A8 EZ RE K THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MARCH 7 , 2022
was flailing on the ground. One
officer struck the person with a
baton and kicked the person be-
fore another shooed away the
camera filming the encounter.
In Washington, about 400 peo-
ple draped in blue-and-yellow
flags and carrying protest signs
demonstrated in front of the
White House on Sunday after-
noon as speakers, including U.S.
diplomats and lawmakers, called
for support for Ukraine.
“We need more armed forces,
not just from the U.S. but from
other countries, because they’re
going to take over other nations,”
said Beatriz Nehrebeckyj, 74, of
Ellicott City, Md., whose parents
left Ukraine at the onset of World
War II.
She was there with her daugh-
ter, son-in-law and two grandchil-
dren.
“Putin won’t stop at us,” she
said, her voice shaking. “He
won’t, he won’t.”
Andriy Kulynin, 55, wore a
handlebar mustache and tradi-
tional Ukrainian attire including
an embroidered shirt and a wood-
en copy of the mace that is a
symbol of the Ukrainian presi-
dent. The owner of an HVAC
company in Philadelphia, he
speaks daily to his cousins in
Ukraine.
“They [are] scared, but they
stay,” he said. “Nobody going to
give up, even old people, even old
ladies. They will stay, they will
fight for their country.”Fahim reported from Istanbul;
Warrick and Lamothe from
Washington; and Ryan from Tallinn,
Estonia. Jennifer Hassan in London,
Danielle Paquette in Dakar, Senegal,
and Sarah Cahlan, Paulina Firozi,
Rachel Pannett, Hannah Knowles,
Tara Bahrampour, Kim Bellware,
Brittany Shammas Steven Zeitchik
and Yasmeen Abutaleb in
Washington contributed to this
report.proach that fully takes into ac-
count the emerging realities,” he
said, according to the Kremlin, in
an apparent reference to
Ukraine’s military and territorial
losses since Russia’s invasion.
Speaking by phone with Turk-
ish President Recep Tayyip Erdo-
gan, Putin said the war was “go-
ing according to plan” and on
time. He denied that Russia was
responsible for the civilian casu-
alty toll, according to a Russian
readout of the call.
But Russia’s economic and dip-
lomatic isolation has deepened in
the days since the start of the
invasion. On Sunday, American
Express and Netflix became the
latest international corporations
to suspend operations inside Rus-
sia. Citing the “unjustified attack
on the people of Ukraine,” Ameri-
can Express said its credit cards
will no longer work at merchants
or ATMs in Russia, and cards
issued locally in Russia will no
longer operate outside the coun-
try. Visa and Mastercard imple-
mented similar measures over
the weekend.
Demonstrators again took to
the streets to denounce the Rus-
sian invasion in cities around the
world, including in Russia itself.
Nearly 4,500 protesters were ar-
rested Sunday at antiwar demon-
strations in more than 50 Russian
cities, according to OVD-Info, an
independent human rights or-
ganization that Russian authori-
ties have declared a foreign agent.
Crowds chanted “No to war!”
while streaming through Moscow
and St. Petersburg in a pair of
videos posted to Twitter. In an-
other, a demonstrator sang
Ukraine’s anthem while being
hauled away by police.
Footage shared on social media
showed police taking demonstra-
tors into custody, at times using
force.
Several officers wearing body
armor surrounded a person whocontested.”
“Ukrainian air and missile de-
fenses remain effective and in
use,” said the official, who, follow-
ing standard practice, requested
anonymity in providing military
assessments. “The Ukrainian mil-
itary continues to fly aircraft and
to employ air defense assets.”
The Pentagon has noted “limit-
ed changes on the ground” over
the past day, the official said.
Russian forces appeared to be
continuing their efforts to ad-
vance and isolate major cities like
Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv but
are “being met with strong Ukrai-
nian resistance,” he said.
