Monday, March 14, 2022

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US official: Russia seeking military aid from China

Posted: 14 Mar 2022 02:47 AM PDT

WASHINGTON — A US official said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine, a request that heightened tensions about the ongoing war ahead of a Monday meeting in Rome between top aides for the US and Chinese governments.In advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. "We will not allow that to go forward," he said.The prospect of China offering Russia financial help is one of several concerns for President Joe Biden.A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said that in recent days, Russia had requested support from China, including military equipment, to press forward in its ongoing war with Ukraine. The request was first reported by the Financial Times and The Washington Post.The Biden administration is also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces to attack Ukraine with chemical or biological weapons.Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has shown support for Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with "no limits."Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support. They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBC's "Meet the Press," "it's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves."The striking US accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the US was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in "which the US Department of Defense has absolute control." The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.Sullivan told "Face the Nation" on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is "an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that."The international community has assessed that Russia used chemical weapons in attempts to assassinate Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decadelong civil war.China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine.Chinese officials have said Washington shouldn't be able to complain about Russia's actions because the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The US claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction though none was ever found. (AP)

Saudi Arabia puts 81 to death in its largest mass execution

Posted: 13 Mar 2022 10:52 PM PDT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history.The number of executed surpassed even the toll of a January 1980 mass execution for the 63 militants convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, the worst-ever militant attack to target the kingdom and Islam's holiest site.It wasn't clear why the kingdom choose Saturday for the executions, though they came as much of the world's attention remained focused on Russia's war on Ukraine — and as the U.S. hopes to lower record-high gasoline prices as energy prices spike worldwide. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly plans a trip to Saudi Arabia next week over oil prices as well.The number of death penalty cases being carried out in Saudi Arabia had dropped during the coronavirus pandemic, though the kingdom continued to behead convicts under King Salman and his assertive son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced Saturday's executions, saying they included those "convicted of various crimes, including the murdering of innocent men, women and children."The kingdom also said some of those executed were members of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and also backers of Yemen's Houthi rebels. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015 in neighboring Yemen in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government to power.Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. The report did not say where the executions took place."The accused were provided with the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process, which found them guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead," the Saudi Press Agency said."The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten the stability of the entire world," the report added. It did not say how the prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.An announcement by Saudi state television described those executed as having "followed the footsteps of Satan" in carrying out their crimes.The executions drew immediate international criticism."The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow," said Soraya Bauwens, the deputy director of Reprieve, a London-based advocacy group.Ali Adubusi, the director of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, alleged that some of those executed had been tortured and faced trials "carried out in secret.""These executions are the opposite of justice," he said.The kingdom's last mass execution came in January 2016, when the kingdom executed 47 people, including a prominent opposition Shiite cleric who had rallied demonstrations in the kingdom.In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. It also publicly nailed the severed body and head of a convicted extremist to a pole as a warning to others. Such crucifixions after execution, while rare, do occur in the kingdom.Activists, including Ali al-Ahmed of the U.S.-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, and the group Democracy for the Arab World Now said they believe that over three dozen of those executed Saturday also were Shiites. The Saudi statement, however, did not identify the faiths of those killed.Shiites, who live primarily in the kingdom's oil-rich east, have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens. Executions of Shiites in the past have stirred regional unrest. Saudi Arabia meanwhile remains engaged in diplomatic talks with its Shiite regional rival Iran to try to ease yearslong tensions.Sporadic protests erupted Saturday night in the island kingdom of Bahrain — which has a majority Shiite population but is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, a Saudi ally — over the mass execution.The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque remains a crucial moment in the history of the oil-rich kingdom.A band of ultraconservative Saudi Sunni militants took the Grand Mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba that Muslims pray toward five times a day, demanding the Al Saud royal family abdicate. A two-week siege that followed ended with an official death toll of 229 killed. The kingdom's rulers soon further embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine.Since taking power, Crown Prince Mohammed under his father has increasingly liberalized life in the kingdom, opening movie theaters, allowing women to drive and defanging the country's once-feared religious police.However, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the crown prince also ordered the slaying and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while overseeing airstrikes in Yemen that killed hundreds of civilians.In excerpts of an interview with The Atlantic magazine, the crown prince discussed the death penalty, saying a "high percentage" of executions had been halted through the payment of so-called "blood money" settlements to grieving families."Well about the death penalty, we got rid of all of it, except for one category, and this one is written in the Quran, and we cannot do anything about it, even if we wished to do something, because it is clear teaching in the Quran," the prince said, according to a transcript later published by the Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al-Arabiya."If someone killed someone, another person, the family of that person has the right, after going to the court, to apply capital punishment, unless they forgive him. Or if someone threatens the life of many people, that means he has to be punished by the death penalty."He added: "Regardless if I like it or not, I don't have the power to change it." (AP)

