Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.S., Canada and European leaders vow to freeze Russian assets, target banks

Outside the Russian Embassy on Boris Nemtsov Plaza in Washington, the sound of honking filled the air. It was noon on Saturday, and a dozen people had found their way there. The invasion of Ukraine was unfolding thousands of miles away, but here, they felt a sense of purpose.

They held signs and balloons in Ukraine’s national colors. As vehicles passed on Wisconsin Avenue NW, drivers sounded their support.

The group was ragtag, drawn by a shared propulsion to do something, rather than an organized effort. There was a couple from North Carolina, who had traveled to Washington for a soccer match. And a woman from Peru. And a Ukrainian couple, who couldn’t speak English but stood quietly among the gaggle.

“NO WAR,” read one of their cardboard signs. “INVADERS OUT OF UKRAINE!” read another. One man, holding an orange poster, approached one of the embassy surveillance cameras and held up his sign: “It’s okay to defect.”

Pilar Viliarromero, 65, taped a small sign to the concrete that read: “Six things the Lord hates … hands that shed innocent blood.”

The London Philharmonic Orchestra elicited a standing ovation Saturday, when it preempted its “From Russia With Love” concert with the Ukrainian national anthem in a show of solidarity for the invaded nation.

The musicians were to present two pieces by Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev, according to the concert’s program. But before delving into the “heartfelt melody and sparkling wit” of Prokofiev’s Violin Concert No. 2 and the “blissful love-song” of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, they began with “Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy” or “Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished” at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.

The philharmonic’s artistic director, Elena Dubinets — who said she is Russian and married to a Ukrainian — gave a speech condemning “the war instigated by the government of my native country against his native country.”

“The program was designed a couple of years ago, but the accidental timing of our concert that coincided with the beginning of this war, has given us a reason to believe that this music can speak for itself and will help us during these terrible times,” Dubinets said.

As conductor Alpesh Chauhan led the players into Ukraine’s national anthem, the audience rose to its feet — a sight widely shared across social media.

“Thank you to @LPOrchestra for beginning their beautiful Rachmaninov/Prokofiev concert tonight with the most stirring rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem,” concertgoer Rachel Law wrote on Twitter. “A packed Southbank Centre on its feet to stand with Ukraine.”

China’s ambassador to Ukraine said he is still in the country and has urged Chinese citizens there to remain calm amid intensifying Russian attacks.

In a video posted online, Fan Xianrong said that he has received a deluge of anxious reports over the welfare of Chinese citizens and that the embassy is taking steps to ensure their safety.

“I ask everyone to rest assured and have confidence the Chinese Embassy will never ignore anyone’s safety,” he said in the address recorded near a Chinese flag. “I know many people want to go back to China. … What I can tell you clearly is that as long as the safety conditions are met, everyone’s safety is guaranteed. We will make appropriate arrangements.”

Fan did not comment on the wider conflict, which Chinese officials have declined to label as an invasion. Beijing has instead heaped scorn on the United States and NATO, which it says are provoking conflict in the region.

The Chinese Embassy in Ukraine announced Thursday that it would arrange charter flights to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine, but unlike many other countries, it did not call for them to leave the country before the invasion. China has said it has about 6,000 citizens in Ukraine.

Former president Donald Trump again lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin as “smart,” telling a crowd of his most ardent supporters that the problem is not with Putin, but that U.S. leaders “are dumb.”

Most of Trump’s comments about the Russian invasion of Ukraine during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando on Saturday were focused on himself and his grievances; he and Putin understood each other, Trump said, so this wouldn’t be happening if he were still president.

He mildly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine without denigrating Putin directly, saying it’s “appalling and it’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.” It would never have happened “if our election was not rigged,” he said — a reference to Trump’s false assertion that a 2020 election win was stolen from him.

The former president called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “brave man,” then quickly qualified his affinity for Zelensky, who was the central figure in the 2019 impeachment charges against Trump. At the time, Zelensky said he hadn’t felt pressured during a phone call in which Trump conditioned U.S. military aid on Ukraine digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his family.

Before his CPAC remarks, Trump told reporters that the war in Ukraine could “spread throughout the world.”

“This could be a world war,” he said. “Something has to be done.”

Asked what specifically should be done, Trump said there were things “that would end it very quickly,” but he wasn’t going to talk about them to the news media.

The ravine where the massacres took place looked like a dusty river bed. In 1941, it was outside Kyiv, Ukraine, out of sight. The sound of gunfire from within didn’t carry far.

Over two days that September, more than 33,000 people were executed there by Nazi killing squads in one of the worst mass murders of Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.

Today, the notorious site is inside Kyiv city limits. It’s called Babyn Yar, or Babi Yar, and the invading Russian soldiers fighting to subdue the city might notice the monuments to those who were murdered there.

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.