Russia-Ukraine live updates: Belarus prepares to join invasion, boosting tensions before Russia-Ukraine talks

Facebook’s services, which include WhatsApp and Instagram, continued to be blocked or slowed down over the weekend in Russia, causing users there to switch to Telegram, according to reports by locals.

Netblocks, a civil society group that monitors Internet traffic worldwide, reported late Sunday that Facebook’s content servers had been severely restricted by Russian Internet providers, making it so that content either no longer loads or loads extremely slowly, the group said. People can use special software to bypass some of the restrictions, Netblocks said, but most people do not have access to such software.

Twitter’s services were also restricted, Netblocks said.

Facebook’s president for global affairs, Nick Clegg, tweeted Sunday that the Russian government was already “throttling our platform” to prevent people from using the company’s services to “protest and organize against the war and as a source of independent information.”

NEW DELHI — Indian students stranded in Ukraine are posting desperate appeals for evacuation on social media as the government steps up efforts to bring them back via neighboring countries like Romania, Hungary and Poland.

Hundreds have reached Ukraine’s borders on foot, in inclement weather, without many supplies. A video posted by New Delhi Television reportedly shot by a student at the Romanian border shows dozens of people stuck in freezing temperatures.

Another video shared by the Economic Times shows students at the Polish border seeking to enter.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting on the crisis Monday, and four ministers are likely to head to Ukraine’s neighboring countries to step up and coordinate evacuation efforts, New Delhi Television reported.

On Sunday, India abstained from voting on a resolution calling for a U.N. General Assembly session on the invasion of Ukraine. Last week, India was one of three countries, including China and the United Arab Emirates, to abstain from voting on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the invasion, in a bid to strike a balance between its alliance with Russia, its largest arms supplier.

Opposition parties criticized Modi and the ruling party for focusing on state election campaigns even as students were stuck in bunkers in areas where fighting has intensified in Ukraine, including Kharkiv.

About 18,000 Indian students are enrolled in Ukrainian universities, primarily studying medicine and engineering, according to the Indian Embassy in Kyiv. So far, five evacuation flights have brought back hundreds of students.

“We are running out of food and water,” a student stuck in a college hostel in the Mykolaiv region told the News Minute.

Another student, who spoke to the Indian Express, described spending two nights at the Polish border before moving to a nearby shelter home. “There is no response from the Indian Embassy yet,” the student said.

“We are surrounded from all sides,” a female student says in a viral video on social media.

In tears, she says she is stuck in Kyiv and is not safe.

“Please send someone by air to help us.”

China’s embassy in Kyiv said it is starting to check key information of Chinese citizens in Ukraine, even as evacuation plans remain on hold until conditions are safer.

As of Friday afternoon, 6,580 people had registered with the Chinese Embassy for evacuation from Ukraine, according to China’s Changjiang Daily newspaper. Those whose file was missing key information such as passport number or location would receive a call, the embassy said in a statement on its website on Sunday.

China’s ambassador to the Ukraine, Fan Xianrong, posted a lengthy message early Sunday to reject rumors that he had left the country. He said that the embassy could not evacuate Chinese citizens immediately because it could not guarantee their safety, but that it would do so as soon as possible.

“We must wait until it is safe to go,” he wrote. “But our waiting is not passive. We will do it whenever conditions are available, and whichever way is the safest.”

China’s state-run Global Times reported that some Chinese nationals in Ukraine were trying to drive out of the country but were stuck in long traffic jams. The Chinese Embassy was also trying to help some Chinese-operated factories and farms in the Ukraine to protect their property, Global Times reported.

Londoners donated diapers, sleeping bags, first aid necessities and more for Ukrainians fleeing to Poland. Volunteers sorted the donations in Balham, South London, on Feb. 27.

Belarus approved the amendment of its constitution in a referendum on Sunday, according to Russian state media, ditching the Kremlin-aligned state’s nonnuclear status and clearing the way for Russian nuclear weapons to be placed on Belarusian soil.

The Belarusian election commission said 65 percent of people who participated in the referendum voted in favor of the move, according to Russian media, as President Alexander Lukashenko maintains a tight grip over the country.

Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, questioned the legitimacy of the vote, writing on Twitter that the vote count was according to Lukashenko’s “criminal clique.” The country’s last presidential vote, which pitted Tikhanovskaya against Lukashenko, was widely regarded as fraudulent.

The passage of the amendment had been expected and comes as Belarus is preparing to send soldiers to Ukraine in support of the Russian invasion, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive development. The official said the deployment could start as soon as Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday put Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces on alert — a move that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield condemned as an attempt to “escalate this war in a manner that is totally unacceptable.”

Facebook said late Sunday that it had disrupted a Russian disinformation operation targeting Ukraine, one of the first official confirmations of such a campaign since the invasion of Ukraine last week.

The small operation, Facebook said, ran a handful of websites masquerading as independent news outlets and published claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state. The accounts had fewer than 4,500 followers on Facebook and Instagram combined.

Facebook, which recently changed its name to Meta, also said it had taken action against a hacking group that in recent days attempted to compromise the accounts of prominent Ukrainians.

The hacking group Ghostwriter, the company said, had successfully targeted Ukrainian military, journalists and other public officials. The hacking group typically targets people by sending malicious links to their email and hoping they will click on it, allowing the group to take over their social media profiles.

The company said it had detected attempts to get the compromised social media accounts to post YouTube videos portraying Ukrainian troops as weak and surrendering to Russia, including a video claiming to show Ukrainian soldiers coming out of a forest while flying a white flag of surrender.

Alphabet-owned Google said it has temporarily disabled live traffic and crowd-size features in Google Maps in Ukraine, amid fears for the safety of local communities.

Google spokeswoman Alex Krasov confirmed the development, which was first reported by Reuters. She said the company had “taken the action for the safety of local communities in the country, after consulting with sources including regional authorities.”

Traffic data is still available for drivers in the area using the Google Maps app to navigate, Krasov said. But live traffic information and Google’s “busy area” feature that shows how crowded places such as restaurants and stores are won’t be visible on a general map of the area.

Google Maps is a key tool for following the invasion of Ukraine, helping researchers track troops and civilians seek shelter.

On Google Maps, tracking the invasion of Ukraine

Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., documented how he and his team of researchers realized an invasion was underway hours before the news became public by combining Google Maps traffic information with a radar image that showed Russian armored troops near Ukraine’s border.

But concerns have also surfaced in recent days about location data potentially being used to pinpoint large gatherings, and posts have sprung up on social media with instructions on how to turn off geolocation features.

Google Maps and other map applications track cellphone locations in real time. The company earlier declined to confirm whether its Maps app showed any SOS alerts in Ukraine, or whether it shows a list of bomb shelters in the country. But it does give information about subway stations, some of which are being used as shelters.

Belarus is preparing to send soldiers into Ukraine in support of the Russian invasion in a deployment that could begin as soon as Monday, a U.S. administration official said Sunday evening.

The decision would mark a significant escalation in Belarus’s role in the conflict and complicate upcoming diplomatic talks between Ukraine and Russia, which are poised to take place on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.

“It’s very clear Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security development.

The Kyiv Independent first reported on Belarus’s troop preparations, noting that an Ilyushin Il-76 transport aircraft is expected to carry Belarusian paratroopers into Ukraine.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The agreement for talks between Kyiv and Moscow was announced Sunday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We will be happy if the result of these negotiations is peace and the end of the war,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, reading a statement to reporters. “But I emphasize again, we will not give up. We will not capitulate. We will not give away an inch of our territory.”