Acclaimed filmmaker Brent Renaud shot, killed in Ukraine

Posted: 13 Mar 2022 10:46 PM PDT

BRENT Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for "Arming the Mexican Cartels," a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence."This guy was the absolute best," Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. "He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone."The details of Renaud's death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back."We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us," Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city."In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders," Markushyn said.The U.S. State Department said it would not comment on Renaud's death out of respect for his family members but that consular assistance was being offered to them.The U.S. State Department condemned attacks on news professionals and others documenting the conflict."We are horrified that journalists and filmmakers—noncombatants—have been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces," the department said via Twitter. "This is yet another gruesome example of the Kremlin's indiscriminate actions."Responding to news of Renaud's death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and civilians."This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law," the committee said on Twitter.TIME released a statement deploring Renaud's death and saying he had been in the region working on a TIME Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis."We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud," the statement said. "Our hearts are with all of Brent's loved ones."Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for "Last Chance High," an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago's West Side. The brothers' litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and VICE News.Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion."Nowhere was too dangerous," Putzel said. "It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared."He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig's wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo. (AP)

Talks to resume as Russian strikes widen in western Ukraine

Posted: 13 Mar 2022 10:08 PM PDT

LVIV, Ukraine — Besieged Ukrainians held out hope Monday that renewed diplomatic talks with Russia might open the way for more civilians to evacuate, a day after Moscow escalated its offensive by shelling areas perilously close to the Polish border. Ukraine's leader warned that the attacks could expand to neighboring countries.Russian missiles pounded a military base in western Ukraine on Sunday, killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defense. It raised the possibility that the alliance could be drawn into the fight. The attack was also heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a "black day," and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea that the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation."If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries," Zelenskyy said, urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him directly, a request that has gone unanswered by the Kremlin.Diplomats were due to resume talks Monday, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Mosc ow evade Western economic sanctions.The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher, and Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office said that at least 85 children are among them. Millions more people have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.Since their invasion more than two weeks ago, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummeled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.That fight expanded Sunday to the sprawling facility at Yavoriv, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other countries in the Western alliance. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the site. In addition to the fatalities, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said 134 people were wounded in the attack.The base is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia's 18-day invasion. It has hosted NATO training drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding fears that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security — something NATO denies. Still, the perceived threat from NATO is central to Moscow's justifications for the war, and it has demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions to join the alliance.Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts Sunday morning that shook her windows."I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us," she said.Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, two other NATO allies.NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting. Ukrainian authorities said Sunday that more than 10 humanitarian corridors were set to open, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol. But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes.The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol was "simply immense" and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine."Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell," the Red Cross said in a statement. "Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated."The fight for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.Elsewhere, fighting continued on multiple fronts.In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, authorities reported nine people killed in bombings. They said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children's resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and others were sheltering, wounding 32 people.Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east. An American filmmaker and journalist was killed in an attack by Russian troops.In the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, Ukrainian soldier Alexei Lipirdi, 46, said that the Russians "want to intimidate us so that we will not be calm," but he and his unit remain defiant. As he spoke, smoke billowed from distant buildings and cars stood damaged or abandoned. (AP)

