Russia-Ukraine live updates: Nearly 10 million have fled their homes since invasion, but defiant defense stalls Russian advance

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited a Ukrainian church in Chicago this week in a show of solidarity with the people of the war-torn country.

The two men, 75, wore yellow and blue ribbons — the colors of Ukraine’s flag — and carried sunflowers, Ukraine’s national flower and a symbol of hope, as they made an unannounced visit to the Saints Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church.

“America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression,” Clinton tweeted, sharing a video of the pair.

The video said Chicago was a “sister city” twinned with Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and has a sizable Ukrainian American population. It said the former leaders wanted their visit to encourage Americans to stand with Ukraine.

On Instagram, Bush shared the same video and said: “America stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their freedom and their future.”

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Traumatized residents from Mariupol, Ukraine, arrived in a nonstop stream of cars at a humanitarian aid station on Friday, describing urban fighting and devastation as Ukrainian forces appeared to lose their grip on parts of the battered city.

They arrived in a near-constant convoy in the city of Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles to the northwest, their vehicles marked with white flags and signs reading “children” in the hope that it would spare them from attack.

Some families drove cars with their windshields smashed out or shattered from the force of explosions near their homes. One car, struck in a rocket attack, looked as if it had defied the odds by being able to move at all, one side completely punched in by the impact.

But with vehicles the only way out, anything that could move was put to use. Some cars were crammed with eight or nine people.

The war in Ukraine is having a global impact.

At least 40 million people could be pushed into “extreme poverty” as a result of soaring food, energy and commodity prices sparked by the Russian invasion, according to a report by the Center for Global Development think tank published Friday.

The price spikes particularly affect households in low-income countries, where many families allocate almost half their budgets to food, the report found. Countries in the Middle East and Africa are already feeling the pinch, with rising costs of wheat, corn, sunflower oil and fuel.

Russia and Ukraine respectively export 19 percent and 10 percent of globally traded wheat, the report said, while Russia is also a major exporter of fertilizer. The conflict has led to tough economic sanctions on Moscow, and the fighting in Ukraine has interrupted agricultural planting and farming timetables, it added.

The report recommended that policymakers avoid “hasty” export restrictions that could exacerbate global shortages and that they “ready themselves to navigate further shocks” as the war in Ukraine enters its fourth week and the disruption to global markets and supply chains continues.

War is driving up food prices, exacerbating shortages abroad, especially for food-insecure nations

The head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, has called Ukraine the “breadbasket of Europe,” and he warned earlier this month that the widening crisis would have a ripple effect in other countries.

“This is not just a crisis inside Ukraine,” he said. “This is going to affect supply chains, and particularly the cost of food.”

A corridor to evacuate people from the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine is set to open Saturday morning, according to the regional governor.

Authorities will try to evacuate as many people as possible during an agreed local cease-fire, Serhiy Gaiday said on Telegram. They would also attempt to bring in food.

Thousands of people have been shuttled out of battered or besieged cities to other parts of Ukraine through “humanitarian corridors” agreed between Kyiv and Moscow, although the cease-fires have not always held. The United Nations said Russia’s assault on Ukraine has displaced roughly 9.8 million people since Feb. 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said thousands of people fled Friday through multiple corridors. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has also announced plans to deliver aid on Saturday to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and to Luhansk.

Four American service members died Friday night when a U.S. military aircraft crashed in Norway while taking part in a NATO exercise, the Norwegian prime minister said.

“The soldiers participated in the NATO exercise Cold Response. Our deepest sympathies go to the soldiers’ families, relatives and fellow soldiers in their unit,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Saturday morning.

The U.S. Marine Corps aircraft was reported missing Friday while participating in the exercise, the Norwegian military said earlier.

Norway announced Friday that it would step up defense spending in support of forces near its border with Russia. The Cold Response exercise, which started this month and will last until April, comes on the heels of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, although NATO stressed that the exercise was not in response.

Thousands of flag-waving Russians crammed into Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium — the same arena that once hosted the FIFA World Cup finals — during a triumphal celebration Friday of the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The event sharply underscored how much Russia — isolated by Western governments and shunned by global companies — has changed since 2018, when it opened its arms to the global soccer tournament.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, breaking from his recent image as a remote figure at the end of a very long table, strode about the stage, extolling the war against Ukraine as testament to Russia’s “Christian values.”

Wearing a cream turtleneck sweater and expensive navy quilted jacket, he said Russia took military action to stop “neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists” in Ukraine from committing “genocide.” He has frequently repeated these claims to try to justify the invasion — and the Kremlin has used the same phrases as cornerstones of its propaganda against Ukraine.

But the video feed of his speech abruptly cut off mid-sentence, an interruption that was later described by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as a technical problem.

“Well, or sabotage,” tweeted the exiled Anti-Corruption Foundation of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Russian state television replayed the speech in full.

The United Nations and its partners successfully sent a first humanitarian aid convoy to the besieged Ukrainian city of Sumy on Friday, delivering more than 130 metric tons (143 tons) of essential supplies to what was once home to some 250,000 people. Thousands have since fled the city.

The aid included medical supplies, bottled water, ready-to-eat meals and canned food for 35,000 people from four U.N. agencies and an NGO, according to a U.N. statement. Equipment to repair water systems was also dispatched. The convoy traveled through combat zones after “successful dialogue with and notification” to both Kyiv and Moscow, the U.N. said.

Hannah Knowles, Jon Swaine and Miriam Berger contributed to this report.