Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia expands attacks to Ukraine’s west, as ground forces close in on Kyiv

TORONTO — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that Canada will impose sanctions on five Russians, including billionaire Roman Abramovich, and on 32 Russian military entities, vowing “clear and deep consequences” for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his enablers.

Canada’s move came a day after Britain also said it would slap sanctions on Abramovich, owner of London’s Chelsea Football Club. He also holds a more than 28 percent stake in steel and mining giant Evraz.

A North American subsidiary of the firm operates four sites in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where it is a major employer in Regina, the provincial capital. It also supplied much of the steel being used in the controversial expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline here.

Trudeau said the sanctions would prevent Abramovich from profiting or benefiting from economic activities in Canada. But he said he did not expect them to affect operations at Evraz plants in the country, which employ more than 1,000 people.

“We are obviously going to watch carefully,” Trudeau told reporters in Warsaw before returning to Canada after a five-day trip to Europe. “But we are confident that this will not affect the hard-working Canadians who are doing good work in companies across the country.”

Russia accused the United States at the United Nations on Friday of supporting a biological weapons program in Ukraine, a fact Moscow said it uncovered as its forces press deeper into Ukraine.

The Russian representative to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, told the body’s Security Council that Russia had discovered “truly shocking facts” related to what he said were at least 30 Ukrainian laboratories working on diseases including anthrax, cholera, and “the plague” with funding and oversight by the U.S. military. He said the “reckless” activity included research related to diseases born by birds, lice and fleas.

“We call on you to think about a very real biological danger to the people in European countries which can result from an uncontrolled spread of bio-agents from Ukraine,” he said.

Russia requested the meeting on Thursday amid its allegations of U.S.-supported bioweapons research — claims rooted in long-standing strains of Russian disinformation and unproven allegations. U.S. officials have denied all such charges and suggested that Moscow may be making the allegations as a pretext for its own use of chemical or biological warfare in Ukraine.

A defense official, speaking to reporters on Thursday on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said that Ukraine had five biological research centers that were focused on disease prevention and treatment.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., hit back against Russia’s claims. She said the United States had assisted Ukraine with public health laboratories but said Moscow, with its allegations, may be laying the groundwork for using biological or chemical weapons in an assassination or military operation in Ukraine.

“Russia is attempting to use the Security Council to legitimize disinformation and deceive people to justify President Putin's war of choice against the Ukrainian people,” she said.

She also said China was “spreading disinformation in support of Russia's outrageous claims.”

The British representative, Lady Barbara Woodward, said Russia was demonstrating its use of misinformation and deception in its assault on Ukraine. She called the bioweapons claim “utter nonsense.”

“Russia is sinking to new depths today, but this council must not get dragged down with it,” she said.

At the beginning of the session, the U.N.'s high representative for disarmament affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, said the U.N. was not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.

The Mariupol city council said Friday that nearly 1,600 civilian residents of the southeastern port city have been killed by Russian forces during the invasion.

In a message posted to its Telegram account, the council wrote that “1,582 peaceful Mariupol residents” were killed by Russian forces during a 12-day period in which the Russians surrounded and shelled the city. The Washington Post cannot verify the city council’s claim regarding the number of people killed.

The city council’s message came after Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the city was going through “Armageddon” and had faced “two days of hell,” including a strike that tore through a maternity hospital Wednesday, killing at least three people and injuring 17. Boychenko said in a video Thursday that planes struck residential areas in the city every 30 minutes, “killing civilians: old people, women, children.”

The Mariupol city council told The Post in a Thursday statement that 43 people have been buried in what it described as the city’s first mass grave in the conflict. Footage from the Associated Press showed men wrapping bodies in shrouds or body bags and placing them in a trench.

The destruction this week led the city council to post a message to Russian forces Friday.

“Every occupier will burn in hell,” the council wrote. “We will never forget and will never forgive this crime against humanity, against Ukraine, against Mariupol!”

Putin on Friday approved recruiting foreign “volunteers” to reinforce the Russian military’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

“If you see that there are people who want to come voluntarily, especially free of charge, and help people living in the Donbas, you need to meet them halfway and help them move to the war zone,” Putin told his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, during a televised Russian Security Council meeting Friday.

Donbas is a region of eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed separatists have declared independent “republics” and where Putin has baselessly accused Ukraine of committing a genocide against Russian speakers.

Shoigu said that Moscow has received “a colossal number of applications” from across the world to join what it is calling a “Ukrainian liberation movement.” The defense minister said the Kremlin got more than 16,000 applications, of which most came from the Middle East.

President Biden formally urged Congress on Friday to end normal trade relations with Russia and announced a new slate of bans on Russian imports and exports.

