Russia-Ukraine live updates: Nearly 10 million have fled homes; Russian forces in Mariupol, hindering rescues

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Traumatized residents from Mariupol, arriving in a nonstop stream of cars at a humanitarian aid station, described urban fighting and devastation as Ukrainian forces appeared to lose their grip on parts of the battered southern port city.

Those arriving at a way station farther north on Friday and Saturday painted a picture of a city that is no longer fully controlled by Ukrainian forces, with Russian tanks spotted in the streets.

Oksana, 37, who left with her three sons, her sister, brother-in-law and two nieces, said Russian forces had entered the house they were sheltering in to check their documents, parking tanks outside.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor’s office, confirmed that Russian tanks were in the city. “It’s difficult to say who is controlling what,” he said. “Mariupol is a battlefield. But we are still defending the city, and we aren’t giving up.”

He said one front line was now downtown, near a theater that was bombed by Russian forces Wednesday. The theater was used to shelter hundreds of civilians, and an unknown number remained trapped under rubble Saturday as fighting raged, officials said.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Street fighting between invading Russian soldiers and Ukrainian forces is hindering search-and-rescue efforts for the estimated hundreds of civilians who were taking shelter in Mariupol’s Drama Theater when Russia bombed it Wednesday, Ukrainian officials say.

At least 130 civilians were able to climb out of the rubble after the attack, but the fate of the remainder is unknown, according to Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor.

Rescue work is going “very slowly” due to fighting in the city center, Andryushchenko told The Washington Post on Friday. “How many people are beneath the rubble, we don’t know.”

“Mariupol is a battlefield,” he added. “But we are still defending the city, and we aren’t giving up,”

The underground bomb shelter in Mariupol’s theater had become known as a relative safe haven for increasingly desperate residents, who have been cut off from heat, water, food and electricity for weeks as Russian forces encircle the southern port city. Mariupol stands in the way of connecting Russian-held Crimea with eastern Ukraine.

Maryna Selkova, 41, said the house in which she was sheltering, near the theater and university in the city center, was already on the front line on Wednesday evening. She tried to flee several times but could not because of the fierce fighting.

“It was so scary to come out. Everything was exploding,” she said. “We got back into the basement and tried again later.”

“Our house was shaking,” she said, her 11-year-old son clinging to her neck.

They finally escaped on Thursday morning. “The theater was already bombed when we left,” she said. “We understood then we couldn’t hide anywhere.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Saturday that its forces used a Kinzhal hypersonic missile to destroy an underground storage facility in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin, who has invested heavily in rebuilding and equipping Russia’s military during his time in power, has boasted in the past that Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles puts it ahead of the world in military advances.

But Moscow’s problems on the ground in more than three weeks of its war against Ukraine have severely dented Russia’s military reputation.

Moscow released video of the attack near the village of Deliatyn, claiming the facility was an underground arms depot. The claim that a Kinzhal missile was used could not be verified independently.

A Ukrainian air force official confirmed to a local news outlet Saturday that a Russian missile targeted a military warehouse in the Deliatyn area in western Ukraine, but he said it was not yet clear whether the missile was a Kinzhal, the Associated Press reported.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov did not elaborate on why the military would use a Kinzhal missile for the target.

Military analyst Rob Lee of the War Studies Department at King’s College London said the missile may have been used to test its capacity in a war situation, or because it had better penetrating capacities than other missiles. He said it might also indicate that Russia is running low on other missiles suitable for such tasks.

Russian officials have made clear that a major priority is to destroy Ukraine’s ammunition supplies, as advanced antitank weapons and other equipment from NATO members and other nations have helped Kyiv to resist Russia’s advance for more than three weeks.

But Russia’s announcement that it used the Kinzhal missile also signals a determination to defeat Ukraine at any cost, underscoring the capacity of Russia to outgun its smaller, poorer neighbor.

Putin has boasted that Russia’s hypersonic missiles cannot be intercepted and are “absolutely invulnerable to any missile defense system.” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in January that the first regiment of Russia’s strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles had been fully rearmed with Avangard hypersonic warheads. The Tass state news agency reported last month that a second regiment would be armed with Avangard warheads by the end of the year.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Traumatized residents from Mariupol, Ukraine, arrived in a nonstop stream of cars at a humanitarian aid station Friday, describing urban fighting and devastation as Ukrainian forces appeared to lose their grip on parts of the battered city.

