Russia tells Mariupol to surrender, but Ukrainian official is defiant

President Biden will visit Warsaw and meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda this week to talk about what the administration calls the “humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will go to Poland after his previously scheduled meeting Thursday with NATO at its headquarters in Brussels.

Poland, a NATO ally that borders Ukraine, has floated a proposal to deploy NATO troops there. Some past peacekeeping missions have faced ambushes and other forms of direct combat.

Biden has said repeatedly that U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine, though the United States continues to provide the country with large quantities of missiles, ammunition and other supplies.

Earlier Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ruled out any U.S. military participation in a proposed NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.

“The president has been very clear that we will not put American troops on the ground in Ukraine,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “We don’t want to escalate this into a war with the United States.”

Thomas-Greenfield said other NATO countries “may decide that they want to put troops inside Ukraine.”

“That will be a decision that they have to make,” she said.

Psaki said Biden’s planned trip to Europe does not include a visit to Ukraine.

Before announcing the meeting with Duda, Psaki tweeted that the Brussels trip would focus on “continuing to rally the world in support of the Ukrainian people and against President Putin’s invasion.”

She added that “there are no plans to travel into Ukraine.”

The heads of three governments in the European Union met last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital — a major target for Russia.

Tyler Pager contributed to this report.

The prime minister of Slovenia said his country would send diplomats back to Ukraine’s capital “soon,” even as Russian forces close in.

“They are volunteers,” tweeted Prime Minister Janez Jansa. “We are working to make [the European Union] do the same.” He said Ukraine “needs direct diplomatic support.”

Jansa was one of three European heads of government who traveled to Kyiv last week to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Observers called the trip risky, even as approaching Russian forces seemed to have stalled outside the capital. Kyiv has suffered significant damage in airstrikes, and fighting rages around the city.

Late Sunday, explosions rocked the city’s Podilskyi district, local officials said on social media.

Some countries, including the United States, pulled embassy staffers from Kyiv before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, worried about diplomats’ safety as the situation escalated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that Switzerland clamp down on Russian oligarchs, saying their use of Swiss bank accounts is helping Russia continue its attacks on Ukraine from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns.”

“Your banks are where the money of the people who unleashed this war lies,” Zelensky said as he addressed the country on Saturday, calling for it to review its ties to Russia and freeze the accounts of the mega rich.

More than $210 billion of Russian money is held in Swiss bank accounts, the country’s financial industry association told Reuters.

While Zelensky thanked the president and people of neutral Switzerland for backing sanctions against Russia and helping Ukraine in its quest for “life and liberty,” he urged Swiss banks and companies to take additional steps to ensure “not a singer dollar, franc or euro” would assist Russia in killing Ukrainians.

Companies such as Nestlé, which has its headquarters in Switzerland, continue to operate in Russia, as a growing list of businesses have severed ties there since the invasion of Ukraine.

Swiss politician Mattea Meyer has also called for the country to “turn off the money taps” to stop Russian oligarchs from stashing large amounts of cash there.

RIGA, Latvia — In a dingy Russian classroom with worn-out rugs, elementary school students lined up to form the shape of the letter Z: the symbol used on much of Russia’s military equipment in Ukraine and an emblem of support at home, showing up from bus stops to car stickers to corporate logos.

Now it has become part of the classroom lessons as the Kremlin expands its anti-Ukraine propaganda to students as young as kindergarten age. It’s another front in President Vladimir Putin’s sweeping crackdowns to criminalize dissent and enforce an unquestioning brand of patriotism even as Russia grows increasingly isolated.

Over the past three weeks, thousands of posts appeared on Russian social media featuring schoolchildren — up to high school age — attending special “patriotic lessons” or posing for pictures forming Z and V-for-victory signs.

“I’m for the president. I’m for Russia!” a teacher exclaims in a clip posted Saturday by an official page for the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 250 miles east of Moscow.

“We are united and therefore invincible!” a choir of young children screams into the camera, holding balloons in the white-blue-red colors of the Russian flag.

Russia’s education minister, Sergey Kravtsov, openly described schools as central to Moscow’s fight to “win the information and psychological war” against the West. At the same time, Russia has imposed laws against spreading “fake” news or “discrediting” the Russian armed forces — prompting many journalists and activists to leave Russia.

The country’s Internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, ordered media outlets to delete reports using the words “invasion” or “war” and only rely on official government sources, which call the Ukraine war a “special operation.” Russian state TV removed all entertainment shows from its programming, filling the broadcasts with propaganda-filled talk shows and state-vetted news.

After weeks of relentlessly bombarding Mariupol, Russia on Sunday called for Ukrainian forces to surrender and flee the city or risk further attacks and a “military tribunal.”

The ultimatum, issued through Russian state media, came after Russian forces had entered every neighborhood in Mariupol, a strategically valuable city on Ukraine’s southeastern coast. The assault — which has reduced large swaths of the city to rubble, left civilians dead on the streets and spawned a humanitarian catastrophe — has descended into house-to-house guerrilla warfare, officials said Sunday.

Moscow said Mariupol’s leaders faced a “historic choice”: either concede to Russian troops or be considered “with the bandits” and face trial in a Russian military court, according to the state media reports, which disseminate Kremlin communications. Russia requested an official response from Ukrainian authorities by 5 a.m. Moscow time on Monday, which is 10 p.m. Eastern time Sunday.

Late Sunday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told the news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda that Ukraine would not surrender, and she reiterated calls for open and unconditional evacuation routes from the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis on Sunday for raising millions to help refugees and shared a photo of his video call with the star couple.

The actors have raised nearly $35 million with a GoFundMe fundraiser, surpassing a $30 million goal in a couple of weeks. Zelensky tweeted Sunday that the pair “were among the first to respond to our grief. … They inspire the world.” Kutcher retweeted the post.

Kunis identifies herself on the fundraising page as a “proud Ukrainian” whose family came to the United States in 1991, when she was a child. The fundraiser will go toward two groups: Flexport.org, which is organizing supply shipments to refugees in countries around Ukraine, and the rental company Airbnb, which is offering free housing to Ukrainians fleeing the war, Kunis said.

Nearly 1 in 13 Ukrainians have fled the country during Russia’s invasion, according to the United Nations.

“While we are witnessing the bravery of Ukrainians, we are also bearing witness to the unimaginable burden of those who have chosen safety,” Kunis wrote.