Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.S., Canada and European leaders vow to crack down on Russian banks

It was 3:15 a.m. in Belgorod, Russia — much too early for a traffic jam, thought Jeffrey Lewis, who was watching the traffic pileup on Google Maps.

Lewis, a professor specializing in arms control and nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., was monitoring Google Maps with a research team of students he mentors as part of a project to analyze images taken from space. He and his team realized what was happening: a Russian armored unit was moving toward the border with Ukraine.

By combining Google Maps traffic information with a radar image that showed troops, Lewis and his team realized an invasion was underway hours before the news became public and from thousands of miles away in California. Russia officially announced its assault on Ukraine on Thursday morning, which President Biden called “unprovoked and unjustified.”

LONDON — Oleg Paska says his mother may be an “old woman,” but she is not scared.

Paska, 56, recently moved to the United Kingdom after years traveling for work but was born and raised in Ukraine, where many members of his family live, including his “brave” 84-year-old mother in the western city of Khmelnitsky, he said.

“She has survived a lot,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post after Russia launched its assault on Ukraine on Thursday, forcing families to flee and prompting Western officials to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin for “bringing war back to Europe.”

“My mother and grandmother were nearly killed during the Second World War,” Paska said, explaining that his mother “still remembers the terror” of Nazi atrocities in Europe. This time she is preparing and she is ready, Paska said. “She tells me she is not afraid,” he said.

Although images of smoldering apartment buildings and unsuspecting cyclists cut down by incoming fire have ricocheted across social media, the cumulative toll of Russia’s invasion has been obscured by a bevy of factors, including international observers unable to do their work, a sprawling conflict zone in Europe’s largest nation, a government in disarray as it fights for survival, and a steady drip of misinformation.

To those tasked with helping to protect the lives of noncombatants, the result has been a frustrating void at a time when civilian casualties are undoubtedly increasing.

“It’s an incredibly worrying situation. We don’t have any idea of the full scale of the consequences right now,” said Mirella Hodeib, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kyiv. “Only that they’re rising exponentially.”

Hodeib spoke from a bunker in Ukraine’s capital city as combat continued unabated aboveground. The organization has a 600-member staff in Ukraine, Hodeib said. But nearly all have had to take shelter, with conditions too dangerous to effectively track how Ukrainians are faring while Russian troops advance and war planes fire their missiles.

Greece’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday that 10 people of Greek origin were killed and six others injured in fighting near Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine and home to many from the Greek diaspora.

“Stop the bombing now!” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.

Greece’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday that 10 people of Greek origin were killed and six others injured in fighting near Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine and home to many from the Greek diaspora.

Greece appears to be the first country outside Ukraine and Russia to claim that its people have died in the fighting.

The fatalities include six people from the village of Sartana and four from Buhas. In Sartana, about six miles from Mariupol, six people — including one child — were injured, Greece’s Foreign Ministry said in news releases. At least 240 civilians have died because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations said Saturday.

The deaths of the people of Greek origin — whose identities were not released — prompted Greek government officials to summon the Russian ambassador in Athens to the Foreign Ministry for a meeting Monday, according to a statement from Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.

“Aerial attacks against civilians … are unacceptable criminal actions,” the government agency said in a news release. “We condemn them unequivocally. We call on the Russian Federation to immediately halt airstrikes and any action targeting civilians.”

In Ukraine, nearly all people of Greek origin reside by Mariupol, Ukraine’s 10th-largest city. Located in the Donetsk oblast, the city of about 400,000 has more than 100,000 people of Greek origin.

Russian troops have moved into Ukraine from the north, south and east. Russian successes in the south contrast with difficulties to take Kyiv, which is resisting more than Russia was expecting.

In response to a plea from a Ukrainian official, Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted that the Starlink Internet service that SpaceX provides from its orbital satellite constellation is up and running in the war-torn country and that more ground terminals are on the way.

The system could help Ukrainians continue to access the Internet, and be able to communicate and gain valuable information, even if broadband is severed on the ground.

Starlink’s constellation of satellites beams Internet signals to ground terminals, much in the way that satellite television, such as DirecTV, allows consumers to access programming.

On Saturday, Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister of Ukraine and the country’s minister of digital transformation, tagged Musk in a tweet asking Musk to “provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.” Several hours later, Musk replied that “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”

It wasn’t clear how many customers SpaceX has in Ukraine for the service or how widespread it is in Ukraine, though coverage maps indicate the service is available nearly 24 hours a day. SpaceX has been launching many batches of the satellites into Earth orbit and has achieved operational capability, but is still planning on putting up many more satellites for better coverage.

Still, the news was welcomed in Ukraine.

“Starlink terminals are coming to Ukraine!” Fedorov tweeted. “Thank you @elonmusk, thank you everyone who supported Ukraine!”

The exchange followed another on Friday in which Musk offered SpaceX’s services.

After Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, threatened that Russia may stop using its spacecraft thrusters to periodically boost the International Space Station, Musk indicated that SpaceX could do it with its Dragon spacecraft, which regularly fly to the station.