Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden announces new aid after Zelensky’s emotional plea to Congress

Wall Street’s optimistic mood continued Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing more than 500 points higher after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in years and oil prices continued to retreat from recent highs.

As expected, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday and signaled that six more increases will follow this year. The move marks the Fed’s first rate hike since 2018 and kicks off a new era of tighter monetary policy in the wake of the avalanche of stimulus the central bank unleashed to cushion the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

Raising rates is the central bank’s strongest tool to combat inflation, which has been sitting at a 40-year high. But the invasion of Ukraine compounded the issue because Russia is a major player in global energy markets. Its wells supply 11 percent of global oil consumption and 17 percent of natural gas usage, according to Goldman Sachs.

“Today’s Fed meeting offered some level of clarity to investors in that they are no longer waiting to make significant steps to tighten current monetary policy,” Charlie Ripley, senior market strategist at Allianz Investment Management, said Wednesday in comments emailed to The Washington Post.

The Dow gained 518.76 points, or 1.6 percent, to close at 34,063.10. The broader S&P 500 index climbed 95.41 points, or 2.2 percent, to land at 4,357.86. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index — battered by recent sell-offs — soared 487.93 points, or 3.8 percent, to end at 13,436.55.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped 2.4 percent Wednesday, to roughly $97.60 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, swung 1.7 percent lower to trade below $95 per barrel.

President Biden on Wednesday detailed the latest military assistance package that the United States would be providing to Ukraine to counter the Russian assault.

The administration and NATO have resisted calls for establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and the Pentagon has rebuffed Poland’s offer to send MiG fighter jets to Ukraine amid fears of further escalation involving a NATO country.

The administration will directly transfer equipment from the Defense Department to the Ukrainian military, according to the White House.

The latest $800 million package of assistance, on top of the $200 million Biden announced this past weekend, includes:

A Ukrainian television station said its Internet stream had been hacked to show a “deepfake” video of President Volodymyr Zelensky directing his nation’s troops to surrender.

On its Facebook page and Telegram channel, Ukraine24 said its site and another one “were hacked by enemy hackers and broadcast Zelensky’s message about alleged 'capitulation.’ ”

Other sites were hacked to spread the same video, according to media reports.

The video’s distribution followed warnings by Ukrainian officials more than a week ago that they believed such fake videos would be coming.

Zelensky — who gave an impassioned speech to Congress on Wednesday to ask the United States for more arms and a no-fly zone — responded with a short video of his own, saying the only call he would be making is for Russian soldiers to lay down their arms.

An airstrike hit Mariupol’s Drama Theater, a cultural site in the heart of the besieged city where hundreds of residents have been seeking shelter in recent days, local Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.

There was no immediate information on deaths or injuries.

The Mariupol City Council said in a Telegram post that a Russian plane “dropped a bomb” on the emblematic building.

Videos verified by The Washington Post show extensive damage to the theater. Flames and plumes of smoke rise up from a large indentation in the middle of the building.

“It is still impossible to estimate the scale of this horrific and inhumane act,” the city council said, adding that at least the central part of the theater as well as the entrance were destroyed.

The incident is the latest to hit the key port city, which has seen widespread devastation from continuous shelling and bombing in recent weeks. Reports of the incident came shortly after President Volodymyr Zelensky made a plea to the U.S. Congress to help prevent further destruction in his country.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, where Mariupol is located, said in a Facebook post that the fate of the “several hundred” residents is “unknown” as the entrance to the building is blocked by rubble.

Kyrylenko posted images on Facebook, saying the destruction was caused by a Russian airstrike targeting civilians and adding that Russian troops had launched an airstrike on the Drama Theater and Neptune swimming pool. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, described the attack as “another horrendous war crime.”

Satellite imagery captured by Maxar Technologies on Monday, two days before the attack, shows the word “children” written in Russian in large white letters on the ground in front of and behind the theater.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement.

“Russian aviation did not carry out any tasks related to strikes against ground targets in the city of Mariupol,” the ministry stressed in a statement.

Instead, Russian defense officials asserted without evidence that “reliable data” showed that militants of the Azov Battalion, a far-right nationalist Ukrainian paramilitary group, “committed a new bloody provocation by blowing up the theater building.”

President Biden on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for the first time publicly.

His comments came after an unrelated White House event, when a reporter asked him if Putin is a war criminal. Biden initially said “no,” but then turned around and asked the reporter to repeat the question.

“I think he is a war criminal,” the president said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s remarks “speak for themselves” during a news briefing soon afterward.

“He was speaking from his heart and speaking from what we’ve seen on television, which is barbaric actions by a brutal dictator through his invasion of a foreign country,” Psaki said.

The Kremlin reacted swiftly to Biden’s words.

“We consider unacceptable and unforgivable such rhetoric from the head of the country, whose bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people,” said Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

During the news briefing, Psaki wouldn’t say if there’s any new intelligence that caused the president to directly call Putin a war criminal.

“There is a legal process that is underway, continues to be underway at the State Department,” Psaki said. “That’s a process that they would have any updates on.”

Psaki said the president was answering a direct question by a reporter when calling Putin a war criminal.

“[He was] responding to what he has seen on television,” Psaki repeated. “We have all seen barbaric acts, horrific acts by a foreign dictator in a country that is threatening and taking the lives of civilians, impacting hospitals, women who are pregnant, journalists, others. And I think he was answering a direct question.”

MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — A Ukrainian official says a mayor who was reported to have been abducted last week has been freed from Russian captivity.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Kirill Timoshenko posted a video on his Telegram channel, in which he announced Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov’s release.

“Friends, great news: A special operation has just been completed that has freed the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov,” Timoshenko said. He did not provide details of the circumstances of Fedorov’s reported release.

“I just want to say one thing: We never leave our people behind,” Timoshenko said.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on his Telegram channel that Fedorov had been freed from Russian captivity.

The Ukrainian presidential administration posted a video of Zelensky talking to a person on speakerphone, reportedly Fedorov. The person on the other end of the phone thanks Zelensky for “not abandoning me.”

Thousands protest in Melitopol after Russian forces reportedly abduct mayor with a hood over his head

Ukrainian authorities said Russian forces detained Fedorov on Friday. Security camera footage showed armed men leading an unidentified person, who was said to be Fedorov, away from a Melitopol government building.

Russia’s Tass news agency said on Saturday that the prosecutor’s office in Luhansk, a region in Ukraine’s east that Russia declared a breakaway region, accused Fedorov of aiding and financing terrorist activities. Ukrainian officials said he was being held in Luhansk.

The Department of Treasury on Wednesday gave a new international body a list of 50 Russian elites that the United States views as its top priorities for enacting new sanctions, as global law enforcement steps up its hunt for the assets of oligarchs tied to the Kremlin.

Treasury officials provided the list to the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO) task force, a new multinational body involving the United States and more than a half-dozen allied nations, for the group’s first meeting. The task force will pool the resources of the countries’ law enforcement divisions to track down the assets of Russian oligarchs stashed overseas, a difficult task complicated by the opaque or complicated financial instruments frequently used by Russian financial elites to hide their holdings from public view.

The Treasury Department publicly released 28 of the 50 names on the list, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian mega-billionaire Alisher Usmanov, among other top government officials. Treasury officials declined to share the other 32 names. One person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to frankly describe the sanctions, said administration officials typically do not want the names of sanctioned oligarchs to be known ahead of time, because that could help them evade the penalties.