Here’s what to know
- Russia is “revising its war aims” to focus its offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
- The International Committee of the Red Cross said a team helping with evacuation efforts was stopped about 12 miles west of Mariupol.
- In interviews with The Washington Post in recent days, residents recounted how they were terrorized by their new Russian overlords.
- Russian officials denied harming civilians in Bucha. The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to discuss the situation in Ukraine on Tuesday.
- The Washington Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel for updates.
UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT
London’s National Gallery renames ‘Russian Dancers’ drawing as ‘Ukrainian Dancers’
London’s National Gallery has changed the name of a drawing by French impressionist Edgar Degas from “Russian Dancers” to “Ukrainian Dancers,” after mounting pressure on social media from Ukrainians calling on institutions to review how they label Ukrainian art and culture.
The painting, which is not currently on display at the museum but can be viewed on the gallery’s website, is believed to have been created by Degas in 1899. It shows dancers clutching garlands of yellow and blue — the colors of Ukraine’s flag — and wearing the same colors in their hair.
In an Instagram post last month, one user called on the gallery to “change the name” of the painting “to a historically correct one,” while others drew attention to the fact that “Ukraine’s culture has lived under being labelled Russian for so long.” “The dancers are not Russian and never were,” the post from Tanya Kolotusha, who describes herself as a Ukrainian living in London, read.
“Hi Tanya, we have updated the painting’s title to better reflect the subject of the painting. Thank you,” the official Instagram account for London’s National Gallery wrote in response about two weeks ago.
“The title of this painting has been an ongoing point of discussion for many years and is covered in scholarly literature; however there has been increased focus on it over the past month due to the current situation,” a spokesperson for the National Gallery said in a statement to the Guardian. “Therefore we felt it was an appropriate moment to update the painting’s title to better reflect the subject.”
Bucha massacre tests Europe’s ‘red lines’ on Russian energy
Every barrel of oil and ton of gas is “soaked in the blood” of those killed, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament said. Lithuania’s foreign minister warned other E.U. countries not to become “accomplices.”
In Mykolaiv, Russia continues a pattern: Shelling hospitals
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Mothers with newborn babies, a woman with a heart condition and elderly people who couldn’t walk on their own hurriedly evacuated to the basement at a Mykolaiv hospital on Sunday night as the booming thuds of artillery drew closer.
They made it down to shelter just in time. Five minutes after patients and staff had crowded into the cramped underground hallway, a suspected cluster munition landed right next to the building. The blast shattered nearly all of the windows.
It made for an eventful first night for Bohdan, who was born in the makeshift bomb shelter after his mother, Vitalina, and others from the maternity ward made the most harrowing journey to safety, from the hospital’s top floor.
“The Russians are animals; there’s no other explanation,” said Bohdan’s grandmother Vlada.
‘The video is brutal’: Zelensky cites Bucha in push for more sanctions
In his first address to European lawmakers since horrific images from a Kyiv suburb drew international outrage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Romanian Parliament that current sanctions on Moscow are “not enough.” He urged the European Union to provide weapons, close its ports to Russian ships and stop importing Russian energy.
Zelensky also screened a graphic 90-second compilation of photographs and footage that he said showed the aftermath of Russian occupation in the suburb, Bucha.
“I apologize,” he said. “The video is brutal, but it’s a reality.”
The video showed dead bodies sprawled in the street — some with bound hands, others straddling bicycles as though they’d been cut down as they rode. In one picture, a woman’s lifeless hand could be seen with red nail polish. Footage of mass graves showed limbs sticking out of the dirt.
Ukrainian officials have been able to identify about 300 victims so far, Zelensky said, but he expects the final toll to be far higher.
The Russian Defense Ministry quickly dismissed photos and videos out of Bucha as a Ukrainian “production.” It said Russian forces withdrew from the suburb “as early as March 30” and suggested bodies lacked the telltale signs of corpses left out for at least several days.
But satellite photos of the street in one widely shared video indicate the bodies were present for weeks, according to satellite company Maxar Technologies. That would mean the deaths predated Russian forces’ exit.
Maxar said it photographed Bucha’s Yablonska Street, where a viral video posted online Saturday shows at least 9 bodies strewn along the road. The Washington Post verified the footage.
Maxar on Monday shared a New York Times analysis that found the satellite company’s images contradicted Russian claims.
Ukrainian residents recount how they were terrorized by new Russian overlords
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 Washington 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. In places like Irpin and Bucha, residents are also describing abuse, torture and killings at the hands of occupying Russian soldiers.
Villagers here in the Mykolaiv area said soldiers repeatedly threatened them at gunpoint. They broke into the stores and looted ice cream and other produce, locals said. Some people said their cars were stolen. Others described the soldiers forcing them out of their homes so they could live there.
The latest on key battlegrounds in Ukraine
Russian-held areas and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
POL.
