Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday pressed the world to help his country beat back a Russian invasion, even as those forces closed in on Kyiv from various directions overnight in their effort to take the capital.
Zelenskyy tweeted that he had started “a new day on the diplomatic frontline” by talking to French President Emmanuel Macron. In a second tweetZelenskyy called the present “a crucial moment to close the long-standing discussion once and for all and decide on Ukraine’s membership in the #EU,” or European Union.
In the United States, President Joe Biden was slated to meet with his national security team on Saturday morning.
But despite international condemnation of Russia’s strike against its smaller neighbor, Russia pressed on with the attack, with airstrikes on cities and military bases in the predawn hours. The violence prompted thousands of Ukrainians to flee their homes, looking for safety in nearby countries.
Friday recap:Battle for Kyiv intensifies; defiant Zelenskyy urges resistance: ‘The fight is here.’
‘Our weapons are our truth’
In a selfie-style video posted to twitter early on SaturdayPresident Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to stay and fight on.
“I am here. We will not lay down any weapons. We will defend our state, because our weapons are our truth,” he declared, denouncing as disinformation claims that he had surrendered or fled.
–Associated Press
Russia-Ukraine explained:Inside the crisis as US calls Russian movements an invasion
Sean Penn calls Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘a brutal mistake’ while filming documentary there
Sean Penn, in Ukraine working on a documentary about the ongoing Russian assault taken, called the invasion “already a brutal mistake of lives and hearts broken.”
“If he doesn’t relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind,” Penn said in a statement to USA TODAY early Saturday morning. President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people “have risen as historic symbols of courage and principle. Ukraine is the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.”
–Brian Truitt
Read the whole story here:Sean Penn calls Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘a brutal mistake’ while filming documentary there
Biden’s hitting Russia’s yacht-riding rich with sanctions. Will it blunt Putin’s Ukraine invasion?
Russia’s wealthy oligarchs and political elites flaunt a level of in-your-face affluence across the world. This week, their wealth and connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin made some of them targets of President Joe Biden’s sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine.
But if the Biden administration really wants to hurt Russian oligarchs enough to rein in Putin’s actions in Ukraine, it needs to hit them much harder – and hit a lot more of them, some US officials and kleptocracy experts told USA TODAY.
By any measure, the new rounds of US financial blockages issued this week go far beyond what has been done in the past to pressure Putin into curbing his rogue behavior, White House officials said. The sweeping actions would cause extreme hardship for some of Russia’s largest financial institutions and a small handful of Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats that Biden said use them as their own “glorified piggy bank.”
–Josh Meyer
Tens of thousands flee Ukraine into neighboring countries
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have crossed into neighboring countries to the west in search of safety as Russia pounded their capital and other cities with airstrikes for a second day.
Those arriving were mostly women, children and the elderly after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday banned men of military age from leaving the country.
A woman from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, who arrived in Przemsyl, Poland, broke down in tears describing how men were pulled off trains in Ukraine before they got to the border.
“Even if the man was traveling with his own child he couldn’t cross the border, even with a kid,” said the woman, who would only give her first name, Daria.
More than 50,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled their country in less than 48 hours, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said Friday, as many more continued to move towards the borders. He said a majority went to Poland and Moldova.
–Associated Press
www.usatoday.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism