Russia-Ukraine live updates: Red Cross heads toward Mariupol for evacuations; peace talks resume online

Several U.S. military units that have been deployed to Europe amid Russian aggression and its invasion of Ukraine will remain “for a while longer,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday.

The 82nd Airborne Division has deployed soldiers to Poland, and the Harry S. Truman carrier strike group is in the Mediterranean. Both will stay until Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin decides otherwise, Kirby said.

“Everybody that the secretary has ordered in is going to stay in,” Kirby said, adding that the Pentagon has not ruled out rotating those units at some point. “We don’t know how long this war in Ukraine is going to last.”

Some 80,000 U.S. troops are in Europe on either rotational or permanent assignments.

Videos published Friday and verified by The Washington Post show the moment of an attack on a fuel depot in Belgorod, Russia, and its aftermath.

Security video recorded north of the depot in an industrial yard captures a barrage of missiles and a low flying helicopter circling above. Moments after the first attack, missiles from the direction of a second helicopter hit the facility, sparking a large explosion.

A video taken by witnesses in a residential area around three miles west of the fuel depot shows two helicopters flying westward over residential areas, away from an orange glow reflected in the sky. Belgorod is about 25 miles north of Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Eyewitness video recorded later from an apartment within sight of the fuel tanks shows the aftermath of the strikes. Posted to Telegram, the recording captures a fire burning intensely and emitting a plume of thick, black smoke.

Col. Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said in a news conference Friday that he would neither confirm nor deny Russian claims of Ukrainian involvement in the strike.

Ukraine resumed peace talks with Russia online on Friday, representatives of both sides said, after tentative progress in discussions in Istanbul on Tuesday.

Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said on his Telegram channel that the talks resumed via video conference, Bloomberg News reported. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, confirmed that the discussions are continuing, the agency said.

In India, visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country is preparing a response to Ukraine’s proposals on security guarantees and ending the war. Russia is ready to discuss Kyiv’s proposals to maintain a nonnuclear, neutral status, he told reporters in New Delhi. He added that Ukraine has shown “more understanding” of the situation in Russian-annexed Crimea and in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, where pro-Moscow separatists have declared independent “republics.”

David Arakhamia, a senior Ukrainian diplomat participating in the talks, said Thursday that Ukraine stressed the need for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a venue not in Belarus or Russia. But Russian officials declined, saying the sides should first work out a more coherent draft agreement, he said. Ukrainian officials have said any peace deal should be signed by the two leaders.

The two sides have been exploring ways for Ukraine to become a neutral country as part of a broader peace deal. Ukrainian officials have demanded a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian forces to the borders that existed on Feb. 23 — a day before Russia launched its invasion, Arakhamia said.

The negotiations have been met with skepticism by Ukrainian and Western officials. Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who visited Washington, D.C., this week as part of a parliamentary delegation, repeatedly said Putin was using the talks as a smokescreen to buy time for his forces in Ukraine to regroup.

“It is difficult to negotiate with someone when the gun is being [pointed] at your head,” she said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. In remarks to reporters published by CNN on Wednesday, she said Putin was “sending false, lying messages” to the world.

PARIS — UNESCO warned Friday of a grave risk to Ukraine’s world heritage, saying dozens of culturally significant sites have already been damaged in the Russian invasion.

“Humanity’s heritage is at risk” in Ukraine, UNESCO official Ernesto Ottone said at a news conference in Paris.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said it has no knowledge of damage to Ukraine’s seven official world heritage sites, which include the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and Lviv’s historic center.

But the organization said at least 53 other culturally significant sites have been damaged or destroyed since Feb. 24. Most of the damage has been reported from areas in and around Kharkiv and Donetsk, although U.N. officials also suspect severe destruction in the city of Chernihiv.

More than two dozen religious sites are confirmed to have been damaged or destroyed, along with several monuments, museums and other buildings, according to UNESCO.

U.N. officials are conducting daily assessments of additional damage, and “the list is growing,” Ottone said.

In a letter two weeks ago, UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay urged Russia to respect its obligations under international law and to “ensure the protection of all cultural assets in Ukraine.”

The deliberate targeting of cultural sites can constitute a war crime.

Following similar action by Germany, Latvia’s Parliament voted Thursday to ban public displays of the letter “Z,” instituting fines of up to $388 for individuals and $3,214 for companies displaying the letter that has become associated with support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As we condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, we must send a strong signal that the symbols glorifying Russian military aggression, such as the letters ‘Z’ or ‘V,’ or other symbols used for this goal, have no place in public events,” Artuss Kaimins, chairman of the Latvian Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, said in a statement posted to the parliamentary website.

The ban was passed as part of amendments to Latvia’s “Law on the Safety of Public Entertainment and Festivity Events.”

The amendments included exemptions for cases in which these symbols were being displayed for reasons other than showing support for Russia’s military campaign.

The former Soviet republic — now a member of the European Union and NATO — also added amendments outlawing the granting of permits for events planned within 200 meters (656 feet) of monuments celebrating or commemorating the Soviet armed forces. In addition, the law prohibits public events glorifying Nazis or the Soviets, including those commemorating birthdays, individuals or military battles and occupations, although exemptions are in place for educational purposes.