War censorship exposes Putin's leaky internet controls

Posted: 13 Mar 2022 09:59 PM PDT

BOSTON — Long before waging war on Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin was working to make Russia's internet a powerful tool of surveillance and social control akin to China's so-called Great Firewall.So when Western tech companies began cutting ties with Russia following its invasion, Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov was alarmed. He'd spent years exposing Russian censorship and feared that well-intentioned efforts to aid Ukraine would instead help Putin isolate Russians from the free flow of information, aiding the Kremlin's propaganda war."Look, guys the only space the Russians have to talk about Ukraine. and what is going on in Russia. is Facebook," Soldatov, now exiled in London. wrote on Facebook in the war's first week. "You cannot just, like, kill our access."Facebook didn't, although the Kremlin soon picked up that baton, throttling both Facebook and Twitter so badly they are effectively unreachable on the Russian internet. Putin has also blocked access to both Western media and independent news sites in the country, and a new law criminalizes spreading information that contradicts the government's line. On Friday, the Kremlin said it would also restrict access to Instagram. By early Monday, the network monitor NetBlocks found network data showing the social network restricted in Russia across multiple users.Yet the Kremlin's latest censorship efforts have revealed serious shortcomings in the government's bigger plans to straightjacket the internet. Any Russian with a modicum of tech smarts can circumvent Kremlin efforts to starve Russians of fact.For instance, the government has so far had only limited success blocking the use of software known as virtual private networks, or VPNs, that allows users to evade content restrictions. The same goes for Putin's attempts to restrict the use of other censorship-evading software.That puts providers of internet bandwidth and associated services sympathetic to Ukraine's plight in a tough spot. On one side, they face public pressure to punish the Russian state and economic reasons to limit services at a time when bills might well go unpaid. On the other, they're wary of helping stifle a free flow of information that can counter Kremlin disinformation — for instance, the state's claim that Russia's military is heroically "liberating" Ukraine from fascists.Amazon Web Services, a major provider of cloud computing services, continues to operate in Russia, although it says it's not taking on any new customers. Both Cloudflare, which helps shield websites from denial-of-service attacks and malware, and Akamai, which boosts site performance by putting internet content closer to its audience, also continue to serve their Russian customers, with exceptions including cutting off state-owned companies and firms under sanctions.Microsoft, by contrast, hasn't said whether it will halt its cloud services in the country, although it has suspended all new sales of products and services.U.S.-based Cogent, which provides a major "backbone" for internet traffic, has cut direct connections inside Russia but left open the pipes through subsidiaries of Russian network providers at exchanges physically outside the country. Another major U.S. backbone provider, Lumen, has done the same."We have no desire to cut off Russian individuals and think that an open internet is critical to the world," Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer said in an interview. Direct connections to servers inside Russia, he said, could potentially "be used for offensive cyber efforts by the Russian government."Schaeffer said the decision didn't reflect "financial considerations," although he acknowledged that the ruble's sharp drop, which makes imported goods and services more expensive in Russia, could make it difficult to collect customer payments. Meanwhile, he said, Cogent is providing Ukrainian customers free service during the conflict.Schaeffer said these moves might impair internet video in Russia but will leave plenty of bandwidth for smaller files.Other major backbone providers in Europe and Asia also continue to serve Russia, a net importer of bandwidth, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for the network management firm Kentik. He has noted no appreciable drop in connectivity from outside providers.Cloudflare continues to operate four data centers in Russia even though Russian authorities ordered government websites to drop foreign-owned hosting providers as of Friday. In a March 7 blog post the company said it had determined "Russia needs more Internet access, not less."Under a 2019 "sovereign internet" law, Russia is supposed to be able to operate its internet independent of the rest of the world. In practice, that has brought Russia closer to the kind of intensive internet monitoring and control practiced by China and Iran.Its telecommunications oversight agency, Rozkomnadzor, successfully tested the system at scale a year ago when it throttled access to Twitter. It uses hundreds of so-called middleboxes — router-like devices run and remotely controlled by bureaucrats that can block individual websites and services — installed by law at all internet providers inside Russia.But the system, which also lets the FSB security service spy on Russian citizens, is a relative sieve compared to China's Great Firewall. Andrew Sullivan, president of the nonprofit Internet Society, said there's no evidence it has the ability to successfully disconnect Russia from the wider internet."Walling off a country's internet is complicated, culturally, economically and technologically. And it becomes far more complicated with a country like Russia, whose internet, unlike China's, was not originally built out with government control in mind," he said."When it comes to censorship, the only ones who can really do it are the Chinese," said Serge Droz, a senior security engineer at Swiss-based Proton Technologies, which offers software for creating VPNs, a principal tool for circumventing state censorship.ProtonVPN, which Droz says has been inventive in finding ways to circumvent Russian blocking, reports clocking ten times as many daily signups than before the war. VPN services tracked by researchers at Top10VPN.com found Facebook and Twitter downloads surging eight times higher than average. Its research found the Kremlin to have blocked more than 270 news and financial sites since the invasion, including BBC News and Voice of America's Russian-language services.Russia's elites are believed to be big VPN users. No one expects them to disconnect.Russian authorities are also having some success blocking the privacy-protecting Tor browser, which like VPNs lets users visit content at special ".onion" sites on the so-called dark web, researchers say. Twitter just created a Tor site; other outlets such as The New York Times also have them.The Kremlin has not, however, blocked the popular Telegram messaging app. It's an important conduit for Ukrainian government ministries and also for Meduza, the Latvia-based independent Russian-language news organization whose website is blocked in Russia. Meduza has 1 million followers on Telegram.One reason may be that Telegram is also a vital conduit for Kremlin propagandists, analysts say.Additionally, Telegram does not feature default end-to-end encryption, which renders messages unreadable by the company and outsiders, as the popular U.S.-based messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp do. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook's parent, Meta. Telegram does offer users fully encrypted "private chats," although users have to make sure to activate them.After the invasion, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike tweeted a reminder that sensitive communication on insecure apps can literally be a matter of life and death in war. A Signal spokesman would not share user numbers, but WhatsApp has an estimated 63 million users in Russia.Being able to access outside websites and apps vital to staying informed depend, however, on foreign-based VPN services that Russians say they are having trouble paying for since Visa and Mastercard cut off their country. (AP)

