LONDON — The bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral rang out Sunday as a gesture of support for Ukraine.
The London landmark rang its 12 bells at 4 p.m. (1600GMT), the same time as church bells were due to sound in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Durham Cathedral in northern England and other churches around Britain also joined in.
Dean of St. Paul’s David Ison said he hoped Ukrainians would “find comfort in this act of solidarity.” He said “we continue to pray for strength and safety for the many people affected by the conflict, and for peace in Ukraine and around the world.”
Ukrainian politicians have likened their fight against Russian invasion to Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany in World War II. One of the most iconic images of British wartime resilience is a photo showing the dome of St. Paul’s surrounded by thick smoke during a night of heavy German bombing in 1940. (edited)
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BERLIN — Alona Fartukhova has been coming to Berlin’s Ukrainian Orthodox Christian community every day since she arrived in Germany five days ago from war-torn Kyiv. The 20-year-old refugee has been attending daily prayers for peace and helped organize donations for her compatriots back home.
On Sunday, Fartukhova joined dozens of other Ukrainian worshippers at a red brick stone church in the German capital who sang together, lit candles, and received blessings from the head of the community, Father Oleh Polianko. Later they put medical crutches, sleeping bags, diapers, big boxes of gummi bears and countless jars of pickles — which were piling up everywhere inside the church — into big cardboard boxes to be send to Ukraine.
Across Europe, Ukrainians gathered for church services to pray for peace in their war-torn country. Newly arrived refugees mingled with long-time members of Europe’s 1.5 million-strong Ukrainian diaspora at houses of worship all over the continent from Germany to Romania to Moldova.
Since Russia attacked Ukraine more than three weeks ago, over 3.38 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Most have escaped to neighboring Poland, Romania or Moldova, but as the war continues many are moving further west.
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BERLIN — More than 8,000 people are attending an open-air concert in the German capital to express their support for Ukraine.
The “Sound of Peace” concert at the city’s landmark Brandenburg Gate on Sunday features German music stars such as Marius Mueller-Westernhagen, who was to perform his iconic song Freiheit, or freedom in German, violinist David Garrett, singer Peter Maffay, and the bands Revolverheld and Silbermond.
Up to 20,000 people were expected at the concert which started in the early afternoon and was supposed to last into the night.
On Sunday afternoon, police called on visitors that the main streets leading to the venue where so crowded that newcomers should look for others ways to get to the concert, German news agency dpa reported.
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KYIV, Ukraine — The Mariupol City Council has issued a statement claiming that its residents are being evacuated to Russia against their will and one Ukrainian lawmaker says those people are being taken for forced labor in remote parts of Russia.
“The occupiers are forcing people to leave Ukraine for Russia. Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents have been taken to the Russian territory,” the city statement said.
The Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said Sunday that 2,973 people have been evacuated from Mariupol since March 5, including 541 over the last 24 hours.
The statement by the Mariupol City Council also claimed that cellphones and documents of evacuees have been inspected by Russian troops before sending Mariupol residents to the “remote cities in Russia.”
Ukrainian lawmaker Inna Sovsun told Times Radio that according to the mayor and city council in Mariupol, those citizens are going to so-called filtration camps and “then they’re being relocated to very distant parts of Russia, where they’re being forced to sign papers that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas.”
The besieged city of Mariupol, which has suffered under heavy Russian forces’ shelling, has been cut off from food, water and energy supplies.
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WARSAW, Poland — Officials in Poland say that trucks headed for Belarus are backed up for 40 kilometers (25 miles) while they wait to reach the Koroszczyn border point as a group of protesters is blocking the road there. The protesters are calling for a ban on trade with Russia and its ally Belarus.
The protesters, Ukrainians and Poles, have been blocking access to the crossing – on and off – for some two weeks, to pressure Moscow into ending its war on Ukraine.
The latest round of the “NO Trade with Russia!” protest in eastern Poland began early Saturday.
Some 950 trucks were waiting to cross into Belarus early Sunday, according to spokesman for the local tax office, Michal Derus. The waiting time was 32 hours, he said.
The road leading to the border point has been closed and the police were separating the protesters from the trucks and the drivers, road infrastructure authorities said.
