As a Ukrainian city nears ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ Russians face void of digital information

Computer chip manufacturers, shipping companies and a host of exporters are halting deliveries to Russia to comply with sanctions. Western nations are closing their skies and ports to Russian planes and vessels. European retailers are shuttering shops in Russia, and in one of the biggest blows yet, Microsoft on Friday said it is suspending all new sales in the country.

Russia’s economic integration with the outside world was never smooth and easy. Corruption and lawlessness often throttled industrial development, leaving the country too dependent on exporting its natural resources. The rigged privatization of oil and metals companies in the 1990s left an oligarchic class in charge of the economy.

Still, in the decades since the Soviet collapse, Russia’s economy struggled forward, slowly and imperfectly, forging important trade and investment ties with the outside world.

Video, verified by The Washington Post, shows evidence of damage to a covered walkway about 250 feet from a building that houses a nuclear reactor at the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

The video first shows a long, thin object twisted on the ground. It appears similar to the vertical components that line the east side of the walkway. Puddles of unknown liquid are visible, as the camera moves further south. An empty tube that appears to be an expended munition casing lies on the ground near a slatted side of the walkway, and on the other side, the window facing the reactor is cracked. Nearby, the sky is visible through at least two holes in the roof. The floor immediately beneath them is discolored and covered in debris.

The footage surfaced less than 24 hours after Russian forces took control of the Enerhodar facility and was filmed approximately 1,800 feet from where a fire blazed and heavy fighting occurred about 2 a.m. Friday, local time.

As Russia’s military buildup pressed against Ukraine’s border in late January and early February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov celebrated the arrival of weapons from the West, illustrating his near-daily tweets with photographs of smiling men in uniform unloading heavy pallets from cargo aircraft.

“The 8th [American] bird has arrived in Kyiv!” Reznikov exulted on Feb. 5. “Our partners from #USA have sent more than 650 tons of defense ammunition to Ukraine! To be continued.”

The last such message came on Feb. 23, the day before Russia invaded.

There have been no known air deliveries since then. Ukraine’s airspace is now part of a war zone that no Western nation wants to enter, even as the United States and its allies and partners pledge to deliver more weaponry for the fight.

NATO territory to the west — where Ukraine borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania — provides the only still-uncontested ground access. But east-west roads that can handle truck transport into Ukraine are few, and most are clogged with refugees fleeing the country.

A chilling video published on Friday shows the moment a team of Sky News journalists came under gunfire while driving through Ukraine — highlighting the increasing violence in an invasion that has killed hundreds of civilians.

Sky News foreign correspondent Stuart Ramsay and his team of four were attacked Monday after being ambushed by “a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad,” according to Ramsay’s account of the incident.

The group was on its way to the town of Bucha, about 18 miles away from Kyiv. Near an intersection, the pop of a small explosion is heard. “It’s the tire, isn’t it?” producer Dominique Van Heerden is heard wondering out loud.

But when the car comes to a stop, that is the moment “our world turned upside down,” Ramsay wrote. The crackle of a cascade of gunfire can be heard as flashes of bullets fly through the car, the video shows.

“At this stage we thought it was a Ukrainian army checkpoint firing at us and that it was a mistake, so we started screaming we were journalists, but the rounds kept coming,” Ramsay said.

With bullets flying, the group eventually managed to escape from the car. They jumped down a 40-foot embankment at the side of the road, where Ramsay said he landed “like a sack of potatoes.”

According to Ramsay, they found refuge in a garage, while the sound of gunfire rattled outside. The five journalists were eventually rescued by Ukrainian police the next morning, when it was “pitch-black outside.”

Ramsay was wounded after being shot in the back. Camera operator Richie Mockler took two rounds to his body armor during the ordeal. In Ukraine, the U.N. human rights office said Friday that at least 331 civilians had been killed, while Ukraine’s emergency services put the number of civilian fatalities much higher, at more than 2,000.

“The point is we were very lucky,” Ramsay wrote. “But thousands of Ukrainians are dying, and families are being targeted by Russian hit squads just as we were, driving along in a family saloon and attacked.”

