s possible attempt to play both sides, Zhao declined to say if Beijing’s support for its ambassador’s remarks means China will not offer weapons or other assistance to Russia to support the military invasion in Ukraine.

“That’s your own interpretation,” he said, responding to a reporter’s question on the topic. “China has made repeated statements. There is no reason for you to make such a connection.”

Fan Xianrong, the Chinese ambassador to Ukraine, pledged Beijing’s support and praised the Ukrainian people in a meeting in Lviv on Monday, according to a press release from the regional government.

“China will always be a force of good for Ukraine both economically and politically,” Fan was quoted as saying to Maksym Kozytsky, the head of the regional administration in Lviv. “China will never attack Ukraine. We will help, especially economically.”

“In this situation, which you have now, we will act responsibly. We have seen how great the unity of the Ukrainian people is, and that means its strength,” he continued, adding that the Chinese embassy had moved from Kyiv to Lviv and would remain there for the time being.

As of Thursday afternoon, Fan’s remarks had not been reported by China’s state media, which has largely been parroting the Kremlin’s talking points since the Russian invasion began.

On Tuesday, China’s ambassador to the US Qin Gang published an op-ed in the Washington Post reiterating that Beijing wanted to see an end to the conflict in Ukraine and dispelling “rumors” that “China knew about, acquiesced to or tacitly supported” the war.

“Conflict between Russia and Ukraine does no good for China. Had China known about the imminent crisis, we would have tried our best to prevent it,” Qin wrote.

His comments followed assertions from US intelligence officials that Russia had asked China for military support in Ukraine. Beijing and Moscow have both denied the claims.

People sheltering at a theater in Mariupol that was struck by a Russian bomb on Wednesday are emerging alive, according to a short statement posted on Facebook Thursday by the former head of the Donetsk region.

“After an awful night of not knowing, we finally have good news from Mariupol on the morning of the 22nd day of the war. The bomb shelter [of the theater] was able to hold. The rubble is beginning to be cleared. People are coming out alive,” Sergei Taruta wrote.

It is not yet clear if this means all those inside the building have survived. Hundreds of people were believed to have taken shelter in the theater.

Some context: Mariupol City Council, which shared an image of the destroyed building, said Russian forces had “purposefully and cynically destroyed the Drama Theater in the heart of Mariupol.”

“The plane dropped a bomb on a building where hundreds of peaceful Mariupol residents were hiding,” it said.

CNN geolocated the image and confirmed it is of the theater in the southeastern port city. The word “children” was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed, according to satellite images.

Videos of the aftermath showed a fire raging in the theater’s ruins. The number of casualties is unknown, authorities said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made explicit reference to the Holocaust in an address to German lawmakers Thursday.

“Every year politicians say never again. Now I see that these words are worthless. In Europe a people is being destroyed,” he said while speaking to lawmakers via a video address at the Bundestag.

Watch:

Video Ad Feedback

a7c789cc-1f93-4532-a811-2cab0275a303.mp4

02:05 - Source: cnn

More than 1.9 million refugees have entered Poland from Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24, the country’s Border Guard agency said in a tweet Wednesday.

Of those:  

Overall, more than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, according to the UN Refugee Agency, with the majority of those refugees going to Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.

The population of Ukraine was more than 43 million people before the invasion.

China will “never attack Ukraine,” its top diplomat inside the country told officials Monday, according to a news release from the Lviv regional government. 

“China will never attack Ukraine. We will help, especially economically…In this situation, which you have now, we will act responsibly,” China’s ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong told Maksym Kozytsky, the head of the regional military administration in Lviv during a meeting. 
“China is a friendly country to the Ukrainian people. As an Ambassador, I can responsibly say that China will always be a force of good for Ukraine both economically and politically.”

Fan said the Chinese Embassy had moved from Kyiv to Lviv and would remain there for the time being, according to Kozytsky.

Some context: On Tuesday, China’s Ambassador to the US Qin Gang published an op-ed in the Washington Post reiterating that Beijing wanted to see an end to the conflict in Ukraine and dispelling “rumors” that “China knew about, acquiesced to or tacitly supported” the war. 

His comments followed claims from US intelligence officials that Russia had asked China for military support in Ukraine — something that Beijing and Moscow have denied. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has largely stalled on all fronts, the UK Defense Ministry said Thursday on its official Twitter account.

“Russian forces have made minimal progress on land, sea or air in recent days” and continue to suffer heavy losses, the ministry said, adding that Ukrainian resistance remains strong.
“The vast majority of Ukrainian territory, including all major cities, remains in Ukrainian hands.”

