Russia-Ukraine live updates: Humanitarian costs mount as Russia pushes south; radiation levels stable after nuclear plant fire

Russia’s last independent news and radio stations folded this week as journalists and other newsroom staffers left their positions to flee their country as the war against Ukraine intensifies.

TV Rain suspended its coverage Thursday, its director general, Natalya Sindeeva, announced in a statement on the station’s website and on the air.

“We need strength to exhale and understand how to work further,” she said. “We really hope that we will return to the air and continue to work.”

Russia blocked access to the station and declared it and fellow news station Radio Echo as foreign agents for using “war” and “invasion” — terms banned by the Kremlin — in their coverage of the attack on Ukraine, the New Yorker reported.

The blocking of TV Rain portended danger for its editor in chief, Tikhon Dzyadko, who left Russia with his family as some staffers received threats, according to Current Time TV.

Radio Echo, also known as Echo of Moscow, shut down Thursday based on the decision of its board of directors, a day after Russia pushed broadcasting barriers against TV Rain’s website and social accounts, CNN reported.

The radio station found itself facing immense scrutiny from Russia’s prosecutor general over its coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NBC News reported.

The last seconds of TV Rain’s broadcast, after one of its journalists walked off reportedly saying “No war,” was of a black-and-white broadcast of “Swan Lake.” The choice was a nod to state television playing the performance in 1991 when the Soviet Union was on the edge of collapsing, according to NBC News.

Correction: A previous version of this report said TV Rain aired “Swan Lake” in 1991. It was the Soviet state television that broadcast the show in 1991. This version has been corrected.

After Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and surrounding area early Friday, the mayor of the nearby city of Enerhodar said in a video address that the plant — part of which had earlier been on fire — was operational and running as usual, in a video address Ukraine’s national atomic energy company said may have been made under duress.

Following the Russian capture of the town, a visibly grimacing Mayor Dmytro Orlov put out an awkward video statement on Telegram calling on Ukrainians not to provoke Russian troops and saying that no shots had been fired at civilians. He also suggested, improbably, that Russian troops had fired blanks.

“There were no shots fired at the civilian population, if they were fired, then these were blanks. There were no shots at residential areas. There were no victims or casualties among the unarmed population,” Orlov said, appearing to read from a piece of paper while being hesitant to look at the camera. “We call the population not to provoke the troops of the Russian armed forces.”

The mayor also said the city of Enerhodar, about 342 miles southeast of Kyiv, did not currently have any heating, but he added that his team was working to return things to normal.

Ukraine’s national atomic energy company Energoatom said in a post on its official Telegram account that Orlov’s statement appeared to have been made under duress. “There is a high probability that the recent speech of the mayor of Enerhodar was recorded under the barrel of a machine gun,” the post reads.

Energoatom said similar videos may appear from other officials “detained by the occupiers,” and urged caution and vigilance.

The Zaporizhzhia facility is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Earlier Friday, a building at the complex was on fire for around four hours before it was extinguished at 6:20 a.m. local time, Ukrainian authorities said.

ON THE UKRAINE-MOLDOVA BORDER — Her body was shaking as she crossed the border, a mix of cold and fear and everything she was running from. She had scarcely slept in six days. She hadn’t eaten in two. But now finally, amid the snow and chaos of volunteers, Ira Ivanitskaia and her son were safe.

She had spent the previous seven days focused on escaping the war, on getting away from the rockets she’d heard howling at night. But the cost of the conflict was about to become apparent in new ways.

“A dividing line between my old life and new,” Ira, 46, would later call it. On the new side, all she had were muddy duffel bags of clothes, a few tools she needed as a hairdresser, and two unfamiliar men flagging her down.

The volunteer van drivers.

Ira started to sob.

MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — The southern Ukrainian city of Kherson faces a “global catastrophe” if a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to be evacuated, and food and medicines to be delivered, is not opened in the nearest future, the secretary of the city council said.

“In Kherson, we are running out of food — literally, we can still last for maybe three, four days,” Galina Luhova said by telephone from Kherson. “We’re running out of medicines, we’re out of baby food, we are running out of diapers, and we are running out of first aid in hospitals.”

Kherson was among the first cities Russian troops attacked as they swept into Ukraine last week, and local eyewitnesses say that it is the first major city to fall to Kremlin forces. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has not confirmed that it is controlled by Moscow, however.

