Russia-Ukraine live updates: Evacuation efforts resume from battle zones, Ukrainian officials say

A Ukrainian governor announced Thursday that he’s setting up a hotline for deserting Russian troops who don’t want to fight in the war.

Vitaliy Kim, governor of the nation’s Mykolaiv region, said on Telegram that he wanted to give a “chance” to Russian troops “who haven’t fired at the civilians or committed any crimes yet.”

“For those who’d like to live, I’ll organize a hotline to call in, to come and stay alive, and avoid jail when you get back to Russia,” Kim said. “I’m arranging this, and I’m hopeful this will work.”

Kim claimed that Russian troops have “been misled” into thinking the fighting throughout the invasion were merely “military exercises.” His remarks were targeted to troops who have deserted. It remains unclear whether any Russian troops have deserted during the war.

The governor did not offer details as to how Russian troops would be handled if they were to call the hotline. But Kim said the idea of calling a hotline for safety is a better option following the Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol.

“After Mariupol, those guys have no chance: either run or lie in soil,” he said.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Officials in Ukraine’s southern city of Mariupol accused Russian forces of continuing to bombard the besieged seaside hub on Thursday, a day after a strike tore through a maternity hospital, killing at least three people and injuring 17.

The latest shelling hit near a theater and a university building, the city council said Thursday after the airstrike buried hospital patients under rubble. One of the dead was a child, and some of the injured women had been in labor, the council said.

A Russian barrage has pummeled Mariupol, a key port city on the Sea of Azov, for days, thwarting efforts to shuttle residents out to safety after a siege choked off food, water and power supplies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin argued Thursday that the sanctions imposed by the United States and others across the globe were not legitimate and were being used to blame Russia for high fuel prices. But he also acknowledged that the economic shock felt throughout the country in response to the invasion of Ukraine has signaled that Russia “cannot exist in such a miserable and humiliated state.”

In a meeting with members of the Russian government, Putin claimed, without presenting evidence, that the wide-ranging, historic sanctions levied against Russia would have been imposed at some point — regardless of whether the country had invaded Ukraine. Facing more than 5,500 restrictions, Russia is now the world’s most-sanctioned country, according to data from Castellum.ai, a global database that tracks sanctions.

“Yes, now the sanctions pressure is complex and creates certain difficulties for us, but we will overcome them, even now,” Putin said, adding that the Russian economy was “adapting to the new situation.” Then he pointed to the enormous economic strain and the effect it has had on his country: “Russia cannot exist in such a miserable and humiliated state. Sooner or later, all this had to happen. It happened now, and I am sure that we will overcome all these difficulties.”

Putin addressed announcements by the United States and European Union that they were dramatically scaling back imports of Russian oil and natural gas in an attempt to further economically isolate the Kremlin. President Biden said he was banning all imports of oil and natural gas from Russia, effective immediately, and the E.U. unveiled a separate plan to cut imports of Russian natural gas by approximately two-thirds this year.

The Russian president described the sanctions as “illegitimate.”

“We, together with our partners who do not recognize these actions, will certainly find solutions to all the problems that they are trying to create for us,” Putin said of the United States.

Putin also noted that gasoline prices in the United States have continued their rapid increase. Russia is the world’s third-largest producer of oil, and other countries are so reliant on its exports that Western leaders initially ruled out targeting its oil and natural gas exports. Putin argued that Russia was not at fault for any of the higher fuel prices facing millions of consumers worldwide.

“They are trying to blame us for the results of their own mistakes,” he exclaimed. “We have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

The U.S. intelligence community says that Ukraine is not manufacturing biological weapons, despite Russian claims that the country operates bioweapons laboratories within its borders, the top U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.

“We do not believe that Ukraine is pursuing biological or nuclear weapons,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee during an annual hearing on global threats.

Haines said that Russia’s recent claims to the contrary were consistent with long-running “propaganda” campaigns. The White House warned Wednesday that Russia might use the false claim that Ukraine was manufacturing biological or chemical weapons as a pretext for Russia using them.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a tweet, “It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.”

Haines said that Ukraine operated about a dozen biological research labs and that they were used for biodefense and public health purposes, such as defending against viruses and pandemics. Haines said that the United States has provided some assistance to those labs for “biosafety” purposes and emphasized that the Ukrainian programs weren’t offensive in nature.