The pressure of truck traffic on the Koroszczyn border point increased after Poland’s largest crossing into Belarus, in Kuznica, was closed in November, following border guard clashes with Middle East migrants who were trying to illegally cross into Poland, European Union member.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has called on the European Union to halt all land and sea trade with Russia.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Germany’s economy minister is visiting the tiny, energy-rich state of Qatar to discuss improving stability in the energy market as Russia’s war in Ukraine sends gas prices to new highs.
Robert Habeck met with Qatar’s foreign minister and minister of state for energy affairs on Sunday about the short-term supply of liquefied natural gas, as Germany seeks to scale back its reliance on Russian oil and gas.
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani spoke with Habeck about ways to boost energy cooperation and security, a Qatari government statement said.
Habeck is the latest Western official to visit the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf amid turmoil in energy markets as Europe seeks to wean itself off Russian energy sources while keeping skyrocketing gasoline prices under control.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia last week in a bid to convince the countries to pump more oil after prices spiked dramatically on supply disruption concerns.
Italy's foreign minister, after visiting Algeria, also went to Qatar, as the Italian government is intent on quickly reducing reliance of Russian-energy. Italy is also looking to Azerbaijan, Tunisia and Libya, to boost its acquisition of gas.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says that six Russian generals and dozens of other senior officers have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion.
Podolyak tweeted on Sunday that “the high mortality rate among Russia’s senior military officers” reflects a “total lack of readiness,” adding that the Russian military relies on big number of troops and cruise missiles.
The Russian military hasn’t confirmed the death of any of its generals. But an associate and an officers’ group in Russia confirmed the death of one, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the 7th Airborne Division.
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ISTANBUL — Turkey’s foreign minister says Ukraine and Russia are close to an agreement on “fundamental issues” and that negotiations were ongoing.
Speaking on Sunday in Antalya, Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey was in touch with negotiators on both sides and was acting as a “mediator and facilitator.” He said he could not divulge details but that there was “momentum.”
The minister said in return for its neutrality, Ukraine was demanding that Turkey, Germany and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council act as guarantors. Cavusoglu visited Russia and Ukraine this week to meet his counterparts.
Turkey is close with both Russia and Ukraine. It has close energy, trade and defense relations with Moscow, even though it supports opposing sides in Syria and Libya. Ankara has not sanctioned Russia or closed its airspace but has closed the Turkish Straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which affects Russian warships’ access except for those returning to port.
Turkey has been critical of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, where Crimean Tatars share ethnic and religious links with Turkey, and has emphasized the importance of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
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BEIRUT — Dozens of people have demonstrated outside U.N. headquarters in Beirut to express support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. They contend that Moscow only moved in to protect Russian-speaking people who have been under attack for eight years.
Sunday’s gathering by nearly 150 Lebanese, Syrians and Russians.
Some Lebanese and Syrians support Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military joined Syria’s civil war in 2015 and helped tip the balance of power in favor of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Lebanon is divided by a Western-backed coalition and another by groups supported by Iran and Assad’s government.
Pope Francis has denounced Russia’s “repugnant war” against Ukraine as “cruel and sacrilegious inhumanity.”
In some of his strongest words yet since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, Francis on Sunday told thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square that every day brings more atrocities in what is a “senseless massacre.”
“There is no justification for this,’’ Francis said, in an apparent reference to Russia, which sought to justify its invasion as vital for its own defense. But Francis again stopped short of naming Russia as the aggressor. Pontiffs typically have decried wars and their devastating toll on civilians without citing warmongers by name.
Francis also called on “all actors in the international community” to work toward ending the war. “Again this week, missiles, bombs, rained down on the elderly, children and pregnant mothers,’’ the pope said. His thoughts, he said, went to the millions who flee. “And I feel great pain for those who don’t even have the chance to escape,’’ Francis added.
The pope said that “above all, defenseless life should get respected and protected, not eliminated.” That priority “comes before any strategy,’’ Francis said, before leading those in the square in a moment of silent prayer.
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WARSAW, Poland — Officials in Poland say that trucks headed for Belarus are backed up for 40 kilometers (25 miles) while they wait to reach the Koroszczyn border point as a group of protesters is blocking the road there. The protesters are calling for a ban on trade with Russia and its ally Belarus.
The protesters, Ukrainians and Poles, have been blocking access to the crossing – on and off – for some two weeks, to pressure Moscow into ending its war on Ukraine.
The latest round of the “NO Trade with Russia!” protest in eastern Poland began early Saturday.
