Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.S. to toughen sanctions as evidence of atrocities mounts

The Biden administration will announce a ban on new investments in Russia on Wednesday, and NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Brussels, as the West looks to step up pressure on the Kremlin amid mounting evidence of atrocities against civilians.

The United States is also eyeing sanctions against two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the European Union, divided over a full energy embargo, is debating an import ban on Russian coal under a new round of penalties.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded a tougher E.U. response Wednesday and criticized leaders who “still think war crimes are not as horrific as financial losses.” Leaders in Ukraine say the grim killings in Bucha are not the exception. The withdrawal of Russian forces in other parts of the country has revealed looted homes and shootings of civilians.

Chip-making giant Intel is suspending its business operations in Russia “effective immediately” in response to the country’s unprovoked attack of neighboring Ukraine, according to a statement on the company’s website.

The company halted all shipments to Russia and Belarus on March 3 as it called for an end to the war, and has previously issued statements condemning the violence. But it held off on fully cutting ties until Wednesday, moving at a time when Western governments are rolling out a new round of sanctions.

“We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, including our 1,200 employees in Russia,” the company wrote in an unsigned statement. “We have also implemented business continuity measures to minimize disruption to our global operations.”

Intel has maintained a substantial engineering presence in Russia for more than two decades, according to a company release. In its statement Wednesday, it said it has put in place unspecified “business continuity measures” to prevent the pullout from disrupting its global operations.

NOVOMOSKOVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian emergency services spent eight hours fighting a blaze raging at an oil storage facility struck by a Russian missile Wednesday night near the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, according to local authorities. Eyewitnesses reported that the facility in the town of Novomoskovsk was hit about 10:30 p.m. in a missile strike that damaged oil storage tanks and a nearby factory.

Residents who spoke with The Post reported feeling the powerful blast several miles away from the strike. Washington Post reporters who visited the area Wednesday afternoon saw large flames emanating from a damaged storage tank as an acrid plume of black smoke billowed over the facility.

The Russian military has continued to target oil storage facilities and other infrastructure vital for the Ukrainian war effort across the country.

Moscow complained angrily last week about what it said was a Ukrainian helicopter raid on an oil depot in Belgorod, Russia, about 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border. That attack followed Russian strikes on fuel facilities in Ukraine, including one in the western city of Lviv last month while President Biden was visiting neighboring Poland.

Eugene Lakatosh contributed to this report.

The Mariupol City Council accused Russia on Wednesday of attempting to cover up crimes committed by its armed forces during their attacks on the besieged port city, including by deploying “mobile crematoriums” and setting up “filtration camps” to identify and eliminate people who may have witnessed crimes.

The council made the accusations as Western countries continued to express outrage and seek tougher sanctions over the discovery by Ukrainian officials and independent journalists of mass graves in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, after Russian troops withdrew from the area as part of a broader realignment of the Russian war effort.

In a Telegram post Wednesday, the council of Mariupol, one of the hardest-hit Ukrainian cities, said, without providing evidence, that Russia’s leaders have ordered far-right and pro-Russian separatist brigades to destroy “any evidence of crimes committed by its army in Mariupol,” including by burning the bodies of civilians killed by its forces. It said this effort is being coordinated by Konstantin Ivashchenko, whom Ukrainian authorities have said was appointed mayor of Mariupol by Russian forces in the city in a sham election.

The city council also claimed that forces operating on behalf of Russia are rounding up potential witnesses to these alleged crimes, who are then sent to “filtration camps” and “destroyed.”

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the Nazi concentration camps,” the post quotes the city’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, as saying. “Unfortunately, the eerie analogy is increasingly being confirmed. This is no longer Chechnya or Aleppo. This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek.”

The Biden administration is considering the imposition of financial penalties against two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a person briefed on the deliberations.

If the White House decides to follow through and sanction Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, Putin’s daughters would become the latest targets of U.S. finance officials as they seek to make it harder for Russia’s elite to access money outside Russia and participate in the global banking system.

Vorontsova is a genetics researcher, and Tikhonova was once deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, according to a recent Washington Post article.

The White House has already levied a range of sanctions and other financial penalties against Russian leaders and businesses as it has sought to punish the country over its invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions have escalated in recent weeks, and the White House has continued to look for new targets, particularly ones close to top Russian officials. The person describing the White House’s latest deliberations spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the planning.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the sanctions against Putin’s daughters were coming.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s Kyiv region as “a gesture of goodwill” ordered by President Vladimir Putin, according to a Russian state news agency Tass release about an interview with French TV channel LCI.

“We decided to take this step as a gesture of goodwill to create favorable conditions for negotiations. We can make serious decisions in the course of negotiations, and therefore President Putin ordered the withdrawal of troops from the region,” Peskov said in a broadcast scheduled for Wednesday evening, Tass reported.

Five weeks after an invasion complicated by losses, miscalculations and a failed attempt to take Kyiv, the Russian military has redeployed toward the east of Ukraine, in the contested Donbas region, and is attempting to organize reinforcements. The shift reflects a recognition in Moscow that Russia can no longer accomplish its original goal of quickly taking key areas in the north and west, analysts told The Post.

In the French TV interview, Peskov repeated Moscow’s claims that evidence of execution-style slaughter, notably in the city of Bucha, was fabricated.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, told the Security Council on Tuesday that reports documenting possible war crimes in Bucha were “attempts to discredit Russian soldiers and present them as murderers and rapists.” Earlier this week, Russian diplomats suggested that corpses seen in videos from Bucha were actors, part of a hoax by Ukraine to discredit Russia.

Washington Post journalists documented bodies in the streets of Bucha, including people who had their hands tied behind their backs and were shot in the head. Satellite imagery examined by The Post and other media shows objects — matching body positions — on the ground since mid-March, a time when Russian troops occupied Bucha. The imagery also shows what appear to be mass graves dug before Russian troops left. Moscow claims the footage was fabricated by “the Kyiv regime” after the withdrawal.

“We strongly insist that the images that were shown, the photographs, were the result of a planned falsification,” Peskov said, according to the Tass account of the French interview. The published satellite images “must be thoroughly investigated,” he added.

The European Commission said Wednesday it has started stockpiling protective gear, decontamination equipment and drugs that could boost its defenses in the event of chemical, nuclear or biological incidents.

“As an immediate first step, the EU has mobilised … to procure potassium iodide tablets which can be used to protect people from the harmful effects of radiation,” the statement said. It added that a European Union mechanism has already delivered nearly 3 million tablets to Ukraine with the help of France and Spain.

Russia’s war on Ukraine, waged in a country with several nuclear facilities, has raised the urgency of averting a potential disaster and has increased demand for potassium iodide in some neighboring countries.

“We are taking concrete measures to increase Europe’s preparedness in the face of potential threats,” said Janez Lenarcic, the E.U. commissioner for crisis management.

Greece, Norway and Luxembourg said Wednesday they would move to expel Russian diplomats, and Russia vowed to retaliate — the latest sign that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked a tit-for-tat downgrading of Moscow’s diplomatic relations with its European neighbors.

The Greek Foreign Ministry said 12 Russian diplomats would be ordered to leave the country. Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Hui