Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden calls Putin ‘a butcher’ after meeting refugees in Poland

WARSAW — President Biden visited refugees at PGE Narodowy stadium in Warsaw on Saturday, meeting with the city’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, who warned in an interview with The Washington Post recently that the city’s services were at risk of being overwhelmed.

The president, without a tie and wearing a Beau Biden Foundation hat, traversed a crowd of refugees. At one point, he picked up a little girl with pigtails and took a selfie with her. At another, he embraced a woman in what appeared to be an emotional conversation.

As he was exiting, the president told reporters he had met refugees from Mariupol, a Ukrainian city that has been under siege from Russian forces, and said he is always surprised by “the depth and the strength of the human spirit.”

When asked about what the stop made him think about President Vladimir Putin, he called the Russian leader “a butcher.”

Officials in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv are reporting several powerful explosions, and a large plume of smoke could be seen billowing in the air.

Lawmaker Igor Zinkevych said on Facebook that there were three explosions, and he urged people to remain calm and stay inside. Maksym Kosytsky, Lviv’s governor and head of the regional military, said the explosions were “near Lviv, from the direction of Kryvchyts.”

Lviv is regarded as a center of Ukrainian nationalism and culture and dates its official founding to more than seven centuries ago. Since the start of Russia’s invasion, it has become something of a western capital for the country. Many diplomats and others have fled to Lviv from Kyiv and other cities that have come under heavy Russian bombardment.

Photos showed a large black cloud of smoke rising over densely spaced buildings. No further details or information on potential deaths or injuries was immediately available.

Russia now claims the primary aim of the multipronged invasion it launched last month is to capture two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, but a U.S.-based military think tank says Moscow is misrepresenting its planned operations.

Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, told Russian reporters Friday that Moscow’s forces have heavily diminished Ukraine’s troops and could now focus on their “main goal” of obtaining control of the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Pentagon said Russia has paused its ground operations aimed at Kyiv and was focusing attacks on the separatist areas, even as air attacks on Ukraine continued.

The Institute for the Study of War is skeptical that Russia’s motives have changed.

In a statement Friday, the Washington-based think tank noted that Russian forces have not stopped fighting in other parts of the country — “conducting operations and committing war crimes that do not accord with the objectives [Rudskoy] claims Russia is pursuing.”

The institute believes the Kremlin still aims to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other major cities, and that any absence of significant Russian offensive operations likely reflects military shortcomings rather than a change in war aims.

Rudskoy’s comments "are likely an attempt to gloss the Russian military’s failures for a domestic audience and focus attention on the only part of the theater in which Russian troops are making any progress at this point,” the ISW said.

President Biden met with top Ukrainian ministers Saturday while visiting Poland to rally global support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country more than a month ago.

Biden’s visit came on the final day of his European trip and marked his first meeting since the start of the war with high-level Ukrainian officials.

The president dropped in on a meeting that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov were having with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw. Biden sat in for about 40 minutes and reiterated U.S. support for Ukraine — including in the form of historic levels of humanitarian aid. He also received updates on the country’s progress on military, diplomatic and humanitarian fronts.

The United States expressed “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Biden and the Ukrainian officials also discussed efforts by the United States and its allies to sanction Putin for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

WARSAW — President Biden emphasized Saturday the United States’ enduring commitment to defending NATO member states as he met with the Polish president and sought to reassure an anxious ally on the border of Ukraine.

“We take Article 5 as a sacred commitment,” Biden said at the start of a bilateral meeting at Poland’s Presidential Palace, referring to the alliance’s collective defense pact. “Not a throwaway, a sacred commitment that relates to every member of NATO.”

Biden praised Poland’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thanking the country’s leaders for playing a leading role in the humanitarian response. More than 2 million Ukrainian refugees have sought safety in Poland since the invasion began more than a month ago, but Biden said it should be all of NATO’s responsibility, not just Poland’s, to take in refugees.