Chernihiv
Separatist-
controlled
area
Kyiv
Lviv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Mariupol
Odessa
ROMANIA
200 MILES
Control areas as of April 4
Sources: Institute for the Study of War,
AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
THE WASHINGTON POST
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
POLAND
Chernobyl
Kyiv
Sumy
Lviv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Separatist-
controlled
area
Odessa
Mariupol
Berdyansk
ROMANIA
Kherson
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
100 MILES
Active nuclear power plants with power-generating capabilities
Black Sea
Control areas as of April 4
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
POLAND
Chernobyl
Kyiv
Sumy
Lviv
Kharkiv
Separatist-
controlled
area
UKRAINE
Mykolaiv
Mariupol
Berdyansk
Kherson
ROMANIA
Odessa
Kherson
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
Active nuclear power plants with power-generating capabilities
Control areas as of April 4
100 MILES
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
- Northern Ukraine: Officials in northern Ukraine continued to report Monday that Russian forces have withdrawn. The governor of the Zhytomyr region said Russian forces had left his area. The Sumy regional governor said the same. The Ukrainian military said over the weekend that some villages in the Chernihiv region were cleared.
- Eastern Ukraine: Russia appears to be refocusing its attacks on southern and eastern Ukraine, including the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. Pro-Kremlin separatists controlled some territory there before Russia’s invasion.
- Kharkiv: A spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces continue to shell the large northeastern city and may be preparing a renewed offensive to “take” the hub — an early target just 25 miles from the Russian border.
- Mariupol: As many as 130,000 people remain trapped in this port city where shelling has destroyed most infrastructure, Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Monday. Fighting continues, he said, while residents remain cut off from water, electricity and communications. A humanitarian convoy has struggled to reach the city for four days and hit more roadblocks Monday when team members were stopped and held just west of Mariupol, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
- Mykolaiv: The governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said Monday that Russian strikes badly damaged the southern front-line area of Ukraine, with projectiles hitting more than 2,000 buildings — including homes, hospitals and other health facilities. The strikes have killed at least 161 people, including six children, he said, adding that at least 85 towns and villages were without electricity. His figures could not be independently verified. The mayor of Mykolaiv city said Monday that 10 people were killed and 46 wounded in shellings that hit civilian buildings.
David Stern and Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.
Bucha to be ‘front and center’ of U.N. Security Council meeting
British United Nations Ambassador Barbara Woodward voiced support Monday for the United States’ call to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council after images emerged appearing to show Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha.
Woodward, the April president of the U.N. Security Council, said during a news conference that “we will look to take that forward here in the coming days.” She added, “As the images from Bucha came through over the weekend, we were all appalled.”
The Security Council is set to discuss Ukraine on Tuesday, and Woodward said she had “no doubt that the situation in Bucha will be absolutely front and center of the meeting.” Russia had requested to meet Monday to rebut allegations that its troops committed a mass assault on civilians in what Ukrainian officials have called war crimes.
Woodward defended rejecting that request, saying back-to-back meetings were not needed and the extra day allows for a more informed meeting that will be “the most important counter to Russian disinformation.” She said the visuals, which appeared to show deceased civilians and mass graves after Russia’s retreat from Bucha, “were harrowing, appalling, probable evidence of war crimes and possibly of genocide.”
Suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council would require the support of at least two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members. Woodward said she expected to accomplish that, noting 141 nations had voted to condemn the invasion.
“We want to keep the pressure on Russia,” she said, “so that we can support all of the work that’s going on to see Russia leave Ukraine.”
Sullivan says Russia ‘revising’ war aims to focus on Ukraine’s east, south
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said U.S. intelligence indicates Russia is “revising its war aims” to focus its offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine, rather than attacking most of the country as it has so far, and he warned that the next phase of the war would probably be measured in months or longer.
Russian forces are retreating from Kyiv to Belarus, and it is likely that dozens of additional Russian battalion tactical groups will be deployed instead to the front line in Ukraine’s east, Sullivan told reporters Tuesday.
“We assess Russia will focus on defeating Ukrainian forces in the broader Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which encompasses significantly more territory than Russian proxies already controlled before the new invasion began in late February,” Sullivan said. “Russia could then use any tactical successes it achieves to propagate a narrative of progress.”
Sullivan added that Russia could extend its presence even deeper into Ukraine and that it would probably try to hold the Ukrainian city of Kherson to control access to water. Meanwhile, cities such as Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv and Lviv remain under threat, he said.
“Moscow will likely continue to launch air and missile strikes across the rest of the country to cause military and economic damage and, frankly, to cause terror,” Sullivan said. “Russia’s goal in the end is to weaken Ukraine as much as possible. … The next stage of this conflict may very well be protracted. We should be under no illusions that Russia will adjust its tactics, which have included and will likely continue to include wanton and brazen attacks on civilian targets.”
