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The official Washington Post channel, sharing live news coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. You can find our full coverage at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraine-russia/.

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Right-wing Azov Battalion emerges as a controversial defender of Ukraine

Inside a warehouse, in a bustling section of this capital, the incessant cracking sound of gunfire echoed off walls. Men in olive-colored camouflage were training for war. Most wore helmets and bulletproof jackets. Some wore high-top sneakers. All clutched AK-47 rifles and waited for their turn to shoot at a round target 50 yards away.

It was centered with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s face — and peppered with bullet holes.

Invisible, yet palpable, was the shadow cast over this new regiment, like every unit of the Azov Battalion. Alexi Suliyma knew about its ugly past, but he joined anyway. Two friends were in the force, and he felt the Azov would best train him to defend his motherland.

“These are guys who simply love their country and Ukrainian people,” said Suliyma, 23, a former construction worker. “I never knew them to be Nazis or fascists, never heard them make calls for the Third Reich.”

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Ukrainian villagers describe cruel and brutal Russian occupation

The city of Mykolaiv has been defended fiercely by Ukrainian forces blocking Russia’s attempts to advance toward the strategically key Black Sea port of Odessa, about 70 miles to the southwest. When Russian forces couldn’t go through Mykolaiv last month, they tried to go around it, storming into an area of small, rural towns north of the city.

Russians arrived in columns of armored vehicles and occupied these hamlets for about 10 days before Ukrainian military forces ejected them. In interviews with The Post in recent days, residents recounted how they were terrorized by their new Russian overlords. Their stories offer a glimpse of abuse and violence against unarmed civilians that could be used as evidence in potential war crimes cases against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military.

Similar stories have been emerging in recent days from areas around Kyiv that were under Russian control until recently.

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Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- The U.S. Justice Department has indicted Konstantin Malofeyev, the first criminal charges against an oligarch since the invasion of Ukraine began.

- The Red Cross said it was “impossible to enter” the southern port of Mariupol after its team tried over five days to reach thousands of people trapped in the devastated city.

- Greece and Norway said Wednesday that they would expel Russian diplomats, and Moscow vowed to retaliate — the latest sign of a tit-for-tat downgrading of diplomatic relations between Russia and its European neighbors.

- The Kremlin described the withdrawal of troops from around Kyiv as “a gesture of goodwill” for negotiations, while its forces shifted to eastern Ukraine, where officials reported intensifying attacks.

More live updates here.
Here is the latest on Ukraine’s key battlegrounds and retaken cities.

Mariupol: At least 5,000 residents of this city have died in the war, including 210 children, the mayor said Wednesday, adding that more than 100,000 people are trapped. The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended its efforts in the area after days of unsuccessful attempts to evacuate residents because of security conditions.

Kharkiv region: The Ukrainian deputy prime minister and local officials said Wednesday that residents are in danger and should consider evacuating as Ukrainian leaders brace for new assaults in the country's east.

Chernihiv: The largest city besieged by Russian troops and retaken by Ukrainians, more than half of Chernihiv’s 300,000 residents have fled and hundreds more have been killed, the mayor said. The total toll remains unclear, but survivors describe atrocities echoing those that have emerged from other cities Russia has occupied.

More live updates here.
Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- Russia faces further estrangement from the international community as NATO foreign ministers head into their second day of meetings Thursday, and as European leaders weigh a ban on Russian coal imports. And amid the growing revelations over the killings in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, the United Nations could vote to expel Russia from its Human Rights Council.

- The Biden administration on Wednesday issued additional sanctions against Russia, with targets including two of the country’s biggest banks and President Putin’s adult daughters.

- Ukrainian officials called Wednesday for evacuations in three provinces near the Russian border amid new signs that Russian troops are escalating their assault there.

- Russia has fully withdrawn its troops from Kyiv and the city of Chernihiv, according to the Pentagon.

More live updates here.
Russia should be expelled from G-20, Yellen says

Russia should be expelled from the Group of 20 for its actions in Ukraine, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said Wednesday.

