Pentagon official says Russia now shelling Mariupol from sea; Biden to announce new sanctions

KYIV, Ukraine — A fleet of white vans pulled up to central Kyiv in darkness just after 9 p.m.

The passengers stepped out bleary-eyed, clutching their luggage, pets and young children. They had survived the last two weeks in catastrophic conditions in the besieged city of Chernihiv — then endured an hours-long journey on dangerous roads to the capital.

Now, at the historic Brodsky Synagogue, they had finally reached safety.

The curfew and sabbath were well underway, but at the door to greet the hundreds of civilians pouring out of the convoy was the bearded jovial man who helped arrange their journey: Rabbi Moshe Azman.

“Some said they didn’t eat for three days,” Azman said.

The evacuees from Chernihiv, many of whom had lived underground to avoid an aggressive Russian shelling and bombing campaign, are among the tens of thousands of people Azman said he has helped to move from dangerous areas in the past month. On Friday night, they shuffled through the synagogue, passing by a large silver menorah before settling in the prayer hall, where they rested and warmed up before being relocated to the train station or nearby hotels for the night.

With Russia beginning to shell Mariupol from the sea, Ukraine’s evacuation effort Tuesday focused on the already devastated port city.

About 7,000 people escaped embattled regions through humanitarian corridors, and nearly 6,000 came from Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a video address. People fled in their own vehicles, she said. The Washington Post could not verify the number of evacuees, but the figure would represent an increase over the roughly 3,000 that officials reported Sunday.

What is happening in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city under Russian siege?

The humanitarian situation in Mariupol has been desperate for weeks, but the effort to save civilians from Russian strikes has taken on new urgency since Ukrainian leaders refused Moscow’s demand that the city surrender. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Tuesday that about 100,000 people are still trapped in the city.

“In inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade,” Zelensky said in a video address. “No food, no water, no medicine. Under constant shelling, under constant bombing.”

Ukraine has been trying for more than a week to set up reliable humanitarian corridors to help people escape Mariupol and to get supplies into the city, but “almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are disrupted by the Russian occupiers — by shelling or deliberate terror,” Zelensky said.

He expressed optimism that an offer from Greece’s foreign minister to lead a humanitarian mission into Mariupol, where thousands of ethnic Greeks live, would help bring more stability to the effort. Zelensky said he expects this to occur “in the coming days.”

Zelensky and Vereshchuk also accused the Russian military of violating evacuation agreements by not allowing residents in two villages near Mariupol to leave, and said they had seized 11 buses and two emergency vehicles in a third village. The fate of the drivers, Vereshchuk said, is unknown.

A man who appears on the FBI’s wanted list for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot has been granted asylum in Belarus, the country’s state media reported Tuesday.

Evan Neumann, a 49-year-old from California, fled to Europe after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He lived in a rented apartment in Ukraine for four months before crossing the border into Belarus on foot through the Ukrainian swamps of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, late last year, Belarusian state television said at the time. He said he thought Ukrainian security service agents were pursuing him.

In a video posted by state-owned television BelTA on Tuesday, Neumann is pictured signing a migration document and shaking hands with a police official, who, according to English subtitles posted with the video, says: “Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus.”

“Thanks a lot,” Neumann says, according to the translation, waving the document and turning toward the camera and other officials in the room, his face clean-shaven and unsmiling.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and close ally Russian President Vladimir Putin have frequently referenced the Capitol riot, calling the prosecution of those involved an example of “double standards” by the United States because it frequently criticizes crackdowns on anti-government protests abroad.

“Today I have mixed feelings,” Neumann told BelTA in the report aired Tuesday. “I am glad Belarus took care of me. I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country.”

President Biden will announce a new package of sanctions against Russia this week when he travels to Brussels to meet with European leaders, a White House official said Tuesday, as Western countries seek to project unity during Moscow’s increasingly brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Biden will announce the new measures Thursday, after summits with the European Union, NATO and the Group of Seven, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a news briefing. Sullivan did not specify what the sanctions would entail or to whom they would apply, but he said the announcement will mark “a new phase.”

In addition to new penalties, the package will include “a joint effort to crack down on evasion — on sanction-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken or get around the sanctions,” Sullivan said.

White House eyes new sanctions on lawmakers in Russian parliament as part of financial attack on Moscow

Biden will also discuss NATO force deployments in Europe and a “joint action” on reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

“The president is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes,” Sullivan said.

