Russia-Ukraine live updates: Odessa braces for Russian assault as humanitarian conditions deteriorate

Video shows Russian police scrolling through people’s phones in Moscow near Lubyanka Square on Sunday. Other video separately shows police making arrests. One of the women being escorted away by police held a sign that said “Peace.” According to the independent human rights organization OVD-Info, more than 4,500 protesters were arrested Sunday at antiwar demonstrations across Russia.

The footage was posted by Russian journalist Anna Vasilyeva. She wrote on Telegram that the police stopped people and asked to see what they had on their phones. She said when she asked why the police checked her press card and didn’t answer her.

Russia announced six new evacuation routes — allowing Ukrainians to flee the conflict by heading to Russia or Belarus. The Ukrainian government decried the suggestion, demanding safe routes to allow Ukrainians to flee to Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

This news is the latest example of Russia’s faulty assumptions about Ukraine and expectations of an easy victory. As Russian troops entered the country just two weeks ago, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations declared, “the people of Ukraine will be happy when they are liberated from the regime that occupied them.”

To justify the invasion and previous occupation of the Donbas region, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly argued that Ukrainians in the eastern parts of the country are ethnic Russians living under Ukrainian occupation.

“People who identify as Russians and want to preserve their identity, language and culture are getting the signal that they are not wanted in Ukraine,” Putin said in a recent address to Russian citizens. Russians seem to believe him, as does Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to former president Donald Trump, who wrote about “legitimate ethnic problems” in Ukraine.

Research in political psychology shows that Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population does not require rescue by Russia — or even want it. Here’s what we know.

IRPIN, Ukraine — On Monday morning, Oksana Shumskaya didn’t know what awaited her on the other side of the destroyed bridge. Was it death, as it was for the four residents of this city killed by a Russian mortar shell the day before? Or was it escape, which she desperately wanted?

She suffered from diabetes, hypertension and a heart ailment. Her severe arthritis meant she couldn’t walk up steps to take a train, or she would have left days ago. She, her daughter and their cat, Barsik, had not left their apartment in nine days. But now Russian forces were inside their city and the shelling was getting close to home.

It was time to flee.

“We took only the cat and my medicines,” said Shumskaya, 65, breathing heavily.

Her daughter, Julia, carried a small wooden stool for her mother to rest on.

They joined hundreds of panicked residents of this city on the northern outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, who fled across a damaged bridge on Monday, seeking to escape the advancing Russians.

As Russian and Ukrainian forces traded ukrainian shells, many of those fleeing were elderly people, some too frail to walk on their own. Others were in wheelchairs or on crutches. They struggled to cross over narrow wooden planks placed over the Irpin River, where the bridge had been destroyed by Ukrainian forces to hamper a possible Russian move toward the capital.

At least one elderly woman was pushed in a wheelbarrow. Others were carried on the backs of sons or grandsons, Ukrainian territorial defense unit volunteers, even generous strangers.

TALLINN, Estonia — For years, Europe’s Baltic states sounded the alarm about the looming threat from Russia and urged NATO to strengthen its eastern defenses.

On Monday, Lithuania’s leader issued another grim warning: Russian President Vladimir Putin may “not stop” in Ukraine.

“Deterrence is no longer enough, and we need more defense,” President Gitanas Nauseda said ahead of talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

“Because otherwise, it will be too late here, Mr. Secretary,” he said. “Putin will not stop in Ukraine; he will not stop.”

Blinken was in the Baltic states Monday as part of a European tour to shore up support among Western allies as Russia’s war in Ukraine intensifies. He reassured Latvia and Lithuania, both of which are NATO members, of continued support and said that some 400 additional U.S. troops would soon be arriving in Lithuania.

The Baltic states, which include Estonia, have “formed a democratic wall that now stands against the tide of autocracy” that Russia is helping create in Europe, Blinken said from the Latvian capital, Riga.

“Latvians who lived through decades of Soviet occupation understand deeply how wrong this is, and how the world must defend Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign, democratic country, free to choose its own future,” he said. “Latvia has done just that.”

As the Kremlin has escalated its shelling of civilian areas across Ukraine, schools, hospitals and orphanages have come under attack, imperiling an increasing number of children who have been caught in the crosshairs of Russian missiles while fleeing the war zone or seeking cover.

In 12 days of fighting, at least 27 children have been killed and 42 wounded, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council on Monday. Accurate casualty counts are virtually impossible to ascertain because of the rapidly changing situation on the ground, and the United Nations has said it believes that the real figures are “considerably higher” than what the body has reported.

Reporting from the front lines has revealed harrowing scenes of widespread suffering. Russell, who had recently returned from a refugee camp in Romania, recounted stories of families ripped apart, children pulled from school and left without their favorite toys, sheltering through nights of shelling and gunfire.

“So many children have been deeply traumatized,” Russell said.

As fighting continues in densely populated areas, she said, “we expect child casualties to increase.”

Alexandar Markushin, the mayor of a town on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, said Sunday that he witnessed a Russian mortar blast kill two children and two adults.

“I want to emphasize these were peaceful residents,” he said in a video.

Footage of the attack was verified by The Washington Post, and such images “must shock the conscience of the world,” Russell said.

She said that at least half of the 1.7 million people who have fled Ukraine are children and called for an immediate cease-fire to allow for further evacuations.

“This brutality must come to an end. Children in Ukraine need help and protection,” Russell said. “They need hope for the future. But above all, children in Ukraine need peace.”

Russian forces maintain several fronts in Ukraine, including their efforts to encircle the capital, Kyiv, with troops coming from the north, east and west. Meanwhile, Kharkiv, the second-largest city in the country, continues to be attacked from the air and ground.

In the southern fronts, assaults have increased around Mariupol, while part of the focus appear to be moving to the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian gymnast Illia Kovtun shook the hand of the silver medalist he’d just beaten as the two athletes stood on the podium Saturday to accept their medals. He did not extend the same courtesy to the bronze medalist on his left.

Ivan Kuliak, a 20-year-old Russian gymnast, was wearing a white “Z” on his chest. While the letter doesn’t exist in the Russian alphabet, it’s quickly emerging as a way for Russians, following “a propaganda campaign,” to show support for invading Ukraine and rally around a new nationalism, an expert said.

The International Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s global governing body, said it will request a disciplinary investigation into what it called “shocking behaviour” from Kuliak. Regardless, the Taishan World Cup Artistic Gymnastics in Doha, Qatar, was one of the last international events in which Kuliak can compete. Starting Monday, all Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from participating in its competitions, the federation announced Friday.

Oil and gold prices spiked Monday amid fears that the United States and its European allies are weighing whether to ban imports of Russian crude.

Russia and Ukraine returned to the negotiating table, which ended with no progress other than talks on cease-fires and evacuations.

The war entered its 12th day while Russian forces continue to bombard Ukrainian cities, deepening the humanitarian crisis there. International shipping firms are already shying away from Russian crude even in the absence of firm sanctions on the energy industry. And the White House said Friday that it is weighing a ban on imports of Russian oil, which accounts for about 10 percent of global supply.

The possibility of further disruption to energy markets and broader uncertainty surrounding the conflict has spurred a global stock market sell-off, driving the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 797 points, or 2.4 percent, Monday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 482 points, or 3.6 percent, while the broader S&P 500 lost 128 points, or 2.9 percent.