Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.N. General Assembly votes to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

As soldiers stalk an eerily quiet European city, a young boy asks a stranger to help find his mom, while in a bombed-out building a parent gives a plush toy to his child hoping it will provide some reassurance.

The images evoke scenes in Kyiv and Kharkiv as the Ukrainian cities face a growing Russian invasion. But the tableau in fact comes from “This War of Mine” — an award-winning video game from 2014 that has seen its popularity soar since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops descended on the country last week.

The game, from Polish developer 11 Bit Studios, is helping people in Europe and beyond empathize with and even vicariously experience the feelings of everyday Ukrainians. It is one of several examples of cutting-edge immersive technologies — besides video games they include a slick reality-distortion app and virtual reality — to which a younger generation is increasingly turning to explain the war.

Read the story

The Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in Ukraine, moved patients into its basement bomb shelter amid shelling in Kyiv.

“If we stop [treatment], they will die,” Lesia Lysytsia, an onco-ophthalmologist, told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

Doctors continue to provide chemotherapy and radiation treatment to cancer patients. They’ve also treated multiple children with shrapnel and bullet wounds from nearby fighting in Kyiv, Reuters reported.

Patients in more serious conditions were transported to other cities or to Poland. Those who could stay home were urged to do so, with medical consultations taking place over the phone or online.

“I still can’t imagine this is happening. When you work, you don’t think about it — you have a lot of duties to perform,” Lysytsia said. “They’re underground. It’s not normal treatment for patients.”

Toyota is temporarily halting all of its sales and production activities in Russia and Ukraine because of safety concerns, the company announced Wednesday.

The company’s Ukraine business unit had already stopped all of its activities as of Feb. 24, the company said, including sales and distribution at 37 retail locations there. It also halted imports of vehicles at its 168 retail locations in Russia until further notice, citing supply-chain disruptions.

As of March 4, it plans to shut down its factory in St. Petersburg, where it produces Toyota RAV4 and Camry models.

“Like everyone around the world, Toyota is watching the ongoing developments in Ukraine with great concern for the safety of people of Ukraine and hopes for a safe return to peace as soon as possible,” the company wrote in a statement. “As a company with operations in Ukraine and Russia, our priority in dealing with this crisis is to ensure the safety of all our team members, retailer staff, and supply chain partners.”

The company said it has taken unspecified actions to support Ukrainian employees and their families, including facilitating their exit from the country.

There are indications that Ukrainian forces have tried to selectively target the long Russian military convoy snaking toward Kyiv, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss developments on the ground.

“We’ve seen indications that at times and at certain places that the convoy may have been resisted by Ukrainian forces,” the official said, noting that Ukrainians had been “conducting a stiff resistance north of Kyiv.”

Russian forces have been bombarding Kyiv with increasing intensity, but the 40-mile-long convoy of Russian combat vehicles appeared to stall in recent days as invading forces have struggled with shortages of food, fuel and morale, the official said.

At this point, about 82 percent of the forces Russia had massed around Ukraine are inside the country, the senior defense official said.

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s foreign minister said Russia had withdrawn a request to send warships through the Turkish Straits toward the Black Sea in the days after Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine.

The foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking in an interview with the Haberturk news channel Tuesday, said that Moscow had canceled a request to send four warships through the straits, the Dardanelles and the Bosporus after Turkey objected. He did not specify when the request was made but said the warships were scheduled to transit Feb. 27 and 28.

A 1936 treaty, the Montreux Convention, gives Turkey the right to prohibit the passage of warships through the straits during times of war, with exceptions for vessels returning to their home bases.

“We said amicably not to send these ships to Russia,” Cavusoglu said. “Russia or others should not be offended here. Three of these four ships had no right of way in case of war. According to the information we have, they were not ships registered to the bases in the Black Sea.”

The conflict in Ukraine has put Turkey in a difficult position, as it balances its close relationships with both Russia and Ukraine involving commercial and military ties.

Turkey, a NATO member, has condemned Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine as illegal and supplied Ukraine with armed drones.

But it has not joined Western allies in barring Russian flights or imposing financial sanctions.

“We are not planning to apply any sanctions to Russia at this point, because we don’t want our economy to be affected negatively by this,” Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

The U.N. General Assembly voted 141 to 5, with 35 abstentions, in favor of a Ukrainian resolution condemning Russia’s invasion. Russia’s negative vote was backed only by Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria.

The relatively large number of abstentions, following a three-day debate in the chamber, came despite strong U.S. and European outreach in favor of the resolution and included 16 African countries, with South Africa and South Sudan among them. But many that might have been inclined to support Russia, including Cuba, Nicaragua and several Central Asian nations, abstained, as did Vietnam, Laos, Bolivia and El Salvador.

As they did in an earlier U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council vote to condemn the invasion, a measure ultimately vetoed by Russia, China and India abstained in the General Assembly vote. The United Arab Emirates, another Security Council abstention, this time voted in favor, as did the Balkans, including Serbia, and most of the rest of the Middle East. The exceptions were Iran and Iraq, which both abstained, as did Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There are no vetoes in the General Assembly, where resolutions are nonbinding but are seen as a reflection of the overall will of the international community.

In a speech just before the vote, Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the moment “a defining one for our generation … the generation that was supposed by our predecessors to be saved from the scourge of war.”

That, he said, was why the United Nations was created.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia indicated he did not expect a positive outcome for Moscow and accused the West of exerting “unprecedented pressure … [and] open, cynical threats” against other countries to guarantee their favorable votes.

“This document will not allow us to end military activities,” Nebenzia said, adding that “on the contrary” it would embolden nationalists and extremists to continue what he called “provocations” against Russian forces.

DNIPRO, Ukraine — A Russian missile strike that appeared to target a TV tower in Ukraine’s capital Tuesday struck in the vicinity of the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial, the site of a World War II massacre, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said via Twitter on Tuesday. Five people were killed in the strike, according to Ukrainian officials.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear. The TV tower, built by the Soviets, was constructed on part of the land where the massacre occurred. Two memorials commemorating the dead stand nearby, one of which opened last year.

Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai, a veteran war correspondent, visited the site after Tuesday’s attack and reported Wednesday that the recently opened memorial did not appear to have been hit, contrary to some initial reports. He reported that the closest damage was to a TV tower complex less than 1,000 feet away, which itself is on the overall site.

Moscow has said it is targeting only military infrastructure, but missiles and artillery shells have struck residential areas in Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere across Ukraine.

The people of Konotop in northern Ukraine faced a decision Wednesday to resist or face heavy artillery from Russian forces, according to videos verified by The Washington Post.

In one video, two Russian soldiers are jeered at by a large, angry crowd as they walk near the city council building to a Russian military police car. The mayor, Artem Semenikhin, can be seen alongside them.

One soldier with both arms outstretched holds a grenade in each hand, Semenikhin confirmed in text messages to The Post. The other soldier raises his hands. Semenikhin pushes the crowd back to allow the Russians to drive away. When they do, people clap.

The Russians arrived around 10 a.m. and left 30 minutes later, according to Semenikhin.

In a video, Semenikhin is seen relaying the conditions delivered by the Russians. He explains that if they resist, Russians will “blast the city with artillery.” He then asks the crowd if they want to fight. “Of course, I am for fighting. I am for fighting. We make the decision all together because the artillery is targeted at us.”

A voice from the crowd responds that they need to evacuate the women and then fight.

In a text to The Post, Semenikhin, said “Our city is free.” The regional governor, Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, wrote on Facebook that Konotop remains Ukrainian.