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Alarming new satellite images revealed a three-plus-mile convoy of Russian military vehicles snaking toward Kyiv — as an initial round of peace talks on Monday failed to end the deadly invasion.
Hundreds of tanks, mobile artillery, fuel tankers and other trucks were spotted about 40 miles northeast of the Ukrainian capital Sunday, according to Maxar Technologies, which released overhead shots of the procession through the sparsely populated countryside.
A senior US defense official predicted that Russia would try within days to encircle Kyiv, where the night sky was lit up by a massive explosion and air-raid sirens wailed at the tail end of the fifth day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Several towns nearby were also rocked by fierce fighting and missile strikes, and Ukraine said at least seven people were killed and dozens wounded amid shelling of its northern city of Kharkiv, where an unexploded missile was found lodged in a hole in the floor of a room.
Following a meeting at which she begged US lawmakers for aid, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, claimed Russia had used a “vacuum bomb,” a type of munition banned by the Geneva Conventions, earlier in the day.
“The devastation that Russia is trying to inflict on Ukraine is large,” Markarova told reporters in Washington, DC.
Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhalio Podolyak said a meeting with Russian officials on Ukraine’s border with Belarus, which Russia is using as a staging area, produced no results.
Get the latest updates in the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the Post’s live coverage.
“Unfortunately, the Russian side is still extremely biased regarding the destructive processes it launched,” Podolyak tweeted.
In a televised address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the European Union to “urgently admit” his country to the 27-nation bloc, but the request was quickly rejected, with the EU’s foreign-policy chief saying admission would take “a lot of years.”
In other developments:
- President Biden said “no” when asked if Americans should be worried about a possible nuclear war a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear arsenal on high alert. following a warning Sunday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “At this time, we see no reason to change our own alert levels.”
- Ukrainian defense officials said that as of 4 p.m. local time, Russian forces had fired 113 cruise missiles since the invasion began Thursday, with 56 striking their targets. The vast majority of missile attacks came Thursday, when 75 were launched and 33 detonated.
- Following reports that banned cluster bombs were being dropped on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Karim A. A. Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague,, said he was opening a war-crimes investigation into “alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
- The European Union said it would allow Ukrainian refugees to stay and work within its borders for up to three years without first having to apply for asylum. The UN said more than 500,000 had already fled to the EU since the start of the Russian onslaught, with the total expected to reach 4 million.
- The US is expelling 12 Russian diplomats for who “abused their privileges of residency in the US by engaging in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security,” a spokesperson for the US Mission to the UN said, without identifying them.
- The Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions that prohibit Americans from engaging in any transactions with Russia’s Central Bank and froze the bank’s US assets. The department imposed similar penalties on Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and its Finance Ministry.
- Moscow’s stock market was closed, and scheduled to remain shut Tuesday, after the Russian ruble fell nearly 30% to a record low against the US dollar before recovering when Russia’s Central Bank more than doubled its key interest rate to 20% to prevent a run on cash.
UN human-rights chief Michelle Bachelet said her office had confirmed that 102 civilians, including seven children, had been killed and 304 more wounded in the Russian invasion so far, but warned that the actual toll was likely much higher.
In a televised address, Zelensky said, “Each of us is a warrior,” and announced that prisoners “with real combat experience will be released from custody and will be able to compensate for their guilt in the hottest spots of the conflict.”
“We have taken a decision, which is not easy from the moral point of view, but which is useful from the point of view of our defenses,” he said. “The key is now defense.”
Zelensky, who claimed that more than 4,500 Russian soldiers had been killed, urged the invaders to give up the fight.
“Abandon your equipment,” he said. “Get out of here. Don’t believe your commanders. Don’t believe your propagandists. Just save your lives.”
In a Facebook post, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov offered Russian deserters “full amnesty” and 5 million rubles, or around $47,000, each.
But, he warned, “for those who continue to behave like an occupier, there will be no mercy.”
Russia has acknowledged casualties but has not provided specifics.
At a special session of the UN General Assembly, Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya read aloud what he said were the final text messages between a now-slain Russian soldier and his mother, who had thought her son was undergoing training in Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
“Mama, I’m in Ukraine. There is a real war raging here. I’m afraid. We are bombing all of the cities together, even targeting civilians,” the soldier wrote, according to moments before being killed.
“We were told that they would welcome us, and they are falling under our armored vehicles, throwing themselves under the wheels and not allowing us to pass. They call us ‘fascists.’ Mama, this is so hard.”
With Wires
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