Biden skeptical of Russia’s pledge to ‘drastically reduce’ assault

Russian troops continue to fight to hold their current front-line position near Kyiv, and they are likely attempting to connect gains southeast of Kharkiv with their front line in the Luhansk region.

The Kremlin on Tuesday signaled that it will keep fighting for Mariupol and said that unless “Ukrainian nationalist militants” stop resisting and lay down their arms, it will be difficult to “resolve the acute humanitarian situation” there.

Grieving families attended a memorial service in Odessa for five Ukrainian soldiers who died in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, this week.

Four of the soldiers died from a Russian airstrike in Mykolaiv on March 18. The airstrike hit the 36th Ukrainian Naval Infantry Brigade. At least 200 soldiers were sleeping inside the military base at the time of the strike. At least 40 were killed, according to the Ukrainian military.

Families gathered around the caskets in downtown Odessa. A military band played the national anthem as members of the military performed a gun salute.

Families followed the caskets to a nearby cemetery on the outskirts of the city where they said their final goodbyes.

BERLIN — It was Sunday evening, one month into Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine, and the German chancellor was exasperated.

The target of Olaf Scholz’s ire was unusual: not a foreign adversary or an opposition party, but rather international economists, including a professor thousands of miles away at the University of Notre Dame.

The professor, Rüdiger Bachmann, is a co-author of a paper published this month that’s galvanizing support for banning Russian energy imports. It’s one of several studies finding that such a move would harm the German economy but ultimately be manageable.

Those findings stand in contrast to warnings from Scholz that an embargo would wreak havoc on the economy and risk social unrest. The chancellor voiced his displeasure with the experts in an interview with the broadcaster ARD, saying it was “irresponsible to add up mathematical models that then don’t work.”

“They get it wrong!” he exclaimed.

Mariupol lost power, mobile communications and Internet as Russia attacked — a blackout that has limited documentation of its residents’ suffering.

Satellite images help capture the Ukrainian port city’s devastation.

Pictures captured Tuesday by Maxar Technologies show the toll of Russia’s invasion on civilian infrastructure, including houses and apartment buildings, according to Maxar.

Maxar says its images from Tuesday also show long lines of people outside a grocery store. Leaders in Mariupol have warned for weeks of food and water shortages amid a Russian blockade.

Also documented: the Mariupol drama theater, where the number of people killed in an airstrike remains unclear. With fighting ongoing, Ukrainian officials have struggled to gather basic information.

Hundreds of people were believed to be sheltering in the theater when it was bombed. Citing eyewitness accounts, the Mariupol City Council has said the strike may have killed 300.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Tuesday that peace negotiations with Russia had yielded “positive” signals, but that he had “no reason to trust” Moscow’s claim that it will curtail its attacks.

“These signals do not silence the explosion of Russian shells,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

While peace talks earlier in the day appeared to make headway toward ending the five-week war, officials in Ukraine and the United States expressed skepticism that the Kremlin was in fact willing to stop its assault on Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.

“Only a concrete result can be trusted,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky said Ukraine would continue negotiations. The Ukrainian peace proposal, presented Tuesday, included a commitment to military neutrality and a 15-year timeline for negotiations with Russia over the status of Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014. The thorniest issues, such as the fate of the swaths of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia, would likely need to be worked out by the nations’ presidents, Kyiv’s delegates said.

In his address, Zelensky insisted that “Russian troops must leave the occupied territories,” without specifying the areas to which he was referring.

“There can be no compromise on sovereignty and our territorial integrity,” he said. “And there will not be any.”

He reiterated that Ukrainian citizens would vote on the most consequential decisions. Zelensky also warned against lifting sanctions on Russia prematurely. He announced an effort, led by Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, and Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, to ensure the effectiveness of the sanctions.