But according to Luhova, Russian equipment and soldiers are “absolutely everywhere,” and Ukrainian forces are “currently not in the city.” Ukrainian city officials continue to carry out their duties, however, and the Ukrainian flag still flies over city hall.

What’s more, she said, Moscow’s forces encircle Kherson, as the fighting continues to rage in southern Ukraine, making it impossible for the city of 320,000 people to receive needed supplies and let civilians escape to safer areas.

The fighting has left large portions of Kherson without electricity and running water. The number of people killed in the fighting is hard to determine, she said, but the figures could be “in the dozens, maybe hundreds,” and their corpses are in “the city’s streets, parks and squares.”

Now that the fighting has stopped, it’s become possible to open some stores and points of distribution. Queues stretched “hundreds of meters,” she said.

“People tried to take everything that there is — flour, sugar, eggs — and there’s a very tense situation with bread in those areas that were shelled,” she said.

Ukrainian and Russian negotiators said Thursday that they had reached a tentative agreement to introduce temporary cease-fires in those areas that were facing a crisis, allowing humanitarian corridors to be opened.

This, Luhova says, is the “most important thing right now” that can avert a humanitarian disaster. “It will save the city from a global catastrophe,” she said.

“People are in a panic, people are tense, people are frightened just to the core of their souls,” she said. “Their eyes show insane fear at what is happening now.”

Human Rights Watch has alleged that Russian troops fired cluster munitions into at least three residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv on Monday, in a possible war crime, killing more than three civilians. Ukraine’s second-largest city has seen some of the most intense clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces since the start of the invasion more than a week ago.

The agency said in a Friday report that it documented the use of cluster munitions based on two witness interviews and the analysis of 40 videos and images. Some of these sources show the “explosion signatures and rocket remnants” consistent with the delivery of cluster munitions from 9M55K Smerch rockets, it added.

Due to the indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions — they scatter over a wide area small bomblets that could explode even after the fighting is over, and threaten civilian safety — Human Rights Watch claimed that Russia may have committed a war crime by using them.

“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch, said. “If these deadly acts were carried out either intentionally or recklessly, they would be war crimes.”

More than 100 countries are party to a 2010 international treaty banning cluster weapons, but neither Russia nor Ukraine has joined. Both countries possess such weapons.

Russian forces seized a massive Ukrainian nuclear power plant on Friday after its shelling had earlier set the complex on fire, raising fears across the continent of a serious nuclear accident.

Ukraine’s nuclear inspectorate said that technicians in the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, were still at work and local authorities confirmed that the fire had been extinguished.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog soon said the blaze had not affected “essential” equipment and that Ukraine’s regulator reported no change in surrounding radiation levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the Energy Department had also seen no elevated radiation readings.

“The plant’s reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down,” Granholm said.

But the blaze still sparked international alarm and underscored the perils of a war fought around nuclear sites. Ukrainian officials immediately raised the possibility of another disaster such as the deadly 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. The U.N.'s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, had called an emergency meeting Wednesday as fighting closed in on the site in Enerhodar.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday said the “only way” to end the crisis in Ukraine is for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be assassinated by those in his own country.

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Graham tweeted. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.”

Graham added that if Russians do not want to live in darkness and be isolated from the rest of the world, then “you need to step up to the plate.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were quick to condemn Graham’s comments. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said, “This is an exceptionally bad idea.” Sanctions and boycotts of Russian oil and gas are solutions, along with military aid for the Ukrainians, Cruz said.

“But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state,” he added.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called Graham’s remarks “dangerous” and “unhinged.”

“We need leaders with calm minds & steady wisdom,” she wrote. “Not blood thirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said calls for Putin’s assassination from U.S. politicians “aren’t helpful.”

“I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWlll,” Omar tweeted. “As the world pays attention to how the US and it’s leaders are responding, Lindsey’s remarks and remarks made by some House members aren’t helpful.”

Graham, a retired Air Force officer, made the same call for Russians to assassinate Putin during a Thursday appearance on “Hannity” on Fox News. He also introduced legislation this week calling for Putin to be investigated for war crimes.

The Russian military will not consider foreigners fighting against it in Ukraine as legal combatants and grant them prisoner-of-war status should they be captured on the battlefield, according to Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman.