Ukraine crisis
Zelenskyy says humanitarian convoy attacked
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces not only blocked a humanitarian convoy trying to reach besieged Mariupol with desperately needed supplies on Tuesday but took captive some of the rescue workers and bus drivers.
He said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.
“We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation.
Ukraine thwarts Russian advances; fight rages for Mariupol
Ukrainian forces battled continuing Russian efforts to occupy Mariupol and claimed to have retaken a strategic suburb of Kyiv on Tuesday, mounting a defense so dogged that it is stoking fears Russia’s Vladimir Putin will escalate the war to new heights.
“Putin’s back is against the wall,” said U.S. President Joe Biden, who is heading to Europe this week to meet with allies. “And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.”
Biden reiterated accusations that Putin is considering resorting to using chemical or biological weapons, though Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. has seen no evidence to suggest that such an escalation is imminent.
The warnings came as attacks continued in and around Kyiv and Mariupol, and people escaped the battered and besieged port city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles.
Zelenskyy said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.
“We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation.
Read: Ukraine retakes key Kyiv suburb; battle for Mariupol rages
The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor were shaking as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.
“There’s no connection with the world. We couldn’t ask for help,” said Julia Krytska, who was helped by volunteers to make it out with her husband and son. “People don’t even have water there.”
Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several of the capital’s suburban areas.
Early Tuesday, Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces from the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.
A video posted by Ukrainian police showed them surveying damage in Makariv, including to the town’s police station, which an officer says took a direct hit to its roof. The police drove by destroyed residential buildings and along a road pocked by shelling. The town appeared all but deserted.
Still, the Defense Ministry said Russian forces partially took other northwest suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which have been under attack almost since Russia invaded nearly a month ago.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russia’s advance to a halt but has not sent Moscow’s forces into retreat.
“We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now,” Kirby told reporters separately in Washington. He said that was particularly true in southern Ukraine, including near Kherson, where “they have tried to regain territory.”
Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin had achieved in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn’t achieved yet.” But he insisted that the military operation was going “strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.”
Putin’s aims remain to “get rid of the military potential of Ukraine” and to “ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country,” Peskov said.
Russia’s far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine’s long-term odds. Russia’s practice in past wars in Chechnya and Syria was to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killed countless civilians and sent millions fleeing.
But Russian forces appeared unprepared and have often performed badly against Ukrainian resistance. The U.S. estimates Russia has lost a bit more than 10 percent of the overall combat capability it had at the start of the fight, including troops and tanks and other materiel.
Western officials say Russian forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, leaving some soldiers suffering from frostbite.
The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraine’s population, according to the United Nations.
Thousands of civilians are believed to have died. Estimates of Russian military casualties vary widely, but even conservative figures by Western officials are in the low thousands.
Read: Rohingya repatriation: Dhaka detects 'lack of goodwill' in Myanmar's list
On Monday, Russia’s pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, citing the Defense Ministry, reported that almost 10,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. The report was quickly removed, and the newspaper blamed hackers. The Kremlin refused to comment. The Western official said the figure is “a reasonable estimate.”
Putin’s troops are facing unexpectedly stiff resistance that has left the bulk of Moscow’s ground forces miles from the center of Kyiv, and they are making slow progress on apparent efforts to cut off fighters in eastern Ukraine. The Russians are increasingly concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraine’s cities and civilians.
Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going “step by step, but they are going forward.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he saw progress in the talks.
“From my outreach with various actors, elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues,” and the gains are enough to end hostilities now, he said. He gave no details.
The Western official, though, said that there were no signs Moscow was ready to compromise.
In the last update from Mariupol officials, they said March 15 that at least 2,300 people had died in the siege. Accounts from the city suggest the true toll is much higher, with bodies lying uncollected. Airstrikes over the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where many civilians were taking shelter.
Zelenskyy, in his address, said more than 7,000 people were evacuated from Mariupol on Tuesday. But about 100,000 remain in the city “in inhuman conditions, under a full blockade, without food, without water, without medicine and under constant shelling, under constant bombardment,” he said.
Before the war, 430,000 people lived in Mariupol.
