Russia-Ukraine live updates: Major blast lights Kyiv sky as bloody battles rage across Ukraine

SYDNEY — Australian Federal Police are investigating a suspicious package delivered to the Russian Embassy in Canberra on Thursday. Images taken by bystanders and local media showed Australian authorities in hazmat suits entering a cordoned-off area in front of the embassy, located along a main avenue in the capital.

Police said they had looked at two packages, one of which they determined not to be suspicious, while the other required further analysis. Ilya Roshchenkov, a press secretary at the embassy, told The Washington Post that the package contained “suspicious powder” but declined to comment further.

Australia has joined the United States and other nations in imposing sanctions on Russia and earlier this week said it would send $50 million worth of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine.

A large explosion lit up the night sky in Ukraine’s capital in the early hours of Thursday, local time, according to video footage verified by The Washington Post.

The blast, which was captured by a camera in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods, took place in a region to the west of Kyiv and appeared to have struck an area far from the city center.

Between late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, air raid sirens have sounded at least six times, urging residents to take shelter, according to messages in the official municipal government Telegram channel.

Russian forces remain stalled on the outskirts of the capital. Unable to substantially push through Kyiv’s defense in the north, they have moved westward to further encircle the city. But a senior U.S. defense official warned that these troops also have accelerated the pace of missile and artillery attacks targeting the capital.

As the Biden administration and its allies step up the enforcement of sanctions on Russian oligarchs to put pressure on those close to the Kremlin, a handful of luxury yachts owned by Russian billionaires have reportedly reached the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

According to shipping tracking data, two pleasure crafts owned by Oleg Deripaska and Alexander Abramov entered the waters near Malé, the capital of the Maldives, on Wednesday. Three more yachts owned by Russian magnates were also seen sailing in the island nation’s waters, Reuters reported, including one belonging to Vladimir Potanin, a Russian nickel tycoon whose net worth is over $25 billion.

Deripaska, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he urged negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in his Telegram channel.

Several other Russian oligarchs have also put out calls to Putin in recent days. Billionaire Evgeny Lebedev, for one, made a plea to Putin in the Evening Standard, a British newspaper he owns, asking that Russian troops stop “killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters.”

New analysis of satellite imagery shows the extent of the devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with bridges and roads damaged and homes destroyed in towns and cities across the country, including on the western reaches of the capital, Kyiv.

“The invasion’s impact on Ukrainians was clearly evident with visual examples of damaged and destroyed homes, residential areas, buildings and factories,” according to the U.S. firm Maxar Technologies, which on Wednesday published a review of additional photos captured Monday, local time.

In a residential area of Bucha, a city in Kyiv oblast, satellite photos show blown-up homes and military vehicles.

In Chernihiv, a strategic northern city on a highway that links the Russian border and Kyiv, and where a fierce battle has taken place in recent days, the images show damaged roads, bridges and homes. Some factories appear to have been leveled.

Satellite images show 40-mile convoy of Russian forces bearing down on Kyiv

Previous images captured the same day showed that a massive convoy of Russian ground forces was making its way closer to Kyiv, drawing within 20 miles of the center of the capital. The convoy has made limited headway since Monday, Western defense officials said, stalled by attacks by the Ukrainian military, low morale among Russian troops and botched planning.

KYIV, Ukraine — There were young parents with their toddler children in strollers. There were middle-aged women helping their elderly mothers up the steps. And there were sons and daughters desperate to reach their parents — before the Russian military arrived.

Many simply wanted their children never to know or feel the pain of war.

As explosions rattled the capital, thousands of Ukrainians headed to Kyiv’s central station on Wednesday in the hope of catching an “evacuation train.” Many had waited until the seventh day of the war to flee for a variety of reasons. Some had tried — and failed — to convince elderly relatives to leave. Others had prayed that international sanctions or diplomacy would halt the Russian onslaught.

By Wednesday, though, any shred of hope had vanished as Russia intensified its attacks on several Ukrainian cities. All around this besieged capital, Ukrainians felt a sense that the noose was tightening.

“We were waiting for the situation to stabilize, but it’s not going to happen,” said Serhiy Ralchenko, 35, who was inside the station with his infant son Danylo in a stroller. “There is no more time to wait.”