Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia strikes key cities; Biden says Moscow ‘more isolated’ than ever

MOSCOW — When Russians showed shame and grief over President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his most loyal propagandist was withering: “If you are now ashamed that you are Russian, don’t worry, you’re not Russian,” the editor in chief of state-owned broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan, sniped on Twitter.

The invasion that united NATO and Europe on sanctions as never before has also divided Russians. On one side: an outward-looking urban middle class who vacation in Europe and while away spend time scrolling through Western apps on their iPhones and send their children to universities abroad. On the other: Putin loyalists, many less-educated Russians or older people raised on Soviet propaganda.

State television hosts tell viewers that the sanctions prove the West hates Russians.

Europe’s airspace slammed shut, and Russia’s now-toxic brand was shunned in sports, chess, ice hockey, football, motor racing, and by art galleries, Harley-Davidson, Disney, the film “The Batman,” the Eurovision song contest, luxury car companies, the Maersk shipping line, the International Olympic Committee, major oil companies, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and many more.

The cascading effect was swift, and the war’s seismic impact is just beginning to dawn on many Russians, deepening these fissures in society.

LVIV, Ukraine — At the main train station in this western Ukrainian city, where the internally displaced jostle to get on trains to Poland or change for other destinations in Europe, few among the heaving crowd wore masks. As night fell, hundreds bedded down across crowded stone floors or curled up on the stairs, inhaling thick, muggy air.

For these Ukrainians, the focus is escaping the Russian invasion bearing down on their country — not on dodging diseases such as covid-19.

But as more than half a million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries, global health officials fear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be the latest reminder of a grim lesson — that war and disease are close companions, and the humanitarian and refugee crises now unfolding in Eastern Europe will lead to long-lasting health consequences, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Russia’s military campaign accelerates, Ukraine’s hospitals are running out of critical medical supplies as travel is increasingly choked off by the conflict. The country’s health workers and patients are relocating to makeshift shelters, seeking to escape explosions. Meanwhile, officials at the World Health Organization, United Nations, U.S. State Department and other organizations warn of rising civilian casualties and new pressures on the region’s fragile health-care systems.

MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — Russia continued its assault on Ukrainian cities overnight, with significant attacks on the capital, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv in the northeast, and the southeastern port of Mariupol, according to assessments by the British Ministry of Defense.

Russian state media, citing Russian defense officials, said Moscow’s troops controlled Kherson, a vital port linking the Black Sea and Dnieper River. But Kherson’s mayor, while confirming that enemy tanks and troops were in the city, said it was still in Ukrainian hands. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said via WhatsApp that battles are going on now and “the city is not captured totally.”

Russian troops continued to meet staunch resistance from Ukrainian military and civilian fighters, which, along with ongoing logistical struggles, limited their gains over the previous 24 hours.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, endured another night of airstrikes, with social media videos, which could not be immediately verified, purporting to show explosions at the regional police headquarters and in residential areas. Russian paratroopers had landed and engaged Ukrainians in a firefight at a medical center, a regional official said.

In Kherson, videos confirmed by The Washington Post showed heavy fighting, with a strike on an apartment building as well as Russian tanks rolling into a residential area.

In a Facebook message, Mayor Igor Kolykhayev urged residents to remain indoors and pledged to keep the city running. The first priorities, he said, were restoring electricity, water and heat where it had been lost and collecting the dead. “Last night, when my team and I were at the mayor’s office, the building was shelled. Everybody is alive,” he wrote. “But I ask you again: do not leave the house. Do not provoke shooting by your actions and behavior. We are in a very difficult situation, there is no need to aggravate it.”

He ended: “We are all waiting for a miracle. We need it.”

Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska was formally subjected to sanctions by the U.S. government in 2018, and two mansions he is linked to in the United States were searched by the FBI last year.

But officially, the two properties — including a 23,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom mansion in Washington’s swanky Embassy Row neighborhood — are held in the names of anonymous limited liability corporations. And a Deripaska spokeswoman insisted last year that they are owned by relatives of the aluminum magnate, not the billionaire facing sanctions.

Property records show that neither home has been seized or changed hands in the nearly four years since the United States formally moved against Deripaska, considered one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies.

Deripaska’s U.S. property holdings demonstrate the difficulty facing the United States and other countries in pursuing and seizing the vast overseas assets of Putin’s inner circle, as the Russian opposition and nongovernmental advocacy groups have urged for years to raise pressure on Putin to curb his international and domestic aggression.

Experts say it is not yet clear whether the sweeping punitive financial measures imposed by the United States and other Western leaders in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will have significant effects on Russian money held in the United States. Some said they believed Putin’s closest allies have largely avoided U.S. markets in recent years as tensions have risen between the United States and Russia — and, like Deripaska, have particularly avoided holding assets in their own names that would make identification and seizure easy.

In other ways, the punishing financial measures being imposed by Western leaders on Russia — which have already devastated the Russian economy — could have rippling effects through the United States.

Ukrainian officials say at least two people were killed in a Russian missile strike that hit a residential area in the northwestern city of Zhytomyr on Tuesday evening.

Moscow on Tuesday appeared to escalate its attacks on residential areas, with videos and social media posts documenting the devastation and fierce fighting.

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on his Telegram channel that four people — including a child — were killed when homes in Zhytomyr were hit by a Russian cruise missile apparently aimed at a nearby air base.

On its official Twitter page, the Interior Ministry said two people were confirmed dead, along with 16 injured. Twelve people, including six children, were rescued from the basements of damaged homes, it said.

In a video posted on social media, the city’s mayor, Serhiy Sukhomlyn, said one of the bombs hit an apartment building near a state hospital.

Video released by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service on Tuesday showed clouds of smoke and rescue workers digging through debris. The organization said private houses were hit and the number of casualties was yet to be determined.

A photo posted on Twitter and verified by The Washington Post shows the night sky over the city lit up by what appears to be a powerful explosion near a residential area. The Post was not able to confirm the source of the photo, the exact nature of the incident or any casualties.

DNIPRO, Ukraine — A Russian missile strike that appeared to target Kyiv’s TV Tower also hit the nearby Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial site and killed five people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday on Twitter.

“To the world: what is the point of saying «never again» for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?” Zelensky wrote.

The bombing in Ukraine’s capital city is the latest example of what international observers say are indiscriminate attacks by Russia’s forces on civilian targets. Although the Kremlin has said it is only targeting military infrastructure, missiles and artillery shells have struck residential areas in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other parts of Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion had caused 536 civilian casualties as of Tuesday — including the deaths of 136 people, 13 of whom were children — according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Nearly 680,000 people have also fled their homes for safety in neighboring countries.

PRZEMYSL, Poland — The two women look like sisters, but they are actually childhood friends — both 35 years old, both with relentlessly energetic 12-year-old sons.

And both now share a terrifying reality as war refugees adrift with no idea what the future will hold amid waves of desperate people streaming out of Ukraine to Poland and other countries — an exodus of more than 660,000 people so far fleeing Russia’s invasion.

They recounted how the air raid sirens would sound at least twice an hour in their central Ukrainian hometown of Vinnytsia, meaning their minds could only alternate between two thoughts. One: Are we going to die? And two: Snap out of it and rush everyone to the basement.

On Monday, they arrived in Poland after a grueling 33 hours on multiple trains in which their children slept in the aisles with hundreds of others. The vast majority of those on the move are women and children, separated from their boyfriends, husbands and fathers because able-bodied men 18 to 60 years old are prohibited by Ukraine’s government from leaving.