West takes aim at Russian oil and gas while companies halt business

When Moscow downplays its invasion and says that its attacks aren’t hitting civilians, Ukraine’s first lady has a ready reply: Alice, Polina, Arseniy.

They are the names of three of the more than two dozen children who have been killed since the Russian assault began nearly two weeks ago, according to Olena Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“When Russia says that it is ‘not waging war against civilians,’ I call out the names of these murdered children first,” Zelenska wrote in an impassioned open letter delivered to the media by her spokesperson on Tuesday.

She penned the letter, she said, in response to an overwhelming number of press inquiries, and said it should serve as her “testimony from Ukraine.” At two pages and nearly 1,000 words, it is a wrenching and direct statement from someone Zelensky has described as Russia’s “target No. 2″ — along with the couple’s two young children — after only the president himself.

For security reasons, the location of Zelenska and their children has not been publicly disclosed, but like Zelensky, she has been a prominent voice on social media, buoying the morale of Ukrainians with encouraging posts on Instagram and a Telegram channel that answers questions about how to live in a war zone. Zelensky has said his family remains in Ukraine.

Who is Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady and Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife?

In the letter, Zelenska describes the impact of the combat on the most vulnerable, who have been trapped in besieged cities.

“Our women and children now live in bomb shelters and basements,” she wrote. “The first newborn of the war saw the concrete ceiling of the basement, their first breath was the acrid air of the underground, and they were greeted by a community trapped and terrorized. At this point, there are several dozen children who have never known peace in their lives.”

The invasion has driven more than 2 million people out of the country, the United Nations said Tuesday, a crisis that has stunned humanitarian workers with its scale and speed. Half of those who have fled are children, according to UNICEF. Zelenska recounted the pain and hope embedded in scenes of separating families — those fleeing the country bidding farewell to those returning to fight.

“Our roads are flooded with refugees,” she wrote. “Look into the eyes of these tired women and children who carry with them the pain and heartache of leaving loved ones and life as they knew it behind. The men bringing them to the borders shedding tears to break apart their families, but bravely returning to fight for our freedom. After all, despite all this horror, Ukrainians do not give up.”

Zelenska also repeated calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine and appealed directly to journalists, who have been targeted by the Kremlin’s strict new media laws.

“Keep showing what is happening here,” she wrote, “and keep showing the truth.”

TALLINN, Estonia — At nearly every stop on his whirlwind European tour over the last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had an identical message seemingly directed straight at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power,” he said during a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, on Tuesday, in what became a verbatim refrain throughout his six-day sprint from Brussels to the Baltics.

Blinken’s trip, capped by a brief stopover in Paris on Tuesday for talks with President Emmanuel Macron, was an attempt to illustrate Western unity and a warning to Putin to banish any thought of lashing out at NATO nations as he presses deeper into Ukraine. It unfolded as Putin’s invasion becomes more deadly and the West’s unprecedented economic reprisals sends tensions with Moscow to levels not seen in generations.

Several thousand people were evacuated from the northeastern Sumy region Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said — a breakthrough after shelling thwarted attempts to shuttle civilians out of other areas.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s office of the president, said on Telegram that about 5,000 people were able to leave — some in buses, others in their cars. More than 1,000 private cars made it out safely, Tymoshenko said.

The evacuees went to Poltava nearly 100 miles southwest — the only route available, according to Dmytro Zhivitsky, a regional governor. Zhivitsky said buses arrived with supplies and gave priority to children, disabled people and pregnant women trying to flee.

The deputy prime minister of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, said during a telethon that 1,700 foreign students were among those evacuated from the Sumy area, according to Ukrainian National News. The students went to Poltava and then toward Lviv and the rest of Europe, she said, adding that Tuesday’s operation “succeeded” with the help of the Red Cross.

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said Tuesday on Twitter that “all Indian students” in Sumy were part of the evacuation and safely out of the city. From Poltava, he said, the students would take trains to western Ukraine, where efforts would continue to repatriate them to India.