An earlier intelligence report from the ministry said Russia is resorting to the use of older, less precise weapons that are less militarily effective and more likely to result in civilian casualties.

Due to the delays in “achieving their objectives and failure to control Ukrainian airspace,” the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update said Russia has probably “expended far more stand-off air launched weapons than originally planned,” leading them to resort to weapons that are less militarily effective.

Some context: This is not the first report suggesting Russia’s advance is slowing in Ukraine.

Hong Kong’s flag carrier, Cathay Pacific, is no longer routing flights over Russian airspace, the airline said Thursday.

“We regularly review our flight routings internally and also with information provided by external parties. We are currently not flying through Russian airspace,” Cathay Pacific said in a statement to CNN.

Some context: Airlines have experienced major disruption due to the war in Ukraine.

A glance at flight-tracking site FlightRadar24 on Thursday showed few planes over Russian skies. They included at least one Air China flight but most were for domestic Russian airlines.

Russian forces tear-gassed Ukrainian protesters in the Russian-occupied city of Skadovsk on Wednesday when they demonstrated against the detention of the mayor and two other officials, according to a citizen who will not be named for safety issues.  

Russian troops detained Mayor Alexander Yakolev, his deputy Alexander Grischenko and the city council secretary Yuri Palyukha on Wednesday morning, the citizen said. Dozens of residents of the Black Sea port city then gathered around noon outside the government building, where the three were being held.

According to a video of the incident and the citizen, Russian troops fired tear gas at the protesters as they demonstrated peacefully, sang and chanted, and tried to mediate for the release of the three officials.  

Yakolev was released, according to a video he posted on Telegram, but the fate of his deputy and the city council secretary is not known. 

Some context: This is the first known instance of tear gas being used by the Russian military against Ukrainians in occupied territory since the invasion began three weeks ago.

Russian troops have frequently tried to disperse protesters with gunfire, shooting over their heads. On March 5, at least one protester was shot in the leg in the eastern town of  Novopskov in such an instance.

One of the stars of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, Olga Smirnova, has quit the company over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and will instead dance for the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam.

Smirnova, whose grandfather is Ukrainian, wrote on Telegram that she is “against war with all the fibers of my soul.”

“I never thought I would be ashamed of Russia,” she wrote in the statement, which was later republished by the Dutch National Ballet. “I have always been proud of talented Russian people, of our cultural and athletic achievements. But now I feel that a line has been drawn that separates the before and the after.
“It hurts that people are dying, that people are losing the roofs over their heads or are forced to abandon their homes. And who would have thought a few weeks ago that all of this would happen? We may not be at the epicenter of the military conflict, but we cannot remain indifferent to this global catastrophe.”

Smirnova joined the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet in 2011, before taking lead roles in performances of “Swan Lake” and “Giselle,” among others. She has since toured internationally with the troupe and has appeared as a guest performer for the American Ballet Theatre and the Vienna State Ballet.

The announcement comes a little over a week after two other Bolshoi members — Brazilian soloist David Motta Soares and Italian principal dancer Jacopo Tissi — both announced they were resigning. Explaining his decision via Instagram, Tissi said Russia’s actions left him “unable to continue with my career in Moscow,” adding “no war can be justified.”

Read more:

Bolshoi Theatre ballet dancer Olga Smirnova during a gala concert of the Svetlanov State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia and the Sveshnikov State Academic Russian Choir at the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow.

Related article 'We cannot remain indifferent': Russian star ballerina Olga Smirnova quits Bolshoi Ballet

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has clamped down on any dissent since the invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday blasted pro-Western Russians by calling them “national traitors” in a televised address.  

“The West will try to rely on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors, on those who earn money here with us but live there. And I mean ‘live there’ not even in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their thoughts, their slavish consciousness,” Putin said. 

The term “fifth column” usually refers to enemy sympathizers and originated during the Spanish Civil War.

The Russian leader, whose forces have become bogged down in Ukraine and whose country is facing economic disaster due to Western sanctions, has often blamed Western influences for what ails his country. 

Watch:

One person died and three others were injured after debris from a downed missile hit a residential building in Kyiv on Thursday, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine’s state emergency service said it received a report of a fire and damage to a 16-story apartment in the Darnytsky district of the capital at 5:02 a.m. local time.

The blaze was later extinguished, the service said.  

According to initial information, 30 people were evacuated from the site as rescue operations continue, the service added.  

