Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden meets Ukrainian ministers in Poland; Russia focuses on eastern front

For weeks, the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv — about 95 miles north of the capital — has been under near-constant Russian attack. Power, water and gas have largely been cut off. Food is running out. Many residents are sheltering underground. Civilians trying to flee have braved artillery shelling.

The city of 285,000 became even more isolated this week, when Russians bombed a major bridge, Ukrainian forces said, cutting off another route to get residents out and humanitarian aid in.

With little electricity, getting up-to-date information out of the city has been challenging.

One of the few eyewitness accounts from inside the city comes from Chernihiv resident Alex, a 38-year-old who is volunteering with humanitarian aid efforts. Starting on March 12, he sent a team of journalists at The Washington Post updates about the situation in his hometown. He used his limited phone battery and connectivity to share voice notes, photos and videos.

Police in the Ukrainian region of Poltava say they have seized an array of abandoned military equipment apparently collected by the local populace, including tanks and armored vehicles, and they warned residents not to take home any explosives and weapons left behind after battles with invading Russian forces.

Among the weaponry seized, according to Yevhen Rohachov, the Poltava regional police chief: 11 tanks, two armored vehicles, eight machine guns, nine submachine guns, five rifles, 10 pistols and an estimated 4,000 rounds of ammunition.

It’s unclear how the equipment was left, but police indicated that it was found by the local population in forests and fields and on roadsides in the northern part of the Poltava region, where fighting has taken place west of Kharkiv.

In a statement Friday, Rohachov urged locals to be vigilant and to report any findings. He told people not to keep weapons at home but instead to inform police of their location.

“We warn you that by storing explosives and weapons at home, you are not only breaking the law, but also putting yourself, your children, family, friends and acquaintances in great danger,” the police chief said. “If you find weapons, ammunition, military equipment, other dangerous or suspicious objects in forest strips, forests, fields or roadsides, immediately report it to the police.”

Friday’s statement noted that Poltava regional police are investigating 31 cases of “illegal handling” of weapons or ammunition under Ukraine’s criminal code.

The statement urged people who want to use weapons to join Ukraine’s armed forces to help fight the enemy and protect Ukrainian lives.

Russia is likely to continue using “heavy firepower on urban areas” in its bombardment of key Ukrainian cities including Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, Britain’s Defense Ministry warned Saturday in an intelligence update.

The ministry said the Russian military was seeking to “limit its own already considerable losses” and would rely on siege tactics that further endanger civilian lives.

“Russian forces are proving reluctant to engage in large-scale urban infantry operations, rather preferring to rely on the indiscriminate use of air and artillery bombardments in an attempt to demoralise defending forces,” the ministry said.

On Friday, the Pentagon said Russian forces appeared to be halting ground advances toward the capital, Kyiv, and focusing attacks on the eastern Donbas region. The Defense Department called the shift a possible indicator that Moscow may be paring back its ambitions after a string of setbacks.

Citing its latest intelligence assessments, the Pentagon noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun to mobilize military reinforcements to send into Ukraine after weeks of significant losses.

“We now have indications that they are drawing on forces from Georgia,” said a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Biden administration. The official referred to Russian troops based in Georgia, adding, “We don’t have an exact number.”

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — The theater in Mariupol was supposed to be a safe haven.

Its walls were thick and sturdy. People had packed into the basement, foyer and the dressing rooms backstage in the hope of escaping Russia’s bombardment of Mariupol, Ukraine’s coastal city that President Vladimir Putin appears set on seizing at any cost.

“We thought maybe they’d see there were kids there and not bomb it,” said Alexiy, 34, who left with his wife and 7-year-old son the day before an apparent Russian attack March 16 left parts of the building in ruin, leaving some people badly injured and officials struggling to determine a possible death toll.

“They even tied a white flag to the top of the building,” he said. Like many people interviewed by The Washington Post, he spoke on the condition that only one name be published because of security concerns.

Hospitals, ambulances, doctors and patients continue to come under fire in Ukraine, where the World Health Organization says more than 70 such attacks have taken place since Russia invaded — a number that is growing on a “daily basis.”

The organization has recorded 72 attacks on Ukraine’s health-care facilities or personnel since the war began — 68 of which have been confirmed, with the others listed as probable or possible. The verified attacks have caused at least 71 deaths and 37 injuries, and the strikes impacted medical personnel, patients, vehicles and supply chains, according to WHO data.

“Health facilities should be safe places for both doctors and nurses, but also patients to turn to for treatment,” the WHO’s Ukraine country representative, Jarno Habicht, said in an interview with the BBC.

“This should not happen,” Habicht said, warning that the total number of attacks was likely to increase each day.

Some health-care facilities across Ukraine have been reduced to rubble. Doctors are going to extreme measures to keep patients alive amid the chaos and uncertainty, notably by moving expectant mothers underground to give birth.

Ukrainian officials say Russian strikes have destroyed key medical infrastructure across the country, posing a direct threat to those suffering cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and tuberculosis — illnesses that WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says are among the country’s leading causes of mortality.

Vladimir Putin had a very pointed way of summing up the international efforts to sanction his country for its invasion of Ukraine. It’s all an attempt, he said Friday, to “cancel” Russia.

In a speech for a literature awards ceremony, the Russian president struck chords that seemed to have been lifted from American conservative punditry, griping about “cancellation,” a favored culture-war term that has gained traction in recent years.

The notion of getting “canceled” — which began life as a Black-culture punchline before it transformed into a White-grievance watchword — has become a central storyline in right-wing media’s ongoing culture wars. The general premise is that criticism or public shaming of a person for saying certain things or alleged bad behavior is tantamount to censorship and erasure.

While entertainers and politicians on the left have also lamented “cancel culture,” conservative media frequently depicts it as a pervasive sickness threatening to undermine American values — and it has turned into a major area of coverage.

President Biden visited the Polish city of Rzeszow on Friday, in a show of support for a NATO ally of the United States. He met with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda and greeted members of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division stationed some 60 miles from the Ukrainian border.

As of Friday, over 2.2 million displaced Ukrainians have fled to Poland — more than to any other country — sparking concerns that the sudden influx is placing severe strain on public services. Warsaw, home to roughly 1.8 million people, took in more than 300,000 Ukrainians in the three weeks after the war broke out.

The 82nd Airborne, fresh from its previous mission in Afghanistan, is commanded by Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the last soldier to walk up the ramp on the final U.S. military plane to leave Kabul. Its members make up the bulk of U.S. military presence along NATO’s eastern flank.

For more than a decade, the Pentagon, pinned down in Afghanistan, followed China’s rise as a global power and Russia’s ambitious military modernization program with growing alarm. The consensus in Beijing, Moscow and among some in Washington was that an era of U.S. global dominance was rapidly coming to an end.

But one month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, senior Pentagon officials are brimming with newfound confidence in American power, spurred by the surprising effectiveness of U.S.-backed Ukrainian forces, Russia’s heavy battlefield losses and the cautionary lessons they believe China is taking from the war.

“Let me put it this way,” said one senior Pentagon official of America’s standing in the world. “Who would you switch places with? Seriously, who would you switch places with?”