Like Zelenskyy, the Red Cross said a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with desperately needed supplies had not been able to enter.
Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. The siege has cut the city off from the sea and allowed Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea.
But it’s not clear how much of the city Russia holds, with fleeing residents saying fighting continues street by street.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagon’s assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have now joined in the shelling of Mariupol. The official said there were about seven Russian ships in that area, including a minesweeper and a couple of landing vessels.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that troops defending the city had destroyed a Russian patrol boat and electronic warfare complex.
Those who have made it out of Mariupol told of a devastated city.
“They bombed us for the past 20 days,” said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled into Poland. “During the last five days the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere — on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.”
Beyond the terrible human toll, the war has shaken the post-Cold War global security consensus, imperiled the world supply of key crops and raised worries it could set off a nuclear accident.
As part of a series of addresses to foreign legislatures, Zelenskyy urged Italian lawmakers to strengthen sanctions against Moscow, noting many wealthy Russians have homes in the country.
“Don’t be a resort for murderers,” he said from Kyiv.
Don’t help Russia’s invasion, Biden tells China’s Xi
Face to face by video, President Joe Biden laid out to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday the stiff consequences the Chinese would face from the U.S. if they provide military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There was no indication he got any assurance in return.
In fact, Xi blamed the U.S. for the crisis and insisted with a Chinese proverb that the next move was up to Biden:
“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off,” Xi said, according to a Chinese government readout.
More formally after the nearly two-hour conversation, China’s Foreign Ministry deplored “conflict and confrontation” as “not in anyone’s interest,” but assigned no blame to Russia and said nothing of next steps.
At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki said, “China has to make a decision for themselves, about where they want to stand and how they want the history books to look at them and view their actions.”
She declined to detail possible consequences Biden specified to the Chinese president if his country provides support for the Russian invasion.
But a senior administration official who briefed reporters following the leaders’ call said that Biden pointed to the economic isolation that Russia has faced — including economy-battering sanctions and major Western corporations suspending operations — as he sought to underscore the costs that China might suffer.
Xi urged the U.S. and Russia, which have had limited engagement since the Feb. 24 invasion, to negotiate. He noted China’s donations of humanitarian aid for Ukraine, while accusing the U.S. of provoking Russia and fueling the conflict by shipping arms to the embattled country. He also renewed China’s criticism of sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion, according to State media. As in the past, Xi did not use the terms war or invasion to describe Russia’s actions.
Ahead of the call, Psaki noted Beijing’s “rhetorical support” of Putin and an “absence of denunciation” of Russia’s invasion.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying pushed back, calling the U..S. administration “overbearing” for suggesting China risks falling on the wrong side of history.
The two leaders also discussed the longer-simmering U.S.-China dispute over Taiwan. In a reminder of China’s threat to assert its claim by force, the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, just hours before the Biden-Xi call. The U.S. is legally obligated to ensure the self-governing island democracy can defend itself and treats threats to it with “grave concern.”
Planning for the leaders’ discussion had been in the works since Biden and Xi held a virtual summit in November, but differences between Washington and Beijing over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prosecution of his three-week-old war against Ukraine were at the center of Friday’s conversation.
The U.S.-China relationship, long fraught, has only become more strained since the start of Biden’s presidency. Biden has repeatedly criticized China for military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
But the relationship may have reached a new low with the Russian invasion.
In the days after Putin deployed Russian forces in Ukraine, Xi’s government tried to distance itself from Russia’s offensive but avoided the criticism many other nations have leveled at Moscow. At other moments, Beijing’s actions have been provocative including amplifying unverified Russian claims that Ukraine ran chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support.
Earlier this week, the U.S. informed Asian and European allies that American intelligence had determined that China had signaled to Russia that it would be willing to provide both military support for the campaign in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off the impact of severe sanctions imposed by the West.
Read: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
The White House says China has been sending mixed messages. There were initial signs that Chinese state-owned banks were pulling back from financing Russian activities, according to a senior Biden administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal analyses. But there have also been public comments by Chinese officials who expressed support for Russia being a strategic partner.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi met in Rome this week for an intense, seven-hour talk about the Russian invasion and other issues.