During brief remarks at the White House, Biden said these moves are being made in collaboration with other global powers, noting that the “world is coming together” to punish Russia.

Biden and leaders from the six other Group of Seven nations will on Friday announce new economic actions against Russia meant to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. On the U.S. side, Biden called on Congress to revoke Russia’s “most-favored nation status,” which gives preference to Russian imports. If revoked, Russian products will no longer receive favored status in the United States.

Biden will sign an executive order to end the exportation of luxury items to any person in Russia, including high-end watches, apparel, alcohol and jewelry. The executive order will also ban the import of goods from several “signature” sectors of the Russian economy, including seafood, vodka and nonindustrial diamonds. According to the White House, this move will deny Russia more than $1 billion in export revenue.

“We’re going to hit Putin harder because the United States and our closest allies and partners are acting in unison,” Biden said. “Our sanctions, our export control, is crushing the Russian economy. Ruble has lost more than half its value.”

President Biden said Friday morning that he spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky to underscore U.S. support for Ukraine.

According to the White House, Biden “highlighted how the United States is continuing to surge security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine.” The president also updated Zelensky on the actions the United States will take Friday in coordination with the Group of Seven nations and the European Union to further raise costs on Russia.

The president also announced that he will ask Congress to strip Russia of its “most-favored nation” status, which would mean further economic restraints on the country.

Biden said he told Zelensky once again that “the United States stands with the people of Ukraine and their bravery as they fight to defend their country.”

The new sanctions on Russia would mean the country’s exports would not receive favored-nation treatment in the U.S. economy.

Biden also plans to sign an executive order banning the export of luxury goods from the United States to Russia and prohibiting imports to the United States of Russian seafood and vodka, among other products.

“As Putin continues this merciless assault, the United States and our allies and partners continue to work in lockstep to ramp up their economic pressure on Putin and to further isolate Russia on the global stage,” Biden said.

“Revoking [this status] for Russia is going to make it harder for Russia to do business with the United States,” Biden added. “And doing it in unison with other nations that make up half of the global economy will be another crushing blow to the Russian economy. It’s already suffering very badly.”

Biden thanked bipartisan congressional leaders for their work to coordinate stripping Russia of these trade permissions, citing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) specifically for signing off on it in the House “until I can line up all of our key allies.”

The Russian government announced Friday that access to Instagram would be limited in the country due to posts “containing calls to commit violent acts” against Russian citizens in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

“The Instagram social network distributes informational materials containing calls to commit violent acts against citizens of the Russian Federation, including military personnel,” Russia’s media regulator said in a news release.

The Russian prosecutor general’s office wants the company Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to be declared an extremist organization and to be banned in the country.

The move comes after the prosecutor general asked Russia’s media regulator to block access to Instagram because of actions “aimed at inciting hatred and enmity toward the citizens of the Russian Federation.” The agency said earlier this month that it was blocking Facebook.

The news followed reports that Facebook will allow calls for violence against Russian forces as the assault on Ukraine rages, creating an unusual exception to its long-standing hate speech rules that prohibit such language. The change will also allow users to call for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or his ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, the company said.

A company spokesman said it has temporarily made allowances for what “would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘Death to the Russian invaders.’” The spokesman added, “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

A Russian lawmaker said earlier Friday that Russia could ban Instagram if it confirms the change in content moderation policy or if Meta does not respond to an inquiry. “Silence will be viewed as a confirmation in this case,” Alexander Khinshtein, a member of the Russian State Duma, told television channel Russia 24. He added that “the harshest available mechanism” would be to block the platforms.

ODESSA, Ukraine — Ukraine’s military claimed Friday that Russia conducted an airstrike on a Belarusian town in an attempt to blame Ukraine for the attack and prompt Belarusian forces to fight with Russia.

At 2:30 p.m., Russian planes left an airfield over Belarus, entered Ukrainian airspace and then turned around over the northwestern Ukrainian towns of Tumen and Horodyshche, the Ukrainian armed forces said in a statement on Twitter. The planes then “inflicted a fiery defeat on the settlement of Kopani,” a Belarusian town near the border with Ukraine, the statement said.

In a Facebook post, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Russia “is preparing a series of bloody provocations” on Belarusian territory.

“To mask this crime, Russia intends to carry out the strike from Ukrainian airspace,” Reznikov wrote. “The purpose of this provocation is to force the current leadership of Belarus into war against Ukraine.”

“I guarantee that the Ukrainian army did not plan, is not planning and will not plan any aggressive actions against Belarus,” Reznikov added.

However, the Belarus Defense Ministry, on its official Telegram channel, denied that any airstrikes had taken place.

“The disseminated information about the strikes on the territory of the Republic of Belarus is another provocation and an attem