Russia-Ukraine live updates: Chernobyl in ‘extremely dangerous’ situation; Ukraine evacuations attempts resume

Ukraine’s closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been disconnected from the nation’s power grid on Wednesday by Russian forces, according to Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday, potentially jeopardizing the cooling of nuclear fuel still stored at the site.

“Because of military actions of Russian occupiers the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl was fully disconnected from the power grid. The nuclear station has no power supply,” Ukrenergo said in a statement on its official Telegram page, using Ukraine’s spelling for the plant.

Electricity is needed for cooling, ventilation and fire extinguishing systems at the closed site. In a statement on its Facebook page, Ukrenergo also said emergency diesel generators have been turned on but that fuel would only last for only 48 hours.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demanded a cease-fire with Russia to allow repairs on Wednesday.

“The only electrical grid supplying the Chornobyl NPP and all its nuclear facilities occupied by Russian army is damaged,” he tweeted. “I call on the international community to urgently demand Russia to cease fire and allow repair units to restore power supply.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday that he has “restrained” expectations for upcoming talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Turkey.

While briefly live on Facebook, Kuleba said the possibilities for a breakthrough on the crisis in Ukraine depend on whether Lavrov comes “in good faith.”

He said Ukraine’s main interests are to stop the fighting, “liberate our territory” and take care of the “humanitarian catastrophe created by the Russian army.”

“What we will get at the conclusion is another question,” Kuleba said. “This depends also on the instructions and directives with which Mr. Lavrov is coming to the talks. I hope he is coming in good faith and not with a propagandistic perspective — truly with the task of searching for a solution, how to stop this war, unleashed by Russia.”

Turkish officials have invited Kuleba and Lavrov to meet on the sidelines of a diplomatic conference in Antalya that begins Friday. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that both sides accepted the offer of a meeting, but given the ongoing fighting, there is no guarantee it will take place.

Turkish officials are hoping to position their country as a neutral third party and facilitate negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.

Where will Vladimir Putin stop?

On the heels of an invasion of Ukraine by a Russian leader bent on reconstructing an old Soviet sphere of influence, that’s the question haunting a host of nations behind what was once the Iron Curtain. They include the Baltic states — the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. They’ve been warning the West about real and present threat posed by the Kremlin almost ever since, even as some observers worried that their acceptance into NATO’s collective-defense club amounted to the West sleepwalking into confrontation with Moscow.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the midst of a trip to the Baltics, is hearing a warning and an ask from its leaders. Putin must be stopped in Ukraine, they’re saying. At the same time, the West must do far more to shore up NATO territory in Eastern Europe, where, they fear, Putin’s gaze may turn next.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russia agreed to a cease-fire between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. local time in Ukraine on Wednesday to allow for the evacuation of civilians along six routes — none of which appeared to leave Ukraine.

But officials in Izyum, one of the cities set to be evacuated, alleged Wednesday that their efforts to get civilians out of the city were compromised by shelling from Russian forces.

The news follows repeated failed evacuation attempts of besieged cities in recent days, which Ukrainian authorities have blamed on Russian violations of cease-fire agreements that have endangered the lives of fleeing civilians caught in the shelling and raised concerns about potential war crimes.

“We have a negative experience where the obligations [Russia] took on didn’t work,” Vereshchuk said.

Meanwhile, Russia promised a new cease-fire to allow the evacuation of civilians from “a number of cities in Ukraine,” including Kyiv and Mariupol, its state media reported, citing Russian government sources. It’s unclear whether Ukraine and Russia have agreed to each other’s routes. According to the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti, the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday claimed Ukraine has approved one of its proposed routes — from the city of Sumy.

The evacuation routes Ukraine said were covered by Wednesday’s cease-fire include Enerhodar to Zaporizhzhia, two cities along the Dnieper River separated by about 80 miles, and Sumy to Poltava, two cities in the north of Ukraine, near the border with Russia, some 110 miles apart. Other routes are set to bring people from hard-hit areas such as the port city Mariupol toward Pokrovsk and from Irpin and Hostomel to the capital, Kyiv.