Read: Rescuers search theater rubble as Russian attacks continue
Ahead of the Rome talks, Sullivan said the U.S. wouldn’t abide China or any other country helping Russia work around economy-jarring sanctions inflicted by the U.S. and other allies in response to the invasion.
Sullivan also said the administration determined China knew that Putin “was planning something” before the invasion of Ukraine, but the Chinese government “may not have understood the full extent” of what Putin had in mind.
Xi and Putin met in early February, weeks before the invasion, with the Russian leader traveling to Beijing for the start of the Winter Olympics. The two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless “friendship.”
Beijing’s leaders would like to be supportive of Russia, but they also recognize how badly the Russian military action is going as an overmatched Ukrainian military has put up stiff resistance, according to a Western official familiar with current intelligence assessments.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Beijing is weighing the potential “reputational blowback” of being associated with the Russian camp. The Chinese response to Russia’s request for help is still being formulated, the official said.
Though seen as siding with Russia, China has also reached out to Ukraine, with its ambassador to the country on Monday quoted as saying: “China is a friendly country for the Ukrainian people. As an ambassador, I can responsibly say that China will forever be a good force for Ukraine, both economically and politically.”
“We have seen how great the unity of the Ukrainian people is, and that means its strength,” Fan Xianrong was quoted by Ukraine’s state news service Ukrinform as telling regional authorities in the western city of Lviv, where the Chinese Embassy has relocated to.
State media quoted Xi as saying China-U.S. relations had yet to “emerge from the dilemma created by the previous U.S. administration, but instead encountered more and more challenges,” singling out Taiwan as one area in particular.
“If the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it will have an undermining impact on the relationship between the two countries,” Xi reportedly told Biden.
What the EU is doing to help Ukraine refugees
In the two weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, around 2.5 million people have fled — the great majority of them to European Union countries. More than half have entered Poland while hundreds of thousands more are seeking refuge, mostly in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked war has been met with an outpouring of goodwill in Europe. The EU has launched an emergency protection system offering shelter, access to jobs, medical treatment and education to those who fled the assault.
The protection system streamlines entry procedures. It was established in 2001, in response to the fallout from the wars in former Yugoslavia and Kosovo in the 1990s, when thousands were forced from their homes. It has never been used before, despite the arrival of well over 1 million people in Europe in 2015, many fleeing conflict in Syria.
The “Temporary Protection Directive” sets out minimum standards across the EU’s 27 countries for helping those in need. Member nations can provide more favorable conditions if they want. It also eases procedures for countries to transfer refugees between them if those people agree to move.
The following is a short guide to the new rules, what they mean for Ukrainians seeking shelter in Europe and for those who might want to help them.
Read: Zelenskyy says 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers killed
WHO IS ELIGIBLE?
The decision applies to all Ukrainian nationals who have been displaced from Ukraine on or after Feb. 24, 2022 “as a result of the military invasion by Russian armed forces that began on that date.”
It also applies to their family members — spouses, unmarried partners in stable relationships and children — or to people who were already refugees inside Ukraine before the war. It excludes those who were living in Ukraine short-term, like foreign students.
HOW LONG CAN REFUGEES FROM UKRAINE STAY?
Ukrainian nationals are allowed to travel visa-free in Europe and so can move around once they are admitted for a 90-day period.
This means they can choose the EU country that would like to stay in and apply for temporary protection there. It’s particularly good for those who want to stay with relatives already in Europe.
That period of protection would apply for one year, initially. Unless it ends, the stay could be extended in six-month periods for a further year. If Ukraine remains unsafe, the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, could extend the protection system for one more year, making a maximum of a three-year stay possible under certain circumstances.
Member states should try to help people return voluntarily when their stay is over. In some cases, they could help set up exploratory visits to help people work out whether it’s safe to go home. People can also apply for asylum in the EU at any time during their stay.
WHAT ARE PEOPLE ENTITLED TO?
Some countries are already providing free rail and bus travel, and other benefits to people fleeing Ukraine.
Some are lodged in reception centers or with willing European families. But under this system, European governments should ensure that people have access to accommodation or help to get housing.