Four Russian warships passed through the Tsugaru Strait in northeastern Japan between Tuesday and Wednesday, possibly transporting troops and combat vehicles to Ukraine, Japan’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

“Japan’s Ministry of Defense will continue to monitor the situation and movements of the Russian army with a high sense of caution,” the ministry said on its official Twitter account.

The Tsugaru Strait connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean and is located between Japan’s two largest main islands, Honshu and Hokkaido.

Some context: A public intelligence assessment released Tuesday by the UK Ministry of Defence said that due to heavy losses suffered in Ukraine, Russia was redeploying forces from as far away as “its Eastern Military District, Pacific Fleet and Armenia.”

Another day of horrific civilian carnage in Ukraine underscored the desperate need for a ceasefire — and explained why an end to the barbaric war may still be far away.

Russian forces Wednesday escalated their assault on soft targets, which prompted President Joe Biden to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

The fate of hundreds of people sheltering in a theater in the coastal city of Mariupol is unknown after a Russian barrage slammed into a building flanked with the word “children” on the ground to ward off attacks. Another bombardment hit a swimming pool in the same city used as a shelter.

There are too many attacks for this to be anything but a deliberate Russian strategy of trying to bomb Ukraine into submission one civilian at a time. This assault designed to cause maximum pain and destruction is likely to further deepen the schism between the two countries and make it harder to find an accommodation to end the killing.

Yet the appalling humanitarian disaster unfolding in Ukraine — and the possibility that thousands of innocent lives could be saved — make it imperative for Kyiv and Western nations to try to come to some accommodation with Putin, as bitter as that may be. But even then: Will the Russian leader ever accept it?

Read the full analysis:

Smoke rises from a fire broke out at the Saltivka construction market, hit by 6 rounds of Russian heavy artillery in Kharkiv, Ukraine on March 16, 2022.

Related article Analysis: Why Ukraine's battle for survival may be far from over

The fate of hundreds of people sheltering in a bombed theater in the southern coastal city of Mariupol is unknown while new satellite images show that constant bombardment is causing significant destruction across Ukraine.

Here’s the latest:

Russia is resorting to the use of older, less precise weapons that are less militarily effective and more likely to result in civilian casualties, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update Thursday.

Due to the delays in “achieving their objectives and failure to control Ukrainian airspace,” the ministry said Russia has probably “expended far more stand-off air launched weapons than originally planned,” leading them to resort to weapons that are less militarily effective.

“Stand-off air launched weapons” are munitions fired from aircraft that are not in close range of a target.

Firing from a distance allows for the delivery of the weapon while minimizing possible harm to the aircrew from retaliatory attack.

The constant bombardment of military strikes is causing significant destruction across Ukraine, as seen on new Maxar Technologies satellite images. 

Volnovakha: In southeastern Ukraine, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of Mariupol, much of the small city of Volnovakha lies in ruins — destroyed by military strikes. Where some buildings once stood, only scorched structures remain.

On Wednesday, Russian state media interviewed Russian-backed separatists from the Donbas region in the city, who claimed they had taken control of it from Ukrainian forces.

The roof of the city’s train station looks like it’s been punched in. Buildings northeast of it have their roofs knocked in too. The only evidence that some buildings ever stood near the central square is their charred walls.

On the northern side of Volnovakha, a church and an apartment complex have been devastated. Debris is seen covering the ground around them.

At a roundabout toward the northwestern side of town, nearly all of the buildings seen in the satellite image have sustained significant damage.

Chernihiv: In a field about 10 miles (17 kilometers) northeast of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, more than a dozen Russian self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launch systems are seen. 

In eastern Chernihiv, a number of homes surrounding a roundabout are seen on fire. 

In another satellite image, multipurpose sports venue Chernihiv Stadium has sustained massive damage to the stands and a huge impact crater is seen in the center of the field. 

Kharkiv: In northeast Ukraine, a number of houses near a large apartment complex are on fire in central Kharkiv. Further north of the city, a snow-covered field near the airfield at the Kharkiv Aircraft Manufacturing Company is dotted with impact craters.  

President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” Wednesday, a rhetorical leap that came as civilian deaths mount in Ukraine.

It was the harshest condemnation of Putin’s actions from any US official since the war in Ukraine began three weeks ago. Previously, Biden had stopped short of labeling atrocities being documented on the ground in Ukraine as “war crimes,” citing ongoing international and US investigations.

But on Wednesday, speaking with reporters at an unrelated event, Biden affixed the designation on the Russian leader.

