A Ukrainian official was urging residents in Russian-occupied southern areas to evacuate ahead of a counteroffensive and intense fighting.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said late Friday that residents in areas near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia needed to get out to prevent Russians using them as human shields.
“You need to search for a way to leave because our armed forces are coming to de-occupy,” she said. “There will be a massive fight.”
Despite predictions that Russian forces might ease off their offensive while they reassemble, Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the eastern Luhansk region, said Saturday that Russian forces were managing to “raise true hell.”
Latest developments:
►Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said giving up Ukrainian land is not an option for negotiating an end of the nation’s war with Russia in an interview with CNN that aired Thursday.
► A municipal lawmaker in Moscow, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in prison for comments spurning Russia’s war in Ukraine, the first elected Russian official to be charged under a new law targeting anti-war remarks.
►71 million more people around the world are experiencing poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices that climbed in the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Development Program said in a report.
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Putin tells West: ‘Let them try’ to defeat Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged Western nations, suggesting his invasion of Ukraine is far from over, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported Thursday.
“Today we hear that (the West wants) to defeat us on the battlefield,” Putin said, according to RIA Novosti. “Well, what can I say? Let them try.”
Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled parliament Thursday, Russia’s president accused Western allies of fueling the hostilities, charging that “the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian.”
“It’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction,” Putin said.
“Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest,” he added.
UN report: Russia and Ukraine both to blame for nursing home attack
WASHINGTON — A U.N. report says Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for a deadly assault on a care home for elderly and disabled people.
Ukrainian fighters occupied the facility in March and then battled Russian forces while dozens of patients and staff were trapped inside. Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on the Russian troops, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that Ukrainian soldiers occupied the nursing home a few days before the attack, effectively making the building a target.
US to give Ukraine $360M more in humanitarian aid
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter Saturday the U.S. will give Ukraine an additional $360 million in humanitarian aid to support refugees who have fled the nation amid its conflict with Russia and the Ukrainians still there.
The extra aid comes a day after the Pentagon said it would send another $400 million in weapons and spare parts to Ukraine, including four additional sophisticated rocket-assisted artillery systems to counter Russia’s advances.
Civilian military trainings begin in Kyiv
Civilians in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, are receiving military training in hopes of bolstering the city’s defenses against Russia.
Skills included in the trainings are procedures for battling fires and handling explosives, safety trainings and how to act when exposed to radiation and chemical pollution, Kyiv’s city council said Saturday in a news release. Providing knowledge about emergency first aid is a key objective.
“Eighty percent of those killed in hostilities are people who lose a lot of blood. And it is important to know how to save the life of a wounded person in the conditions of war,” Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said in the release.
The programs are targeted in particular toward women and students, though anyone in the civilian population can participate in the trainings, the release said.
More Ukraine news:First Russian prison sentence for anti-war remarks, $400M more in weapons to Ukraine
50,000 explosives defused in Kyiv region
More than 50,000 explosives already have been defused in and around Kyiv, the region’s military administration said Saturday. Nearly 30 villages in the Kyiv region, making up more than 70 square miles of land, have been swept for explosives which were defused when found.
US to China: Support for Russia complicates relations
In five hours of talks in their first-to-face meeting since October, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday he expressed deep concern to Chinese officials about their country’s stance on Russia’s actions in Ukraine and did not believe Beijing’s protestations that it is neutral in the conflict.
“We are concerned about the PRC’s alignment with Russia,” Blinken told reporters after the meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali. He said it is difficult to be “neutral” in a conflict in which there is a clear aggressor but that even it were possible, “I don’t believe China is acting in a way that is neutral.”
Contributing: Associated Press
