Nuclear catastrophe ‘narrowly averted’ as Russia presses siege of Ukrainian cities

And in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian troops have fired cluster munitions into at least three residential neighborhoods, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Friday.

The grim conditions on the ninth day of Russia’s invasion spawned an urgent appeal late Friday from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who urged Europeans to “take to the streets” to back his battered country.

“Do not be silent. Support Ukraine. Because if Ukraine does not survive, the whole of Europe will not survive,” Zelensky said.

As demonstrators in multiple European cities heeded the president’s call, Russia’s international isolation grew.

The country’s internet censor on Friday announced that it would block access to Facebook, cutting off a key source of outside information to Russian citizens. The BBC said it would suspend reporting from Russia in response to new legislation that it said “appears to criminalize the process of independent journalism.” Major U.S. news networks, including CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS, also said they would stop reporting from Russia.

International companies such as Airbnb, Microsoft and Cogent Communications — a key internet provider — also cut ties.

Russia's siege of Mariupol could be grim sign of what's to come in other cities

Pressure on Moscow could escalate further in the coming days, with the Biden administration weighing a ban on crude oil imports. The United Nations’ top human rights body, meanwhile, voted decisively to set up a commission to investigate alleged rights violations by Russia, amid growing reports of potential war crimes.

But the limits to international willingness to come to Ukraine’s defense were also laid freshly bare, with NATO’s senior leader once again rebuffing Ukrainian demands to set up a no-fly zone.

The exact number of casualties caused by more than a week of fighting has been impossible to verify. The U.N. human rights office said Friday that at least 331 civilians had been killed, while Ukraine’s emergency services put the number of civilian fatalities much higher, at more than 2,000.

A U.N. statement said most of the casualties had been caused “by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and airstrikes.”

Russia has acknowledged the deaths of about 500 of its troops, while Ukrainian officials claim that as many as 10,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or captured.

What to know about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where a Russian projectile caused a fire

Russia’s seizure early Friday of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power facility, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, came after a projectile set part of the complex on fire, raising fears across Europe of a catastrophic accident.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog reported that the blaze had not affected “essential” equipment and that Ukraine’s regulator reported no change in surrounding radiation levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the Energy Department also had seen no elevated radiation readings.

“The plant’s reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down,” Granholm wrote. Even so, the blaze sparked international alarm and underscored the perils of a war fought around nuclear sites.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the world “narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe” and thanked Ukrainian operators for keeping nuclear reactors safe.

“Russia’s attack last night put Europe’s largest nuclear power [plant] at grave risk,” she said. “It was incredibly reckless and dangerous.”

Zelensky said his country had “survived a night that could have stopped history” and that the attack on the nuclear facility could have been as bad as “six Chernobyls.”

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations denied reports that the Russian military shelled the reactor, saying his country’s troops were actually offering “protection” for the facility — a claim that Western ambassadors dismissed.

In Mariupol, Russian forces have been engaged in a “bombardment of critical civilian infrastructure” aimed at forcing the city to surrender, a senior western intelligence official said.

The city’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, said officials were hoping that talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials would establish a “period of silence” to restore utilities such as electricity and water. “We are simply being destroyed,” he said on his Telegram channel, noting the city has been under “merciless bombardment” from Russian forces over the past five days.

Kherson, meanwhile, faces dire consequences if a humanitarian corridor is not opened soon to allow civilians to be evacuated, and for food and medicine to be delivered, the secretary of the city council said.

“In Kherson, we are running out of food — literally, we can still last for maybe three, four days,” the city council secretary, Galina Luhova, said by telephone. “We’re running out of medicines, we’re out of baby food, we are running out of diapers, and we are running out of first aid in hospitals.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling on him to “immediately cease all hostilities” and allow access for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, according to a readout of the conversation from Berlin.

With the conflict now in its second week and Russia sending nearly all of its assembled military power into neighboring Ukraine, satellite images are providing glimpses of the scale of the invading force, as well as the devastation the fighting has wrought. Analysis of satellite imagery by the U.S. firm Maxar Technologies shows bridges and roads damaged and homes destroyed in towns and cities across the country.

In Chernihiv, a strategic northern city on a highway that links the Ukraine-Belarus border with Kyiv, the capital, and where a fierce battle has been waged in recent days, the images show damaged roads, bridges and homes. Some factories appear to have been leveled. On Friday, Chernihiv’s regional authority said in a Facebook post that Russian strikes killed 47 people, including nine women.

The images also continue to show a long Russian armored column north of Kyiv that has remained stalled because of what Western officials say are logistical challenges and fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces, including the destruction of a bridge.

“We certainly believe that the Ukrainians blowing up that bridge absolutely had an effect on stopping and curtailing the movement of that convoy,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “But we also believe that they have hit the convoy at other places as well in direct attacks.”

The convoy may also have stalled because Russians have not been able to seize the suburbs west of Kyiv, where antitank weapons have littered roads with destroyed vehicles and dead Russian troops. A significant blow to the Russian forces in the area are losses among its airborne soldiers, said Rob Lee, a Russia military expert and a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Airborne troops are expected to move quickly against the enemy, but their lightly armored vehicles have become a burden as the troops have struggled to gain the initiative.

The convoy, consisting of combat and logistics vehicles, appears destined to help encircle Kyiv. But if the defenders can hold, Lee said, “they will stymie forces trying to begin the siege.”

Alarm over the fate of Ukraine’s cities has intensified amid growing evidence that Russian forces are indiscriminately targeting urban centers.

“We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Friday.

In its report Friday, Human Rights Watch said it had documented the use of cluster munitions on the basis of two witness interviews and the analysis of 40 videos and images. Some of these sources show the “explosion signatures and rocket remnants” consistent with the delivery of cluster munitions from 9M55K Smerch rockets, the group added.

As Ukraine war intensifies, some Russian speakers far from Moscow are feeling hostility

Because of the indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions — they scatter over a wide area small bomblets that could explode even after the fighting has ended — Human Rights Watch claimed that Russia may have committed a war crime by using them.

“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said Steve Goose, the arms director at Human Rights Watch. “If these deadly acts were carried out either intentionally or recklessly, they would be war crimes.”

The United States, which is out of step with many of its allies in abstaining from a treaty banning cluster weapons, has said for days it cannot verify they are being used by Russians in Ukraine.

Russian forces have launched more than 500 missiles of all sizes since the invasion began, the Pentagon said Friday, many of which were fired from inside the territory of Russia and Belarus.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Brussels as part of a trip to Europe this week, said conditions for Ukrainian civilians will only deteriorate in the days to come. “The terrible expectation is that the suffering we’ve already seen is likely to get worse before it gets better,” Blinken said.

Fahim reported from Istanbul, Horton and Witte from Washington. Missy Ryan and Emily Rauhala in Brussels, Ellen Francis and Adela Suliman in London, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff in Berlin, Amy Cheng in Seoul and Timothy Bella, Hannah Knowles, Steven Mufson and Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.