“We understand that, because we have at our southern border thousands of people a day, literally not figuratively, trying to get into the United States,” he said. “But we believe that we, the United States, should do our part relative to Ukraine as well by opening our borders to another 100,000 people.”

The president also spoke of the need to keep the West unified, as Russian President Vladimir Putin “counted on a divided NATO.”

“America’s ability to meet its role in other parts of the world rests upon a united Europe,” he said.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said his citizens are feeling a “great sense of threat” due to Russian aggression, but he said the relationship between the United States and Poland is “flourishing” and that the bond was “strengthened immensely” by Biden’s visit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he sent troops into Ukraine to depose “Nazis” running the country. But top Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, one of the war’s key cheerleaders, took Moscow’s discredited invasion pretext a step further Saturday on a pro-Kremlin television talk show, saying that “Nazis” make up a large part of the Ukrainian population.

“I certainly couldn’t have imagined there being so many of them. Well, but this is the main force in Ukraine,” she said.

Putin originally called his war a mission to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine, portraying the country as hostage to a small group of political leaders whom he called “neo-Nazis” and “drug addicts.”

But that left Russian leaders struggling to explain Ukraine’s unity, its stunning resistance and outrage at the Russian invasion, amid repeated Ukrainian protests against Russia in towns its forces occupy.

Simonyan, editor in chief of Russia Today, pontificated at length Saturday on pro-Kremlin NTV about the psychology of Germans during the Nazi era, arguing that any Ukrainian who resisted Russia must be a Nazi.

“Nazism is Nazism. That’s why we call this operation a special operation for denazification,” she said. “We don’t call them Nazis by accident.”

Simonyan added: “What makes you a Nazi is your bestial nature, your bestial hatred and your bestial willingness to tear out the eyes of children on the basis of nationality.”

Calling Ukrainians “our people,” she claimed that “a significant part” of the population “has been caught up in this madness of Nazism.”

For their part, Ukrainians call Putin and his forces “rashists,” meaning “Russian fascists,” a common Twitter hashtag in Ukraine. Both sides fought to defeat the Nazis as part of the Soviet Union during World War II, a period at the core of Russia’s patriotic view of its identity as saviors of an ungrateful world.

Simonyan was one of the early proponents of Russian action to seize eastern Ukraine in January 2021, urging, “Mother Russia, take Donbas home.”

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed Saturday that the United Kingdom would send 2 million pounds ($2.6 million) in food aid to Ukraine, where key food warehouses and storage centers have come under Russian bombardment.

“This vital donation of food and supplies will help support the Ukrainian people in the face of Russia’s barbaric invasion,” Truss said. Teams are working “day and night” to ensure that aid is delivered, she said.

For those trapped in Ukraine, access to food, water and essential items has become difficult, a situation likely to worsen as Russian forces continue bombarding key cities.

“People are starving,” one Chernihiv resident named Alex said in a first-person account for The Washington Post. “There are huge lines everywhere, and it is almost impossible to buy food.”

Warehouses in neighboring Poland and Slovakia will play a key part in transporting the goods into Ukraine, the British government said. The pledge is part of a broader promise from Britain to deliver aid worth 400 million pounds to Ukraine for urgent economic and humanitarian support amid the invasion.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s vice president, said Wednesday that Russian forces are “deliberately targeting and destroying” Ukrainian food stocks and storage locations, leading to soaring food prices, disruption to supply chains and widespread insecurity.

President Biden is meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on the final leg of his European trip designed to bolster the NATO alliance and reassure allies.

Photos showed the two men taking part in an arrival ceremony outside the Presidential Palace, flanked by soldiers in ceremonial uniforms. A military band played the U.S. and Polish national anthems, and at one point some of the service members shouted in Polish, “Hail to the president!” according to pool reports.

The president’s visit to Poland reflects the country’s position at the center of the crisis, as more than 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees have sought safety in Poland since the conflict began.

Poland shares a border with Ukraine and with Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad and hosts NATO troops in its military bases.

On Wednesday, Poland said it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats it accused of being spies, describing it as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s policies toward Poland and its allies.