In at least one case, Ukraine’s evacuation routes appear to take civilians into the capital, while Moscow’s proposed routes appeared to lead out of Kyiv and other cities.

Authorities in Moscow have previously proposed evacuating civilians to Russia or its ally, Belarus, which Ukraine has said would be unacceptable. On Wednesday, separatists in Donetsk said that Kyiv did not agree to proposed evacuation corridors from Mariupol and Volnovkha to Russia or to separatist regions.

In Vorzel, a town outside Kyiv, 55 children and 26 employees of a children’s home needed to be evacuated from a maternity hospital in a “separate special operation,” Vereshchuk said. She said Denys Shmyhal, the prime minister of Ukraine, was working with the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, to “confirm” the cease-fire agreements.

One humanitarian corridor, from Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, managed to open Tuesday morning, Ukrainian officials said, and some 5,000 people were able to leave, with most heading to Poltava.

Sumy’s governor, Dmytro Zhyvytsky, said on Telegram on Wednesday that residents had begun evacuating in their own vehicles. Around 2 p.m. local time, he said, 22 buses would arrive to take people to Poltava — prioritizing pregnant women, women with children, older people and people with disabilities.

Vereshchuk said Wednesday that residents of Volnovakha, where recent evacuation attempts have not succeeded, “have appealed to me and asked that the Russian Federation’s promise today is fulfilled, and people will be able to leave the places where they are hiding” from attacks.

Ukraine’s Zelensky expressed his frustration Wednesday after the United States all but rejected an offer from Poland to provide its MiG-29 fighter jets for use by Ukrainian pilots.

In a public offer that caught the United States off guard, Poland on Tuesday said it would send all of its MiG-29 fighter jets to a U.S. air base in Germany, with the aim that they could be flown to Ukraine from there. Ukraine has requested the fighter jets, saying its pilots can fly them and that they could help it defend itself against Russian planes.

U.S. and Western officials said they were not consulted before Poland made the public statement. The Pentagon called the offer “untenable” and said that the idea of fighter jets departing from a U.S. air base in Germany bound for Ukraine would raise “serious concerns” for the NATO alliance. NATO leaders have made it clear that they do not want to enter into direct conflict with Moscow and the refusal to supply fighter jets was a reminder of the limits of what NATO will offer.

In a video speech on Telegram, Zelensky said: “We all heard this, we read it in the media — that there’s an agreement of the U.S. side with Poland … But then we hear that the Polish proposal is allegedly unfounded …When will there be a decision? … Listen, we have a war. We don’t have time for all this media, for all these signals.”

“This isn’t ping-pong — it’s people’s lives,” implored the Ukrainian leader. “We ask one more time: Resolve this faster. Don’t shift responsibility. Send us the planes.”

The move by Poland appeared intended to shift the responsibility for delivering the aircraft — and risking a potential Russian military retaliation — to the United States.

Faced with what the United Nations has called the “fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,” people, nonprofits and governments around the world are coordinating a large-scale effort to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees.

From clothing to food and diapers, the photos below hint at the scale of that effort, as Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine makes it increasingly difficult for people on the ground to secure the goods they need for everyday life, and as the number of Ukrainians fleeing their country — and arriving in mostly neighboring countries, in need of essentials — surpasses 2 million.

Fitch Ratings says it is downgrading Russia’s credit rating to “C,” junk status, from “B” and that a default is “imminent,” as sanctions imposed by the West continue to bite.

“Fitch Ratings has downgraded Russia’s Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘C’ from ‘B,’ ” it said in a statement Tuesday, using a classification that shows major concern for Russia’s ability and willingness to service its debt.

On the Fitch Ratings scale, AAA denotes the lowest expectation of default risk and an “exceptionally strong” capacity for payment of financial commitments. A “C” rating is an indication that a default process has begun or that “payment capacity is irrevocably impaired,” according to the company.

“The ‘C’ rating reflects Fitch’s view that a sovereign default is imminent,” the American credit rating agency said, pointing to “developments” that have “further undermined Russia’s willingness to service government debt.”