Russia-Ukraine live updates: Zelensky rejects Russian ultimatums; strike on Kyiv mall kills 8

Speaking to a group of U.S. business executives Monday evening, President Biden confirmed for the first time Russia’s use of a hypersonic missile in its invasion of Ukraine. On Saturday and Sunday, Russian military officials claimed they had deployed hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, but the Pentagon had declined to confirm their use through Monday afternoon.

“As you noticed, they just launched a hypersonic missile because it’s the only thing they can get through with absolute certainty. As you all know, it’s a consequential weapon,” Biden said Monday at the quarterly meeting of Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs from some of the largest U.S. companies. “But with the same warhead on it as any other launched missile. It doesn’t make that much difference except it’s almost impossible to stop it. There’s a reason they’re using it.”

Biden said NATO and Pacific allies had been united in dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression with sanctions and other punishments, and he thanked business leaders for making decisions — such as pulling their business out of Russia — that also helped impose real costs on the Russian economy. But Biden also warned that the effectiveness of their alliance would drive Putin to pursue more severe war tactics.

“Now Putin’s back is against the wall. He wasn’t anticipating the extent of our strength, of our unity,” Biden said. “And the more his back is against the wall, the greater severity the tactics he may employ. We’ve seen it before.”

Biden said U.S. intelligence warned that Russia could be planning a cyberattack against the United States and urged the CEOs “as a patriotic obligation” to invest as much as they can to bolster technological capacity to deal with such attacks.

Moscow issued an ultimatum Sunday: Ukrainian forces had to leave the besieged city of Mariupol or face further assaults and a “military tribunal.”

Ukraine rejected the order to surrender the city, which has been battered by a Russian blockade and bombardments for nearly three weeks.

Here’s what to know about Mariupol and the humanitarian catastrophe happening there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played an air raid siren on Monday during a Telegram address, saying he was demonstrating to the world what Ukrainians hear amid Russian air assaults.

“You will hear what we have been living for 25 days now,” he said before playing the siren noise from a phone.

In recent weeks, as Russia has escalated its assault, Ukrainians have grown more confident in their country’s ability to repel the invasion and emerge victorious from the war, a newly released poll found.

The survey, conducted by the Kyiv-based firm Info Sapiens, shows how Ukrainian public opinion has evolved during the intense shelling and bloody firefights in which the Ukrainian military exhibited a stouter-than-expected defense. According to the poll — conducted March 14 and 15 — 91 percent of Ukrainian respondents say the country’s troops will eventually defeat Russian forces and end the invasion.

That figure has risen significantly since an Info Sapiens survey in February, just before the war began, in which 56 percent of Ukrainians said they would be victorious in the event of a Russian invasion. The increased resolve is perhaps unsurprising and probably can be at least partly attributed to the “rally ‘round the flag effect,” in which public support grows for governments and their leaders in times of war or conflict.

The latest Info Sapiens poll, which surveyed a random sample of people on their mobile phones and is representative of Ukraine’s adult population, found that “confidence in victory prevails in all regions” but that it is lowest — 74 percent — in the country’s east, where Russia has the largest presence.

One of the firm’s earlier polls found that 67 percent of Ukrainians surveyed — 78 percent of men and 59 percent of women — said they were “willing to put up armed resistance” to stop Russia’s advance into Ukraine.

Western analysts and experts have in recent days said the war appears headed toward a stalemate, with Russia’s progress stalled and its casualties mounting. But they cautioned that the Kremlin, with its far larger military, has the upper hand and said the coming weeks will be crucial.

The Biden administration on Monday reiterated a call for U.S. businesses to increase their cybersecurity capabilities, citing intelligence that the Russian government is exploring options for potential attacks.

The warning, which came after U.S. intelligence concluded that Russian government hackers probably have penetrated Ukrainian military, energy and other critical computer networks, adds to concerns that private U.S.-based companies need to do more to secure their networks.

“Today, we are reiterating those warnings, and we’re doing so based on evolving threat intelligence that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the United States,” Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said at a White House briefing Monday. “To be clear, there is no certainty there will be a cyber incident on critical infrastructure.”

The administration last week held a classified briefing with companies and sectors it said could be affected. Neuberger declined to specify the companies and sectors involved.

She said there was no evidence of a specific attack but that U.S. intelligence had detected “preparatory activity” such as scanning websites and looking for potential vulnerabilities.

The executive chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank on tech and trade security, said he anticipated Russian retaliation “for sanctions, including with cyberattacks.”

“They are probably judging that now is as good a time as any, with the war in Ukraine grinding into a stalemate,” Dmitri Alperovitch said.

Neuberger said any such actions taken by Russia would be met with a response.

“We’re not looking for a conflict with Russia,” she said. “If Russia initiates a cyberattack against the United States, we will respond.”

Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

Videos verified by The Washington Post show Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov walking through residential buildings damaged by suspected Russian strikes in the southern part of the Ukrainian city, near the Black Sea coast.

In the video, a resident says he heard shelling about 5:50 a.m. before running to his bomb shelter just as the roof starting to give in. Another resident recounts an explosion in his front yard.

According to a statement from the mayor’s office to The Post, the strike was not near a military facility and there were no reported fatalities.

In additional video, a crew from the State Emergency Services of Ukraine puts out a fire and clears rubble from the area. Odessa, a city in southwestern Ukraine known for its historic downtown and Black Sea beaches, has largely avoided the bulk of the Russian strikes, and many residents have chosen to stay in the city.

“We will not leave Odessa and we will fight for our city,” Trukhanov said in his statement.

Oil prices surged past $116 a barrel on Monday and U.S. stocks turned negative — with the Dow sliding 200 points — as the war in Ukraine and inflation dominated investors’ attention.

The major U.S. indexes erased mild advances, then remained in the red after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell raised the specter of bigger interest rate hikes to beat back decades-high inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average shed 201.94 points, or 0.6 percent, to close at 34,552.99. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 55.83 points, or 0.4 percent, to settle at 13,838.46, while the broader S&P 500 index edged down 1.94 points, or 0.04 percent, to end at 4,461.18.

Last week, all three indexes notched their best weekly performance since November 2020, boosted by a cool-down in oil prices that had spiked past $130 a barrel in early March. But prices have swelled as bombardments intensify and resolution seems to remain out of reach. An attack on Saudi oil facilities over the weekend injected further uncertainty into energy markets.

Additional pressure came as the European Union weighed whether to ban Russian oil, a move that would strike a direct blow to Russia’s main financial artery — oil sales account for 40 percent of the Russian government’s budget, according to Russia’s Finance Ministry — while also cutting the bloc off from its biggest energy supplier.

The Bank of Russia said Monday that federal loan bonds would resume trading, days after the government made a $117 million interest payment to foreign bondholders, averting what would have been its first foreign debt default since 1918. Other trading remains suspended, as the government seeks to shield stocks from the pain that Russian-listed firms outside the country have felt in recent weeks amid the cavalcade of sanctions.

Oligarch. It’s a word that refers to wealthy elites, people who don’t just hold power and money but who control enough resources to influence politics or government in a meaningful way.

It is also heavily associated with the rich and powerful in Russia, specifically those who made their fortunes in the post-Soviet era, including some who remain connected to the Kremlin today.

An oligarchy is government by the few. And the Oxford Dictionary defines “oligarch” as an “extremely rich and powerful person, especially a Russian who became rich in business after the end of the former Soviet Union.”

Despite the Russian overtones, the word oligarch has Greek roots: It is derived from oligoi (“few”) and arkhein (“to rule”). Aristotle used it to describe a privileged few exercising despotic power for corrupt purposes — a debased kind of aristocracy.