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President Joe Biden could announce plans to permanently maintain an increased number of troops in NATO countries near Ukraine, sources said Tuesday, as the president heads to Europe.
It's been nearly a month since Russia attacked and invaded Ukraine in what Western nations have condemned as an unprovoked and unjustifiable assault. More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine, according to the United Nations, and bombarded cities are in a humanitarian crisis.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had captured people fleeing Mariupol after agreeing on a humanitarian corridor.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip at home while stoking fears he may turn to more aggressive tactics abroad, with leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny sentenced to a further nine years in a maximum-security penal colony on Tuesday.
Russian forces captured people fleeing Mariupol, Zelenskyy says
Russian forces captured people fleeing the besieged city of Mariupol after agreeing on an escape route, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday night.
Zelenskyy said in a speech that emergency services employees were taken prisoner near the town of Manhush, 12 miles west of Mariupol.
“For more than a week now we have been trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents,” Zelenskyy said. “And almost all our attempts, unfortunately, are disrupted by the Russian occupiers. By shelling or deliberate terror.”
According to The Associated Press, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians seized 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers, along with their vehicles.
It wasn’t clear what happened to them. NBC News couldn’t independently verify her figures or Zelenskyy’s account.
Zelenskyy made the comments a day after he declined to surrender the strategically important city, which has seen relentless attacks. He said just over 7,000 residents were rescued from the city Tuesday.
The United Nations has said 953 civilians, including 78 children, have been killed since Russia invaded the country last month. The actual toll is much higher, according to the U.N.
Germany honors survivor of Nazi camps, 96, killed in Ukraine
BERLIN — Germany’s parliament on Tuesday paid tribute to Boris Romanchenko, who survived several Nazi concentration camps during World War II but was killed last week during an attack in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He was 96.
The Buchenwald concentration camp memorial said Monday that Romanchenko, who survived Buchenwald as well as camps at Peenemuende, Dora and Bergen-Belsen, was killed Friday. It said that, according to his granddaughter, the multistory building where he lived was hit by a projectile.
Romanchenko was dedicated to keeping alive the memory of Nazi crimes and was vice president of the International Buchenwald-Dora Committee, the memorial said.
Opening a session of Germany’s parliament on Tuesday, deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt paid tribute to Romanchenko.
She said Romanchenko was taken to Dortmund, Germany, as a forced laborer in 1942 and was sent to the concentration camps after an escape attempt in 1943. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
“His death reminds us that Germany has a special historical responsibility toward Ukraine,” Goering-Eckardt said. “Boris Romanchenko is one of thousands of dead in Ukraine. Every single life that has been taken reminds us to do everything we can to stop this cruel war that violates international law and to help people in and from Ukraine.”
White House looks to streamline resettlement of vulnerable Ukrainian refugees in U.S.
The Biden administration is preparing to unveil as early as this week a plan to expedite and streamline the resettlement of some Ukrainian refugees in the U.S., according to three sources familiar with the plan.
The plan would allow vulnerable Ukrainians, specifically activists, journalists and those who are part of the LGBTQ community, to safely enter the U.S. at least temporarily. It would also expedite the reunification of Ukrainians with U.S.-based family members, the sources said.
The exact authority President Joe Biden would use to speed the passage of Ukrainians remains unclear, the sources said. The White House is considering both humanitarian parole, a presidential authority that does not guarantee permanent legal status, and the Priority-2 designation program, which has been used for Afghans and others escaping war zones, they said.
Ukrainian activists in small boat face down oligarch’s superyacht
Hacktivists, new and veteran, target Russia with one of cyber’s oldest tools
LVIV, Ukraine — M, a Ukrainian engineer in his early 20s, is not healthy enough to enlist in the military. So every day, he sits down at his computer to do what he can as part of Ukraine’s IT army, an informal group of volunteer hackers whose job it is to wreak as much havoc on Russian websites as possible.
“I try to do whatever I can, whatever I can reach to end the war, to stop it, to stop killing Ukrainian people,” said M, who asked to use only an initial from his first name out of fear for his and his family's safety.
M's tool is a simple one: flooding Russian websites with fake web traffic, an old and basic cyberattack more commonly known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS. He can execute it from the computer in his bedroom in Lviv.
Although it is unsophisticated, the DDoS attack has had a renaissance during the opening weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And while the attacks do not tend to do much damage — many websites can either mitigate them or come back online quickly — they’re a way for almost any hacktivist to participate.
“They’re quite an easy task that most people can do on their phones and their laptops,” M said.
Biden may boost number of U.S. troops in NATO countries
During his trip to Europe this week, President Joe Biden may announce that the U.S. plans to permanently maintain an increased number of U.S. troops deployed in NATO countries near Ukraine, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
The president, who is attending a NATO summit Thursday, recently reviewed options for permanent increases in the number of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe, and Poland is among the possible locations for the additional forces, the sources said.
“We are looking at additional troop posture adjustments,” an administration official said, adding that no final decisions have been made.
Russia has lost some combat power, U.S. official says
For the first time, the U.S. has assessed that Russia has lost some of its combat power as Ukrainian forces on Tuesday were fighting to regain the town of Izium, according to a U.S. senior defense official.
“We assess that for the first time, they may be just a little bit below 90 percent," the official said at a briefing. "And no indications, no tangible indications of reinforcements being brought in from elsewhere in the country.”
The official said that Ukraine was fighting to recapture the town of Izium, southeast of Kharkiv.
“What we’re seeing today is some significant fighting there by Ukrainians in an effort to take it back,” the official said. “We've definitely seen anecdotal evidence anyway, that the Ukrainians are not only defending well, where they choose to defend, but they are making efforts to take back territory that the Russians have taken in.”
Over the last 24 hours, the U.S. has also observed that seven Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have likely been firing to get to the south of Mariupol, the official. Mariupol is significant as an important port and, if captured, could allow the Russians to pin down Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region and cut them off from Kyiv and the country’s west.
Some Russian troops are suffering from frostbite because they don't have cold-weather gear and they're having trouble communicating to manage logistics.