UK defense says Ukraine holding its airspace; Russia uses first hypersonic missile: Live updates
Russian forces are besieging Ukrainian cities, relying increasingly on bombarding them from a distance with artillery, missiles and air strikes, according to the Pentagon.
“This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis,” British Defense attache Mick Smeath said in a statement Saturday.
Meanwhile in Russia, President Vladimir Putin is reinforcing his control of domestic media, attempting to obscure high casualties amid fierce resistance encountered in his invasion of Ukraine, according to a British Defense Ministry intelligence estimate.
The assessment was echoed by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, in a report this week. The group warned that since Russia’s “lightning offensive designed to take the capital” had failed, the military appeared to be settling in for an extended campaign “designed to suffocate Ukraine.”
REFUGEE EXODUS:Millions of refugees are fleeing Ukraine. Where are they going?
The strategy would likely involve attacking civilian areas, destroying cities and blocking off supplies, possibly leading to famine, according to the analysis. The organization later drew parallels to an artificial famine engineered by the Kremlin in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians — a Soviet attempt to “subjugate the Ukrainian nation.”
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Latest developments:
►At least 847 civilians, including 64 children, have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner reported Saturday, but the agency said the actual figures are much higher. Agents also estimated the violence had left nearly 1,400 civilians injured, including 78 children.
►The Mariupol city council claimed Russian soldiers have forced several thousand city residents to be relocated to Russia. “The occupiers illegally took people out of the Levoberezhny district and a shelter in the building of a sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombing,” the council said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.
►Saturday, Ukraine and Russia agreed to open 10 humanitarian corridors to assist in the evacuation efforts, according to Ukraine’s deputy prime minster.
►The U.N. migration agency says the fighting has displaced nearly 6.5 million people inside Ukraine, on top of the 3.2 million refugees who have already fled the country. Ukraine says thousands have been killed.
►The Ukraine military claims to have killed another Russian general – the fifth since the invasion began.
UK defense says Ukraine holding its airspace
The British defense ministry said the Ukrainian Air Force and air defense forces are “continuing to effectively defend Ukrainian airspace.”
“Russia has failed to gain control of the air and is largely relying on stand-off weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets within Ukraine,” the ministry said on Twitter. “Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress.”
A Ukrainian military official meanwhile confirmed to a Ukrainian newspaper that Russian forces carried out a missile strike Friday on a missile and ammunition warehouse in the Delyatyn settlement of the Ivano-Frankivsk region in western Ukraine.
Mapping and tracking Russia’s invasion of Ukrainesiege of Mariupol will go down in history for what he’s calling war crimes by Russia’s military.
“To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said early Sunday in his nighttime video address to the nation.
Zelenskyy told Ukrainians the ongoing negotiations with Russia were “not simple or pleasant, but they are necessary.” He said he discussed the course of the talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.
“Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution. Moreover, we are interested in peace now,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military isn’t even recovering the bodies of its soldiers in some places, Zelenskyy said.
“In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defense. And no one is collecting these bodies,” he said. He described as battle near Chornobayivka in the south, where Ukrainian forces held their positions and six times beat back the Russians, who just kept “sending their people to slaughter.”
– The Associated Press
‘PLEASE HELP US’:Weary voices call from Mariupol, where bodies line streets
Experts: Math of military occupation may be against Putin in Ukraine
Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely. Yet even conservative figures are in the low thousands. That’s a much faster pace than in previous Russian offensives, threatening support for the war among ordinary Russians. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 over years of fighting in Chechnya.
Russia’s number of dead and wounded in Ukraine is nearing the 10% benchmark of diminished combat effectiveness, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher on Russia’s security at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. The reported battlefield deaths of four Russian generals — out of an estimated 20 in the fight — signal impaired command, he said.
Researchers tracking only those Russian equipment losses that were photographed or recorded on video say Russia has lost more than 1,500 tanks, trucks, mounted equipment and other heavy gear. Two out of three of those were captured or abandoned, signaling the failings of the Russian troops that let them go.
When it comes to the grinding job of capturing and holding cities, conventional military metrics suggest Russia needs a 5-to-1 advantage in urban fighting, analysts say. Meanwhile, the formula for ruling a restive territory in the face of armed opposition is 20 fighters for every 1,000 people — or 800,000 Russian troops for Ukraine’s more than 40 million people, said Michael Clarke, former head of the British-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank
That’s almost as many as Russia’s entire active-duty military of 900,000, and it means controlling substantial Ukrainian territory long term could take more resources than Russia can commit, he said.
“Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal — they could flatten all the major cities, and Ukrainians will rise up against Russian occupation — there will be just constant guerrilla war,” said Clarke.
– The Associated Press
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Ukrainians evacuated along 8 of 10 agreed upon humanitarian corridors
Evacuations from besieged cities proceeded Saturday along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. She said a total of 6,623 people were evacuated, including 4,128 from Mariupol who were taken northwest to Zaporizhzhia.
Russian forces pushed deeper into the besieged and battered port city of Mariupol, where heavy fighting on Saturday shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help.
The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.
-The Associated Press
Pope Francis visits Ukrainian children at Vatican hospital
Pope Francis has paid a visit to some of the Ukrainian children who escaped the Russian invasion and are currently being treated at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital in Rome.
The Vatican says the Bambino Gesu hospital is currently tending to 19 Ukrainian refugees, and that overall some 50 have passed through in recent weeks.
Some were suffering oncological, neurological and other problems before the war and fled in the early days. Others are being treated for wounds incurred as a result of the invasion.
The Vatican says Francis travelled the short distance up the hill to the hospital on Saturday afternoon. He met with all the young patients in their rooms before returning back to the Vatican.
Francis has spoken out about the “barbarity” of the war and especially the death and injury it has caused Ukrainian children.
-The Associated Press
Russia says it used hypersonic missiles for the first time
Russia said it used a hypersonic missile Friday to strike a western Ukraine target, the Interfax news agency reported.
Hypersonic missiles are missiles that can move at five times the speed of sound. The Russian military said these missiles are capable of hitting targets at a range of more than 1,200 miles, or roughly the distance from New York City to Kansas City.
“The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aero ballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region,” the Russian defense ministry said Saturday.
This is the first known use of hypersonic missiles since Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
– Ana Faguy
providing humanitarian assistance and lethal aid to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
“This invasion of Russia into Ukraine is abhorrent and we cannot stand for it,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. “The goal is a free and sovereign Ukraine. We want peace, but we want a free and sovereign Ukraine.”
The lawmakers displayed part of a missile that struck close to the Polish border. Ernst said lawmakers didn’t visit the border, but did stop in at a refugee center where people rested before resettling elsewhere in Poland or other countries.
AID FOR UKRAINE:Biden calls Putin a ‘war criminal’ after signing off on $800 million in new military aid: March 16 recap
“We do need to find new ways of getting much needed material into Ukraine as quickly as possible,” Ernst said after the delegation met with leaders from Poland, Ukraine and Germany.
Ernst, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard who served in the Iraq war and sits on the Armed Services Committee, said Russian President Vladimir Putin should be held accountable for the war and for targeting women, children and the elderly.
“It’s a truly weak man that targets children, elderly, women. Putin is a weak leader,” Ernst said. “He may be trying to project strength, but he is a weak man when he is going after weak individuals. We need to hold him accountable for the crimes that he is committing in Ukraine. This is abhorrent. It is an illegal war and he needs to held accountable.”
– Bart Jansen
UNICEF: 1.5M Ukrainian refugee children at risk of human trafficking
The more than 1.5 million children who have fled Ukraine as refugees face a higher risk for exploitation and trafficking, UNICEF said Saturday.
Women and children represent nearly all of the refugees who have left Ukraine since Feb. 24. UNICEF said that increases the proportion of potential trafficking victims.
“The war in Ukraine is leading to massive displacement and refugee flows – conditions that could lead to a significant spike in human trafficking and an acute child protection crisis,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia. “Displaced children are extremely vulnerable to being separated from their families, exploited, and trafficked. They need governments in the region to step up and put measures in place to keep them safe.”
With more than 500 unaccompanied children identified crossing from Ukraine into Romania as of March 17, UNICEF warned that separated children are especially vulnerable to trafficking.
– Ana Faguy
Russian cosmonauts board space station in blue and yellow spacesuits
Three Russian cosmonauts on Friday boarded the International Space Station donning spacesuits in the Ukrainian flag’s colors. Images of the cosmonauts wearing the striking yellow and blue suits sparked speculation online that the colors were worn in protest of Russia’s invasion.