• Kyiv: Despite Moscow’s pledge during peace talks in Turkey to “drastically reduce” military activity near Kyiv, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Russia’s movement of troops away from the capital appeared to be minimal, and airstrikes continued to hit the capital Tuesday. Ukrainian officials had previously warned that Russian troops were withdrawing to Belarus only to regroup and could return.
• Chernihiv: Ukrainian forces have pushed toward the borders of the Chernihiv and Zhytomyr regions, north and west of Kyiv, according to Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander overseeing the defense of the capital. Chernihiv has been under near-constant attack with power cut and resources dwindling, in a situation that echoes the humanitarian crisis in the besieged city of Mariupol in the south.

• Irpin: More than 95 percent of Irpin, a key battleground on Kyiv’s outskirts, is now under Ukrainian control, Syrsky told reporters Tuesday. A senior U.S. defense official could not confirm Ukraine’s declaration of victory.
• Mykolaiv: A missile struck the regional state administration building Tuesday in this southern city along a river feeding into the Black Sea, the local governor said. Ukrainian emergency services said seven people were killed and 22 injured. The attack, if confirmed, would be the largest on Mykolaiv’s downtown since the war began. The Ukrainian military’s efforts in Mykolaiv have delayed any plans for Russian forces to attack the strategic port of Odessa, about 70 miles southwest.
• Mariupol: The Kremlin signaled Tuesday it will keep fighting for this key southern port city, saying that unless “Ukrainian nationalist militants” stop resisting and lay down their arms, it will be difficult to “resolve the acute humanitarian situation” there. Evacuations from the devastated city resumed on Tuesday, with more than 1,600 escaping Mariupol and a nearby region, according to local officials.
• Kharkiv: Russian forces don’t appear to have conducted significant operations in or immediately around this city, Ukraine’s second largest, in the past day, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank.

Hannah Knowles, Marisa Iati, Mary Ilyushina, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

NORTH OF KYIV — Five weeks ago, Ukraine’s Western allies feared Kyiv would fall to Russian forces within days. Millions of people fled the capital and the surrounding areas, including the city of Irpin, where intense street battles have devastated local populations and forced civilians to live in apocalyptic conditions with little food, water and power.

But for now, in places like this military position, Ukrainian statements that they are pushing Russian forces back seem relatively true. Although the area is still dangerous, with shelling in the distance, Ukrainian soldiers said they are in more control here just north of Kyiv than they were even a few days ago. Still, in other areas close to the capital, intense shelling continued Tuesday, proving that the fight is far from over and casting doubt on claims of significant progress.

Russia is introducing rubles into occupied territory while limiting the circulation of Ukrainian currency there, according to two Ukrainian government agencies.

Citing reports from unnamed banks and local media, the National Bank of Ukraine said in an online statement that Russia has taken steps to “limit the circulation of cash and cashless” hryvnias, the national currency. The move was confirmed in a tweet by Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

Nikolenko said it is part of Russia’s attempt to establish a regime in Ukraine without the support of the people.

“Faced with total resistance from the local population, Russia tries to introduce the Ruble in the temporarily seized parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in an attempt to establish an occupation regime,” Nikolenko tweeted.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Neither Ukrainian agency clarified how exactly Russia was “introducing” its own currency or who was receiving payments. The Kyiv Independent reported that Russian forces in Henichesk, which is part of Kherson oblast, have been issuing pensions in rubles. The newspaper cited a Facebook post from Sergey Khlan, whom it describes as a regional council member.

“After compiling the lists last week, the actual payments of 10,000 rubles began in Henichesk,” Khlan wrote, according to a translation of his Facebook post. “People are standing in line and already receiving cash on hand. However, the entire movement of the ruble ends in exchange offices, in which retirees immediately exchange rubles for hryvnia.”

A payment of 10,000 rubles was worth about $113 as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Ukrainian central bank called Russia’s purported actions “a gross violation of international law,” noting that Ukraine’s laws forbid the issuance or use of any currency in the country other than the hryvnia. It called on the country’s top prosecutor to press charges in relevant international courts.