Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russian invasion escalates as massive convoy nears Kyiv and Kharkiv assaulted

About 60,000 people in Japan donated more than $17 million after the Ukrainian Embassy tweeted its bank account number Friday for those who want to support the embattled country during Russia’s invasion, the embassy announced Tuesday.

Separately, more than $868,000 was donated in less than 24 hours after Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten announced Monday that it would allow customers to use their Rakuten points and credit cards to support Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Embassy said it is coordinating with its Foreign Ministry to transfer the funds.

“We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our friends in Japan for their support during these difficult times for the Ukrainian people,” the embassy tweeted Tuesday.

There has been an outpouring of support from the Japanese public since the weekend. Protesters have called for an end to the Russian invasion, denouncing President Vladimir Putin, and demonstrations continued Tuesday, when Ukrainian nationals living in Hiroshima gathered in front of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, a ruin commemorating the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing in World War II.

Many of those who protested and donated throughout the country expressed solidarity with Ukrainians, including over their shared experience with nuclear disasters: Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.

DNIPRO, Ukraine — Air attacks on Kharkiv continued Tuesday, with a projectile appearing to strike the Regional State Administration building of Ukraine’s second-largest city, according to a government official and social media videos.

Just 25 miles from the Russian border, Kharkiv has been the site of some of the heaviest artillery shelling since Russia’s attack on Ukraine started last week. Local officials have said at least 11 are dead from a bombardment that included suspected cluster munitions in civilian suburban areas.

The regional governor said there was “chaotic shelling in all directions” overnight in the city, with firefighters battling 24 blazes. The morning attack struck the city’s opera house and a residential area as well as the government headquarters, according to emergency service officials in a statement relayed by a parliamentary Telegram account. Officials beseeched residents to stay inside.

“The enemy continues to attack Kharkiv,” Gov. Oleh Synehubov wrote on Telegram shortly after the explosion at the administration building. “Russian occupier continues to use heavy weapons and destroy the civilian population.”

Tuesday’s strike was on the city center, appearing to target an area that civilian volunteers and Territorial Defense forces had used as their headquarters.

Video and images shared on social media showed the building still standing, but with its windows and those of several adjacent structures completely blown out by the large explosion. Over the weekend, Kharkiv residents visited the blue-and-yellow tent across from the city hall to sign up to volunteer — weaving camouflage netting and driving food to people who haven’t been able to leave their homes because of shelling.

The tent, located on “Freedom Square,” was a main hub for local activists. Those who wanted to join the Territorial Defense — a volunteer reserve force — were then directed to go across the street to the administration building.

LONDON — Fissures appear to be forming between Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the oligarch class who made billions of dollars while showing fealty to the autocratic leader but now see their fortunes threatened by Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

The cracks are faint and fall short of suggesting any groundswell of oligarchic opposition to Putin, according to experts and Western officials. But expressions of unease that weeks ago seemed unthinkable have surfaced repeatedly in recent days.

After an earlier social media post calling for peace talks “as fast as possible,” Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska followed up on Sunday with a veiled shot at Putin’s stewardship of the economy, issuing a statement that said, “It is necessary to change the economic policy, it is necessary to end all this state capitalism.”

A second oligarch, Mikhail Fridman, said in a letter to subordinates that the Ukraine “crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years,” according to Reuters, which said that it had seen portions of the message.

Even the daughter of Putin’s principal spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, voiced opposition to the invasion by posting a black square on her Instagram account with a caption, “No to war!” It was an apparent message of solidarity with protesters in Russia, even as her father defended arrests of thousands who have turned out for rallies that he said were “not allowed by the law.”

Sanctions experts and former U.S. officials said that while the signs of dissent remain tepid, they represent a more palpable fraying of relations between Putin and the ranks of elite loyalists than has been observed in years.

“The splintering of the regime is visible,” said Daniel Fried, a former State Department official who helped lead the sanctions response to Russia’s previous military incursions into Ukraine.

He described the spate of messages as the most significant expression of dissent by Russian elites “since the Soviet period.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree Monday temporarily lifting the visa requirements for foreign volunteers who wish to enter Ukraine and join the fight against Russian forces.

