Russia-Ukraine live updates: Official says ‘battle continues’ in key city, rebuffing Russian claim of control

President Biden said Wednesday’s United Nations vote shows just how much the majority of the world is unified in its opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re united folks,” he said in Superior, Wis., at an infrastructure event, a day after delivering his State of the Union address that opened with a condemnation of the invasion. “That’s how we were able to make sure we kept Europe united and the free world united to vote in the United Nations to condemn Putin.”

More than 140 countries voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Putin has falsely claimed is motivated by his desire to free the country. In an emergency special session, the U.N. General Assembly demanded that Moscow cease its attacks on Ukraine and withdraw all Russian troops from the country. Thirty-five countries — including India, Cuba and China — abstained. Only four delegations — Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea — joined Russia in voting against the resolution.

Biden said that Putin underestimated how Europe and other countries were ready to come to the aid of Ukraine.

“He did it because he thought he could split NATO, split Europe and split the United States,” he said. “We’re going to demonstrate to the whole world: No one can split this country.”

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine and the full withdrawal of Russian forces from the county with overwhelming support.

Only three Republicans — Reps. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.) — voted against the resolution, which also backs the sanctions that the Biden administration has placed on Russian banks and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The resolution also calls for the U.S. and its allies to deliver additional and immediate defensive security assistance to Ukraine.

Moments before the vote, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s chair, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), and ranking Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), noted the importance of bipartisan support for the measure, with McCaul saying that the bill is meant to “prove that the American people stand for the Ukrainian people and against Mr. Putin.”

McCaul praised the courage of Ukrainians and their leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, and said the bill sends “a strong message to these brave men and women that they are not alone.”

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) noted that he hoped the resolution, brought forward by Meeks and McCaul, would be passed “with not a single negative vote.”

“Let there be no mistake throughout the globe that yes, we have differences between Republicans and Democrats, but we in this House are all Americans committed to freedom, committed to democracy, committed to the peaceful relations between nations,” Hoyer said.

The Pentagon is delaying a test of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that was planned for this week, according to its spokesman John Kirby, who said the move was intended “to demonstrate that we are a responsible nuclear power.”

Nuclear tensions spiked earlier this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was putting the Russian arsenal on heightened alert, following a decision by the United States, Canada and the European Union to impose punishing sanctions on Russia’s central bank and cut all Russian banks that are under sanctions off from the international financial transaction processing system known as SWIFT.

“This is not a diminution in our readiness whatsoever,” Kirby said. “It’s not going to change our strategic posture one bit.”

The test has not yet been rescheduled. Such tests of the Minuteman III occur multiple times a year, and are planned three to five years in advance, Kirby said.

Pentagon officials have denounced Putin’s move as unnecessary and escalatory, and, Kirby added, “unacceptable.” The United States has not responded to Putin putting his nuclear arsenal on heightened alert with any similar gesture.

Kirby added that the delayed test was aimed at sending a “strong, clear, unambiguous message to Putin” that United States has “no intention in engaging in any action.”

A Western intelligence report indicated that Chinese officials in early February requested that senior Russian officials wait until after the Olympics to begin an invasion of Ukraine, Biden administration officials said Wednesday.

Chinese Communist Party officials conveyed that information to Russian officials at that time, according to U.S. officials. It was not clear whether Chinese President Xi Jinping directly discussed invasion timing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But his desires were clear, said a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence.

“That was one of Xi’s biggest concerns” — that an invasion not happen “until after the Closing Ceremonies,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The existence of the intelligence report was first reported earlier Wednesday by the New York Times.

Putin met with Xi at the start of the Olympics, on Feb. 4, one of few world leaders who attended. Many others had boycotted the event in protest of China’s repression of Uyghurs, its ethnic Muslim minority population.

As the Olympics opened, in a show of solidarity and shared grievance, the two leaders issued a lengthy joint statement reaffirming their partnership and firmly opposing NATO enlargement.

The United States since November had been privately urging Beijing to use its influence to pressure Moscow to refrain from attacking Ukraine. China was unmoved by the overtures.

Beijing was concerned that an invasion would be destabilizing and upset the Olympics, according to a second U.S. official. Such a move would have been similar to when Russia invaded former Soviet republic Georgia as the 2008 Beijing Olympics were starting.

Instead, last month, four days after the Olympics torch was extinguished, Russia began to invade Ukraine.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich says he will sell the English soccer team Chelsea amid the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Abramovich said in a statement Wednesday that he would sell the storied London team “in the best interest of the Club, the fans, the employees, as well as the Club’s sponsors and partners.”

The move comes in the face of growing pressure to sanction Russian oligarchs who are believed to be part of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

In 2021, Forbes valued Chelsea at $3.2 billion, seventh in the soccer world and fourth among Premier League teams behind Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City.

As Western countries respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of them have sought to hit Moscow where it hurts — the pocketbook — with sanctions against President Vladimir Putin and his allies, as well as restrictions on Russian airlines and banks.

Taking a cue from those efforts, international sporting bodies and retailers have also announced boycotts of Russian goods and benched Russian teams in a symbolic global movement designed to show solidarity with Ukraine.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the boycotts launched globally since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Video shows residents of Enerhodar, home to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on the banks of the Dnieper River, blocking Russian troops from entering the city, according to the mayor.

The drone footage, posted Wednesday, captures a large crowd gathering in front of and around makeshift barricades of cars, trucks, tires and sandbags. Ukrainian flags fly next to the blockage.

Dmitry Orlov, the city’s mayor, wrote in a Telegram post Wednesday that Russians soldiers and plant employees had met for negotiations.

In a Facebook post, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, pleaded with Russian generals to bypass Enerhodar and the nuclear plant so as not to create conditions for a new Chernobyl.

As soldiers stalk an eerily quiet European city, a young boy asks a stranger to help find his mom, while in a bombed-out building a parent gives a plush toy to his child hoping it will provide some reassurance.

The images evoke scenes in Kyiv and Kharkiv as the Ukrainian cities face a growing Russian invasion. But the tableau in fact comes from “This War of Mine” — an award-winning video game from 2014 that has seen its popularity soar since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops descended on the country last week.

The game, from Polish developer 11 Bit Studios, is helping people in Europe and beyond empathize with and even vicariously experience the feelings of everyday Ukrainians. It is one of several examples of cutting-edge immersive technologies — besides video games they include a slick reality-distortion app and virtual reality — to which a younger generation is increasingly turning to explain the war.