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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has allowed Russian troops to assemble in Belarus and conduct large-scale military drills there. If Belarus joins the Russian invasion, it would significantly complicate proposed talks between Russia and Ukraine, which the two sides had planned to hold at the Ukrainian border with Belarus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the talks earlier Sunday — the first diplomatic discussion since the invasion began — but he did not say when they would occur.
“We will be happy if the result of these negotiations is peace and the end of the war,” Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations said, 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.”
Tensions continued to escalate, with Putin stating Sunday that he had put his nuclear deterrence forces into alert, attributing the move to “aggressive statements” from the West. The White House called the order an example of “manufacturing threats that don’t exist.”
The European Union, meanwhile, announced it will shut down airspace to Russian planes and finance weapons purchases to Ukraine as several nations, including the United States, vow to block the Kremlin’s access to its sizable foreign currency reserves in the West and to cut off some Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system. Those sanctions, The Washington Post reports, followed an emotional call for help from Zelensky.
Here’s what to know
Video: For displaced Ukrainians, a long, wrenching wait at the Polish border
Return to menuAt the most-trafficked border post between Ukraine and Poland on Sunday, the line of cars was backed up for more than 20 miles over gray and frozen country roads, almost halfway to Lviv, the biggest city in western Ukraine. Drivers swapped shifts between naps to lurch forward sporadically.
Many had driven furtively for days after fleeing shelling elsewhere, just to arrive in a place where they feel trapped. Many had abandoned their vehicles and pushed forward on foot.
“I can’t feel my feet anymore. I think they are frozen,” said Olga Balaban, 26, who came on her own after making a wrenching decision to leave behind her parents, who refused to leave.
Maksym Kozytskyy, the head of the Lviv’s state administration, said there were 30,000 people waiting outside or in their cars for as long as three days at the region’s train stations and six border crossings with Poland. The state’s emergency services have set up tents, with snow falling on Sunday night.
“For three days, I didn’t eat a single bite of food, only water,” said Somnath Gaud, 22, a Nepalese citizen who was studying hotel management in Kyiv. “ … If I slept, I would have lost my place in line.”
Ukrainian border authorities said that numerous factors contributed to such scenes of misery but that ultimately their border posts were not built to handle the sheer number of people trying to cross now.
“It’s a wartime situation, people are worried about their lives, everybody is tense,” said Roman Pavlenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s border guards in the Lviv region. He said staff at the crossing used by Gaud and tens of thousands of others were working as fast as they could, with at least 12 people checking passports.
With preemie twins born to a Ukrainian surrogate, a U.S. family fights to get babies to safety
Return to menuCHICAGO — Alexander Spektor didn’t immediately recognize the number on the video call that came through on his phone Thursday.
For the past week, Spektor, 46, and his partner, Irma Nuñez, 48, have been glued to their devices, waking at 5 a.m. each day to immerse themselves in the latest news from Ukraine and digest the stream of messages flooding their phones from 5,000 miles away.
In Kyiv, their surrogate was carrying twins for the couple, and she and the babies had endured weeks of terrifying health complications. There were seven more weeks until the due date, and Russian forces were bearing down on Ukraine’s capital city.
“I get a video call from this beautiful young woman, who appears a little bit drunk, and I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ ” Spektor recalled. “And she says, ‘You have two beautiful sons.’ ”
Born premature but weighing more than four pounds each and with full heads of hair, twins Lenny and Moishe brought new life during wartime.
“It feels like a schizophrenic experience,” Spektor told The Washington Post late Saturday. Nuñez agreed: “This has been the longest weeks of our lives.”
‘Positive, beautiful chaos’: Londoners donate diapers, clothes for fleeing Ukrainians
Return to menuLONDON — Hundreds of Londoners came together Sunday to help fleeing Ukrainians by donating supplies that were being loaded into vans destined for the Poland-Ukraine border.
People turned up at a Polish community center in South London with diapers, bedding, blankets, clothes, toys, tea, food, flashlights and first aid kits. Someone donated child car seats. Another a bassinet. Another brought a doll dressed in pink clothes. The community center quickly became so full that new arrivals were told to drop off donations in an outdoor parking lot.
“I wanted to help. It’s as simple as that,” said Anna Dobosz, 45, as she handed over bags of baby clothes.
Many of the Londoners who spoke to The Washington Post said they were touched by the scene, and several said they’d like to see the U.K. government do more at the national level. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come under increasing pressure in recent days to do more to help Ukrainian refugees. Johnson on Sunday said he would ease restrictions for those with close family in the United Kingdom; Britain is offering far less for refugees than many other European countries.
Dia Day, 19, a student who was lifting boxes of bedding into a van, described the scene in south London as “positive, beautiful chaos.” She said she had family members in Poland near the Ukrainian border who were taking in refugees and wondered if the U.K. could do something similar.
“They are very vulnerable citizens. It would be ideal to see the U.K open its doors,” she said.
From Berlin to Bangkok, the world shows solidarity with Ukraine in a weekend of protests
Return to menuPeople around the world continued to show their solidarity with Ukraine over the weekend, showing up by the thousands to protest the Russian invasion.
More than 100,000 turned out in Berlin on Sunday, a sea of people waving Ukrainian flags and denouncing Putin. Elsewhere in Europe, 80,000 protesters crowded into Prague’s central square, waving signs that read “Hands off Ukraine,” a poignant display in a country whose buildings still bear bullet holes from a Soviet invasion in 1968.
"We cannot appease tanks coming to some country, crushing the desire for freedom and democracy,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told the crowd.