“This war gets worse by the day,” he added.

For a small tribe of veteran atomic experts who helped secure the Soviet Union’s nuclear energy and missiles as it started to fall apart in the late 1980s, the grainy images of the fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Europe’s largest, were like something out of a frightening alternative reality.

That smoke. Those tracers. That fire. They, more than most others, knew the precise mechanics of how an accident could quickly turn into disaster.

Although the damage appears to have been contained — and Europe spared a nuclear disaster on the level of Fukushima — nuclear experts said they were still fearful as Russia’s military battles its way across Ukraine. The country has four active nuclear power plants and a failed one, Chernobyl, the radiation from which still requires constant upkeep.

Ivan Kolpakov, editor in chief of Meduza, one of Russia’s most popular independent media outlets, had been expecting the government to block the public’s access to his website every day since the war with Ukraine began.

On Friday morning it finally happened. But then Russia’s parliament went further, passing a law banning what it considers “fake” news about the military, including any rhetoric that calls the invasion of Ukraine an “invasion” — the preferred language is “special military operation” — with a potential 15-year prison sentence. Putin signed it into law hours later.

“Our sources say they are likely to use this against journalists,” said Kolpakov, speaking from a location he would not disclose. “They can use it against journalists and why wouldn’t they? They decided to destroy the industry entirely.”

Kolpakov, whose website is based in Latvia, began what he called “an urgent evacuation” of his Russian staff.

Similar scenarios are currently playing out at countless independent media outlets across Russia, a nation that has never had a fully welcoming attitude toward a free press.

Several U.S. media organizations said Friday that they would limit activity in Russia, hours after President Vladimir Putin signed a measure into law criminalizing news coverage that accurately portrays the country’s bloody incursion into Ukraine as an “invasion.”

Bloomberg said it will “temporarily suspend our news gathering inside Russia,” according to a statement from editor in chief John Micklethwait. “The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country.”

CBS and ABC both said they would not broadcast from Russia at least for the day because of the new regulations, which ABC described in a statement as a “censorship law.” Both cited concerns about the safety of their reporting teams and said they will continue to assess the situation.

CNN, meanwhile, said the network “will stop broadcasting in Russia” — effectively cutting off its signal in the country — “while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward.”

Their decisions followed an announcement earlier Friday from Britain’s BBC that it would suspend coverage from Russia after Russia’s communications watchdog said it had blocked access to the network and several other foreign news organizations’ websites for spreading what it called “false information” about the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s unclear how much these policies will affect the ability of Western news organizations to report on the ongoing conflict in neighboring Ukraine, where dozens of media organizations have sent correspondents to cover the Russian aggression.

But Putin’s measures have already been devastating to Russian independent newspapers, TV and radio stations within the country, many of which have shuttered or sent its staff out of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned NATO allies for ruling out a no-fly zone over the war-torn country to protect its skies from Russian attackers.

Zelensky, in a video message posted on social media, called NATO’s stance “weak,” saying it gave Russia the green light to continue its bombing campaign. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that NATO would support Ukrainians but that enforcing a no-fly zone would require sending NATO aircraft into Ukrainian airspace to shoot down Russian jets — something the alliance is unwilling to do.

“That could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe,” Blinken said. “President Biden has been clear that we are not going to get into a war with Russia.”

In an emotional address late Friday, Zelensky told Ukrainians to remain strong and said NATO would be to blame for the deaths of Ukrainians as Russia continues its missile attacks, striking cities.

“For nine days, we have seen a brutal war,” he said. “They are destroying our cities. They are shelling our people, our children and residential neighborhoods. Churches. Schools. They destroy everything that ensures a normal life. And they want to continue it.”

Earlier in the day, after Ukrainians said Russian shelling caused a fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zelensky called again on international allies to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said that only “an immediate closure of sky over Ukraine” would guarantee Russia would not bomb nuclear installations. He accused Russian forces of targeting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant facility in an attack he said could have been as bad as “six Chernobyls.”

Adela Suliman, David Stern and Alexander Stetsenko contributed to this report.