Warsaw Poland. Officials in Poland say trucks bound for Belarus are being held up for 40 kilometers (25 miles) as they wait to reach the Koroszczyn border crossing as a group of protesters block the road there. The protesters are calling for a ban on trade with Russia and its ally Belarus.
Protesters, Ukrainians and Poles, have been blocking access to the crossing for about two weeks now in order to force Moscow to stop the war with Ukraine.
The next round of the action “No Trade with Russia!” Protests in eastern Poland began early Saturday morning.
According to the representative of the local tax office Michal Derus, about 950 trucks were waiting to enter Belarus early Sunday morning. According to him, the waiting time was 32 hours.
The road leading to the border crossing was closed and police separated protesters from trucks and drivers, the road infrastructure department said.
Truck traffic at the Koroshchin border crossing intensified after Poland’s largest checkpoint in Belarus, at Kuznica, was closed in November after border guards clashed with migrants from the Middle East who were trying to illegally cross the border into Poland, a member of the European Union.
Commenting on Saturday’s protest, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on the European Union to stop all land and sea trade with Russia.
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KEY EVENTS IN THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR:
– A school in the city of Ukraine was blown up; Zelensky refers to war crimes
– Even if Russia is denied an easy victory, Putin can gouge Ukraine for months
— Surrogate children born in Ukraine wait out the war in the basement
— Grassroots groups help rescue Holocaust survivors in Ukraine
– Minister: It will take years and outside help to neutralize the live shells now scattered across Ukraine
— Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine to learn more.
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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS TODAY:
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia. Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said that the first multinational NATO units with Patriot air defense systems are being transferred to his country.
The story goes on
Nad said on Sunday that the transfers would continue in the coming days.
Germany and the Netherlands agreed to send their troops, armed with patriots, to Slovakia. The troops are among 2,100 soldiers from several NATO members, including the United States, who will form a battle group on Slovak soil as the alliance bolsters defenses on its eastern flank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nad says the Patriots will first be stationed at the Sliac military base in central Slovakia, and then deployed to various locations to protect as much Slovak territory as possible.
He thanked Germany and the Netherlands for their “responsible decision” to significantly increase the defense capability of Slovakia.
At the same time, Nad said, the Patriots would not replace the Russian S-300 air defense systems his country relied on, calling their deployment “another component to protect Slovakia’s airspace.”
Nad said earlier that his country would be ready to provide Ukraine with its S-300 long-range anti-aircraft missile system, provided it had a proper replacement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned the S-300 in a video message to US lawmakers on Wednesday, calling for air defense systems that would allow Ukraine to protect its airspace from Russian warplanes and missiles. NATO members Bulgaria, Slovakia and Greece have S-300s.
The Slovak minister said on Sunday that his country will work to replace the S-300 with another system that is compatible with those used by the allies.
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Kyiv, Ukraine. Authorities in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol say about 40,000 people have fled in the past week. This is almost 10% of its 430,000 population.
The city council of the Sea of Azov port city reported on Sunday that 39,426 residents had been safely evacuated from Mariupol using their own vehicles. It says the evacuees used more than 8,000 vehicles to travel along the humanitarian corridor through Berdyansk to Zaporozhye.
The strategic city was surrounded by Russian troops and subjected to relentless Russian bombing for three weeks, symbolizing the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Local authorities said the siege cut off food, water and energy supplies and killed at least 2,300 people, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that the siege of Mariupol would go down in history for what he called war crimes committed by Russian troops.
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Kyiv, Ukraine. Authorities in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv say at least five civilians have been killed in the latest Russian shelling.
Regional police in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, said a 9-year-old boy was among the victims of a Russian artillery attack early Sunday morning.
Kharkov has been besieged by Russian troops from the very beginning of the invasion and is subjected to merciless shelling.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities have evacuated dozens of orphans from a city in the grip of hostilities.
The governor of the northeastern Sumy region, Dmitry Zhyvitsky, said on Sunday that 71 babies were safely evacuated along the humanitarian corridor. Zhyvitsky said on Facebook that orphans would be taken to an unidentified foreign country. According to him, most of them require constant medical care.
Like many other Ukrainian cities, Sumy was besieged by Russian troops and subjected to repeated shelling.