Some 950 trucks were waiting to cross into Belarus early Sunday, according to spokesman for the local tax office, Michal Derus. The waiting time was 32 hours, he said.
The road leading to the border point has been closed and the police were separating the protesters from the trucks and the drivers, road infrastructure authorities said.
The pressure of truck traffic on the Koroszczyn border point increased after Poland’s largest crossing into Belarus, in Kuznica, was closed in November, following border guard clashes with Middle East migrants who were trying to illegally cross into Poland, European Union member.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has called on the European Union to halt all land and sea trade with Russia.
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia’s Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad says the first multinational NATO units with the Patriot air defense systems have been moving to his country.
Nad said on Sunday the transfers will continue in the next days.
Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to send their troops armed with the Patriots to Slovakia. The troops are some of the 2,100 soldiers from several NATO members, including the United States, who will form a battlegroup on Slovak territory as the alliance boosts its defenses in its eastern flank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nad says the Patriots will be initially deployed at the armed forces base of Sliac in central Slovakia before they will be stationed at various places to protect the largest possible Slovak territory.
He thanked Germany and the Netherlands for their “responsible decision” to fundamentally boost Slovakia’s defenses.
At the same time, Nad said, the Patriots would not replace the Russian-made S-300 air-defense system his country has relied on, calling their deployment “another component to protect Slovakia’s airspace.”
Nad previously has said his country will be willing to provide its S-300 long-range air defense missile system to Ukraine on condition it has a proper replacement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the S-300s when he spoke to U.S. lawmakers by video Wednesday, appealing for anti-air systems that would allow Ukraine protect its airspace against Russian warplanes and missiles. NATO members Bulgaria, Slovakia and Greece have the S-300s.
The Slovak minister said Sunday his country will work to replace the S-300s with a different system that would be compatible with the systems used by the allies.
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KYIV, Ukraine — The authorities in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol say that nearly 40,000 people have fled over the past week. That’s nearly 10% of its 430,000 population.
The city council in the Azov Sea port city said Sunday that 39,426 residents have safely evacuated from Mariupol in their own vehicles. It said the evacuees used more than 8,000 vehicles to leave via a humanitarian corridor via Berdyansk to Zaporizhzhia.
The strategic city has been encircled by the Russian troops and faced a relentless Russian bombardment for three weeks, coming to symbolize the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Local authorities have said the siege has cut off food, water and energy supplies, and killed at least 2,300 people, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that the siege of Mariupol would go down in history for what he said were war crimes committed by Russian troops.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Authorities in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv say at least five civilians have been killed in the latest Russian shelling.
Regional police in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said the victims of the Russian artillery attack early Sunday included a 9-year-old boy.
Kharkiv has been besieged by Russian forces since the start of the invasion and has come under a relentless barrage.
KYIV, Ukraine — Authorities in Ukraine have evacuated scores of baby orphans from a city engulfed by combat.
The governor of the northeastern Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, said Sunday that 71 infants have been safely evacuated via a humanitarian corridor. Zhyvytskyy said on Facebook that the orphans will be taken to an unspecified foreign country. He said most of them require constant medical attention.
Like many other Ukrainian cities, Sumy has been besieged by Russian troops and faced repeated shelling.
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The Russian military says it has carried out a new series of strikes on Ukrainian military facilities with long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that the Kinzhal hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv. The strike marked the second day in a row that Russia used the Kinzhal, a weapon capable of striking targets 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
The previous day, the Russian military said the Kinzhal was used for the first time in combat to destroy an ammunition depot in Diliatyn in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.
Konashenkov noted that the Kalibr cruise missiles launched by Russian warships from the Caspian Sea were also involved in the strike on the fuel depot in Kostiantynivka. He said Kalibr missiles launched from the Black Sea were used to destroy an armor repair plant in Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine.
Konashenkov added that another strike by air-launched missiles hit a Ukrainian facility in Ovruch in the northern Zhytomyr region where foreign fighters and Ukrainian special forces were based.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Authorities in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol say that the Russian military has bombed an art school where about 400 people had taken refuge.
Local authorities said Sunday that the school building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Russian forces on Wednesday also bombed a theater in Mariupol where civilians took shelter. The authorities said 130 people were rescued but many more could remain under the debris.
Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, has been encircled by Russian troops, cut off from energy, food and water supplies, and has faced a relentless bombardment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the siege of Mariupol would go down in history for what he said were war crimes committed by Russian troops.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered activities of 11 political parties with links to Russia to be suspended.
