Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden says Putin ‘cannot remain in power'; White House walks back remark

People fleeing the besieged Ukrainian city of Irpin arrived in Kyiv on Saturday after taking a humanitarian corridor to the capital. Photographer Heidi Levine, working on assignment for The Washington Post, documented people’s arrival.

Humanitarian corridors are meant to facilitate the evacuation of civilians during war, but getting through them can be a traumatic experience because there is no guarantee of safety.

President Biden warned the world to prepare for an extended battle over Ukraine, in remarks in Poland that capped a trip to Europe intended to bolster the NATO response to the Russian invasion.

“This battle will not be won in days, or months, either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead,” he said, addressing top Polish officials and audience members at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Biden gestured to the historical significance of Warsaw in what he has cast as an ongoing battle between democracy and autocracy, calling the city a “sacred place” in the history of Europe and in “humankind’s unending search for freedom.”

The president opened his speech by evoking a famous line from the first public address of Pope John Paul II: “Be not afraid,” said the first pontiff of Polish descent in 1978.

“It was a message about the power of faith, the power of resilience, the power of people in the face of a cruel and brutal system of government,” said Biden, who is a Catholic. “It was a message that helped end the Soviet repression in the central land and Eastern Europe 30 years ago. It was a message that will help overcome the cruelty and brutality of this unjust war.”

Biden also invoked the Polish Solidarity movement, which emerged as a major opposition movement in the Soviet-bloc nation in the 1980s.

“Ten years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Poland and Central and Eastern Europe would soon be free,” Biden said. “Nothing about that battle for freedom was simple or easy. It was a long, painful slog — fought over not days and months, but years and decades.”

“But we emerged anew, in the great battle for freedom: A battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force,” he said.

President Biden, in his Saturday remarks, warned Russia against attacking “one single inch” of territory belonging to NATO allies.

Biden issued the warning after meeting on Friday with U.S. troops who are serving alongside Polish forces to bolster NATO’s from line defenses.

“American forces are here to defend NATO allies,” Biden said. “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory. We have a sacred obligation under Article 5 of defending each and every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power.”

Vladimir Putin’s actions, he said, had had an unexpected effect for the Russian leader: They have drawn NATO allies closer.

“Russia’s brutal tactics have strengthened the resolve,” Biden said. “Rather than drive NATO apart, the West is now stronger and more united than it's ever been.”

Putin, he said, wanted “less” of a NATO presence on his border, “but now he has a stronger presence, a larger presence with over 100,000 American troops here along with all the other members of NATO.”

“In fact, Russia has managed to cause something I’m sure he never intended,” Biden added. “The democracies of the world are revitalized with purpose and unity found in months that we’ve once taken years to accomplish.”

In his remarks Saturday, President Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of strangling democracy at home and seeking to do so in neighboring nations.

“Putin has the gall to say he’s de-Nazifying Ukraine,” Biden said. “It’s a lie. It’s just cynical. He knows that.”

“Over the last 30 years, the forces of autocracy have revived all across the globe,” the president added. “Its hallmarks are familiar ones. Contempt for the rule of law, contempt for democratic freedom, contempt for the truth itself. Today, Russia has strangled democracy — has sought to do so elsewhere, not only in its homeland.”

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Biden said it is “also obscene” for Putin to accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a Nazi, noting that he is Jewish and his father’s family suffered greatly during World War II.

Citing Abraham Lincoln, Biden said it was time to have “faith again” and “put the strength of democracy into action to thwart the designs of autocracy.”

“Let us remember that the test of this moment, is the test of all time,” Biden said.

The Kremlin, Biden added, wants to portray NATO enlargement as “an imperial project aimed at destabilizing Russia.”

“Nothing is further from the truth,” Biden said. “NATO is a defensive alliance. It has never sought the demise of Russia.”

Officials in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv are reporting two powerful rocket strikes on the city’s outskirts that left a large plume of smoke seen billowing in the air.

At least one industrial facility where fuel is stored was struck and on fire, Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said on Telegram.

“As a result of the shelling, one of the industrial facilities where fuel is stored is burning. Housing infrastructure did not suffer,” Sadovy said. “All relevant services are working at the site. I ask everyone to stay in shelters until the end of the air raid alert.”

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

Information on the cause of the blaze could not be immediately confirmed independently. According to preliminary data released by a local official, five people were injured.

In a message on Telegram, Kozytskyy urged residents to stay in shelters and stay off the street.

“Don’t take pictures of anything! Do not read information in anonymous telegram channels and do not spread it from there!” Kozytskyy added. “Everything that can be reported for security reasons, I will report.”

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.

In the month since Russia invaded Ukraine, military and civilian casualties have soared. But as the war drags on and the battle lines shift, no one — not the United Nations, Ukrainian government or U.S. or NATO officials — can provide an accurate count of how many people have been injured or killed.

The few public estimates, including from Western officials, are just that — estimates — and vary widely amid the fog of war. Even the United States and NATO appear to differ over how many Russian troops may have died so far in the fighting. On Wednesday, a senior NATO official told reporters in Brussels that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian forces have been killed.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under NATO ground rules, said the alliance estimates that 30,000 to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded or captured in Ukraine. It’s an estimate, the official said, based on the assumption that for every soldier killed, three are wounded.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on oil and natural gas exporters Saturday to increase production to help “stabilize the situation in Europe” and prevent Russia from using its energy resources as political “blackmail.”

His comments were part of a video statement to Qatar’s Doha Forum, an annual policy summit held in the oil-rich Persian Gulf country.

“The future of Europe rests with your efforts,” Zelensky said. “I urge you to increase energy production so that Russia understands that no state should use energy as a weapon to blackmail the world.”

Zelensky also compared conditions in the heavily bombed Ukrainian city of Mariupol to “what we all saw in Aleppo.” He referred to the northern Syrian city, once the country’s largest, that was relentlessly bombarded by Syrian and Russian warplanes during Syria’s civil war. Russia has been accused of committing war crimes in both Aleppo and Mariupol for indiscriminately striking civilians and hospitals, among other allegations.

Europe is heavily reliant on Russian exports of fossil fuels, which make up about 40 percent of the European Union’s natural gas supplies and more than a quarter of its oil.

Washington banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas on March 8. European Union officials say they aim to cut imports of Russian gas by two-thirds by year’s end and to end the bloc’s dependence for good by the close of the decade. To do so, they plan to accelerate renewable energy initiatives already underway.

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.”