Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russian missile hits site near airport in west as fierce resistance stalls ground invasion

President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are scheduled to discuss Ukraine by phone Friday in a call that appears unlikely to bridge the growing gap between the two sides’ positions on the crisis.

In their first conversation since Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden is expected to press Xi to use China’s influence and persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the attack. In a briefing Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the president would “make clear” that China would bear responsibility for “any actions to support Russia’s aggression.”

In official comments and state-media editorials before the call, Beijing has not signaled any willingness to change its position of avowed neutrality — neither endorsing nor condoning Russia’s actions, while supporting Moscow’s claims of security concerns and blaming the United States and NATO for the crisis.

“Both sides want to make sure the other side has no doubts about its own firm position,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. He said he doubts that the call would have any “major positive impact” on U.S.-Chinese relations.

“Both Beijing and Washington will understand each other’s positions. All these realizations will further harden confrontation between the two countries,” he said.

Hours before the call, scheduled for 9 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated accusations against Washington on Twitter, which is blocked within China but used by Chinese diplomats and state media to target international audiences.

Hua said that if the United States had “refrained from repeatedly expanding NATO and pledged that NATO would not admit Ukraine, and had not fanned the flames by supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, the situation would have been very different.”

Russia accused Canada on Thursday of childishly annotating a letter that it had sent to the United Nations about providing aid to Ukraine.

The United Nations had been due to vote on the draft resolution proposed by Russia on Friday but Moscow withdrew it, citing pressure from the United States on member countries to reject it. Instead, Russia said it would use the time to discuss American biochemical labs in Ukraine, which the United States denounced as a means to promote “disinformation.”

According to Reuters, the Russian letter dated March 16 about providing aid to Ukraine said: “Like other members of the international community, we are gravely concerned about its deterioration.”

Canada crossed out the first few words and changed it to read: “We are not gravely concerned about its deterioration,” and inserted at the end “because we are the primary cause.”

On the final page, Canada also wrote in red: “We want you to know just how little we care about the human life that we have destroyed.”

The spat spilled onto social media after Russia’s first deputy permanent representative at the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, tweeted thanking Canada “for this kindergarten-level Russophobic libel.”

“It only shows that your diplomatic skills and good manners are at lowest ebb and gives an idea why your country’s bid for a non-permanent seat in #SecurityCouncil was voted down twice in 20yrs by UN membership,” he said, adding a thumbs-down emoji.

KHARKIV, Ukraine — The morgue in Kharkiv was overflowing.

In the courtyard outside, scores of black and green body bags were stacked along two of its walls. On the other side, dozens more victims of Russia’s assault on this eastern city were exposed to the elements.

Some wore slippers; one had on army boots and fatigues. Pale, bloodied bellies lay open to the skies.

“We need body bags,” morgue director Yuriy Nikolaevich explained. Or at least plastic wrap, he said. There was nothing left to use to hand the dead back to their families: “There are no coffins left in the city.”

The grotesque scene was a small glimpse of the human toll of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. Just 25 miles from the country’s eastern border with Russia, Ukraine’s second-largest city was an early target in Moscow’s advance.

Friends and relatives of an American who died in Ukraine are mourning his loss and awaiting information about his partner.

James Whitney Hill, 68, was killed while trying to obtain food for himself, his partner and other very ill patients at Chernihiv Regional Hospital in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, his sister, Cheryl Gordon told The Washington Post in an interview.

Gordon said she told her brother to “get the hell out of there” when invasion seemed inevitable, but he said he couldn’t.

Instead, Hill and his partner, Iryna Teslenko, made at least a four-hour trek to reach the hospital so she could receive treatment for her progressive multiple sclerosis. Somewhere along the way, Teslenko came down with pneumonia, according to Gordon, extending their stay in the hospital as the country they both loved burned outside.

The Tennessee National Guard on Thursday denied a Russian state media outlet’s claim that three of its members were killed fighting in Ukraine.

“The three soldiers identified in the article are either current or former members of the Tennessee National Guard,” Nicholas Atwood, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Guard’s Office of the Adjutant General, said in a statement. “They are accounted for, safe and [are] not, as the article headline erroneously states, US mercenaries killed in Donetsk People’s Republic.”

The Guard called the reporting from Pravda “patently false.”

Members of Tennessee’s National Guard deployed in 2018 to help the Ukrainian military develop the Yavoriv Combat Training Center, officials said, but all of them went home the next year.

At least 35 people were killed and more than 100 were injured earlier this week when Russian missiles struck a Yavoriv military facility near Ukraine’s border with Poland, bringing Russia’s invasion closer than ever to NATO’s territory. NATO troops had trained Ukrainians there recently.

President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping are set to speak Friday as their countries navigate political and economic differences over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies last met virtually in November and “have a lot to discuss,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday.

“This is an opportunity for President Biden to assess where President Xi stands,” Psaki said. There has been an “absence of denunciation by China of what Russia is doing,” which she added “speaks volumes” around the world.

The Biden administration has made clear to Beijing its “deep concerns” about any alignment with Russia, she said, adding that reports that China may supply Russia with military equipment were “a high concern.”

Now into its fourth week, China’s effort to displease neither Russia nor the West is looking increasingly untenable. However, slight changes in tone have been detected, such as Xi’s decision to call the invasion a “war” for the first time when speaking to his German and French counterparts last week — a departure from weeks of officials describing the invasion as a “special military operation” or a “situation.”

Earlier this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan had an “intense” and “candid” seven-hour meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Rome about the potential consequences of any assistance that Beijing might provide Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also issued an explicit warning to China on Thursday that there would be consequences for providing military assistance to Moscow.

“We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support,” Blinken said. “Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter.”

Slovakia’s defense minister said Thursday that his country is prepared to send long-range surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine “immediately” — provided that Western allies provide a “proper replacement” to avoid creating a security gap.

“The only strategic air defense system that we have in Slovakia is the S-300 system,” Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad’, said, referring to powerful Soviet-origin weapons that would enable the Ukrainian military to shoot down Russian warplanes flying several miles high. Ukraine had a few before the invasion and has pleaded for more as Russian forces have intensified their bombardment of key cities.

Speaking in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, alongside U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Nad’ said, “Should there be a situation that we have a proper replacement — or we have a capability guaranteed for a certain period of time — then we will be willing to discuss” equipping Ukraine with the air defenses it seeks.

More than two dozen Senate Republicans are demanding that President Biden do more to aid war-torn Ukraine and arm its forces against Russia’s brutal assault, after voting last week against $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine.

Consider Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s emotional plea in a virtual address to Congress on Wednesday for more weapons and a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

“President Biden needs to make a decision TODAY: either give Ukraine access to the planes and antiaircraft defense systems it needs to defend itself, or enforce a no-fly zone to close Ukrainian skies to Russian attacks,” Scott said in a statement. “If President Biden does not do this NOW, President Biden will show himself to be absolute