Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now
Published: 06:03 AM,Mar 12,2022 | EDITED : 10:03 AM,Mar 12,2022
A baby pram is seen next to a destroyed car outside of Kyiv
Air raid sirens blared across most Ukrainian cities after President Zelenskiy said the war had reached a 'strategic turning point'. Russian military units were closer to Kyiv, firing artillery toward residential areas, satellite images showed.
* Mariupol's situation was critical, officials said, as Russian forces tightened their noose around the Black Seaport and the death toll from shelling and a 12-day blockade neared 1,600.
* Evacuations from four cities dropped sharply to 7,144 people, Zelensky said.
* Russian air and missile forces struck the western Ukrainian cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, Britain said.
* Ukraine said neighbor Belarus could be planning to invade, accusing Moscow of trying to drag its ally into the war by staging air attacks on Belarus from Ukrainian air space.* The United States hit Moscow on trade, shut down development funds, banned imports of Russian seafood diamonds, and sanctioned billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, three family members of Putin's spokesperson and lawmakers.
* The EU will join Washington in suspending Moscow's 'most-favored-nation' trade status, a crackdown on its use of crypto-assets, and ban exports to Russia of EU luxury goods and imports of iron and steel goods, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
A new Russian law giving Moscow stronger powers to crack down on independent journalism puts Russia under a 'total information blackout' on the war in Ukraine, said U.N. independent experts. One of the first to be fined under the law, Vera Kotova, wrote the banned phrase 'No to war' with a heart in the snow at a Lenin statue.
* Facebook's owner said a temporary change in its content policy, only for Ukraine, was needed to let users voice opposition to Russia's attack.
Moscow opened a criminal case after the company said it would allow posts such as 'death to the Russian invaders.'
'I'm scared for my home, for the homes of my friends, very scared for the whole country, and scared for myself of course,' Nastya, a girl in Kharkiv.
* 'You can't invade a country on a one-on-one ratio (of troops). Nobody has done it, which means that either something was wrong or they had very wrong assumptions moving into this war.'
Ukraine accuses Russia of a 'war crime' over a devastating attack on a children's hospital in the besieged port of Mariupol that killed three including a child.
At least 17 staff are injured with footage showing the wounded streaming from the destroyed building past burning cars and a giant crater.
Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov claims the hospital was a base for Ukrainian Azov Battalion and 'other radicals' and slams the West for supplying them with 'deadly weapons'.
Some 1,207 civilians have been killed in the 10-day Russian siege of the port, its mayor says. The Red Cross calls the situation there 'apocalyptic' after more than a week without water, power or heat. Safe routes out have repeatedly come under attack.
Lavrov and his Ukrainian opposite number make 'no progress' in their first face-to-face talks since the invasion in Turkey.
Some 35,000 civilians are evacuated from the badly hit cities of Sumy, Enerhodar, and areas around Kyiv during a 12-hour ceasefire, with President Volodymyr Zelensky hoping three more corridors will open Thursday for Mariupol, Volnovakha, and Izium.
Fears are mounting Kyiv will also soon be encircled, with Russian tanks in places just a few kilometers (miles) from the city limits to the east.
Two women and a 13-year-old boy are killed overnight in the bombing of Velyka Pysarivka village near the badly hit northern city of Sumy close to the Russian border.
Britain freezes the assets of Roman Abramovich, including Chelsea Football Club, along with those of six other Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller.
US lawmakers pass a $14-billion aid package for Ukraine with Canada pledging more military equipment.
The International Monetary Fund meanwhile approves $1.4 billion in emergency financing for Kyiv.
Washington deploys two new Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries in Poland to protect its frontline NATO ally.
But the Pentagon definitively rejects a Polish offer to give its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, fearing a wider conflict.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss calls on the G7 to ban Russian oil imports after the US and Britain said they were 'cutting the artery' of the Russian economy.
But fellow G7 members France, Germany, Italy, and Japan are wary of such a move.
The UN's atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it is not receiving updates from either Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants, both of which are now in Russian hands.
But it says there is 'no critical impact on safety' at Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, from a loss of power there.
Washington rejects Russian claims it is involved in bioweapons research in Ukraine and warns Russia could be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons.