The law consequently now bans an annual march in Latvia on May 9 celebrating Russia’s victory in World War II.

The law already banned the display of Nazi and Soviet symbols at public events.

Germany’s Interior Ministry earlier this week said that displaying the letter “Z,” which has been painted on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, could be grounds for prosecution.

The governor of Luhansk said Friday that since Moscow’s invasion five weeks ago, Russian forces have shelled every hospital and every city and town in his embattled eastern Ukrainian province, which has already been embroiled in a war between Ukraine and Russian-backed insurgents since 2014.

Dressed in military fatigues and speaking via video from Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai said the “situation is stable but difficult” and urged residents remaining in the province to heed warnings and evacuate.

“Putin is running this war not against the Ukrainian armed forces, but against the Ukrainian people,” he said during a news conference set up by the nongovernmental Ukraine Media Center. “He hates us. He wants to destroy us completely. So please don’t waste time. Please help out with the evacuation. We will do all that we can.”

About 18,000 residents have officially evacuated so far, Haidai said, although more have left without registering their escape.

But the governor said humanitarian corridors, supposedly agreed to by Russia to allow safe passage for civilians leaving areas under attack, have also remained dangerous.

“There are no such corridors” in reality, he said. The Russians “continue shelling the territory, shelling passes on the roads.”

Haidai said the Russians are currently shelling the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne the hardest, destroying neighborhoods and fundamental infrastructure with weapons ranging from mortars to Grad multiple-launch rocket systems.

The Russians “cannot move forward, they cannot break our defenses, so they shell all around,” he said.

Civilian bodies “are just lying there in the streets,” he said, as they cannot be collected, counted and laid to rest because the shelling makes it too dangerous to retrieve them.

In 2014, Russian-backed separatists seized major parts of Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk province, which are part of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region along the border with Russia. An estimated 14,000 people died in the fighting from 2014 until Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

A Ukrainian official said more than 100,000 people are still in the southern port of Mariupol, where an evacuation was planned Friday after a series of thwarted attempts to deliver aid to the city and help residents escape.

“The city remains closed to entry and very dangerous to leave in one’s own transport," Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser”to the Mariupol mayor’s office, “aid early Friday. “Our forecasts remain disappointing," he said in a Telegram message. "We are working.”

After Moscow declared a temporary cease-fire for Mariupol, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was on the way Friday to assist with a “safe passage operation” to move civilians out of the battered southern city. The agency said it remained hopeful that the plan would go through.

In another operation Friday, officials said dozens of buses escorted by the Red Cross began moving people who had fled Mariupol, taking them from the nearby the city of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov northwest toward the Zaporizhzhia region. The convoy carried about 2,000 people, “a record number of Mariupol residents,” the city council said.

Russian forces have encircled and pushed into Mariupol, where people have sought shelter underground with little or no food, power and water. Thousands have managed to flee in recent weeks, although others have remained trapped as the siege devolved into street fighting. Oleksii Iaremenko, a deputy minister in Ukraine, estimated Friday in comments to Sky News that 100,000 people remain in Mariupol.

Two low-flying attack helicopters swept over the southern Russian city of Belgorod early Friday, firing rockets and blowing up fuel tanks, according to Russian media.

Local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov immediately blamed Ukraine for the attack. The claim could not be verified. Video of the attack surfaced early Friday on Russian Telegram channels, while local media reported that eight fuel tanks were burning, with a risk the fire could spread, and that at least 19 residents from adjacent areas were evacuated.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, when asked about the allegations of Ukrainian involvement, said he could not confirm or deny the claim because he did not have all the relevant military information. Ukraine has not previously attacked targets in Russian territory during the war. Ukrainian forces at first mounted a defensive operation focused on Kyiv and other major cities, and in recent days they have been retaking settlements near the capital and along the front lines.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the incident. He said it was “certainly” an escalation, adding: “This is not something that can be perceived as creating conditions comfortable for the contin”ation of negotiations."

Peskov added that Russia’s control of its airspace was not in doubt. “As for what happened, it”is up to our law enforcement agencies, not us, to make assessments," he said.

On Tuesday, a series of explosions also occurred at a Belgorod ammunition storage facility. Russian media initially said the explosions appeared to be caused by firing from the Ukrainian side, but officials later blamed the blasts on a fire on the premises.

The latest incident risks undermining progress in talks between the two sides aimed at reaching a peace deal, now at a delicate stage, after Ukraine offered concessions to Russia on Tuesday in return for a military withdrawal.

Russian negotiators announced Tuesday that Moscow’s forces would de-escalate their combat operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv in order to “build trust,” focusing their fight on eastern Ukraine. The announcement caused outrage among prominent hard-line state television presenters, pundits and on social media.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he did not trust Russia’s announcement of a de-escalation, telling Ukrainians in one of his regular addresses Thursday: “We don’t believe anyone, not a single beautiful phrase.” United States officials have also been skeptical of Moscow’s de-escalation announcement, seeing it as a sign that Russia is probably taking time to regroup and reorganize its attack.

David Stern contributed to this report.