U.S. officials have repeatedly called out Russia for attempting to create false pretexts for taking military action, including so-called false-flag operations.

CIA Director William J. Burns told senators he was “convinced” that the declassification and disclosures of intelligence had played a role in changing Russia’s behavior in the Ukraine war.

“I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians,” Burns said, reflecting on his long diplomatic career, which included a tour as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

The intelligence disclosures have “had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and calculations,” Burns said. He added, “This is one information war that I think Russia is losing.”

Goldman Sachs plans to phase out its Russian business in response to sanctions, joining a global embargo that has isolated the country’s economy in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

The company said it would help clients find ways to manage or close out their investments while drawing down its broader business footprint there.

“Goldman Sachs is winding down its business in Russia in compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements,” a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman said in an email. “We are focused on supporting our clients across the globe in managing or closing out preexisting obligations in the market and ensuring the well-being of our people.”

It is the first major Wall Street bank to firmly cut ties with Russia amid a global flight of businesses that has led fast-food companies, industrial interests, oil companies and others to abandon decades-long investments. Visa and Mastercard have already cut ties.

Goldman Sachs and its peers have found it harder to quickly extricate themselves, however, as they are tied to Russia by sprawling wealth-management operations. They oversee global investments on behalf of clients, which include pension funds, hedge funds, wealthy individuals and a wide range of investors looking to profit from so-called “emerging markets.” (Russia is no longer being described as an emerging market) They are now involved in the complicated work of extracting their clients’ money from a country that some believe is hurtling toward default, making it hard to predict when or how they will be able to cut ties.

Citigroup said late Wednesday that it’s operating its consumer banking business in Russia “on a more limited basis given current circumstances and obligations,” according to a statement it relayed to the financial news site MarketWatch.

Separately, a Deutsche Bank executive told CNBC on Thursday that it’s not “practical” to close its Russian business. “We’re there to support our clients. And so, for practical purposes, [leaving Russia immediately] isn’t an option that’s available to us. Nor would it be the right thing to do in terms of managing those client relationships and helping them manage their situation,” according to chief financial officer James von Moltke.

Goldman Sachs did not provide a date by which it will fully cut ties with Russia.

Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon called the events in Ukraine “tragic” while praising the “bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian people” in a statement the company tweeted. He added that the company would continue to support its colleagues and contribute to nonprofits engaged in humanitarian aid there.

A little less than 2 million people remain in Kyiv after about half of its residents fled Ukraine’s capital city, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a live broadcast.

As they flee, he said, the city has become a fortress.

“The city is not buildings. It is, first of all, people,” he said in a live broadcast aired on several Ukrainian channels, as reported by Ukrainian news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda. “They won’t give up the mission, and the enemy won’t get through.”

The defiant remarks come as Russian forces continued their efforts to bombard and encircle Ukraine’s two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv. Elsewhere, officials in the city of Mariupol have also said the southern port is under renewed bombardment.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said evacuation efforts had resumed to get civilians out of besieged areas. In a Thursday video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 60,000 people had been evacuated the country’s battle zones the previous day, up from a previous estimate of about 35,000 people.

One image shows a bombed-out hangar at a Ukrainian air base where a massive cargo airplane was destroyed. In the next photo a bridge connecting Ukraine to Belarus lies in pieces. The next: a trail of smoke along the Russian-Ukrainian border that was the probable site of a missile launch attack.

These high-definition satellite images from the Russian invasion of Ukraine were not snapped in secret by the CIA or the National Reconnaissance Office. Neither are they classified. Rather, the images come from a private company known as Planet, one of several companies with a fleet of satellites that act as eyes in the sky — or, in this case, space. The images are public, posted on the Internet and released to the media in what constitutes as real-time documentation of the war from fleets of highly capable satellites swarming around the Earth in space.

The images are so revealing and, in a time of war, valuable, that Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister of Ukraine, sent a plea last week to several satellite companies urging them to share their imagery with Ukrainian military.

As the Russian invasion enters its third week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he was grateful for those who have fought to defend the people of Ukraine — and he remained defiant in noting that they will never be “slaves” to Russia or its president, Vladimir Putin.

In a video posted to his Telegram account, Zelensky, still reeling from a Russian attack Wednesday on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, thanked the people of Ukraine who “persevered” and fought back against the invading forces that have bombarded the country. After he announced a law allowing Ukraine to seize any property owned by Russia or Russian res