Russia-Ukraine live updates: Convoy near Kyiv stalls but forces close in on Kharkiv, other cities

Satellite service DirecTV said Tuesday that it would remove the Kremlin-funded media organization RT America from its lineup in light of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The company was already reviewing its contracts set to expire this year and assessing RT America’s value before the attack began, said Nick Ammazzalorso, a DirecTV spokesman.

“In line with our previous agreement with RT America, we are accelerating this year’s contract expiration timeline and will no longer offer their programming, effective immediately,” DirecTV said in a statement.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has said it would restrict access to RT in the European Union, “given the exceptional nature of the current situation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly created RT to compete with English-language multinational news organizations, including CNN and the BBC, so viewers and readers would perceive Russia as a great power. While TV ratings tracker Nielsen does not report the number of Americans who watch RT America, the channel’s audience probably is small: It is offered in two of the roughly 5,200 cable systems in the United States.

E.U. nations are probably not about to send fighter jets to Ukraine, despite a senior E.U. official’s vow that aircraft would be among the military aid the bloc planned to send to Kyiv, officials said Tuesday.

The rowed-back promise echoed a sense that the bloc was not able to help Ukraine at the speed its leaders are demanding, as Russian forces encircle some of the country’s biggest cities. Zelensky issued an emotional plea to the European Parliament on Tuesday for E.U. membership — also a step that the bloc is entertaining but that is far from resolved.

Inside a closed-door meeting on Sunday of E.U. foreign ministers, E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had put forward Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland as countries that might send fighter jets to Ukraine, since all three countries have the Russian-made MiG-29s that are more compatible with the Ukrainian military than Western planes, according to officials familiar with the discussion.

But Bulgarian and Slovak leaders have now said that they do not plan to send fighter jets to Ukraine, despite Borrell’s declaration after the meeting that military aircraft would be among the lethal aid paid for by a new $555 million E.U. military fund that was approved by foreign ministers that day. Borrell did not identify the countries publicly.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday that his country also did not intend to send jets to Ukraine, though he appeared to leave a touch of ambiguity about the possibility.

“We are not sending any jets to Ukraine because that would open a military interference in the Ukrainian conflict. We are not joining that conflict,” Duda told reporters. “We are not going to send any jets to the Ukrainian airspace.”

It was not clear if he was intentionally leaving open the possibility that the Ukrainians could pick jets up in Poland or that aircraft could be transported over land to the Ukrainian border. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Borrell on Sunday said at a news conference that the European Union planned “to supply arms and even fighter jets. We are not talking just about ammunition. We are providing the most important arms to go to war.”

The idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine had been discussed in meetings earlier that day, but nothing was finalized, according to an E.U. diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private meetings.

But Borrell’s announcement — which came in response to a question about how the aid was going to get into Ukraine, not in his prepared remarks — came as a surprise.

Rauhala reported from Brussels.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said Tuesday it has received information that Russian forces are planning to strike the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv, an 11th-century institution that’s one of the capital’s most well-known landmarks.

The church said in a news release titled “Save St. Sophia” that it had intelligence indicating a potential strike on what it called “the most important shrine of the Ukrainian people since the times of Kievan Rus,” a reference to a millennium-old federation in the region. The church did not disclose the specifics of the information.

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since 2011, is asking for “all Christians to pray for the spiritual sanctuary of the Slavic peoples and urges the aggressor to refrain from this most horrific act of vandalism.”

“May St. Sophia — the Wisdom of God, understand those who planned to commit this crime,” Shevchuk said in the news release.

Located in the heart of the Ukrainian capital, the cathedral is an awe-inspiring building featuring vibrant mosaic displays. The interior of the main dome features a display of Christ Pantocrator — a depiction of the “almighty” Jesus — surrounded by angels and the four evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations issued an alert confirming a possible threat against the Cathedral of St. Sophia.

“It is also absolutely possible that Russian missiles will hit the Saint Sophia Cathedral due to technical defects in weapon systems,” the council wrote. “Every day those missiles fly in the direction of Kyiv, and any one of them can, even if not deliberately, but because of defects or mistakes, hit world-famous sanctuaries.”

The Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation has asked several satellite companies to share imagery “to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine with actionable intelligence.”

In a letter to the companies, including Maxar, Planet and BlackSky, Mykhailo Fedorov wrote that Ukrainian defense forces “badly need the opportunity to watch the movement of Russian troops, especially at night when our technologies are blind.”

He added that “this is really the first major war in which commercially available satellite imagery may play a significant role in providing open-source information about troop movements, military buildups in neighboring countries, flows of refugees and more.”

The revolution in satellite technology means there are swarms of spacecraft no bigger than a loaf of bread in orbit

Several of the companies have been sending imagery to journalists and posting them on social media sites. Over the past several years, satellite technology has improved vastly, allowing companies such as Planet to chronicle changes to specific areas on Earth over a long period of time.

As the costs of rocket launches have decreased, the companies have been able to put up many more satellites, blanketing low Earth orbit with hundreds of spacecraft.

The plea by Fedorov came after Max Polyakov, the Ukrainian-born founder of EOS Data Analytics, urged the companies to act, saying in a statement that “the economic, political, and humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine already are too high to stand on the sidelines.”

Several of the companies did not immediately reply to requests for comment from The Washington Post.

Earlier, Fedorov had asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to supply the country with Starlink communication equipment, which could tap into the company’s satellite Internet system. Musk said the company would help, and on Monday Fedorov wrote on Twitter that it had received the equipment.

The United States and other world powers have decided to release 60 million barrels of oil from their reserves, a move intended to reduce gasoline prices that have climbed rapidly in recent weeks, according to the International Energy Agency.

The agency’s governing board released a statement Tuesday attributing the decision to already tight global oil markets that have become further strained by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although the sanctions that countries have imposed on Russia in recent days do not directly target its oil and gas sectors, they are expected to shrink crude oil stocks dramatically.

The U.S. Energy Department plans to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, one of the most aggressive steps available to the White House as it tries to reduce costs for consumers. In a statement Tuesday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that the Biden administration may be prepared to release more.

DNIPRO, Ukraine — A Russian missile strike that appeared to target Kyiv’s TV Tower also hit the nearby Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial and killed five people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter.

The Babyn Yar Memorial is the site of a 1941 massacre that claimed tens of thousands of lives over two days during Nazi Germany’s campaign against the Soviet Union. The complex, which is less than a year old, is believed to be the largest holocaust memorial in Europe.

"To the world: what is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…,” Zelensky tweeted.

The Kyiv TV tower was struck on Tuesday. Videos verified by The Post appeared to show the structure and the area immediately surrounding it was hit at least two times.

In one video, a man stopped at an intersection is filming the TV tower from approximately a quarter of a mile away. A few seconds into the video, a ball of fire explodes at the site. It takes a few moments for the sound of the blast to reach the onlookers.

“Everyone get down,” a man yells as he exits the car. “Closer to the ground, further away from the glass. There may be one more strike.”

From another vantage point, the bomb appears to hit close to the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial site, which sits just west of the tower.

The frame of the TV tower was still standing after the strike. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry said that the strike on the tower interrupted service, adding that back up channels would be accessible soon. Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the Interior Ministry, claimed on his Telegram channel that the strike on tower left at least five people dead.

Tuesday night’s strike is the latest example of what international observers have said is indiscriminate attacks by Russia’s forces on civilian targets. Moscow has said it’s only blasting military infrastructure, but missiles and artillery shells have struck residential areas in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other parts of Ukraine.

Social media users also pointed out that after President Vladimir Putin said his intention was to “denazify” Ukraine, the site where victims were shot by Nazis was hit.“Nazis killed over 33 thousand Jews here,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. “80 years later, Russian Nazis strike the same land to exterminate Ukrainians. Evil and barbaric.”

The government of Ukraine is asking foreign citizens to help fight its war. And some are heeding the call, despite immense personal risk and uncertain legal grounds.

On Tuesday, Ukraine temporarily lifted visa requirements for foreign volunteers who wish to enter the country and join the fight against Russian forces. The move came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created the International Legion of Territorial Defense over the weekend and called on volunteers to “join the defense of Ukraine, Europe and the world.”

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that anyone interested in participating should contact Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in their respective countries. “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too,” Kuleba said Sunday.

Foreign citizens have been fighting in Ukraine since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized parts of the eastern Donbas region. But experts who track foreign fighters say this is a step far beyond that in ambition. Ukrainian embassies are openly involved in the recruitment of fighters, while Western governments have offered support for those who wish to join the Ukrainian side.