Biden is scheduled to depart Washington on Wednesday and, after back-to-back meetings the following day, will go to Poland on Friday to discuss the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis. Nearly 2 million Ukrainians have fled to Poland. Biden will also meet with American troops stationed there with NATO.

Matt Viser contributed to this report.

European nations are bracing themselves for an influx of Ukrainian refugees in the upcoming weeks.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Tuesday that he expects 40,000 Ukrainian refugees to arrive by the end of April — which would represent a “1 or 2 percent” increase in the country’s population. Ireland has received more than 10,000 refugees who have registered for international protection, Varadakar said Tuesday, according to CNN.

Such an influx could strain Irish education, health care, housing and public finances, Varadkar said. His government has identified about 500 buildings that could be used to house some of the refugees, according to the Irish Times.

Meanwhile, France announced Tuesday that it had launched a national plan to prepare housing for at least 100,000 Ukrainians.

“More and more of them [Ukrainians] are finding refuge in France or transiting through our territory,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex told reporters Tuesday, according to CNN.

More than 26,000 refugees have arrived in France since the beginning of the war, and 10,500 have obtained temporary residency under a recently activated E.U. temporary protection policy, Castex added.

Countries bordering Ukraine, such as Moldova and Poland, have taken most of the influx, which has prompted international organizations including the World Health Organization to ask European nations for help.

On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. International Organization for Migration said some European Union member states have agreed to receive refugees under a pilot program to prioritize the most vulnerable. The organizations are working with several countries to identify and transfer the most vulnerable Ukrainian refugees in Moldova — including people with disabilities, older people, those with severe medical conditions and mothers with young children, the UNHCR said in a statement Tuesday.

Austria has volunteered to admit 2,000 such refugees, the UNHCR said.

BERLIN — The woman faces the camera, her eyes cast downward, and addresses her appeal to “Russian-speaking Germany.”

“I want to tell you about a boy,” she says in the video, posted on TikTok.

Her tale went like this: The 16-year-old, a Russian speaker, was beaten by a band of Ukrainians at a train station in Euskirchen, a German town nestled in a valley near Cologne. The boy, Daniel, slipped into a coma and died, while the assailants returned to their refugee housing.

She didn’t know the boy, the woman says, but learned of his fate from a friend. “People, he died,” she laments. “I cannot imagine.”

Her claims, German authorities later said, are false. In the 90-second video, the woman doesn’t identify herself, disclose her location or explain the basis for her account. Police said that there was no evidence of such an attack and that the video is fake, “intended to stir up hatred.” State prosecutors are investigating.

Few Americans have parsed Russian propaganda on its various platforms like Maxim Pozdorovkin has.

The Russian-born, Harvard-educated filmmaker is behind several works on the subject, most notably “Our New President” from 2018, an award-winning documentary deconstruction of the Russian media’s portrayal of Donald Trump’s election that was, as he puts it, “a movie based entirely on actual footage without a single true statement in it.”

Far from just an attempt to negate discontent over its Ukraine invasion, Russia’s current state-media approach is, in Pozdorovkin’s view, a continuation of a decade-long campaign to warp Russian citizens’ view of the West. He argues that the country’s population has been long primed for this moment — seriously lowering the odds for any tech company or foreign outlet hoping to poke through the veil.

The Washington Post spoke to Pozdorovkin by phone from his home in Brooklyn, where he now lives.

Stocks rebounded Tuesday as energy prices pulled back, with the three major U.S. indexes posting solid gains.

Crude prices swelled as the Russian bombardments in Ukraine intensified but appeared to level off Tuesday. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, stood at $111 per barrel, down roughly 0.7 percent, after surging more than 6 percent the day before. Brent crude, the global benchmark, was trading near $115 per barrel, down 0.5 percent.

Companies and households have been hit with higher costs at just about every step of the supply chain, particularly the gas pump. Though the U.S. average for a gallon of gas dropped a penny overnight, to $4.24, according to data Tuesday from AAA, it’s still 71 cents higher than a month ago and $1.36 more than a year ago.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 254.47 points, or 0.7 percent, to close at 34,807.46. The broader S&P 500 index jumped 50.43 points, or 1.1 percent, to end at 4,511.61. The tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed 270.36 points, or 1.9 percent, to settle at 14,108.82.

The Dow snapped a five-day winning streak Monday when it fell more than 200 points after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell raised the specter of bigger interest rate hikes to beat back decades-high inflation. Last week, U.S. stocks notched their best weekly performance since November 2020, boosted by a cool-down in oil prices that had spiked past $130 a barrel in early March.