The shift from the administration’s previous stance came after an emotional address to Congress from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who aired a video showing Ukrainians suffering amid Russia’s onslaught. Zelensky asked American lawmakers and Biden for more help defending itself, including a no-fly zone and fighter jets.

Biden responded in his own address a few hours later, laying out new American military assistance to Ukraine — including anti-aircraft and anti-armor systems, weapons and drones — but stopping short of acceding to Zelensky’s requests.

Read more:

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.

Related article Biden on Putin: 'I think he is a war criminal'

A senior adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday claimed the Ukrainian army is beginning to counterstrike Russian forces in a number of directions. 

In a statement released on Telegram, adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the “Ukrainian army is beginning a counterstrike on a number of active directions. This fact is drastically changing the dispositions of the sides.”
The “Russian administration is trying to find allies whose soldiers would be ready to die on the field,” Podolyak said.

Some context: According to a UK Ministry of Defence intelligence assessment on Tuesday, the Russian military is calling up reinforcements from across the country as it faces “continued personnel losses” in Ukraine.

The assessment said Russia was redeploying forces from as far away as “its Eastern Military District, Pacific Fleet and Armenia” and was increasingly tapping other sources of fighters such as “private military companies, Syrians, and other mercenaries.”

Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was freed from detention by Russian forces as part of a prisoner swap, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said in a statement Thursday.

Fedorov was exchanged for nine Russian soldiers, whom the Ukrainians say are “conscripts,” born between 2002 and 2003, the statement said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied sending conscripts to Ukraine. But Russia’s Ministry of Defense previously confirmed that conscripts have been involved in the invasion and that some were taken prisoner by Ukrainian forces.

Fedorov was taken to Luhansk after his detention and held for five days. He was allegedly advised to cooperate with Russia, which he declined to do, according to Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security.

“We have finally managed to release the mayor of Melitopol from captivity. Our Ukrainian Melitopol, which did not submit and will not submit to the occupiers,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message posted to Facebook early Thursday.
“Ivan Fedorov is free. I talked to him today. The Russian military abducted him on March 11, trying to persuade him to collaborate. But our man withstood. He did not give up. Just as we all endure. You all. Just as we all do not give up. Because we are Ukrainians. And we always protect our own.”

Earlier, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in Zelensky’s office, said on his Telegram channel that Fedorov was rescued in a “special operation.”

A theater where hundreds of people had taken shelter in Mariupol was bombed on Wednesday, according to local authorities, as hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in the coastal Ukrainian city that has been encircled for weeks by Russian forces.

Mariupol City Council, which shared an image of the destroyed building, said Russian forces had “purposefully and cynically destroyed the Drama Theater in the heart of Mariupol.”

CNN has geolocated the image and confirmed it is of the theater in the southeastern port city. The word “children” was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed, according to satellite images.

Videos of the aftermath showed a fire raging in the theater’s ruins. The number of casualties is unknown, authorities said.

Read more:

The Drama Theater in Mariupol where hundreds were taking refuge sustained heavy damage in a bombing Wednesday.

Related article Russians bomb Mariupol theater where hundreds had taken refuge, officials say

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to Congress for help on Wednesday in a historic speech, telling US lawmakers “we need you right now” as he invoked tragedies in American history like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorist attack.

The speech, which was given as a virtual address to members of Congress, came as the United States is under pressure from Ukraine to supply more military assistance to the embattled country as it fights back against Russia’s deadly attack.

The Ukrainian President expressed gratitude to Biden for aid the US has delivered so far, but he argued that more assistance is desperately needed. Zelensky specifically reiterated calls for the US to help enforce a no-fly zone in Ukraine to protect civilians and provide fighter aircraft that the Ukrainians can use to defend themselves, requests that have met with resistance.

“To create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people, is this too much to ask?” he said. Zelensky went on to say, “You know how much depends on the battlefield, on the ability to use aircraft, powerful strong aviation to protect our people, our freedom, our land, aircraft that can help Ukraine, help Europe. You know they exist and you have them, but they are on Earth not in the Ukrainian sky.”

The speech featured a short video with harrowing scenes from the war-torn country graphically depicting the brutal and deadly toll of the Russian invasion. At the end, the screen read: “close the sky over Ukraine.”

Zelensky paid tribute to tragic moments in American history as he made his appeal.

CNN’s Ted Barrett, Ali Zaslav, Lauren Fox, Annie Grayer, Daniella Diaz, Kristin Wilson, Melanie Zanona, Jeremy Herb, Donald Judd and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.

Read the full report on Zelensky’s address here.