The rallies this weekend extended far beyond the continent facing its most significant conflict since World War II, with pro-Ukrainian demonstrations held from Sydney to Tokyo. In Australia’s largest city, hundreds marched through the rain. And in Japan’s capital, Ukrainian nationals and others joined calls for Russia to lose its seat on the United Nations Security Council.
In Bangkok, a multinational crowd of several dozen protesters demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and sang the Ukrainian national anthem. And in Tehran, about 50 people assembled near the Ukrainian embassy to Iran, some holding candles and chanting, reported a correspondent for Agence France-Presse.
And the Associated Press reported that hundreds of people across at least 12 Belarusian cities held antiwar demonstrations on Sunday, a striking show of defiance in a country where the authoritarian government has closely aligned itself with the Kremlin. According to the AP, more than 170 people were arrested during the protests in Belarus.
U.S. announces $54 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine
Return to menuThe United States announced $54 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine on Sunday as a host of other countries vowed similar help.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the U.S. is one of Ukraine’s biggest humanitarian donors and that this new commitment would help provide food, water, health care and other vital needs.
“As with any refugee situation, we call on the international community to respond to the needs of those seeking protection in a way consistent with the principle of non-refoulement and our shared obligations under international law,” Blinken said. Non-refoulement is the international principle against sending asylum seekers back to a country where they face persecution.
The international community has been unwilling to join the fighting in Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO. But many nations have pledged other forms of support, including military equipment and disaster aid, and sweeping sanctions on Russia’s financial institutions and elites.
Italy’s foreign minister said this weekend that his country would send Ukraine 110 million euros. Denmark announced a donation of weapons, including combat tanks. The United Kingdom announced 40 million British pounds in humanitarian aid Sunday to help provide “basic necessities and medical supplies.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Zelensky spoke Sunday, both leaders said. Zelensky told Johnson “he believed the next 24 hours was a crucial period for Ukraine,” according to a British readout of the call.
‘She is not afraid’: Ukrainians in Europe speak to their loved ones back home
Return to menuLONDON — Oleg Paska says his mother may be an “old woman,” but she is not scared.
Paska, 56, recently moved to the United Kingdom after years traveling for work. He was born and raised in Ukraine, where many members of his family live, including his “brave” 84-year-old mother in the western city of Khmelnitsky.
“She has survived a lot,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post after Russia launched its assault on Ukraine on Thursday, forcing families to flee and prompting Western officials to condemn President Vladimir Putin for “bringing war back to Europe.”
“My mother and grandmother were nearly killed during the Second World War,” Paska said, explaining that his mother “still remembers the terror” of Nazi atrocities in Europe.
This time she is preparing and she is ready, Paska said. “She tells me she is not afraid.” Many others he knew in his native country were making their own preparations: “They are ready to fight.”
U.S. Embassy in Russia says Americans should leave ‘immediately’ as airlines cancel flights
Return to menuThe U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Sunday advised Americans to leave Russia “immediately,” citing the potential for U.S. citizens to be stuck there as more airlines cancel flights into and out of the country.
“An increasing number of airlines are canceling flights into and out of Russia, and numerous countries have closed their airspace to Russian airlines,” the embassy advised in a security bulletin. “U.S. citizens should consider departing Russia immediately via commercial options still available.”
On Friday, the State Department urged Americans to “avoid the areas of Russia along its border with Ukraine.”
Last month, the State Department issued its highest-level travel advisory for Russia — “Level 4: Do Not Travel” — pointing to “ongoing tension along the border with Ukraine, the potential for harassment against U.S. citizens, the embassy’s limited ability to assist U.S. citizens in Russia” and the coronavirus pandemic, among other concerns.
U.S. officials have also been telling Americans to leave Ukraine as soon as possible. The state department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs said in a tweet that U.S. citizens should “consider routes & risk” when seeking a way out of the country.
“Many Polish land border crossings & main Moldavian crossings have long waits,” the agency said. “We recommend Hungary, Romania & Slovakia border crossings. Waits may be hours.”
France on Sunday also urged its citizens to leave Russia and avoid travel there.
Ukraine asks U.N.'s 'World Court’ to intervene against Russia
Return to menuUkraine has asked the United Nations’ judicial body to reject Russia’s claims of “genocide” as a rationale for invasion and order the country to halt and make reparations for its attack.
Ukraine filed its request with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this weekend, saying Russia has turned a decades-old treaty against genocide “on its head — making a false claim of genocide as a basis for actions on its part that constitute grave violations of the human rights of millions of people across Ukraine.”
Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of “planning acts of genocide,” killing Ukrainians as Putin uses “vile rhetoric denying the very existence of a Ukrainian people.”
Based in The Hague and sometimes called the “World Court,” the ICJ settles legal disputes between countries — for instance, by investigating whether one nation has violated a treaty. The U.N. has little ability to enforce its decisions. The ICJ is a civil court, in contrast to the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes war crimes and other atrocities.
Russian leaders have publicly justified their invasion by accusing Ukraine of committing “genocide” in two Moscow-backed separatist areas. Ukrainian officials wrote to the ICJ that the country “emphatically denies that any such genocide has occurred” and wants the court to declare this a false pretext.
The U.S. State Department says that there are “no credible reports of any ethnic Russians or Russian speakers being under threat from the Ukrainian government,” and that the international community has overwhelmingly rejected Russia’s stated reasons for invading.
Ukraine asks that the ICJ order “full reparation for all damage caused by the Russian Federation” with the purported aim of intervening in genocide.
The U.N.'s General Assembly will meet Monday for a rare emergency session to discuss the Russian invasion.
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