Russia-Ukraine live updates: Lviv aircraft attack sows fear as Biden warns China against supporting Russia

KYIV — They patrol checkpoints and hold down front lines, evacuate civilians and provide crucial combat medical care.

Although the vast majority of Ukraine’s military is male, some 32,000 women belonged to the country’s armed forces before Russia invaded Ukraine. More have joined the fight since then.

The ban on men between the ages of 18 and 60 leaving the country means that most of the 3 million refugees who have left have been women and children. But many other women have remained behind and, like so many Ukrainians, have been forced by circumstances to join the war effort. These are the stories of four who chose to stay.

U.S. stocks overcame early-session losses Friday to notch a fourth consecutive day of gains and deliver their best weekly performance since 2020, even as traders kept a wary watch on Ukraine.

Markets had been buoyed this week by hopes of a possible cease-fire despite the continuing Russian assault. Investors also took in stride the Federal Reserve’s well-telegraphed decision to raise interest rates.

On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average surged 274.17 points, or 0.8 percent, to close at 34,754.93. The broader S&P 500 index added 51.45 points, or 1.2 percent, to close at 4,463.12, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq swelled 279.06 points, or 2.1 percent, to land at 13,893.84.

All three indexes posted their best weekly gains since November 2020, according to MarketWatch, with the Nasdaq surging 8.1 percent, the S&P jumping 6.2 percent and the Dow adding 5.4 percent.

Oil prices climbed, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, trading above $107.50 a barrel. The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, was hovering near $104.40 per barrel. Prices have retreated from recent surges that sent them beyond $130.

The Ukraine war has weighed heavily on energy markets because Russia produces about 10 percent of the world’s oil supply, on par with the United States and Saudi Arabia. Surging energy costs tend to ripple quickly through the economy, adding heat to already high inflation and sticker shock at the gas pump. As of Friday, the U.S. average for a gallon of gas was $4.27, according to data from AAA. That’s a 4-cent drop since Monday but still nearly 75 cents more than a month ago and $1.39 higher than last year.

Two people were killed and at least six were injured by a Russian airstrike on the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday morning, authorities said.

Video recorded by a surveillance camera and marked 9 a.m. showed a projectile hitting an area near the center of the city and exploding. Additional footage captured by witnesses showed a large plume of smoke rising behind city stores and serious damage to nearby apartments. The videos were verified by The Washington Post.

How The Post verifies video from Ukraine

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the surrounding Donetsk region, said in a Facebook post that an administrative building and a residential building were hit in the attack. “There will be a punishment,” Kirilenko wrote.

The administrative building housed regional offices of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), according to Google Maps and other directories.

Kramatorsk became the Donetsk region’s provisional capital after pro-Russian separatists seized the city of Donetsk during the Donbas War in 2014. City authorities issued new guidance to residents on Friday on how to deal with sudden shelling.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “extreme concern” about the situation in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Friday, following a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a statement, the French president’s office said Macron had raised the “non-respect of humanitarian law while the negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations have so far not produced any progress.”

About 1,300 people remain trapped in the basement of a Mariupol theater, according to Ukrainian officials. Russian troops also appeared to have targeted a children’s hospital, a university and other civilian sites in the city.

According to the Russian readout of Friday’s call, Putin told Macron that “Russian Armed Forces are doing everything possible to save the lives of civilians, including by organizing humanitarian corridors for their safe evacuation.”

In his call with Macron, Putin accused Ukraine of “numerous war crimes committed daily.” International rights watch groups vehemently dispute that this is the case.

Macron has been one of the few Western leaders to stay in consistent contact with the Russian President following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, announced Friday that it was revoking the license of Russian state-funded channel RT since it does not consider its licensee, ANO TV Novosti, “fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast license.”

In a statement, Ofcom said that the decision comes amid 29 ongoing investigations into the impartiality of news coverage by RT of the Ukraine invasion. The ongoing investigations, along with the fact that the TV channel had been fined before for similar breaches, led the U.K. regulator to start a separate investigation to determine whether RT is fit to retain its license.

This broader investigation took into account that RT is funded by Russia, which invaded Ukraine, and that Moscow has recently passed laws that criminalize independent journalism that veers off the Russian government’s narrative, particularly on the Ukraine invasion.

“We consider that given these constraints it appears impossible for RT to comply with the due impartiality rules of our Broadcasting Code in the circumstances,” the Ofcom statement reads.

RT was off-air already in Great Britain because of sanctions imposed by the European Union.

The news channel objected to the media regulator’s move. RT’s deputy editor in chief, Anna Belkina, told Reuters that “Ofcom has shown the UK public, and the regulatory community internationally, that despite a well-constructed facade of independence, it is nothing more than a tool of government, bending to its media-suppressing will.”

The Russian Embassy in London issued a similar statement, saying that the embassy considered “the investigation and the decision of Ofcom to be absolutely politicized, biased and far-fetched.”

The statement continues, saying that if Ofcom “is truly concerned with the amount of complaints against the Russian media outlet,” it should also thoroughly investigate “numerous complaints against UK state-sponsored media, for example, the BBC and, possibly, look into revoking its license as well. Otherwise, the decision only argues in favor of UK hypocrisy.”

Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.

Heidi Levine has been photographing the Russian invasion in Ukraine for The Washington Post.

This morning, Levine filed these scenes in the aftermath of yet another bombing in the country’s capital. Her work continues to underscore the grave consequences of war and its heart-rending effects.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) was “wrong” to label Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” and that Putin is the real danger to the Ukrainian people.

“Madison is wrong,” McCarthy said Friday during a news briefing. “If there’s any thug in this world, it’s Putin.”

Cawthorn recently called Zelensky a “thug” and said the Ukrainian government is “incredibly evil” — remarks that are at odds with the views of most U.S. lawmakers in the Republican and Democratic parties, who have expressed their support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion of that country.

“Remember that Zelensky is a thug,” Cawthorn told supporters at a recent event in North Carolina, according to video published Thursday by Raleigh-based TV station WRAL. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt, and it is incredibly evil, and it has been pushing woke ideologies.”

McCarthy pointed to the Russian military’s recent acts against Ukraine as proof of Putin’s thuggery. He noted that the Russian military has bombed Ukrainian maternity wards and inflicted great harm on children under the direction of Putin.

“This is atrocious,” McCarthy added. “This is wrong. This is the aggressor. This is the one that needs to end this war. This is the one that everybody should unite against.”

While McCarthy spoke out about a need for unity in support of Ukraine, he said he was unconcerned about the “small” number of Republican lawmakers voting against Ukraine aid or sanctions against Russia.

Eight House Republicans on Thursday voted against a bill to strip Russia and its ally Belarus of key trade preferences and expand presidential authority to impose human rights sanctions. Eight House Republicans voted against a bill Thursday to strip Russia and Belarus of key trade preferences and expand presidential human rights sanctions authority.

At 1 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan and Robert Mahoney, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, are going to be discussing the dangerous challenges reporters are up against in Russia and Ukraine.

Russian reporters have seen their independent news organizations shut down or suspend operations, and many journalists have been forced to flee the country. The New York Times temporarily removed its reporting staff from Russia, and many other news organizations have curtailed their reporting from inside the country.

In Ukraine, Pierre Zakrzewski, a cameraman for Fox News, was killed Monday alongside a Ukrainian colleague, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, while reporting outside Kyiv, the capital. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was with them, was seriously injured. Just days before, American journalist Brent Renaud, who was working for Time Studios, was fatally shot, also outside Kyiv.

What questions do you have about reporting in Ukraine or the Kremlin’s crackdown on Russian media outlets? Send in your questions here.