Russia-Ukraine live updates: Thousands trapped in Mariupol after evacuation effort stalls

The Pentagon said Friday that it will provide a new $300 million package of military aid to Ukraine that includes drones, armored vehicles and machine guns.

The assistance is part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a program that lets the United States procure supplies from manufacturers instead delivering them from its own military stockpiles, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said. Under this initiative, Washington has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine each year since 2015.

The Biden administration has dispatched more than $2.3 billion in defense support to Ukraine since it took office. Among the highlights of the new package are Puma unmanned aerial systems, or hand-launched lightweight drones, “non-standard” machine guns, counter-drone systems and access to commercial satellite imagery services.

Alex Horton contributed to this report.

The U.S. Air Force canceled a scheduled test of an intercontinental ballistic missile last month to avoid the potential for escalated tensions with Russia, the service said Friday.

The Minuteman III test flight was scheduled for early March, days after Russia invaded Ukraine and Moscow put its nuclear forces on alert.

The test was delayed due to an “overabundance of caution to avoid misinterpretation or miscommunication” as the conflict widened, and was later canceled for the same reason, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement.

“Our next planned test flight is later this year. The Department is confident in the readiness of the strategic forces of the United States,” Stefanek said.

Reuters first reported the cancellation. Jeffrey Lewis, a missile researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told the outlet the Minuteman missile is a reliable weapon system and downplayed the cancellation of this particular test.

“There’s a value to doing the tests but I don’t think missing one test in the grand scheme of things is a really big deal,” Lewis told Reuters.

Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.

Wojciech Grzedzinski, a freelance photographer working on assignment for The Post, has been documenting the flight of people from the war-torn port city of Mariupol.

Grzedzinski said he had seen where a convoy had been shelled and people told him that they had seen burned cars along the evacuation route.

Eighty-six Ukrainian service members, including 15 women, from the Zaporizhzhia region have been freed in a prisoner exchange with Russian forces, Ukrainian presidential adviser Yulia Tymoshenko and Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced Friday.

Neither side disclosed the number of Russian prisoners released.

Russian and Ukrainian forces for weeks have engaged in intermittent prisoner swaps, including one in mid-March where Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was freed in exchange for nine Russian conscripts. Fedorov said he was abducted by Russian troops and taken to the southeastern city of Luhansk, which is held by Russian separatists.

Oil prices fell Friday after member nations of the International Energy Agency authorized the release of emergency oil reserves, joining with the United States. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, ushered in a new quarter, edging higher in choppy trading after the federal government released another robust jobs report.

The IEA said its decision, details of which will be made public next week, reflects the strain the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put on global energy markets. It also comes one day after President Biden announced plans to release 1 million barrels of crude oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — its biggest ever — to try to offset the loss of Russian oil from world markets, starve Russia of revenue and rein in gasoline prices.

On Friday, West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, hovered near $99.50 per barrel, down 0.8 percent. Brent crude, the global benchmark, dipped 0.1 percent, to roughly $104.50. Fuel prices remain elevated, with the U.S. average for a gallon of gasoline dipping to $4.21 on Friday, according to AAA. That’s 60 cents higher than a month ago and $1.34 more than a year ago.

Stocks climbed after the Labor Department said the economy added 431,000 jobs in March, bringing the unemployment rate to a pandemic low of 3.6 percent. That marks the 11th consecutive month in which job growth topped 400,000, which is considered to be a particularly strong pace.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day up 139.92 points, or 0.4 percent, to 34,818.27. The broader S&P 500 index added 15.45 points, or 0.3 percent, to settle at 4,545.86. And the tech-centric Nasdaq climbed 40.98 points, or 0.3 percent, to end at 14,261.50.

The three indexes fell sharply Thursday, with the Dow tumbling 550 points, to mark the end of the first quarter. The blue-chip index finished the three-month period 4.6 percent lower, while the S&P 500 shed 4.9 percent and Nasdaq lost 9.1 percent, according to MarketWatch.

DNIPRO — Thousands of people from war-ravaged Mariupol were successfully evacuated to Ukrainian-held territory Friday, Ukrainian officials reported, even as the Red Cross said it was unable to reach the port city.

Dozens of buses traveled Thursday to the outskirts of Berdyansk — a Russian-controlled city down the coast from Mariupol — to pick up refugees who had gathered there. On Friday, about 1,800 refugees arrived in Zaporizhzhia, several hours inland, on 42 buses, officials said. Thousands more people, mostly from Mariupol, traveled in private cars and were evacuated from territory held by Russian forces, according to Zaporizhzhia authorities.

About 6,200 refugees made it to Zaporizhzhia on Friday, they said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it would attempt to reach Mariupol again Saturday after its major humanitarian mission Friday was stymied.

Three vehicles and nine personnel “had to return to Zaporizhzhia after arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed,” the ICRC said in a statement late Friday.

“For the operation to succeed, it is critical that the parties respect the agreements and provide the necessary conditions and security guarantees,” the ICRC said.

The Kremlin had declared a cease-fire ahead of the planned evacuations. Ukrainian authorities have estimated that as many as 100,000 people remained trapped in Mariupol in grim conditions, deprived of power, heat and communications and with critical shortages of supplies.

“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, said early Friday. “Our forecasts remain disappointing,” he said in a Telegram message. “We are working.”

Kim Bellware and Ellen Francis contributed to this report.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday sought to keep the focus on Russia’s aggression following claims by Moscow that Ukraine had attacked a Russian fuel depot.

Russian officials have accused Ukraine of carrying out a helicopter attack against a fuel depot in Belgorod, a city about 40 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said it would “neither confirm nor deny” the attack on Russian territory.

“We have seen those reports,” Psaki said Friday. “We’re not in a position to comment on the Kremlin’s statements. I would note Ukraine has not made any statements or confirmation of these reports.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the alleged incident days after Ukrainian negotiators offered their Russian counterparts a detailed peace proposal was “certainly” an escalation.

But Psaki kept the focus on Russia, blaming President Vladimir Putin for starting the war.

“This is a war that President Putin started — a brutal war with Russia’s forces continuing to bombard cities across Ukraine and commit terrible acts of violence,” Psaki said. “We’ve seen the people of Ukraine fight valiantly in the face of unprovoked Russian brutality.”

“But there is one aggressor here: and that is President Putin and the Russian military at his direction,” she added.