While the governor said the corridor stemmed from an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, he warned that there was still a “very high risk of provocation,” and he urged people to evaluate the risks for themselves.

Russia said Tuesday it was opening humanitarian corridors from a number of besieged cities, as Ukraine accused Moscow’s forces of violating cease-fires that would allow civilians to evacuate.

A planned evacuation from the southern city of Mariupol could not start Tuesday morning, according to Vereshchuk. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said a fleet of vehicles was ready to deliver aid to the port city and carry civilians northwest but accused Russian forces of shelling the route.

Zina Pozen contributed to this report.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the decision by the United States and Britain to ban Russian oil imports Tuesday, calling the moves “a powerful signal to the whole world.”

“Either Russia will respect international law and not wage wars or it will have no money,” Zelensky said in his latest video shared on Telegram.

He called for negotiations to end the war and referenced his earlier video address to the British Parliament, in which he detailed the toll of Russia’s 13-day invasion.

The “scariest figure” was the 50 children killed over that period, Zelensky said in his Telegram video.

“But then in an hour, it became 52 children,” he said. “We will never forgive this. And I know that you will never forgive the occupiers.”

Russia on Tuesday proposed a new cease-fire in some Ukrainian cities to establish “humanitarian corridors” for civilians seeking to evacuate, Russian media reported.

Ukraine has accused Russia of violating limited cease-fire agreements aimed at helping civilians flee the bombardment.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the new cease-fire would begin at 10 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday, according to the state-run news agency, Tass. It would apply to five cities in Ukraine, authorities said, including Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.

Moscow said that Ukraine should respond to begin coordination by 3 a.m. Wednesday — a deadline that has already passed.

On Sunday, Russian forces shelled residents in Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv as they prepared to evacuate, killing at least eight people, local officials said.

“The shell hit, and in front of my own eyes died two small children and two adults,” said Irpin Mayor Alexandar Markushin in a video. “I want to emphasize these were peaceful residents.”

Two Ukrainian children killed ‘in front of my own eyes’ while trying to evacuate, official says

Ukraine has also rejected the Kremlin’s proposals of evacuation routes leading to Russia or its ally, Belarus.

Lumen, a leading American Internet provider to Russia, announced Tuesday that it was severing business relations in the country, a move likely to increase Russia’s isolation as its citizens slip behind what some analysts are calling a new digital Iron Curtain.

Lumen is the second top U.S.-based carrier to make such a move in recent days, following Friday’s announcement by Cogent Communications. Taken together, these moves are likely to make it harder for Russians to gain access to international services, such as news sites and social media based in the West, telecommunications experts said.

American technology and telecommunications companies have been cutting services in Russia since it invaded Ukraine last month. In the same period, Russia’s government has throttled or blocked popular U.S.-based services such as Twitter and Facebook while imposing new criminal penalties for news coverage that doesn’t follow the Kremlin’s strict censorship policies.

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Shortly after midnight in Moscow, the Central Bank announced Russian citizens would no longer be allowed to use rubles to buy dollars and other hard currencies.

“Banks will not sell hard currency to citizens during the period of the temporary order,” the Central Bank said in a statement posted to its website. The order was to expire Sept. 9.

The Central Bank said it also will limit to $10,000 the amount of U.S. dollars that clients can withdraw from hard-currency accounts at Russian banks. Anyone wanting to withdraw more than that from a hard-currency account will have to take the balance in rubles, the Central Bank said.

The measures will prevent Russians from seeking security in the dollar as the ruble plummets to fresh lows in the wake of Western economic sanctions, which have blocked Russia’s access to its foreign currency reserves.

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The trajectory of gas prices at the Mobil station four miles north of the White House has been brutal, clocking in at $3.85 a week ago, $4.17 on Friday, then $4.43 Tuesday, leaving Elizabeth Lopez, a mother of three and employer of six, feeling trapped.

“I don’t know how we can do it,” Lopez said, filling up a Chrysler minivan across from a shuttered tire shop in Northwest Washington.