Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukraine moves to retake territory; Biden to announce new sanctions

Four Ukrainian children who had to halt cancer treatments because of the Russian invasion were airlifted from Poland to Tennessee to resume their medical care, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday.

The children will be cared for at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter that the State Department was “humbled” to help the four children come to the United States. They are between 9 months and 9 years old, the hospital said in a news release.

St. Jude will give the children and their immediate family members food and other support, Price said in a statement. In addition to cancer treatment, patients will receive trauma-informed psychosocial therapy, St. Jude said.

“This is exactly why my father founded St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. When he said no child should die in the dawn of life, he did not mean just America’s children and it is why St. Jude Global exists today. My sisters and I are very proud to carry on his legacy,” Tony Thomas, a board member and the son of hospital founder Danny Thomas, said in a statement.

The State Department arranged the trip after some European hospitals that have been caring for cancer patients coming out of Ukraine reached capacity, Price told reporters at a news briefing later in the day.

First lady Jill Biden, who lost her eldest son Beau Biden to a brain cancer in 2015 and has long advocated for supporting cancer patients and their families, reportedly plans to visit the children.

President Biden will announce a new package of sanctions against Russia this week when he travels to Brussels to meet with European leaders, a White House official said Tuesday, as Western countries seek to project unity during Moscow’s increasingly brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Biden will announce the new measures Thursday, after summits with the European Union, NATO and the Group of Seven, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a news briefing. Sullivan did not specify what the sanctions would entail or to whom they would apply, but he said the announcement will mark “a new phase.”

In addition to new penalties, the package will include “a joint effort to crack down on evasion — on sanction-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken or get around the sanctions,” Sullivan said.

White House eyes new sanctions on lawmakers in Russian parliament as part of financial attack on Moscow

Biden will also discuss NATO force deployments in Europe and a “joint action” on reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

“The president is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes,” Sullivan said.

Biden is scheduled to depart Washington on Wednesday and, after back-to-back meetings the following day, will go to Poland on Friday to discuss the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis. Nearly 2 million Ukrainians have fled to Poland. Biden will also meet with American troops stationed there with NATO.

Matt Viser contributed to this report.

In the dark recesses of Gab.com, a social-media site popular with the far right in the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin is glorified as a conservative lion.

Users post under names such as “Rutin 4 Putin” and “Call of Putin: Slavic Warfare.” One of them who identifies himself as “an unvaccinated, pure blooded, non-complying, God fearing, gun owning, and liberty defending patriotic man” who believes in “2 genders and only one God” wrote that “there is more truth coming from Putin than from all of the leaders of western world countries combined.”

That rightist strain of support is built on one of the Russian leader’s lesser-known war tactics: His casting of a Christian catchall — “traditional values” — as a weapon. To defend Russian aggression in Ukraine, he has lobbed disproved claims of U.S.-funded bioweapons labs and a neo-Nazi takeover of the government in Kyiv (both of which have found homes on gab.com as well). But even as Russian bombs kill scores of civilians, Putin has also sought to portray his war as righteous — describing Ukraine as a microcosm of the greater global tug of war between liberal and conservative thought.

New satellite images show large swaths of Mariupol devastated by Russian strikes, as the Pentagon warned that Kremlin warships have started shelling the southern Ukrainian port city.

Columns of smoke can be seen billowing from a residential area in Livoberezhnyi district, east of the city center, according to photos taken and released Tuesday by the U.S. firm Maxar Technologies. A bird’s-eye view of the city shows high-rise buildings ablaze or otherwise severely damaged.

Civilians have slowly trickled out of their besieged hometown in the past week through humanitarian corridors. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that more than 100,000 people remain trapped within the city, where living conditions have severely deteriorated amid a shortage of critical supplies. One woman who recently fled Mariupol told The Washington Post that scenes from the city are akin to those from a “horror movie.”

Tuesday’s satellite images also show the flooded fields of Kozarovychi, a village some 25 miles north of Kyiv. The Irpin river, which runs west of Kyiv, is strategically important to the defense of the capital. Ukrainian forces had demolished a bridge connecting the city of Irpin to Kyiv to stem Russian military advances.

In the early days of the invasion, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States accused Russian forces of destroying a dam in a reservoir near Kyiv, a claim for which the diplomat did not provide evidence. At least one analyst has said that Kyiv could be engaging in a defensive tactic known as “hydraulic warfare” — deliberate flooding during combat to either erect a barrier or destroy an area.

As President Biden speeds anti-armor and surface-to-air weapons to Ukraine, U.S. officials are making sure those advanced systems, meant to be used against invading Russian forces, won’t fall into the wrong hands, a senior administration official told The Daily 202 Monday.

While those concerns are “a factor in the planning,” the official said on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations, “we’re not going to let a bureaucratic concern stand in the way of getting the Ukrainians what they need.”

That’s just one of the many ways the specter of wars in Afghanistan — from the 1979 Soviet invasion that played a big role in the collapse of the U.S.S.R., to the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal after two decades of fighting — shapes Biden’s approach to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has extended an invitation for Pope Francis to visit his war-torn country amid Russia’s invasion.

While the Vatican has not made concrete plans for a papal visit, Zelensky said after a call with the pope Tuesday that a trip was possible.

“I believe that we will be able to organize this important visit, which will unequivocally support each of us, each of the Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in a video address.

Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, cautioned in an earlier interview with a Catholic news show that the situation may be “too dangerous” for a visit, but said, “I know that Pope Francis wants to do all that is possible for him in order to contribute for peace, so I know for sure that he is evaluating, he is thinking about all the possibilities.”

The request comes just days after the pope made a surprise visit to a Rome hospital caring for Ukrainian children, several of about 50 young refugees have been hospitalized there since the war began, according to the Vatican.

Earlier on Tuesday, Zelensky addressed the Italian Parliament, offering thanks to the country for accepting Ukrainian refugees. He extended expressions of gratitude during his call with the pope, Zelensky said.

“I thanked His Holiness for a clear and strong position against the war and for his prayers for Ukraine,” he said.

President Biden pledged earlier this month to welcome Ukrainian refugees “with open arms if, in fact, they come all the way here.” And Vice President Harris said the United States is “absolutely prepared to do what we can and what we must to support Poland,” where millions of Ukrainians have fled to in recent weeks to escape the Russian invasion.

Those words may soon be put to the test.

Biden is expected to face pressure to do more to help with Europe’s fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II when he meets with Polish Prime Minister Andrzej Duda this week in Warsaw, where officials say the city is straining to meet the needs of Ukrainians.

Pressure is also rising in Washington as the crisis worsens and several senators return from visits to the region.

KYIV, Ukraine — A fleet of white vans pulled up to central Kyiv in darkness just after 9 p.m.

The passengers stepped out bleary-eyed, clutching their luggage, pets and young children. They had survived the last two weeks in catastrophic conditions in the besieged city of Chernihiv — then endured an hours-long journey on dangerous roads to the capital.

Now, at the historic Brodsky Synagogue, they had finally reached safety.

The curfew and sabbath were well underway, but at the door to greet the hundreds of civilians pouring out of the convoy was the bearded jovial man who helped arrange their journey: Rabbi Moshe Azman.

“Some said they didn’t eat for three days,” Azman said.

The evacuees from Chernihiv, many of whom had lived underground to avoid an aggressive Russian shelling and bombing campaign, are among the tens of thousands of people Azman said he has helped to move from dangerous areas in the past month. On Friday night, they shuffled through the synagogue, passing by a large silver menorah before settling in the prayer hall, where they rested and warmed up before being relocated to the train station or nearby hotels for the night.