U.S. finds Russian forces have committed war crimes; Biden arrives in Brussels

In Western Ukraine, cities are not yet under attack, or being shelled, by Russian forces.

But all of Ukraine is on a war footing, and the militarization of the general population is most visible in the thousands of civilians who are enlisting and training as part of ad hoc security forces.

They perform a wide array of surveillance and policing duties while other law enforcement officers head to the front.

Most have never held a gun, except for the hunting enthusiasts among them.

At the main registration center for volunteers in Lviv, the line to sign up was hundreds deep on a recent day. Thousands have joined, and others are on reserve lists.

A Russian resolution addressing the humanitarian situation in Ukraine failed to pass the U.N. ​Security Council on Wednesday, with Russia and China voting in favor and the remainder of the council’s 15 members abstaining. The draft called for protection of noncombatants and for access to be given to humanitarian workers.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, criticized the abstentions and said the absence of a Security Council resolution related to conditions for civilians in Ukraine “significantly complicates” aid activities on the ground. He also repeated Russian accusations that Kyiv has positioned weapons near hospitals and schools. He did not provide evidence to support his claim.

China’s representative, Zhang Jun, called for restraint in Ukraine and for a “balanced, effective and sustainable global and regional security architecture.”

British U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said London abstained because the resolution did not acknowledge Russia’s role in starting the conflict.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield condemned Russia’s resolution. “Once again, Russia is attempting to use this council to provide cover for its brutal actions,” she said. “It really is unconscionable that Russia would have the audacity to put forward a resolution asking the international community to solve a humanitarian crisis that Russia alone created.”

Ashish Pradhan, senior U.N. analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Russia was attempting to distract from its actions in Ukraine. “It fits into their approach of flooding the zone at the U.N. with a lot of noise,” he said.

A parallel Ukrainian-led resolution — which pins blame on Russia — and another sponsored by South Africa are being debated in the U.N. General Assembly.

Russian naval forces launched cruise missiles Tuesday evening from the waters outside Sevastopol, a port city in Crimea, according to expert analysis of video verified by The Washington Post.

A video filmed by a witness from the Sevastopol waterfront Tuesday shows at least four projectiles being fired into the air from the water. Geolocation of the video by The Post shows that the missiles appear to be traveling northwest, away from the city. As the narrator recites the date and location, the camera pans to show his location.

“We thought it was a plane flying. It’s normal that planes fly here. But shooting is something serious,” the narrator says. Additional video filmed around the same time shows eight flares with long tails that appear to be airborne missiles flying over the Black Sea. Both videos were verified by The Post.

A separate video posted to a Telegram channel Wednesday run by Russian state media shows a warship launching missiles. The caption claims the footage, published by the Russian Ministry of Defense, shows how a Russian ship used eight missiles to strike Ukrainian military facilities. The tightly-cropped video first shows multiple large missile engine flares in succession above a ship, while someone off camera counts, “First, second, third, fourth.” The video then cuts to a wider view of a sunset where the long tails of the eight missiles are visible. The Post was not able to verify the location of the launch.

Ian Williams, deputy director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Post in an email that he was nearly positive the videos showed the launch of 3M-14 Kalibr cruise missiles. “These are Russia’s long-range naval sea-based cruise missiles, similar to the U.S. Tomahawk,” he told The Post in an email. “They use satellite navigation along with some onboard inertial guidance. They can fly between 1,500 — 2,500 km, and they pack a pretty big payload of around 1,000 lbs.”

Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, told the Russian news agency Tass on Wednesday that Russian forces used “high-precision long-range sea-based weapons” to strike a weapons depot northwest of the city of Rovno on the evening of March 22. Rovno, which is also called Rivne, is more than 200 miles west of Kyiv and would be within the range a 3M-14 Kalibr missile fired from Sevastopol.

The FBI is trying a novel strategy to recruit Russian-speaking individuals upset about the country’s invasion of Ukraine: aiming social media ads at cellphones located inside or just outside the Russian Embassy in Washington.

The ads, which appear on Facebook, Twitter and Google, are carefully geographically targeted. A Washington Post reporter standing next to the embassy’s stone walls on Wednesday morning received the ad in their Facebook feed. But the ads did not appear in the feed when the reporter stood on the other side of Wisconsin Avenue NW, in the District’s Glover Park neighborhood.

The ads are designed to capitalize on any dissatisfaction or anger within Russian diplomatic or spy services — or among Russian emigres to the United States — over the invasion of Ukraine, an event that counterintelligence experts call a huge opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to recruit new sources.

Ukrainian forces on Wednesday continued to conduct counterattacks in an attempt to prevent Russian attempts to encircle Kyiv, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at least 100,000 people are still living under worsening humanitarian conditions in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.

Repeated attempts by the United States’ top defense and military leaders to speak with their Russian counterparts have been rejected by Moscow for the last month, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers in the dark about explanations for military movements and raising fears of a major miscalculation or battlefield accident.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov but the Russians “have so far declined to engage,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement Wednesday.

The attempted calls by Austin and Milley, which have not previously been reported, come as Russia conducts operations near the borders of NATO members Poland and Romania while the United States and its European allies conduct air-policing operations over the Baltic Sea and pour weapons and equipment into Ukraine by ground transport.

Russia has given the United States a list of American diplomats being expelled from the country, officials from both nations said Wednesday.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the expulsion was a response to U.S. actions against the Kremlin over its invasion of Ukraine — specifically, “Washington’s expulsion of diplomats from the Russian Permanent Mission to the U.N. in New York, as well as a Russian employee of the U.N. secretariat,” the Foreign Ministry said on its website.

A State department spokesperson confirmed the U.S. Embassy “received a list of diplomats declared “persona non grata” from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on March 23.”

“This is Russia’s latest unhelpful and unproductive step in our bilateral relationship. We call on the Russia government to end its unjustified expulsions of U.S. diplomats and staff,” the spokesperson said. “Now more than ever, it is critical that our countries have the necessary diplomatic personnel in place to facilitate communication between our governments.”

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