Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukraine says it recaptured Kyiv suburb; Zelensky says cities bombed beyond recognition

ROME — Zelensky was greeted with a standing ovation Tuesday as he addressed Italian lawmakers. It is rare for foreign leaders to address Italy’s Parliament, and Lower House speaker Roberto Fico noted that the event was “unusual.”

In a 15-minute speech, Zelensky said the increasing number of child casualties was “the price of procrastination,” and he described mass graves and the city of Mariupol in ruins. The United Nations has recorded the deaths of more than 70 children in Ukraine and says the true figure is likely to be higher.

“The last time this happened, it was done by Nazis,” Zelensky said, and called Ukraine “the gate for the Russian army, [through which] they mean to enter Europe.” He also called for further sanctions “so that Russia won’t seek [military] support from … Syria or Libya,” and invited Italians to do more to seize oligarchs’ assets, including yachts, and “absolutely not to allow for exceptions for any Russian bank.”

In an apparent reference to Italy’s strong reliance on Russian natural gas, he told Italian MPs that Moscow is “using that money for war.”

He added that he had spoken with Pope Francis earlier that morning, and also mentioned that the war would affect Ukraine’s food production, and rising prices in other countries - two issues of interest to the Italian public.

He said finally that he was grateful for Italy’s welcoming attitude toward Ukrainian refugees, mentioning that the first Ukrainian refugee birth occurred in Italy.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi thanked Zelensky, praising the heroism of his people in resisting the Russian invasion and stating that although the process may be long, “Italy wants Ukraine in the E.U.”

There’s a new battlefront in the raging debate over whether civilian technologists should play any role in punishing Russia for invading Ukraine.

A volunteer who maintains an immensely popular open-source software tool updated the tool to wipe data from computers in Russia and its ally Belarus, Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard. The updated tool replaced the erased data with a heart emoji.

It’s not clear how much damage the update caused, but it has the potential to wreak havoc on computers used by civilian companies and individuals inside Russia and Belarus — similar to what might be caused by a malicious hacking campaign.

The move comes as large numbers of cyber volunteers in Ukraine and elsewhere have joined an “IT army,” that is conducting digital attacks and information operations in Russia that skirt and sometimes cross legal red lines.

The aggressive actions by cyber pros not backed by national governments are alarming many analysts who fear they could undermine efforts to impose rules of the road in cyberspace or create confusion that leads to escalating cyber exchanges between Russia and NATO nations.

Ukraine’s military said Tuesday it has retaken Makariv and expelled Russian forces from the strategically important town close to the capital, Kyiv.

“Thanks to the heroic actions of our defenders, the state flag of Ukraine was raised over the city. ... The enemy was rejected,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted in an update on Facebook. The Washington Post could not immediately verify Ukraine’s claim.

The head of the Kyiv region’s national police, Andriy Nebytov, confirmed to the local media outlet Hromadske that Makariv was under Ukrainian control.

He said the area came under “constant fire from enemy artillery,” which he said damaged several buildings, including the town’s police station. “There are no people on the streets. Every second house is damaged or destroyed,” he added.

The Associated Press, citing the Defense Ministry, reported that Ukrainian troops regained territory that allowed Ukraine’s forces to retake a critical highway and prevent Russian troops from surrounding the capital from the northwest.

Makariv, home to almost 10,000 people about 38 miles west of the capital, is a strategically important town.

Ukraine also said that Russian aircraft continued to bomb infrastructure in Kyiv. British defense officials have said the Ukrainian capital remains Russia’s “primary military objective.”

A 7-year-old girl who sang “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” inside a bomb shelter in Kyiv is now singing for a different kind of audience — thousands gathered in Poland to raise money to support Ukrainians like her who are fleeing the war.

The girl, Amelia Anisovych, now a refugee in Poland, sang the Ukrainian national anthem in an arena in Lodz on Sunday.

Wearing a white folk dress embroidered with red, white and blue flowers, Amelia took center stage and sang Ukraine’s anthem, “Ще не вмерла України,” meaning “Ukraine has not yet perished.”

Weeks earlier, in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she sang in the same clear, high-pitched voice, “Не боюсь ничего уже” — Russian for “I’m not afraid of anything anymore” — as explosions could be heard overhead.

The video was viewed by millions of people, even reaching the cast of “Frozen.”

Forest fires have broken out around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s parliament said Monday, raising fears they could spread radiation.

At least seven fires within the plant’s exclusion zone have been recorded based on satellite imagery from the European Space Agency, parliament said in a statement, blaming Russian forces.

Ukrainian officials and firefighters could not carry out their usual functions in the area to extinguish the fires due to Russian control of the plant, the update added. It also warned that fires within “a 10-kilometer radius” (6.2 miles) of significant radioactive waste and contamination pose “particular danger.”

Forest fires have raged before near the defunct power plant, the scene of a 1986 accident. Large quantities of radioactive material contaminated the land surrounding the Chernobyl plant after the disaster, and a nearby city was evacuated. Today an “exclusion zone” covers about 1,000 square miles around the plant where radioactive contamination is highest.

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear company, said Monday that radiation levels around the plant risked rising because its radiation monitoring system and forest firefighting service were not able to work under Russian control. “Radiation levels in the exclusion zone and beyond, including not only Ukraine, but also other countries, could significantly worsen,” it said, Reuters reported.

Scientists say forest fires can release radiation trapped in the upper layers of soil around the plant, and the smoke can carry radioactive material.

On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said that a “long-delayed” rotation of technical staff at the Chernobyl plant has been completed, allowing staff to return home for the first time since Russian forces occupied the plant last month.

One of the world’s top chess players, Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin, has been banned for six months by the International Chess Federation for publicly declaring his support for Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.

Karjakin — a chess prodigy who once held the record for the world’s youngest grandmaster, a rank he attained at age 12 — has defended his country’s actions and shared Russian propaganda on social media in recent weeks, drawing a backlash from chess fans and other players.

Global chess officials said his conduct breached the sport’s code of ethics by casting the game in “an unjustifiable, unfavorable light.”

Ukrainian officials said Tuesday they are focusing on evacuating people from the besieged port city of Mariupol, where residents have tried to flee a crushing siege and street fighting.

In a video, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said three routes would operate Tuesday, carrying people from the Berdyansk, Yurivka and Nikolskoye areas near Mariupol, to the Zaporizhzhia region farther inland. She did not announce any evacuation corridors from Mariupol itself, or other parts of the country on Tuesday.

Mariupol residents who reached Zaporizhzhia last week crossed front lines in vehicles marked with white flags, describing urban fighting and devastation as Ukrainian forces appeared to lose their grip on the city to Russian troops.

The Mariupol City Council and a Ukrainian presidential adviser also said on Telegram that buses set out Tuesday to nearby areas on the Sea of Azov to pick up residents who had fled the city.

“We are focusing on evacuations from Mariupol,” Vereshchuk said. “We understand that there are not enough places for everyone.… We definitely will not leave anyone behind and will continue the evacuation everyday … until we have transported everyone out.”

At least 82,525 square kilometers (31,863 square miles) of land in Ukraine could be laced with dangerous explosive devices, according to the Ukrainian Sappers’ Association, a national demining nonprofit.