Read: Ukraine claims another Russian general killed
They should receive social welfare benefits and possibly medical care. Countries should allow people to apply for jobs or become self-employed workers. Adult education, training in a trade or workplace experience should also be possible. People under 18 should be given access to schools.
Children traveling alone would be placed with adult relatives, foster families, reception facilities adapted to receiving minors, or with the adults they fled Ukraine with. Any visas should be provided free of cost.
WHO advises Ukraine to destroy high-risk pathogens in labs
The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens stored in the country's labs to prevent "any potential spills," the UN agency said on Thursday.
In an emailed response, the WHO told Reuters that it has "strongly recommended the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies" to destroy those disease-causing pathogens or toxins, but provided no specifics about their kinds.
According to Reuters, Ukraine has public health laboratories working on disease research, and received support from the United States, the European Union and the WHO.
Read: Russians keep pressure on Mariupol; massive convoy breaks up
With no reference to biowarfare, the WHO said it encourages all parties to cooperate in "the safe and secure disposal of any pathogens they come across, and to reach out for technical assistance as needed."
Also on Thursday, Dmitry Polyanskiy, first deputy permanent representative of Russia to the UN, tweeted that the United Nations Security Council would convene on Friday to discuss the United States' alleged military biological research in Ukraine at Russia's request.
Air alert declared in Kyiv as fighting continues
An air alert was declared Wednesday morning in and around Kyiv, with residents urged to get to bomb shelters as quickly as possible.
“Kyiv region – air alert. Threat of a missile attack. Everyone immediately to shelters,” regional administration head Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.
Nearly two weeks into the invasion, Russian troops have advanced deep along Ukraine’s coastline. The city of Mariupol, which sits on the Azov Sea, has been surrounded by Russian soldiers for days and a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the encircled city of 430,000
Crisis deepens, Ukraine accuses Moscow of 'medieval' tactics
The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine deepened Monday as Russian forces intensified their shelling and food, water, heat and medicine grew increasingly scarce, in what the country condemned as a medieval-style siege by Moscow to batter it into submission.
A third round of talks between the two sides ended with a top Ukrainian official saying there had been minor, unspecified progress toward establishing safe corridors that would allow civilians to escape the fighting. Russia’s chief negotiator said he expects those corridors to start operating Tuesday.
But that remained to be seen, given the failure of previous attempts to lead civilians to safety amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II.
Well into the second week of the invasion, with Russian troops making significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions, a top U.S. official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide the warplanes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading for.
Also read: 'I want to feel safe': Ukraine youth orchestra now refugees
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces continued to pummel cities with rockets, and fierce fighting raged in places. In the face of the bombardments, Zelenskky said Ukrainian forces were showing unprecedented courage.
“The problem is that for one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks,” Zelenskky told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday night. He noted that the gap in forces was diminishing and that even if Russian forces “come into all our cities,” they will be met with an insurgency.
In one of the most desperate cities, the encircled southern port of Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people — nearly half the population of 430,000 — were hoping to flee, and Red Cross officials waited to hear when a corridor would be established.
The city is short on water, food and power, and cellphone networks are down. Stores have been looted as residents search for essential goods.
Police moved through the city, advising people to remain in shelters until they heard official messages broadcast over loudspeakers to evacuate.
Also read: Modi welcomes Russia’s talks with Ukraine on ceasefire: MEA
Hospitals in Mariupol are facing severe shortages of antibiotics and painkillers, and doctors performed some emergency procedures without them.
The lack of phone service left anxious citizens approaching strangers to ask if they knew relatives living in other parts of the city and whether they were safe.
In the capital, Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly 4 million, often using sandbags, stacked tires and spiked cables. Some barricades looked significant, with heavy concrete slabs and sandbags piled more than two stories high, while others appeared more haphazard, with hundreds of books used to weigh down stacks of tires.
“Every house, every street, every checkpoint, we will fight to the death if necessary,” said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, with 1.4 million people, heavy shelling slammed into apartment buildings.