The largest of them is the Opposition Platform for Life, which has 44 out of 450 seats in the country’s parliament. The party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who has friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Also on the list is the Nashi (Ours) party led by Yevheniy Murayev. Before the Russian invasion. the British authorities had warned that Russia wanted to install Murayev as the leader of Ukraine.
Speaking in a video address early Sunday, Zelenskyy said that “given a large-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and links between it and some political structures, the activities of a number of political parties is suspended for the period of the martial law.” He added that “activities by politicians aimed at discord and collaboration will not succeed.”
Zelenskyy’s announcement follows the introduction of the martial law that envisages a ban on parties associated with Russia.
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KYIV, Ukraine -- In peacetime, Ukraine has a thriving surrogate industry, one of the few countries where foreigners can get Ukrainian women to carry their pregnancies. Now at least 20 of those babies are stuck in a makeshift bomb shelter in Ukraine’s capital, waiting for parents to travel into the war zone to pick them up.
They’re well cared for at the moment. Surrogacy center nurses are stranded with them, because constant shelling makes it too dangerous for them to go home. Russian troops are trying to encircle the city, with Ukrainian defenders holding them off for now, the threat comes from the air.
Nurse Lyudmilla Yashchenko says they’re staying in the bomb shelter to save their lives, and the lives of the babies, some of whom are just days old. They have enough food and baby supplies for now, and can only hope and wait for the newborns to be picked up, and the war to end.
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The British defense ministry said the Ukrainian Air Force and air defense forces are “continuing to effectively defend Ukrainian airspace.”
“Russia has failed to gain control of the air and is largely relying on stand-off weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets within Ukraine,” the ministry said on Twitter. “Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress.”
A Ukrainian military official meanwhile confirmed to a Ukrainian newspaper that Russian forces carried out a missile strike Friday on a missile and ammunition warehouse in the Delyatyn settlement of the Ivano-Frankivsk region in western Ukraine.
But Ukraine’s Air Forces spokesman Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainskaya Pravda on Saturday that it has not been confirmed that the missile was indeed a hypersonic Kinzhal.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said earlier Saturday that Russian military hit the underground warehouse in Delyatyn on Friday with the hypersonic Kinzhal missile in its first reported combat use. According to Russian officials, the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound.
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LVIV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the siege of Mariupol will go down in history for what he’s calling war crimes by Russia’s military.
“To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said early Sunday in his nighttime video address to the nation.
Zelenskyy told Ukrainians the ongoing negotiations with Russia were “not simple or pleasant, but they are necessary.” He said he discussed the course of the talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.
“Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution. Moreover, we are interested in peace now,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military isn’t even recovering the bodies of its soldiers in some places, Zelenskyy said.
“In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defense. And no one is collecting these bodies,” he said. He described as battle near Chornobayivka in the south, where Ukrainian forces held their positions and six times beat back the Russians, who just kept “sending their people to slaughter.”
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WASHINGTON — The math of military conquests and occupation may be against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely. Yet even conservative figures are in the low thousands. That’s a much faster pace than in previous Russian offensives, threatening support for the war among ordinary Russians. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 over years of fighting in Chechnya.
Russia’s number of dead and wounded in Ukraine is nearing the 10% benchmark of diminished combat effectiveness, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher on Russia’s security at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. The reported battlefield deaths of four Russian generals — out of an estimated 20 in the fight — signal impaired command, he said.
Researchers tracking only those Russian equipment losses that were photographed or recorded on video say Russia has lost more than 1,500 tanks, trucks, mounted equipment and other heavy gear. Two out of three of those were captured or abandoned, signaling the failings of the Russian troops that let them go.
When it comes to the grinding job of capturing and holding cities, conventional military metrics suggest Russia needs a 5-to-1 advantage in urban fighting, analysts say. Meanwhile, the formula for ruling a restive territory in the face of armed opposition is 20 fighters for every 1,000 people — or 800,000 Russian troops for Ukraine’s more than 40 million people, said Michael Clarke, former head of the British-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank
That’s almost as many as Russia’s entire active-duty military of 900,000, and it means controlling substantial Ukrainian territory long term could take more resources than Russia can commit, he said.
“Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal — they could flatten all the major cities, and Ukrainians will rise up against Russian occupation — there will be just constant guerrilla war,” said Clarke.