The cosmonauts are Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov. They docked at the station in their Russian Soyuz spacecraft at 3:12 p.m. EDT and are scheduled to stay aboard the station until September, according to Space.com.
When asked about the colors in a live-streamed press conference after the docking, Artemyev indicated they were a coincidence, according to the BBC.
“It became our turn to pick a color,” Artemyev said. “We had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it. That’s why we had to wear yellow.”
But some on social media weren’t convinced.
Former NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Terry Virts suggested on Twitter that the colors were in support of Ukraine, and astronomer Jonathan McDowell speculated on Twitter that the colors were meant as an homage to the cosmonauts’ alma mater, Bauman University, which also has blue and yellow colors.
There are seven people already on the orbiting lab, according to Space.com: cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency, and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron and Mark Vande Hei.
– Ella Lee
Russian oligarchs, Swiss public broadcaster SRF reported.
Zelenskyy spoke to thousands of antiwar protestors in Bern, Switzerland via livestream on Saturday where he called on the Swiss government to take away privileges from those who are involved in the war.
More:Who are Russia’s oligarchs and how do they play into the war in Ukraine?
“In your banks are the funds of the people who unleashed this war,” Zelenskyy said. “Help to fight this. So that their funds are frozen.”
The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) estimates that Switzerland’s secretive banks hold up to $213 billion of Russian wealth.
– Ana Faguy
Former presidents Bush, Clinton lay flowers at Ukrainian church in Chicago
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited a Ukrainian church in Chicago this week.
The pair brought sunflowers to Saints Volodymyr Olha Catholic Church. Chicago, a sister city of Kyiv, is home to many Ukrainian Americans.
Clinton shared a video of the visit on Twitter with the caption, “America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression.”
Bush posted the video on Instagram with the caption, “America stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their freedom and their future.”
– Ana Faguy
6.5 million displaced within Ukraine, UN reports
Nearly 6.5 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine, the U.N. migration agency said Friday.
That’s on top of the 3.3 million people who have crossed the Ukrainian borders since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which released the updated data in a paper issued Friday.
The paper noted that an additional 12 million people are thought to be stranded, unable to leave for security purposes or for lack of resources and information.
– Ana Faguy
Tuesday the E.U. agreed to a fourth sanctions package that included restrictions on the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex, an E.U. import ban on those steel products currently under EU safeguard measures and an E.U. export ban on luxury goods.
This comes as more American companies announce the suspension of business in Russia, putting a greater strain on the Russian economy. Friday Halliburton became the latest company to join that list.
– Ana Faguy
Lindsey Graham called for Putin’s assassination. Even discussing it brings danger to US, experts say.
Nika Aleksejeva, a Latvia-based researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, warned Graham’s comments fuel a Kremlin narrative that portrays the U.S. as a violent and lawless sponsor of terrorism out to get Russia.
“The U.S. is painted as the great evil in Russia,” she said. “One of the disinformation narrative lines is that Ukraine is our brother nation, and Russia is forced to carry out this military operation because the U.S. made Ukraine go away from Russia – that the U.S. is to blame in all these problems that are now between Russia and Ukraine.”
Graham, who tweeted in early March that “the only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” doubled down on his comments Wednesday.
“Yeah, I hope he’ll be taken out, one way or the other,” he told reporters during a Capitol Hill news conference. “I don’t care how they take him out. I don’t care if we send him to the Hague and try him. I just want him to go.”
– Grace Hauck
Putin appears at large rally as troops press attack in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally at a Moscow stadium Friday and lavished praise on his troops fighting in Ukraine, three weeks into the invasion that has led to heavier-than-expected Russian losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home.
“Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other,” the Russian president said of the Kremlin’s forces in a rare public appearance since the start of the war. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd.
The show of support amid a burst of antiwar protests inside Russia led to allegations in some quarters that the rally — held officially to mark the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine — was a manufactured display of patriotism.
Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the anniversary. Those reports could not be independently verified.
Moscow police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium. The event included patriotic songs, including a performance of “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”
In response to the rally, American conservative commentator Sean Hannity suggested on his radio show that Putin was “channeling his inner Donald Trump,” Business Insider reported. During his Fox News show later in the day, Hannity again accused Putin of making his “best attempt to look like Donald Trump” at the rally.
Contributing: The Associated Press, Ella Lee
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– Grace Hauck