They arrived in a near-constant convoy at the city of Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles to the northwest, their vehicles marked with white flags and signs reading “children” in hopes they would be spared from attack.

Their accounts provide a glimpse of the situation in a city that has been cut off from communications for more than two weeks.

Evacuees spoke of weeks spent trapped in their basements with little to eat and no electricity or water. They painted a picture of a city that is no longer fully controlled by Ukrainian forces, with Russian tanks spotted in the streets.

LONDON — Former British prime minister Gordon Brown views Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “pariah” and says he is backing calls to establish an international tribunal to hold Putin to account for his invasion of Ukraine.

In an article published Friday in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, Brown said that, alongside 140 lawyers and former world leaders, he is supporting efforts to “issue a declaration calling for a special international war crimes tribunal to be set up to arrest Putin and bring him to trial.” He added: “Such a tribunal would show we are serious.”

Brown said more than 40 nations have already referred Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has begun an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. His petition is also supported by former leaders of Ecuador, Hungary, Mali and Australia, along with judges and British writer Stephen Fry.

Brown, who followed Tony Blair as British prime minister in 2007, recalled visiting Putin at the Kremlin in 2006, when he was finance minister in Blair’s government. Putin struck him as “cold and calculating,” Brown wrote.

“My experience of the man and his methods left me in no doubt that he would continue this ruthless pattern of threatening people and countries,” Brown said, citing Russian events in Georgia, Crimea and Syria. Putin’s acts in Ukraine, which prompted President Biden to describe him as a “war criminal,” making headlines and angering Moscow, were unsurprising, Brown added.

What are war crimes — and could Russia be committing them in Ukraine?

“He must get the message that the long arm of international law is coming for him,” Brown said.

He noted that during World War II, a group of governments-in-exile in London declared that Adolf Hitler should be punished for war crimes, a stand that he said eventually led to the Nuremberg trials. The trials of Nazi leaders were held in the German city of Nuremberg starting in 1945.

“I believe we should follow suit, by indicting President Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” Brown said. “At Nuremberg we held the Nazi war criminals to account. Eight decades on, we must ensure there will be a day of reckoning for Putin.”

BERLIN — Squat white container homes line the runways of the former Tempelhof Airport, used 75 years ago for the airlift that sustained West Berlin through a Soviet blockade.

Now it’s sustaining Lena, 48, who fled her home outside Kyiv with hopes of reaching Tel Aviv; her 14-year-old son clutched a paper printout with directions to a local health and social affairs office said to be helping with plane tickets.

Different plans preoccupied 29-year-old Vika, who expected to remain in Berlin, find work and send her son to kindergarten. A third mother had her sights set on Stockholm. “After war, this is very good,” said Lena, a dressmaker. “We have a bed, bathroom and good food. But it’s not forever.”

These mothers and many like them have refuge from Russia’s assault on Ukraine thanks to a vast humanitarian response facilitated by rail companies, international organizations and everyday citizens. But their aspirations depend also on Western governments, whose initial reaction, critics say, was delayed and undermined by wishful thinking.

As the scale of the crisis became clear, European leaders forged political consensus absent from prior humanitarian disasters, setting aside procedures still being used to block other asylum seekers in a discrepancy shaped by race, geography and geopolitics.

Now, the continent is under pressure to manage the arrivals under the terms of its new playbook. And formidable questions loom — about dispersing the refugees equitably across the West, about finding the wherewithal to set them up with meaningful lives and about sustaining the public support necessary for social cohesion.

More than 100 strollers were placed outside Lviv’s city hall Friday to commemorate the number of children killed so far during the Russian invasion, Reuters reported.

The placement of the strollers in the center of the city was part of a campaign dubbed the “Price of War” that was organized by local activists as a reminder that the death toll exacted by the Russian invasion does not just include combatants but also civilians young and old.

The United Nations has confirmed the deaths of 816 civilians, including 59 children, while warning that the real tolls are far higher.