“I think it struck the fourth floor under us,” Dmitry Sedorenko said from his Kharkiv hospital bed. “Immediately, everything started burning and falling apart.” When the floor collapsed beneath him, he crawled out through the third story, past the bodies of some of his neighbors.
Klitschko reported that fierce battles continued in the Kyiv region, notably around Bucha, Hostomel, Vorzel and Irpin.
In the Irpin area, which has been cut off from electricity, water and heat for three days, witnesses saw at least three tanks and said Russian soldiers were seizing houses and cars.
A few miles away, in the small town of Horenka, where shelling reduced one area to ashes and shards of glass, rescuers and residents picked through the ruins as chickens pecked around them.
“What are they doing?” rescue worker Vasyl Oksak asked of the Russian attackers. “There were two little kids and two elderly people living here. Come in and see what they have done.”
In the south, Russian forces also continued their offensive in Mykolaiv, opening fire on the Black Sea shipbuilding center of a half-million people, according to Ukraine’s military. Rescuers said they were putting out fires caused by rocket attacks in residential areas.
At The Hague, Netherlands, Ukraine pleaded with the International Court of Justice to order a halt to Russia’s invasion, saying Moscow is committing widespread war crimes.
Russia “is resorting to tactics reminiscent of medieval siege warfare, encircling cities, cutting off escape routes and pounding the civilian population with heavy ordnance,” said Jonathan Gimblett, a member of Ukraine’s legal team.
Russia snubbed the court proceedings, leaving its seats in the Great Hall of Justice empty.
Efforts to set up safe passage for civilians over the weekend fell apart amid continued Russian shelling. Before Monday's talks began, Russia announced a new plan, saying civilians would be allowed to leave Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy.
But many of the evacuation routes headed toward Russia or its ally Belarus, which has served as a launch pad for the invasion. Ukraine instead proposed eight routes allowing civilians to travel to western regions of the country where there is no shelling.
Later, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the U.N. Security Council that Russia would carry out a cease-fire Tuesday morning and appeared to suggest that humanitarian corridors leading away from Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy and Chernigov could give people choice in where they want to go.
The U.N. humanitarian chief, Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths, addressed the Security Council and urged safe passage for people to go “in the direction they choose.”
Zelenskyy’s office would not comment on the Russian proposal, saying only that Moscow’s plans can be believed only if a safe evacuation begins. The office said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk planned to make a statement on the issue Tuesday morning.
The battle for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The fighting has sent energy prices surging worldwide and stocks plummeting, and threatens t he food supply and livelihoods of people around the globe who rely on crops farmed in the fertile Black Sea region.
The U.N. human rights office reported 406 confirmed civilian deaths but said the real number is much higher. The invasion has also sent 1.7 million people fleeing Ukraine.
On Monday, Moscow again announced a series of demands to stop the invasion, including that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and recognize the eastern regions controlled by Moscow-supported separatist fighters as independent. It also insisted that Ukraine change its constitution to guarantee it won’t join international bodies like NATO and the EU. Ukraine has already rejected those demands.
Zelenskyy has called for more punitive measures against Russia, including a global boycott of its oil exports, which are key to its economy.
“If (Russia) doesn’t want to abide by civilized rules, then they shouldn’t receive goods and services from civilization," he said in a video address.
He has also asked for more warplanes. Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said officials are "trying to see whether this is possible and doable.”
While the West has been rushing weapons to Ukraine such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, some officials fear that sending warplanes could be seen by Moscow as direct involvement in the war.
One possible scenario under discussion: Former Soviet bloc nations that are now NATO members could send Ukraine their own Soviet-era MiGs, which Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly, and the U.S. would then replace those countries' aircraft with American-made F-16s.
Russia's invasion has nearby countries terrified the war could spread to them.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began a lightning visit to the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, former Soviet republics that are NATO members. Blinken hoped to reassure them of the alliance’s protection.
NATO has shown no interest in sending troops into the country and has rejected Zelenskyy's pleas to establish a no-fly zone for fear of triggering a wider war.
At Romania hotel, ballroom welcomes refugees fleeing Ukraine
As Olga Okhrimenko walked into a bustling ballroom-turned-refugee shelter at a four-star Romanian hotel, her corgi, Knolly, strained at the leash anxiously seeking the warmth inside. It had taken them three days to flee Ukraine by car, bus and taxi in the bitter cold.
The 34-year-old Ukrainian marketing manager could hardly contain her emotions, and a simple “are you OK?” filled her eyes with tears she thought she no longer had.
The first refugees began arriving more than a week ago at the Mandachi Hotel and Spa in Suceava in Romania, where the owner decided to make the lavish, 850-square-meter ballroom available to them. Since then, more than 2,000 people and 100 pets have taken shelter here, with row upon row of numbered mattresses under an incongruous glittering disco ball.
They are part of the swiftest refugee exodus so far this century, in which more than 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine in just 10 days, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Since the war started on Feb. 24, more than 227,000 Ukrainians have crossed into neighboring Romania, according to local authorities.
Like Okhrimenko, some of the refugees at the Mandachi have fled cities on the front lines of the war.
“Whenever somebody asks me where I am from, and I say Kharkiv, their expression, it’s like I arrived from Hiroshima,” Okhrimenko told The Associated Press from mattress number 60. “Then, I remember everything going on there and I break down.”
Read: Russia sets ceasefire for evacuations amid heavy shelling
After five days of shelling, she decided to flee Kharkiv on March 1 with Knolly, a couple of friends and their two cats. Their car passed by the city’s central Freedom Square just 20 minutes before it was engulfed by a giant ball of fire in a Russian military strike.
“It was difficult for me before to say I’m a great patriot of my land,” she said. “But on Feb. 24, I became one 100%.”
As she spoke, volunteers on megaphones interrupted several times to announce buses leaving for Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and other European nations. The room was chaotic, filled mostly with women and children, as men stayed in Ukraine to fight. Some spoke Russian, underlining the sense of a war on family.
The majority of the refugees were Ukrainian, but there were also Nigerians, Moroccans, Italians, Chinese and Iranians. Toddlers cried in the arms of exhausted mothers, who took deep breaths to calm their children and themselves. Cats and dogs of all sizes shared beds with their owners, and one stressed Chihuahua with bulging eyes bit anyone who attempted to pet it.
Some 300 volunteers, translators and social workers take turns to help here. In the mornings, they change the mismatched sheets on vacated mattresses, placing a “reserved” or “free” handwritten sign over them. In the reception area, the two bars display not alcohol but an array of diapers, toothbrushes, snacks and even surgical masks and disinfectant gel.
At the opposite end of the King Salon, at mattress number 82 near stacks of red velvet chairs, 85-year-old Nellya Nahorna sat in silence combing her gray hair with her fingers.
It was the second time this Ukrainian grandmother had fled war. In 1941, when she was just 4 years old, Nahorna was injured by shrapnel in Nazi Germany’s invasion of Ukraine, she said.
“The first night of the war, my mother grabbed me from my cradle and ran to take the last car that carried the wounded to the border,” Nahorna recalled in a soft, low voice.
Now, more than 80 years later, it was her daughter, 57-year-old Olena Yefanova, who grabbed her on the first day of the war and crossed the border. They came from the town of Zaporizhzhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was hit by Russian shelling last week.
“This war is different,” Nahorna said in Russian. In World War II, the enemies were German “fascists,” she said. But now, she was fleeing from her “brothers.” They had to make stops along the way to get her a Ukrainian passport.
“I would like to tell the Russian mothers .... help by keeping your sons right next to yourselves and don’t let them fight and attack other countries,” Nahorna said.
In an astonishing accomplishment, the same grandmother who leaned on a cane to make it from her mattress to a table a few steps away had walked the last 5 km (3 miles) to Romania by foot. At one point, Nahorna’s heart seemed like it was giving up, and a doctor gave her some pills so she could continue, her daughter said.
“My mother clenched her will into a fist and left,” Yefanova said proudly. “She understood that this is going to be hard but she took it steadfastly.”
Yefanova had left her husband and one son behind, enlisted to fight the Russians. She wept as she showed a photo of them on her phone screensaver.