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The Russian military said it launched a new series of strikes against Ukrainian military targets with long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that a Kinzhal hypersonic missile struck a Ukrainian fuel depot in Konstantinovka near the Black Sea port of Nikolaev. The strike marked the second day in a row that Russia has used the Kinzhal, a weapon capable of hitting targets 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away at 10 times the speed of sound.
The day before, the Russian military said the Kinzhal was first used in combat to destroy an ammunition depot in Dilyatyn in the Carpathians in western Ukraine.
Konashenkov noted that Kalibr cruise missiles launched by Russian warships from the Caspian Sea were also involved in the attack on the fuel depot in Konstantinovka. He said Kalibr missiles launched from the Black Sea were used to destroy an armored plant in Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine.
Konashenkov added that another air-launched missile attack was carried out on a Ukrainian facility in Ovruch in the north of the Zhytomyr region, where foreign fighters and Ukrainian special forces are based.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Authorities in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol say Russian troops bombed an art school where about 400 people had taken refuge.
Local authorities said on Sunday that the school building had been destroyed and people could be trapped under the rubble. No casualties were reported immediately.
Russian forces on Wednesday also bombed a theater in Mariupol where civilians had taken refuge. Authorities said 130 people were rescued, but many more may remain under the rubble.
Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, is surrounded by Russian troops, cut off from sources of energy, food and water, and under relentless bombardment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the siege of Mariupol will go down in history because of war crimes committed by Russian troops.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the suspension of 11 political parties linked to Russia.
The largest of them is the Opposition Platform for Life, which has 44 out of 450 seats in the country’s parliament. The party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who has friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Also on the list is the Nashi party, headed by Yevgeny Muraev. Before the Russian invasion. British authorities have warned that Russia wants to make Muraev the leader of Ukraine.
Speaking in a video message early Sunday morning, Zelensky said that “given the large-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and the links between it and some political structures, the activities of a number of political parties are suspended for the period of martial law. He added that “the activities of politicians aimed at discord and cooperation will not succeed.”
Zelenskiy’s announcement follows the imposition of martial law, which provides for a ban on parties linked to Russia.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has a thriving surrogacy industry in peacetime, one of the few countries where foreigners can force Ukrainian women to carry their pregnancies. Now, at least 20 of those babies are stuck in a makeshift bomb shelter in the Ukrainian capital, waiting for their parents to travel to the war zone to pick them up.
So far, they are well cared for. The nurses at the surrogacy center are stuck with them because the constant shelling makes it too dangerous for them to go home. Russian troops are trying to surround the city, Ukrainian defenders are holding them back, the threat comes from the air.
Nurse Lyudmila Yaschenko says they are staying in the bomb shelter to save their lives and the lives of babies, some of whom are only a few days old. They still have enough food and baby supplies, and they can only hope and wait until the newborns are picked up and the war ends.
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The British Ministry of Defense said that the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defense Forces “continue to effectively protect the airspace of Ukraine.”
“Russia has failed to establish air control and relies heavily on remote weapons launched from relatively safe Russian airspace to strike targets inside Ukraine,” the ministry said on Twitter. “Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s main objectives in the early days of the conflict, and their continued failure to do so has significantly hampered their operational progress.”
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian military official confirmed to a Ukrainian newspaper that on Friday, Russian forces launched a missile attack on a missile and ammunition depot in the village of Delyatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, in western Ukraine.
But Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told Ukrayinska Pravda on Saturday that it has not been confirmed that the missile was indeed a hypersonic Kinzhal.
Earlier on Saturday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that on Friday the Russian military had hit an underground warehouse in Delyatyn with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile in its first combat use. Piloted by MiG-31 fighters, the Kinzhal has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound, according to Russian officials.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the siege of Mariupol will go down in history for what he calls war crimes against the Russian military.
“What the occupiers did to a peaceful city is a horror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said early Sunday morning in his late-night video message to the nation.
Zelenskiy told Ukrainians that the current talks with Russia are “not easy or pleasant, but they are necessary.” He said he discussed the progress of the talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.
“Ukraine has always strived for a peaceful solution. Moreover, now we are interested in the world,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Russian military in some places does not even remove the bodies of its soldiers, Zelensky said.
“In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply accumulate along our line of defense. And no one collects these bodies,” he said. He described the battle near Chernobaevka in the south, where Ukrainian troops held their ground and beat back the Russians six times, who continued to “send their people to the slaughter.”