The Associated Press reported that decree will go into effect Tuesday and will last through the 30-day imposition of martial law, which Zelensky first announced last Thursday.

Zelensky created the International Legion of Territorial Defense over the weekend and called on volunteers to “join the defense of Ukraine, Europe and the world.” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that anyone interested in participating should contact Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in their respective countries. “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too,” Kuleba said Sunday.

The same day that the visa-free policy was unveiled, Ukrainian cities weathered another cycle of intense shelling, and peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow did not produce any breakthroughs. At least 11 people were killed in the eastern city of Kharkiv and more were injured, Ukrainian officials said. Suspected cluster munitions struck buildings in residential parts of the city.

Several European leaders appeared to welcome this call for volunteer reinforcement. Lawmakers in Latvia voted unanimously to allow their citizens to fight in Ukraine, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Sunday that fighting in Ukraine is “a choice that anyone can make.” But others, such as British defense secretary Ben Wallace, have cautioned against having civilians join the battle against Russian forces.

KYIV, Ukraine — Along a highway flowing north from the capital, lined by businesses and tall apartment buildings, the Ukrainian fighters were taking no chances. The Russians were less than an hour’s drive up the road.

By Monday evening, the Ukrainians — a mix of soldiers and volunteers — had dug deep trenches and erected barricades of giant truck tires topped with sand. At one wide intersection, they positioned multiple machine guns including a Soviet-era Dushka heavy gun, shoulder-held antitank rockets and an antiaircraft gun with its barrels pointed at the sky, among other weaponry.

An armored personnel carrier with a cannon was covered by a green camouflage tarpaulin. And outside one building, they were making molotov cocktails by the scores. “We are going to give the Russians lots of presents,” promised Yuriy Syrotyuk, 45, a local journalist-turned-warrior, an AK-47 rifle slung over his shoulder.

As Ukrainian and Russian envoys held peace talks at the Belarusian border Monday, Ukrainian forces here, driven by deep mistrust of the Russians and a desire to protect their homeland, were preparing for the worst-case scenario. That scenario was Russian tanks and soldiers pressing into Kyiv and seizing the seat of government.

This highway stretching through the city’s northern Obolon district is one of the main routes by which the Russians could attack.

A visit Monday to this fortified patch, an area the Ukrainian fighters described as “their second line,” opened a window into the courageous efforts by ordinary Ukrainians to stand up to Russian aggression. But it also portended a violent urban conflict, with the prospect of street-to-street fighting and guerrilla tactics and thousands of civilians trapped in the crossfire.

The initial stage of the war in Ukraine has confounded expectations. Russia’s military invasion failed in key objectives, upending predictions of a rout of Ukraine. Then, after years of avoiding direct confrontations with Moscow, Western nations are now directly punishing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies with truly devastating economic sanctions while openly supplying arms to Ukraine.

But after five days of fighting, there is little sign that this conflict will end soon. Instead, the conflict appears to be moving to another phase, more unpredictable and dangerous than the first. Fighting in Ukraine is escalating, not scaling back, while the rhetoric between Russia and the West has reached levels of aggression not seen since the height of the Cold War.

Though there were peace talks for the first time on Monday, there are no signs that the cycle of escalation will go down. Amid unprecedented global pressure, Putin is doubling down on a defensive posture that pits Russia against almost everyone else in the world. He has ratcheted up the levels of violence in eastern Ukraine, bombarding the city of Kharkiv with suspected cluster munitions, while putting the country’s nuclear arsenal on alert.

Hollywood studios such as Disney, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures announced Monday that they would halt the release of new movies in Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Disney said in a statement that it is pausing the Russian rollout of “Turning Red,” an upcoming Pixar animation film, because of “the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the tragic humanitarian crisis.”

A Sony Pictures spokesperson told The Washington Post that it, too, will hold back planned theatrical releases, including “Morbius,” a Marvel anti-hero movie. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been impacted and hope this crisis will be resolved quickly,” the company said.

“The Batman,” which stars English actor Robert Pattinson and is slated to open in theaters later this week, is also on hold in Russia, WarnerMedia said in a statement.

As reports emerge that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in civilian casualties and displaced more than 500,000 people, organizations ranging from energy conglomerates to opera houses and concert halls have severed or suspended partnerships with Russia.