Commenting on widely circu-
lated videos purporting to show
Ukrainian forces shooting down
Russian warplanes and helicop-
ters, he said: “We cannot inde-
pendently verify those incidents,
but neither are we in a position to
refute them.”
The White House and many
congressional leaders have ruled
out the possibility of a no-fly zone
over Ukraine, which could lead to
clashes between NATO and Rus-
sian warplanes and, potentially,
to a dramatic expansion of the
war.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), in
an interview on ABC, said a deci-
sion to implement a no-fly zone
would imply a “willingness to
shoot down the aircrafts of the
Russian federation, which is basi-
cally the beginning of World
War III.”
But Blinken said Sunday that
the United States is exploring
how it might supply Ukraine with
fighter jets from NATO nations. “I
can’t speak to the timeline but I
can just tell you that we’re looking
at it very, very actively,” Blinken
said.
Russia, meanwhile, warned
that foreign countries hosting
Ukrainian combat aircraft could
be viewed by Moscow as parties to
the conflict.war in ukraineThroughout the weekend,
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky renewed his pleas for
international military help to
“close the sky” to Russian bomb-
ers.
Zelensky warned of a coming
Russian aerial assault on Odessa,
the historic city of nearly 1 million
people on the Black Sea coast,
which has roughly the same pop-
ulation as San Jose. Ukrainian
officials also reported steady ad-
vances by Russian armored col-
umns in the country’s southeast.
An international nuclear
watchdog accused Russian occu-
piers of interfering with the
Ukrainian management at the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power
plant in southeastern Ukraine —
a warning that is renewing fears
about the possibility of an unin-
tended nuclear accident amid the
fog of war.
The facility, Europe’s largest
nuclear plant, was seized by Rus-
sian troops on Friday after a
projectile set part of the complex
on fire. Although the strike didn’t
release any radiation, ominous
images of the attack worried
Ukrainian officials and nuclear
experts alike. Ukraine’s main se-
curity agency said Sunday that
Russian forces launched rockets
at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics
and Technology, which houses a
small nuclear reactor.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin denied targeting civilians
and sought instead to shift the
blame to Ukraine. He said the
invasion could still be halted, but
“only if Kyiv ceases hostilities.”
The relentless attacks prompt-
ed new warnings from the Biden
administration and several NATO
allies of harsher measures against
Russia, from war crimes investi-
gations to possible restrictions
against oil exports, which are a
pillar of Russia’s economy.
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said the administration
was in “very active discussions”
with European partners on possi-
bly blocking Russian oil sales, and
Republican and Democratic law-
makers suggested that such a
move would receive bipartisan
support in Congress.
“What Vladimir Putin is doing
is not only terrible violence to
men, women and children, he’s
doing terrible violence to the very
principles [that] keep peace and
security around the world,” Blink-
en said during a visit on Sunday
to Moldova, Ukraine’s southwest-
ern neighbor now worried that it
could be Putin’s next target. “We
can’t let either of those things go
forward with impunity, because if
we do, it opens a Pandora’s box
that we will deeply, deeply regret.”
Russian attacks on two key
aviation facilities raised new con-
cerns about Ukraine’s ability to
challenge Moscow’s control of the
skies.
Airstrikes targeted a military
air base about 150 miles south-
west of Kyiv, as well as a commer-
cial airport at Vinnystia, about
70 miles southeast of the capital.
While the damage could not be
independently assessed, the at-
tacks could deprive Ukraine of
usable airstrips as the country
presses Western allies to send
fighter planes to combat Mos-
cow’s invasion.
Zelensky confirmed in a video
message that the strike on Vinny-
stia had “completely destroyed
the airport.”
In the same message, Zelensky,
who has repeatedly urged NATO
to help him defend his country
against Russian warplanes, again
called for assistance in fighting
an air war.
“We repeat every day: Close the
sky over Ukraine. Close it for all
Russian rockets. For all Russian
military aviation. For all these
terrorists. Make a humanitarian
airspace,” Zelensky said. “We are
people, and this is your humani-
tarian obligation to protect us.”