Washington will boycott “a number” of G-20 meetings if Moscow attends, Yellen said. Russia’s ambassador to Indonesia said last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to” attend a G-20 leaders summit in the Southeast Asian nation in November, but that his presence will “depend on many, many things, including the covid situation.”

President Biden has asked that Russia be removed from the G-20, an assembly of the world’s largest economies, Yellen testified to the House Financial Services Committee. Biden last month joined several other Western leaders in expressing support for expelling Russia from the group.

Yellen said Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including its brutal killings in Bucha, were “reprehensible” and “represent an unacceptable affront to the rules-based global order.”

More live updates here.
Ukraine presses NATO for more aid: ‘Weapons, weapons, weapons’

Ukraine’s top diplomat made a pointed appeal to NATO on Thursday to drop reservations about providing additional arms to Ukrainian forces — weapons that he said are urgently needed to prevent further Russian atrocities against civilians.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba traveled to Brussels to address a gathering of his counterparts from across the Western alliance, saying he had a threefold agenda: “weapons, weapons, weapons.”

he had a threefold agenda: “weapons, weapons, weapons.”

“The more weapons we get, and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved,” Kuleba said ahead of the meeting. “The more cities and villages will not be destructed. And there will be no more Buchas,” he said.

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Germany intercepts Russian talk of indiscriminate killings in Ukraine

Germany’s foreign intelligence service claims to have intercepted radio communications in which Russian soldiers discuss carrying out indiscriminate killings in Ukraine.

In two separate communications, Russian soldiers described questioning Ukrainian soldiers as well as civilians and then shooting them, according to an intelligence official familiar with the findings who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The findings, first reported by the German magazine Der Spiegel and confirmed by three people briefed on the information, further undermine Russia’s denials of involvement in the carnage. Russia has claimed variously that atrocities are being carried out only after its soldiers leave occupied areas or that scenes of massacres of civilians are “staged.”

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Russia suspended from U.N. Human Rights Council amid global outrage over Ukraine

The U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council amid mounting concerns that Moscow’s troops are committing grave war crimes in Ukraine.

The vote came as global outrage over the killings of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha intensified. Bodies were found strewn in the streets — and in some cases showed signs of torture — after Russian troops retreated.

World leaders have responded with tougher sanctions and promises to send Ukraine more weapons — measures that Ukrainian officials have welcomed but say aren’t enough to help prevent future atrocities.

Thousands of people are fleeing eastern Ukraine, bracing for an intensified Russian assault in the eastern part of the country.

More live updates here.
In Bucha, the scope of Russian barbarity is coming into focus

BUCHA, Ukraine — The name of this city is already synonymous with the month-long carnage that Russian soldiers perpetrated here.

But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent as police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations.

As a team from the district prosecutor’s office moved slowly through Bucha on Wednesday, investigators uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses.

Some of the cruelest violence took place at a glass factory on the edge of town.

On the gravel near a loading dock lay the body of Dmytro Chaplyhin, 21, whose abdomen was bruised black and blue, his hands marked with what looked like cigarette burns.

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Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of a looming onslaught in eastern Ukraine, where Russia refocused its troops after withdrawing from Kyiv’s suburbs and the northern Chernihiv region. He urged European countries to impose an embargo on Russian oil.

- The Senate on Thursday cleared a months-long partisan impasse over how to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending multiple bills aimed at punishing Russia and aiding Ukraine to the House for final action.

- Ukraine’s top diplomat made a pointed appeal to NATO leaders to expedite arms supplies to Ukrainian forces — weaponry he said is urgently needed before Russia launches an expected offensive in the country’s east.

More live updates here.
Here’s the latest on Ukraine’s key battlegrounds and retaken cities.

Luhansk region: All medical institutions and hospitals here were destroyed by Russian forces, the governor said Thursday, sharing photos of battered buildings and gutted hallways. Shelling in the area has devastated high-rises and blocked evacuation trains.

Kyiv: President Zelensky touted diplomats’ return to the capital in his address Thursday, as Russian forces have retreated from the area. Since the withdrawal, German intelligence has shown the involvement of Russian troops in the slaying of citizens in Bucha.