Images of destruction, Ukrainian defiance

Posted: 13 Mar 2022 01:55 AM PST

IN BESIEGED towns and cities around Ukraine on Saturday, March 12, 2022, smoke rose from destroyed buildings and burned-out cars. Soldiers patrolled deserted, debris-filled streets. And hospitals struggled to treat the injured, provide shelter and deliver babies.Meanwhile, the exodus of refugees from the country continued. There were tearful goodbyes at train stations, and tears of joy when some family members were united across the border in Poland.Among the images captured by Associated Press photographers on Day 17 of the war, were also pictures of defiance — from a welder working on tire-deflating spikes to a refugee with fingernails painted the colors of the Ukrainian flag.Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling it a "special military operation" to "denazify" the former Soviet republic. (AP)

Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict

Posted: 12 Mar 2022 02:45 PM PST

A RELENTLESS assault on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol continued Saturday, March 12, as Russian forces shelled the city's downtown, including an area around a mosque that was sheltering more than 80 people – some children.Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow has warned the United States that Moscow could attack convoys carrying military equipment to Ukraine, calling them "legitimate targets." U.S. President Joe Biden announced additional aid to Ukraine of up to $200 million for weapons, military services, education and training.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday accused Russia of trying to create new "pseudo-republics" to break his country apart. He called on Ukraine's regions not to repeat the experience of two eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014.Russian units fanned out to prepare for an assault on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv. Zelenskyy said Russia would need to carpet-bomb Kyiv and kill its residents to take the city.Now in its third week, the war has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine.Here are some key things to know about the conflict:What's happening in Mariupol?Russian shelling of this Ukrainian port city of 430,000 has been relentless, and the mayor's office says more than 1,500 have died since the siege began. Russian forces hammered the city's downtown on Saturday as residents hid.The Ukrainian government said a mosque where people sought shelter in the city's center was shelled. However, an unverified Instagram post by a man claiming to be the mosque association's president said the mosque itself wasn't hit, but a bomb fell about 750 yards (700 meters) away. The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among those who had sought safety in the mosque.Repeated attempts to bring food to Mariupol and evacuate civilians have been canceled due to ongoing Russian fire. The unceasing shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves.On Saturday, a Ukrainian official said Russian soldiers blocked a humanitarian convoy headed for Mariupol and stole from another. Doctors Without Borders said some residents are dying for lack of medication, with the city without drinking water or medicine for over a week now. The aid group says people are resorting to boiling water from the ground or extracted from heating pipes.Ukraine's military said Russian forces captured Mariupol's eastern outskirts. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea would be strategic for Russian President Vladimir Putin, as it could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.What was witnessed or confirmed?An Associated Press journalist witnessed tanks firing on a 9-story apartment block in Mariupol and was with a group of medical workers who came under sniper fire on Friday. Conditions at a local hospital there were deteriorating, electricity was reserved for operating tables and the hallways were lined with people with nowhere else to go.Anastasiya Erashova wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child. Shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother's child. "No one was able to save them," she said.In Irpin, on the northwest outskirts of Kyiv, bodies laid in the open in a park and on a street Saturday. Serhy Protsenko walked his neighborhood as explosions sounded."When I woke up in the morning, everything was covered in smoke, everything was dark. We don't know who is shooting and where," he said. "We don't have any radio or information."Some