Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia asks China for military equipment, U.S. officials say

The power supply has been restored at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Herman Galushchenko, the nation’s minister of energy, said Sunday.

The site was disconnected from the grid by Russian forces, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, heightening concerns that a lack of power would jeopardize the cooling systems for the more than 20,000 spent fuel rods that remain on-site. The reactors revert to diesel backup generators in the event of a power outage.

Galushchenko in a message posted to Telegram praised the efforts of nuclear workers and specialists with Ukrenergo, the state-owned grid operator, who he said risked their health and lives “to avert risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe.”

“Now the cooling systems of spent nuclear assemblies will again operate in normal mode, not from backup power,” Galushchenko said.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Sunday that Ukraine conveyed its success in repairing one of two damaged power lines, paving the way for external electricity.

IAEA Director Rafael Mariano General Grossi hailed the “positive development” but said he remains concerned about nuclear security in Ukraine. The country’s regulator said Sunday that staffers at the Chernobyl facility “were no longer carrying out repair and maintenance of safety-related equipment, in part due to their physical and psychological fatigue after working non-stop for nearly three weeks,” the IAEA stated.

Technical employees and guards have not been able to rotate out since Russian forces entered on Feb. 24, the IAEA said.

The IAEA has repeatedly warned that Russia’s takeover of Ukrainian power plants undermines the key pillars of nuclear safety. Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s state-owned atomic energy firm Energoatom, told local media last week that nuclear technicians at the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeast Ukraine were being forced to work at gunpoint. The IAEA has said technicians and operators at nuclear facilities must be allowed to rest and work free from duress.

Award-winning American journalist Brent Renaud was fatally shot while reporting outside the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, according to two Ukrainian officials, prompting an outpouring of grief.

Andriy Nebitov, the Kyiv region’s police chief, said in a Facebook post that Renaud was “shot dead” in Irpin, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv that has seen heavy fighting and shelling between Russian and Ukrainian forces in recent days.

Edward Felsenthal, Time magazine’s editor in chief and CEO, said Sunday that Renaud was working on a Time Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis.

Renaud, 50, worked with his brother, Craig Renaud, on award-winning video journalism and documentary filmmaking projects for HBO, Vice and other major international news organizations, according to their website.

They won a Peabody award for a Vice News documentary about a school in Chicago, among several other accolades in the media industry, including two Overseas Press Club awards and two duPont-Columbia University awards.

The two have worked in conflict zones and dangerous spots around the world, covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a devastating earthquake in Haiti, cartel violence in Mexico, political upheaval in Egypt, and the war on extremism in Africa and the Middle East, according to their website.

On Monday, a team of Post journalists who have been reporting on the war in Ukraine will take your questions about the conflict. Send your questions ahead of time here.

Isabelle Khurshudyan, Max Bearak, Karoun Demirjian and Missy Ryan will write back with their insights at 11 a.m. Eastern on Monday. Isabelle and Max are reporting from Ukraine. Karoun and Missy, who cover the Pentagon and the State Department, respectively, are based in Washington. The questions you submit may be edited for accuracy and clarity.

This is the third time we have answered questions from readers about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can read the transcripts from the past two chats here:

A humanitarian convoy attempting to reach the besieged port city of Mariupol did not leave Berdyansk on Sunday, according to a clergyman accompanying the aid trucks.

Andrey Kovalenko, a bishop from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said fighting around the city was too intense. A new attempt would be made on Monday, he added.

Ukrainian officials had hoped that the convoy carrying food and medicine would reach the city of more than 400,000 people this weekend. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address that Sunday’s “key task is Mariupol.”

The Mariupol City Council said in a Telegram message Sunday that 2,187 residents have died in the Russian invasion. City leaders again accused Russia of targeting residential areas and have warned for days that they are isolated by Russia’s blockade and running out of food, water and basic supplies.

PRZEMYSL, Poland — Two days after fleeing to Poland from a war that has devastated their city, three generations of Sinitsyna women boarded a train to go back to Ukraine on Saturday night.

Zhanna Sinitsyna, the grandmother, was afraid to return home to Mykolaiv, one of several Ukrainian cities under fierce bombardment by Russian forces. But the trio had been unable to find a place to sleep in Poland, and she hadn’t felt right since she left.

“In my soul, Mykolaiv is my home,” said the 49-year-old woman, who was wrapped in a blue shawl to keep warm while waiting for a delayed train from Kyiv outside the Przemysl train station, near the Poland-Ukraine border. “And I need to be home.”

The Sinitsynas would join the 220,000 Ukrainians who have returned to the country in the past two weeks, according to Ukraine’s border guard. On Saturday evening, the Sinitsynas were three of more than 100 people, mostly Ukrainians, waiting in line at the station to board a train for Kyiv.

There were displays of defiance across Kherson on Sunday, as people marched through a central area in the southern port city, now under Russian military control, and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 18th day.

In multiple videos shared on social media and verified by The Washington Post, streams of people marched through the streets, many holding blue-and-yellow flags — individuals waved them, some draped the Ukrainian flag as capes around their bodies, others held on to edges of an outstretched flag facing the sky.

“Kherson is Ukraine,” crowds chanted in Ukrainian.

Ukrainians have filled the streets in numerous cities to protest since the start of Russia’s invasion. On Saturday, crowds gathered in Melitopol to protest the alleged abduction of the city’s mayor by Russian troops.

“Bring back the mayor,” crowds chanted, bundled up and braced for the cold.

Russian forces struck a Ukrainian military training facility, killing 35 people, a regional official said, in an escalation of hostilities in the country’s west, close to the Polish border.

The attack at the Yavoriv military range near Lviv, about 15 miles from the border with Poland, also injured 134 people, Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the regional administration, said in a Telegram statement. He did not specify whether the casualties were military personnel at the base or whether they included civilians.

The Lviv governor accused Russia of firing 30 missiles from the direction of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, warning that “the shelling is approaching the borders of NATO countries.” Ukraine’s air defense system shot down many of them and authorities had put out fires at the site, he added.

Also known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, the military facility has for years been used by the United States and other NATO forces for joint exercises with Ukrainian troops. Members of the Florida Army National Guard trained there with Ukrainian forces as recently as February, during the buildup to the Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications, which operates under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, said the attack is “thought to be the westernmost carried out by Russia in 18 days of the war.”

Until last month, the training center had been home since 2015 to a rotational presence of U.S. troops who were training and advising Ukrainian forces about a half-hour drive from the border with Poland.

The unit, Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, most recently included about 150 members of the Florida National Guard. They were reassigned elsewhere in Europe as it became evident that Russia was likely to invade.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense issued a statement on Sunday confirming the strike, and threatening more such attacks.

“At these facilities, the Kyiv regime deployed a training center for foreign mercenaries before being sent to the areas of hostilities against Russian military personnel, as well as a storage base for weapons and equipment coming from foreign countries," the statement said.

“As a result of the strike," the statement added, "up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons were destroyed. The elimination of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.”