Russia-Ukraine live updates: 3 killed in Mariupol hospital strike as high-level talks begin in Turkey

Thousands of Russians streamed out of train stations and airport terminals in Europe this week, leaving behind a home country that is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and a government that is moving to stamp out dissent.

Many did not book a return ticket.

Some expressed fury at Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine. Others said they were ashamed. Several were afraid to talk.

“It is pointless to remain. There is no future for us,” said Vyacheslav, 59, who left Russia’s St. Petersburg with his wife and 7-year-old daughter by high-speed train Monday morning. By early afternoon, he and his family had made it to Helsinki, the Finnish capital, where Russians have been welcomed with flowers and signs in recent days.

“Putin is crazy,” said a Russian woman who arrived by plane in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, with her teenage son over the weekend.

Fifteen mostly Democratic members of Congress and more than 100 staffers gathered after hours last night for a briefing on the elevated Russian cyberthreat.

The message was this: Don’t relax just yet. Far worse could be yet to come if Russian President Vladimir Putin switches tactics or decides to retaliate against the West.

“Cyber is a capability that Russian security forces have used in the past and as the decision calculus changes, that may change what’s in play,” former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs said in an interview.

CHISINAU, Moldova — He drove the final miles toward Ukraine’s border bracing for the possibility that he was spending his last minutes with his family. Dmitri Alexeev, 34, told his two children he’d probably be prevented from leaving by Ukraine’s border guards. His daughter, 12, said she didn’t want to be separated. Alexeev could scarcely choke out another word until the checkpoint, when he handed over a medical slip noting a head injury he sustained as a child. A Ukrainian guard looked at the document.

And the next moment, Alexeev was in Moldova, still with his family, one of the rare men who made it out.

Rather than returning to a war zone, he was ushered by a volunteer to the Moldovan capital, where two days later, he was awaiting a bus ride toward Germany, his daughter nestling into his elbow, as he tried to describe everything he was feeling: fortune, relief, shame.

“I feel guilty,” Alexeev said, “because we are safe.”

The city council of Mariupol, on the southeastern coast of Ukraine, said Thursday that three people, including a child, had died after a Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital, while 17 people — among them children, women and medical staff — were injured.

“Russian troops purposefully and ruthlessly destroy the civilian population of Mariupol,” the city council said on Telegram. “The whole world should know about Russia’s crime against humanity, against Ukraine and against the people of Mariupol!”

Ukrainian officials had accused Russian forces of shelling the city for days, but early Wednesday, they said that Russian forces had agreed to a local cease-fire to evacuate civilians out of Mariupol and eight other besieged places. (It was not clear whether Russia had agreed to the evacuation routes.)

Hours before the airstrike, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Ukrainian forces of using the hospital as cover for launching military attacks. She alleged that “in Mariupol, the Ukrainian national battalions, having expelled the staff and patients from the maternity hospital, equipped combat positions in it.”

Videos and photos of the aftermath of the airstrike show children and injured pregnant women being led away from the hospital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the airstrike an “atrocity.”

“What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals and maternity hospitals and destroys them?” he said in a video address late Wednesday.

The attack drew international condemnation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said details about the incident were scarce but called it a “horrifying” example of “the barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians in a sovereign country.”

ODESSA, Ukraine — Three prisoners of war were ushered into the room by an armed guard. The first wore a gray sweater and jeans. He walked with his hands behind his back and stared at the floor. He took a seat at the long table in front, looking like a scared teenager.

“Good Lord, he can’t be older than 18, can he?” one journalist in the audience whispered.

His two comrades took their places beside him. One wore slippers over his socks. The other was in a collared shirt. They each said their name, birth date, place of birth and their Russian military unit. They gave statements of contrition — one said he was ashamed to look into the eyes of Ukrainians.

Then their captors opened the floor for questions from journalists.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday authorized $1.4 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine to help the country keep its economy afloat as it fights Russia’s invasion.

The announcement comes as Ukraine’s central bank has sought to prevent bank runs and stabilize its currency, the hryvnia, during the ongoing Russian attack that has forced millions of residents to flee the country. The National Bank of Ukraine has urged citizens to leave their hryvnia-denominated cash in Ukraine even if they go abroad, but has also promised to let Ukrainians “in areas under threat of occupation” withdraw their cash without restrictions, in an apparent bid to comfort depositors.

The IMF has lauded those efforts, noting that Ukraine has so far “stayed current on all debt obligations.” The IMF’s emergency aid will be delivered as part of a rapid financing instrument — a loan that Ukraine is required to repay within 3¼ to five years.

Ukrainian refugees who have fled abroad with hryvnias in their pockets have been either forced to accept expensive exchange rates or outright unable to convert the funds into foreign cash, Oleksii Shaban, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s central bank, said Tuesday in a news release. He advised Ukrainians to use their credit cards.

“In cashless payments, conversion rates are much better than the black market exchange rate for cash,” Shaban said. The National Bank of Ukraine hasn’t imposed caps on cashless transactions abroad, it said in the same release.

The White House is weighing new sanctions against lawmakers in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, as the United States seeks to increase financial pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The potential U.S. sanctions on members of Russia’s Federation Council — also known as the country’s senate — would represent just the latest measure of at least a half-dozen major actions already taken by the White House to harm Russia’s financial elite and its economy more broadly over the assault on Ukraine.

The European Union on Wednesday moved to impose financial penalties on approximately 150 members of the Federation Council who voted to ratify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authorization of military force in the Donetsk and Luhansk sections of eastern Ukraine.

Russia has effectively legalized patent theft from anyone affiliated with countries “unfriendly” to it, declaring that unauthorized use will not be compensated.

The decree, issued this week, illustrates the economic war waged around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the West levies sanctions and pulls away from Russia’s huge oil and gas industry. Russian officials have also raised the possibility of lifting restrictions on some trademarks, according to state media, which could allow continued use of brands such as McDonald’s that are withdrawing from Russia in droves.

The effect of losing patent protections will vary by company, experts say, depending on whether they have a valuable patent in Russia. The U.S. government has long warned of intellectual property rights violations in the country; last year Russia was among nine nations on a “priority watch list” for alleged failures to protect intellectual property. Now Russian entities could not be sued for damages if they use certain patents without permission.