Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukraine to contest Russia’s justification for invasion at top U.N. court as bombardment continues

Bethenny Frankel, a philanthropist who gained fame through “The Real Housewives of New York” reality television show, said she has raised about $25 million to assist those affected by the crisis in Ukraine.

Frankel said that through her disaster relief initiative, “BStrong,” in collaboration with the nonprofit Global Empowerment Mission, more than $10 million had been donated to relocate refugees in Poland and other European Union countries. Her organization also has committed to providing $15 million in other aid, including medical supplies and hygiene kits, she said.

She said her effort focused, in part, on refugees fleeing Ukraine who are not Ukrainian citizens, with needs that were “much more complicated due to visa situations and language barriers.”

Some African and South Asian immigrants fleeing Ukraine have faced problems when trying to exit the country, according to the U.N. refugee agency and other authorities.

Frankel, who founded the Skinnygirl drink brand, has also organized aid and donations for earthquake victims in Haiti, those affected by the Texas blackout last winter and the Surfside condo collapse in Florida.

SYDNEY — Australia’s prime minister called the invasion of Ukraine a “major wake-up call” for liberal democracies as he urged them to stand together in the face of “autocratic regimes,” such as Russia and China.

“A new arc of autocracy is instinctively aligning to challenge and reset the world order in their own image,” Scott Morrison said Monday in a video address from his Sydney residence, where he is isolating after testing positive for the coronavirus last week. He repeatedly drew parallels between Russian and Chinese aggression, saying Vladimir Putin’s claims to parts of Ukraine had “a chilling reverberation with similar lectures that I’ve been on the receiving end of about situations in the Indo-Pacific and what people claim to be theirs.”

The war in Ukraine had not impacted the “tense” situation in the Taiwan Strait, Morrison said, but Australia faces the “most difficult and dangerous security environment” since World War II.

Morrison used his speech to the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, to announce a plan for a new naval base on the country’s east coast that will support nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS partnership struck last year with the United States and the United Kingdom. The $7.5 billion base will also “enable the regular visiting of U.S. and U.K. nuclear-powered submarines,” he said.

The prime minister said missiles that he promised Ukraine last week were now “on the ground” and that Australia had fast-tracked 1,700 visas for Ukrainians since the crisis began. Asked after his speech whether he was confident Ukraine would emerge from the war independent and whole, however, Morrison said no.

“I’m not confident of that outcome at this point,” he said. “Nor can Mr. Putin be confident of the outcome he thought would come so easily.”

KYIV, Ukraine — The groom wore a helmet. The bride wore fatigues.

So did the priest and the wedding party, with comrades in the Ukrainian defense forces who lined up for the marital procession carrying shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles.

Others guests included Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who wore a bulletproof vest and took a selfie with the bride, and a throng of journalists invited to watch the spectacle of a wedding next to a checkpoint in the midst of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Despite the surreal nature of Lesya Filimonova and Valeriy Filimonov’s marriage in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, the moment in some ways offered a glimpse of normality amid the conflict. It showed, the mayor said, that “life continues and the people live and their love helps the war.”

About 95 percent of the forces Russia amassed at its border with Ukraine have been deployed into the country, according to a senior U.S. defense official.

“We’ve observed limited changes on the ground over the past day,” the official told journalists Sunday, on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon. The official said Russian forces are trying to isolate Kyiv, the capital, as well as Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and Chernihiv in the north. They continue to meet “strong Ukrainian resistance,” the official said.

In the south, the person said, Russian forces are encircling Mariupol, a city of 430,000 that has lost heat, water and power under siege. Reports of widespread outages continue, the defense official said, and there is also fighting near Kherson and Mykolaiv.

Russia and Ukraine have lost aircraft and “missile defense inventories” but still have “a majority of their air defense systems and capabilities” intact, the official said.

The official could not independently verify Ukrainian officials’ assertions that Russia broke cease-fire agreements.

Officials in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are asking Interpol to consider suspending Russia’s access to its systems, which help 195 countries share data on crimes.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and justice officials from other nations in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance called Sunday for Interpol and its executive committee to “decide this week on the immediate suspension of Russia’s access,” according to Justice Department spokesperson Anthony Coley.

Interpol did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.

Canada’s minister of public safety, Marco Mendicino, also wrote to Interpol last week asking that Russia lose access. The country has “demonstrated a blatant and egregious disregard for human rights and the rule of law” in attacking fellow Interpol member Ukraine, he said, and is “deliberately undermining the rule of law which INTERPOL is sworn to uphold.”

Sharing Sunday’s joint push on Twitter, U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel echoed that “Russia’s actions are a direct threat to the safety of individuals and to international law enforcement cooperation.”

MARKHALIVKA, Ukraine — Ihor Mozhayev walked unsteadily atop the rubble of his destroyed house, a dazed look on his bruised face. In his path were the remnants of what was left of his life.

A red Christmas decoration, a dust-covered leopard-print pillow, notebooks with neat handwriting, a school bookbag and pieces of toys were among dozens of shattered memories. Scattered in the debris were family photos of loved ones now forever lost.

Mozhayev, 54, his right cheek purplish and swollen, picked up a small plastic chair stained with blood. “That’s her chair,” he said in a low voice that faded into the hum of a bulldozer nearby. “During the day she was always sitting up in this chair.”

The chair belonged to his 12-year-old disabled daughter, Masha. She was killed with her mother, her grandmother, and three other civilians in a suspected Russian airstrike Friday in this speck of a village about six miles southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Two of Mozhayev’s grandchildren, ages 7 and 8, were pulled from the rubble, miraculously alive.