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MARIUPOL -- Evacuations from Ukraine’s besieged cities proceeded Saturday along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, with a total of 6,623 people were evacuated, including 4,128 from Mariupol who were taken northwest to Zaporizhzhia.
Russian forces pushed deeper into the besieged and battered port city of Mariupol, where heavy fighting on Saturday shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help.
The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.
“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders that was authenticated by The Associated Press.
The Mariupol city council claimed Russian soldiers have forced several thousand city residents to be relocated to Russia.
“The occupiers are forcing people to leave Ukraine for Russian territory,” the council’s statement said. “The occupiers illegally took people out of the Levoberezhny district and a shelter in the building of a sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombing.”
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WASHINGTON -- When three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station wearing yellow flight suits with blue accents, some saw a message in them wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag. They shot that down on Saturday.
Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picks the colors about six months before launch because the suits need to be individually sewn. And since all three graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, they chose the colors of their prestigious alma mater.
“There is no need to look for any hidden signs or symbols in our uniform,” Artemyev said in a statement on the Russian space agency’s Telegram channel. “A color is simply a color. It is not in any way connected to Ukraine. Otherwise, we would have to recognize its rights to the yellow sun in the blue sky.
“These days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and our people!”
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the space agency Roscosmos, tweeted a picture of the university’s blue and gold coat of arms.
Shortly after their arrival at the orbiting station on Friday, Artemyev had a different answer about the flight suits, saying there was a lot of the yellow material in storage and “that’s why we had to wear yellow.”
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WARSAW -- Hoping to restore some normalcy after fleeing the war in Ukraine, thousands of refugees waited in long lines Saturday in the Polish capital of Warsaw to get identification cards that will allow them to get on with their lives — at least for now.
Refugees started queuing by Warsaw’s National Stadium overnight to get coveted PESEL identity cards allowing them to work, live, go to school and get medical care or social benefits for the next 18 months. Still, by mid-morning, many were told to come back another day. The demand was too high even though Polish authorities had simplified the process.
“We are looking for a job now,” said 30-year-old Kateryna Lohvyn, standing in the line with her mother. “We don’t yet know (what to do),” she added. “But we are thankful to the Poles. They fantastically welcome us.”
Maryna Liashuk said the warm welcome has made her feel at home already. If the situation worsens, Liashuk said she would like to stay permanently in Poland with her family.
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WARSAW — A bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers visiting Poland said Saturday that the most urgent need in Ukraine’s fight against a Russian invasion is to equip and support the country in every way that will help it defend its independence.
The seven-member delegation led by Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, visited reception centers and noted Poland’s openness in accepting refugees from Ukraine, including in private homes. More than 2 million people fleeing war have come to Poland since Russia's invasion began.
“We are here to reassure and support the people of Ukraine. We are here to thank the people of Poland for the unbelievable generosity they have shown to the refugees,” said Lynch, chairman of a national security subcommittee.
Meeting online with the media Saturday, the American lawmakers said there is no room for peace talks as long as there is a “hot war.”
“The most urgent action that we can take is to make sure that the Ukrainian fighters — those valiant patriots who are fighting for their freedom — have every bit of equipment, every bit of supply, every bit of support that we can possibly deliver to them,” Lynch said.
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ROME — Pope Francis has paid a visit to some of the Ukrainian children who escaped the Russian invasion and are currently being treated at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital in Rome.
The Vatican says the Bambino Gesu hospital is currently tending to 19 Ukrainian refugees, and that overall some 50 have passed through in recent weeks.
Some were suffering oncological, neurological and other problems before the war and fled in the early days. Others are being treated for wounds incurred as a result of the invasion.
The Vatican says Francis traveled the short distance up the hill to the hospital on Saturday afternoon. He met with all the young patients in their rooms before returning back to the Vatican.
Francis has spoken out about the “barbarity” of the war and especially the death and injury it has caused Ukrainian children.
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LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “turning point for the world,” arguing that victory for President Vladimir Putin’s forces would herald “a new age of intimidation.”
Speaking to a Conservative Party conference on Saturday, Johnson claimed Putin was “terrified” that the example of a free Ukraine would spark a pro-democracy revolution in Russia.
He said “a victorious Putin will not stop in Ukraine, and the end of freedom in Ukraine will mean the extinction of any hope of freedom in Georgia and then Moldova, it will mean the beginning of a new age of intimidation across eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”