Failing that, supply “airplanes
so that we can protect ourselves,”
he added.
A spokesman for the Russian
Defense Ministry confirmed that
the military had struck the air
base with long-range, high preci-
sion weapons — apparently in-
cluding cruise missiles. Among
the targets was a Russian-made
air defense system owned by
Ukraine, the spokesman said.
“Almost all combat-capable
aviation of the regime in Kyiv has
been destroyed,” Russian Defense
Ministry spokesman Igor Ko-
nashenkov said in a statement
following the attacks.
In Washington, a senior De-
fense Department official disput-
ed the Russian account, saying
U.S. officials “continue to observe
that the airspace over Ukraine is
UKRAINE FROM A
Alleged cease-fire violations block evacuation of civilians
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESANASTASIA VLASOVA/GETTY IMAGESEVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: A Ukrainian service member watches as
a civilian comes across a destroyed bridge in a village east of
Brovary on Sunday. The view from a hospital window broken by
shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday. Yuriy, who was shot in
the leg while evacuating civilians from the shelled city of Irpin,
seeks medical attention Sunday at a hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Three civilians were killed and others were wounded as Russian
mortar rounds landed between Irpin and Kyiv, striking a route
used by civilians fleeing southeast.toward an intersection before an
explosion rips through the mid-
dle of the street.
The area is filled with smoke.
Someone runs out of the building
and drags the man with the yel-
low armband out of the street.
Soldiers sprint across the inter-
section to people collapsed on the
ground, and someone shouts,
“Medic!”
Associated Press photos of the
aftermath show civilians — in-
cluding children — killed in the
attack. Lynsey Addario, a photog-
rapher working for the New York
Times who witnessed the attack,
wrote on Twitter that “at least
three members of a family of four
were killed in front of me.”
Blinken cited the ongoingshelling in suggesting that invad-
ing Russian forces may have com-
mitted war crimes.
It was the Biden administra-
tion’s sharpest comments on the
issue to date.
“We’ve seen very credible re-
ports of delivered attacks on civil-
ians which would constitute a
war crime,” he said. “We’ve seen
very credible reports about the
use of certain weapons,” Blinken
said Sunday on CNN’s “State of
the Union.”
Yet, in calls with French and
Turkish leaders Sunday, Putin
vowed to press on with the inva-
sion unless Ukraine stopped
fighting.
It was time for Ukraine to
“show a more constructive ap-“We know for a fact about
Ukrainian combat planes which
earlier flew to Romania and other
neighboring countries,” Konash-
enkov said Sunday. “We would
like to point out that the use of the
network of airfields of those
countries for the stationing of
Ukrainian combat aviation for
the further use against the Rus-
sian Armed Forces could be
viewed as the involvement of
those countries in the armed con-
flict,” he said.
Russian shelling of civilian
neighborhoods caused additional
casualties, although precise fig-
ures were difficult to obtain. For
the second time in 24 hours,
Russia was accused of violating
cease-fire agreements intendedto evacuate civilians from be-
sieged cities. In Mariupol, the city
council said evacuations were not
possible because “Russians began
to regroup their forces and to
shell the city heavily.”
Some of the most gruesome
images of the day came after
civilians were killed Sunday in
evacuation attempts near a bat-
tered bridge in Irpin, a town
outside Kyiv, visuals verified by
The Washington Post indicate. A
video published Sunday showed a
man in Irpin wearing a yellow
armband, usually worn by Ukrai-
nian forces, and carrying a gun
over his shoulder as he stands
across from a church and side-
walk crowded with people carry-
ing suitcases. He takes a few steps“Close the sky over Ukraine. Close it for all Russianrockets. For all Russian military aviation. ... Makea humanitarian airspace. We are people, and thisis your humanitarian obligation to protect us.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky