Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia advances in Mariupol, accused of striking art school where 400 civilians sheltered

Russia’s war to conquer Ukraine is grinding to a halt as heavy casualties and equipment losses take a toll on unprepared Russian forces that have failed so far to achieve any of their initial objectives, Western officials and military experts say.

The front lines have barely moved in over a week. Russians are being killed or injured at the rate of up to a thousand a day, according to Western intelligence estimates, and more according to Ukrainian ones.

The ferocity of the Russian assault has only intensified as the advances have slowed, with Russia substituting harsh bombardments of civilian populations for progress on the battlefield.

But in the absence of substantive progress on the ground and given the scale of the losses being inflicted on their ranks, the Russian military campaign could soon become unsustainable, with troops unable to advance because they lack sufficient manpower, supplies and munitions, analysts and officials say.

The city council of Mariupol, in the southeast of Ukraine, alleged on Sunday that Russian armed forces bombed an arts school that was sheltering 400 residents.

The council said in a post on Telegram that women, children and elderly people had taken refuge inside Art School No. 12 in the Left Bank district of eastern Mariupol. It said the building was destroyed on Saturday and civilians “are still under the rubble,” but it did not say whether anyone had died.

“Information on the number of victims is being clarified,” it added.

The Washington Post could not independently verify the council’s claims. Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian armed forces for weeks. Access to food, water and medicine has been limited, and efforts to evacuate civilians have worked only intermittently amid heavy Russian shelling.

Russian armed forces have stepped up their bombardments of Ukrainian cities in recent days, according to British defense officials, in a bid to take control of urban centers while limiting their military losses.

In Mariupol on Wednesday, a suspected Russian airstrike hit a theater in which Ukrainian officials said more than 1,000 people were hiding. At least 130 people were rescued, Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said Friday, but rescue workers were still searching for about 1,300 others on Saturday.

WARSAW — Olga Dudar said it took three tries to find a Polish school for her 10-year-old son. They started by walking around the Warsaw neighborhood where they’re staying, looking for schools with blue-and-yellow flags and ribbons — any sign of support and welcome for Ukrainian refugees like them.

Three weeks into the largest refugee flight in Europe since World War II, more than 75,000 new students have registered in the Polish education system. Warsaw has taken in more than 9,000 students from Ukraine, increasing by 1,000 a day. More than 3,200 students have enrolled in Krakow — the equivalent of adding six additional school buildings.

With the greatest portion of Ukrainian refugees landing in Poland, Education and Science Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek projected on Friday that the overall number could grow to 700,000 students from Ukraine applying to Polish schools. “The Polish educational system is not prepared for this,” said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank in Warsaw.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is calling for a “Marshall Plan” to help Ukraine rebuild, funded by the world’s richest countries.

At a news conference near Warsaw on Saturday, Morawiecki said he would raise the idea at a meeting of the European Council in Brussels starting Thursday. President Biden is also due in Belgium this week to meet with NATO leaders to discuss the Russian invasion.

The reconstruction plan “must primarily consist of the richest countries, because they missed the moment when it was possible to put a dam on Russian aggression,” the prime minister said, according to the Polish Press Agency.

Poland, he added, “is already bearing considerable costs … related to the largest refugee crisis since World War II.” More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine, many to neighboring countries including Poland.

How Ukraine’s child refugees are coping with the trauma of war

The Marshall Plan was an American aid program to rehabilitate Western Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Over four years, Congress appropriated $13.3 billion to help rebuild shattered cities and economies, and avert famine on the continent.

Poland’s prime minister previously said that assets belonging to the Russian state and its oligarchs — seized as part of a global crackdown on those viewed as contributing to the war effort — should be confiscated and used to create a fund to rebuild Ukraine.

Australia will immediately ban the sale of alumina and aluminum ores to Russia as it seeks to limit the Kremlin’s capacity to produce aluminum — a top export for Russia and a key ingredient in arms and munition manufacturing.

Russia relies on resource-rich Australia for nearly 20 percent of its alumina needs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday, adding that Russia “must pay a very high price for its brutality.”

“What happens in Ukraine does not just affect Europe. As we’re seeing here in Australia, it affects, of course, the rules-based order upon which our own region depends,” he told reporters during a news conference, calling the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine “a gross violation of international law.”

Morrison also announced Sunday that Australia would send more military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, along with thermal coal used to power homes and factories. He said Ukrainians fleeing the conflict would be offered a three-year visa upon arrival in Australia, allowing them to work, study and access government-funded health care.

Officials rushed through new sanctions after getting word that a ship was due to dock in Australia this week to collect a load of alumina bound for Russia. “Our decision here should say very clearly that to … all companies operating in Australia, we are watching these things very, very carefully,” Morrison said.

In the southwest corner of rural Virginia, about 5,000 miles from the war zone, a small but mighty team of archaeologists, historians and high-tech mapping experts are using sophisticated satellite imagery to help to protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

Housed in the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab is the museum world’s version of a war room: a network of computers, satellite feeds and phones that represents one of the newest tools being employed to protect national treasures threatened by natural disasters or geopolitical events.

Created last year in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution Cultural Rescue Initiative — a world leader in this field — the lab is compiling imagery of Ukraine’s cultural sites to help track attacks on them. The goal is to quickly alert officials in Ukraine of damage, in case action can be taken — perhaps to protect artifacts exposed to the elements, or to board up stained-glass windows in the wake of a direct hit on a church — and to document the devastation.

Every morning and every night, from her home in Falls Church, Va., Nadiia Khomaziuk messages her sister Lidiia in her hideaway in western Ukraine.

Is Lidiia still okay? How about her kids, who are 7 and 11? Every day, Khomaziuk scours the Internet, calls U.S. government offices and connects with lawyers and other Ukrainian Americans, in search of a path to bring her family to safety in the United States.

To get to there, Khomaziuk’s family and other Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion would need a visa, but the earliest appointment Khomaziuk could get for an interview for her sister at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw is in September.

Lidiia, who asked that her last name not be published because of security concerns, isn’t ready to leave Ukraine. She wants to fight “till the last breath,” Khomaziuk said, though “the kids’ bags are packed, so they can jump in the car the minute they need to. But then I don’t know if I can get them here. Waiting six months for an interview just isn’t right.”