Borodyanka: When Ukrainian authorities returned to this newly liberated community, they discovered decimated buildings, rattled survivors and a growing number of bodies. During a search of two apartment buildings, 26 bodies were found under the rubble, said Ukraine’s prosecutor general, calling Borodyanka “the most destroyed city in the Kyiv region.”

More live updates here.
Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- President Zelensky warned Thursday that the slaughter of civilians in Mariupol would rival Russia's “heinous crimes” in the Kyiv area. He also cautioned the Kremlin could use the port city for propaganda purposes, staging scenes to suggest Ukraine was responsible for the atrocities.

- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is headed to Kyiv, where she will hold talks with Zelensky on Friday.

- The World Health Organization said it had recorded more than 100 attacks against health care facilities and transports since the invasion.

- At least four European nations have either returned diplomatic staff or announced plans to reopen embassies in Kyiv. On Thursday, traffic stretched for miles around Bucha, as thousands of families attempted to head home.

- The Pentagon said it was providing Kyiv with intelligence to combat the Kremlin in the east, where Ukrainian officials say Russian forces are deploying “scorched earth” tactics.

More live updates here.
At least 20 killed at Kramatorsk railway station after apparent airstrike

KRAMATORSK — Washington Post reporters arrived at Kramatorsk train station in the eastern region of Donetsk on Friday, after an apparent Russian airstrike struck while hundreds of evacuees were hoping to escape.

The chairman of the Ukrainian Railways operator, Alexander Kamyshin, wrote on Telegram that more than 30 people had been killed and over 100 were injured, in what he said was a rocket attack on the railway station. He called it a deliberate strike on passenger infrastructure.

Washington Post reporters at the scene counted at least 20 casualties.

The head of the Donetsk regional administration accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting civilians attempting to flee, adding in a Telegram post: “They want to destroy everything Ukrainian.”

More live updates here.
‘For the children’ written on missile in Kramatorsk attack

A missile that killed at least 50 people at the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine was emblazoned with the words “For the children” in Russian, which some say is a suggestion that the attack was meant as revenge for Russian children.

The phrase on the missile remnant, which landed about 100 yards from the station’s entrance, is apparently in keeping with the Kremlin’s assertions that it is fighting the war to protect Ukraine’s separatist Donbas region and Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry has denied carrying out the strike and suggested that Ukraine was responsible. It claimed that the type of weapon found near the train station was “used only by the Ukrainian armed forces.”

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Meet the 1,300 librarians racing to back up Ukraine’s digital archives

In early March, two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Carrie Pirmann stumbled upon a website dedicated to Ivan Mazepa, a 16th century Ukrainian politician and patron of the arts. A 44-year-old librarian at Bucknell University, Pirmann had joined an international effort of fellow archivists to preserve the digital history of a country under siege, and the contents of Mazepa’s website, though obscure, seemed worth saving.

The site held a number of things: Lord Byron poems written about Mazepa’s life and a catalogue of centuries-old articles detailing his various conquests. Pirmann opened her website scraping tool, backing up the site and preserving its content.

Now, the original website is lost, its server space likely gone to cyberattacks, power outages or Russian shelling. But thanks to her, it still remains intact on server space rented by an international group of librarians and archivists.

Read the full story here.
Russia’s war dead belie its slogan that no one is left behind

Soon after the invasion began, a hashtag war slogan popped up everywhere in Russia: “We don’t leave ours behind.” But many were.

In Irpin, on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, two Russian soldiers killed in battle lay on a street corner, covered with a sheet of metal, legs poking out. A third lay a few feet away near a burned-out armored personnel carrier, a lower leg gnawed by dogs. A fourth lay further along the road, the victim of a mine.

In Moshchun, a once-idyllic hamlet northwest of Kyiv, another Russian soldier died inside a dimly lit kitchen, lying on a bench with a gruesome groin wound. Ten others were scattered about, several on the fringes of a forest.

While countless bodies have been abandoned on the battlefield, many more have found their way back to their families, but Russia’s overall death toll, though staggering, remains elusive.

Read the full story here.