The UN says at least 2.2 million people have fled Ukraine, with more than half now in Poland.
It has called the exodus Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
Oil prices surge, while European stocks slip as the market turmoil continues over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
* Mariupol's situation was critical, officials said, as Russian forces tightened their noose around the Black Seaport and the death toll from shelling and a 12-day blockade neared 1,600.
* Evacuations from four cities dropped sharply to 7,144 people, Zelensky said.
* Russian air and missile forces struck the western Ukrainian cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, Britain said.
* Ukraine said neighbor Belarus could be planning to invade, accusing Moscow of trying to drag its ally into the war by staging air attacks on Belarus from Ukrainian air space.* The United States hit Moscow on trade, shut down development funds, banned imports of Russian seafood diamonds, and sanctioned billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, three family members of Putin's spokesperson and lawmakers.
* The EU will join Washington in suspending Moscow's 'most-favored-nation' trade status, a crackdown on its use of crypto-assets, and ban exports to Russia of EU luxury goods and imports of iron and steel goods, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
A new Russian law giving Moscow stronger powers to crack down on independent journalism puts Russia under a 'total information blackout' on the war in Ukraine, said U.N. independent experts. One of the first to be fined under the law, Vera Kotova, wrote the banned phrase 'No to war' with a heart in the snow at a Lenin statue.
* Facebook's owner said a temporary change in its content policy, only for Ukraine, was needed to let users voice opposition to Russia's attack.
Moscow opened a criminal case after the company said it would allow posts such as 'death to the Russian invaders.'
'I'm scared for my home, for the homes of my friends, very scared for the whole country, and scared for myself of course,' Nastya, a girl in Kharkiv.
* 'You can't invade a country on a one-on-one ratio (of troops). Nobody has done it, which means that either something was wrong or they had very wrong assumptions moving into this war.'
Ukraine accuses Russia of a 'war crime' over a devastating attack on a children's hospital in the besieged port of Mariupol that killed three including a child.
At least 17 staff are injured with footage showing the wounded streaming from the destroyed building past burning cars and a giant crater.
Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov claims the hospital was a base for Ukrainian Azov Battalion and 'other radicals' and slams the West for supplying them with 'deadly weapons'.
Some 1,207 civilians have been killed in the 10-day Russian siege of the port, its mayor says. The Red Cross calls the situation there 'apocalyptic' after more than a week without water, power or heat. Safe routes out have repeatedly come under attack.
Lavrov and his Ukrainian opposite number make 'no progress' in their first face-to-face talks since the invasion in Turkey.
Some 35,000 civilians are evacuated from the badly hit cities of Sumy, Enerhodar, and areas around Kyiv during a 12-hour ceasefire, with President Volodymyr Zelensky hoping three more corridors will open Thursday for Mariupol, Volnovakha, and Izium.
Fears are mounting Kyiv will also soon be encircled, with Russian tanks in places just a few kilometers (miles) from the city limits to the east.
Two women and a 13-year-old boy are killed overnight in the bombing of Velyka Pysarivka village near the badly hit northern city of Sumy close to the Russian border.
Britain freezes the assets of Roman Abramovich, including Chelsea Football Club, along with those of six other Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller.
US lawmakers pass a $14-billion aid package for Ukraine with Canada pledging more military equipment.
The International Monetary Fund meanwhile approves $1.4 billion in emergency financing for Kyiv.
Washington deploys two new Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries in Poland to protect its frontline NATO ally.
But the Pentagon definitively rejects a Polish offer to give its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, fearing a wider conflict.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss calls on the G7 to ban Russian oil imports after the US and Britain said they were 'cutting the artery' of the Russian economy.
But fellow G7 members France, Germany, Italy, and Japan are wary of such a move.
The UN's atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it is not receiving updates from either Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants, both of which are now in Russian hands.
But it says there is 'no critical impact on safety' at Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, from a loss of power there.
Washington rejects Russian claims it is involved in bioweapons research in Ukraine and warns Russia could be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons.
The UN says at least 2.2 million people have fled Ukraine, with more than half now in Poland.
It has called the exodus Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
Oil prices surge, while European stocks slip as the market turmoil continues over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.