residents huddled in a pitch-dark basement for shelter, unsure where they could go and how they would get food if they left. Others were on the move, toting luggage across planks to get over a waterway where a bridge had been damaged. Armed men carried one older man on a stretcher.Sergiy Stakhovsky, a recently retired professional tennis player from Ukraine, has left his wife and three young children at home in Hungary and is back in Ukraine, serving with the territorial defense, a branch of the Ukraine armed forces.Stakhovsky said in a video interview with The Associated Press that he would never have imagined he would be in his home city with a gun in his hands."The first couple of days (it's) surreal, you don't believe it is actually happening," he said. "The next thing you know you know you get used to it and you're just trying to find a way of helping your country to actually survive."He earned more than $5 million in prize money in tennis and upset Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013. Stakhovsky's last match came in Australian Open qualifying in January.What is happening on the groundIn the northeast, Russian forces were blockading Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, even as efforts have been made to create new humanitarian corridors around it and other urban centers.Ukraine's emergency services reported that the bodies of five people were pulled from an apartment building that was struck by shelling in Kharkiv, including two women, a man and two children.In multiple areas around Kyiv, heavy artillery fire sent residents scurrying for shelter as air raid sirens wailed. An ammunition depot outside the city was shelled overnight, sending billowing black smoke into the sky, according to video provided by emergency workers.Britain's Defense Ministry said Russian ground forces that had been north of Kyiv for most of the war had edged to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the city center and spread out, likely to support an attempted encirclement.The most vulnerableUkraine's chief prosecutor's office says at least 79 children have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.About 60 child cancer patients from Ukraine boarded a medical train Saturday in Medyka, Poland, bound for hospitals in Warsaw and elsewhere. Medical workers carried some of the children in their arms, on stretchers and pushed them in wheelchairs at the train station near the Ukrainian border.Dominik Daszuta, an anesthesiologist from Warsaw Hospital, said the train has transported 120 children with cancer so far.Ukraine's defense ministry said Saturday that Russian forces shelled a convoy of refugees fleeing Peremoha, a village about 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Kyiv, killing seven people including a child.The seven were among hundreds of people who tried to flee Peremoha. An unknown number of people were wounded, the report added.Moscow has said it would establish humanitarian corridors out of conflict zones, but Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of disrupting those paths and firing on civilians.Elena Yurchuk, a nurse from the northern city of Chernihiv, was in a Romanian train station Saturday with her teenage son, Nikita, doubting that their home was still standing. Her hometown has been heavily shelled."We have nowhere to go back to. Nothing left," said Yurchuk, 44, who hopes to find work in Germany.What are Putin, Zelenskyy, and other world leaders saying?Putin participated in a 90-minute phone call Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Macron's office said the call was "very frank and also difficult."The Kremlin said Putin laid out his demands for ending the war, including Ukraine's demilitarization. Moscow has also demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO, adopt a neutral status and acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Crimea, among other things. Putin also threatened to seize the assets of U.S. and Western companies that have announced plans to leave Russia.Zelenskyy again deplored NATO's refusal to declare a nofly zone over Ukraine. He said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defense assets, though he didn't elaborate.Zelenskyy also told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he would be open to meeting Putin in Jerusalem to discuss an end to the war, but that first there would have to be a cease-fire. Putin has ignored Zelenskyy's previous offers to talk. (AP)
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