Read: Macron keeps an open line to Putin as war in Ukraine rages
“Our kids play a game called little tanks - (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is playing his own version of this game,” she said. “And he is (using) his people in this game.”
A row behind Yefanova on mattress 34, Anna Karpenko thought of her partner as their 6-year-old son played with a yellow balloon.
Before she left him at their home in Chornomorsk, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s biggest port city of Odesa, he promised they would get married after the war. But “when we said goodbye, it felt like it was forever,” Karpenko said, wiping tears from her eyes.
Normally, she said, she’s an optimistic person. Now she and her son both cry every day.
Russian ships have made repeated attempts to fire on the Black Sea port of Odesa, according to Ukrainian officials. Karpenko said people in her town had gathered on beaches to fill bags with sand.
Originally from Crimea, Karpenko speaks Russian, worked for a Russian language school and has relatives in Donetsk, one of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has divided her family, with her Donetsk relatives supporting Putin.
“They think that all of their problems are caused by Ukraine,” she explained in frustration. “They worship (Putin) as if he was a God.”
She’s given up trying to tell them it was Russian strikes she was fleeing.
By the next morning, Okhrimenko and her corgi had left. Her husband, who had moved to Germany only a few months ago, drove down to pick them up. She had planned to join him eventually, but never thought she would suddenly be chased out by sirens and explosions.
“We just took a deep sigh of relief together and hugged each other so strong,” Okhrimenko told AP by text message from the road to Germany.
Karpenko, her son and her mother boarded a bus also bound for Germany. On the same bus were Yefanova and Nahorna, the 85-year-old grandmother.
Thirty hours after leaving the makeshift shelter, they were still on the road. “The longest journey in my life,” Karpenko texted AP from a gas station in Austria.
As one bus left, others arrived at the Hotel Mandachi, full of freezing refugees carrying their children and their belongings. With no end to the war in sight, the wedding parties that once took place in the ballroom have been postponed indefinitely.
We voted for peace, says FM on Bangladesh’s abstention from UN resolution on Ukraine
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said that Bangladesh abstained from the UN General Assembly vote on a resolution over the Ukraine crisis for the sake of peace.
“We voted for peace,” he said, adding that the resolution was not meant for stopping the war but apparently to blame somebody.
Read:Hadisur’s body kept in Ukraine, 5 youths still in detention centre: FM
Four South Asian countries - Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan - were among 35 abstentions as the UN General Assembly voted at an emergency session Wednesday on the Ukraine issue. The vote on the “Aggression against Ukraine” resolution was 141-5, with 35 abstentions.
The abstentions included China, as expected, but also some surprises from usual Russian allies Cuba and Nicaragua.
"If you read the resolution wording, it’s not a call for stopping the war but to blame someone apparently," said Dr Momen while responding to a question at a media briefing at the state guesthouse Padma on Sunday.
He said Bangladesh is a country for peace.
"We want peace. We don't want war anywhere in the world. We said we’re deeply concerned about the war. So, we expect the UN charter to be followed by all," he said.
The foreign ninister said the dispute should be resolved through discussion and dialogue.
“We said we’ve enough confidence in the UN Secretary General and that he should take an initiative to resolve this dispute through dialogue and discussion peacefully. We upheld this position in the UN,” Momen said.
Few days ago, Bangladesh urged restraint by all parties and to immediately resume diplomatic efforts and dialogue in order to settle all disputes by peaceful means, and refrain from taking any action that may endanger international peace and stability.
Read:28 Bangladeshi crew to return home soon: FM
Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but they do have clout in reflecting international opinion.
Under special emergency session rules, a resolution needs approval of two-thirds of those countries voting, and abstentions don’t count.
Ukraine wants special tribunal to judge Putin
The Ukrainian government and a former British prime minister are pushing for a special criminal tribunal to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies over the invasion of Ukraine.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the call for a body to investigate the “crime of aggression” was based on the tribunals that prosecuted senior Nazis after World War II.
The Netherlands-based International Criminal Court is already investigating allegations that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine. But while it can investigate genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, Russia has not signed up to a separate ICC statute under which nations pledge not to commit “crimes of aggression.”