Biden administration does not consider Russia’s actions in Ukraine genocide, national security adviser says
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the Biden administration does not consider Russia’s actions in Ukraine a genocide, although it is monitoring the situation.
Earlier Monday, Biden called Putin a “war criminal” but stopped short of calling the mass deaths genocide. Some world leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, have used “genocide” to describe Russia’s actions.
“So this is something we, of course, continue to monitor every day based on what we have seen so far,” Sullivan told reporters Monday at a news briefing. “We have seen atrocities. We have seen war crimes. We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide. But again, that’s something we will continue to monitor.”
Sullivan added that there is “not a mechanical formula” for making such a determination. He noted that the State Department recently determined that the mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar amounts to genocide.
“That was a lengthy process based on an amassing of evidence over a considerable period of time and involving, frankly, mass death [and] the mass incarceration of a significant portion of the Rohingya population,” Sullivan said. “And we will look to a series of indicators along those lines to ultimately make a determination in Ukraine. But as the president said today, we have not arrived at that conclusion yet.”
U.S. seizes superyacht of Russian billionaire close to Putin
Spanish and U.S. law enforcement agents boarded the $90 million Tango early Monday as the ship docked at the Marina Real in the port of Palma de Mallorca, in Spain’s Balearic Islands. Spanish authorities executed a court order freezing the vessel after the Justice Department obtained a seizure warrant in federal court in Washington alleging U.S. bank fraud, money laundering and sanctions violations.
Germany’s Merkel responds to Zelensky criticism over NATO aspirations
BERLIN — Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, responded on Monday to criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about her handling of Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.
Zelensky singled out Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, in remarks over the weekend following the emergence of footage appearing to show Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv. He said the European leaders had led efforts to deny Ukraine access to NATO during the alliance’s 2008 summit in Bucharest and invited them to travel to Bucha to see firsthand what he described as the failures of their Russia policy.
“I invite Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see what the policy of concessions to Russia has led to in 14 years,” he said. “To see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women.”
Merkel “stands by her decisions in connection with the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest,” a spokeswoman for the former chancellor told the German Press Agency, or dpa. But the spokeswoman also said the former chancellor supports efforts by the German government and the international community to “put an end to the barbarism and the war by Russia against Ukraine.”
Merkel, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, did not run for a fifth term as chancellor and stepped down in December after 16 years in power. She was succeeded by Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party, who served as finance minister and vice chancellor in her final coalition government.
Germany, France expel dozens of Russian diplomats, citing ‘brutality’ in Bucha
BERLIN — Germany on Monday declared 40 Russian diplomats “undesirable persons” and said they had five days to leave the country, a move prompted by scenes of what it described as “unbelievable brutality” in Bucha, near Ukraine’s capital.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the diplomats had “worked against our freedom” and posed a threat to the cohesion of German society. The decision was communicated, she said, to the Russian ambassador in Berlin, Sergei Nechayev.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced a similar decision Monday, which could affect about three dozen diplomats.
“France decided this evening to expel many Russian personnel with diplomatic status assigned to France whose activities are contrary to our security interests,” the ministry wrote in a statement. “This action is part of a European approach. Our first responsibility is always to ensure the safety of French people and Europeans.”
The expulsion orders came as European governments grappled with how to punish Russia for what leaders on the continent described as “war crimes.” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said earlier Monday that the Russian ambassador in his country had been asked to leave.
In contrast to the European Union’s consensus over diplomatic penalties, the bloc has been divided over what to do about imports of Russian fossil fuels. France on Monday joined such countries as Poland in saying that the E.U. should embargo Russian oil and coal, while leaders in Germany and Austria, for instance, continued to resist such a measure.
World is ‘bearing witness’ to Bucha images, says U.S. envoy to Poland
U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski said the world is “bearing witness” to the gruesome scenes out of Bucha.
Reports and photos are emerging from the suburb northwest of Kyiv, where Ukrainian authorities in recent days have described mass graves and where a Post photographer witnessed volunteers placing and carrying away bodies in bags.
“This is an effort to terrorize and intimidate the people of Ukraine, who are standing up for their nation, for their people, to fight back against invaders,” Brzezinski said in an interview with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. “These images may have local roots, but they have global reach. We are all bearing witness.”
In discussing a potential cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, Brzezinski said he does not know “whether that would result, actually, in a cessation of hostilities. Or, actually, is that something that could metastasize into quickly open conflict again?”
“We have to be careful about any kind of pledge or promise that we hear from the Russians because we need to remember what we heard from them in the lead-up to this attack,” Brzezinski added in The Washington Post Live interview. “That nothing was underway, nothing was being planned, no attack was going to occur.”
Russia denies and deflects in reaction to Bucha atrocities
As the world expresses outrage over mounting evidence that Russian troops slaughtered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, officials in Moscow are denying Russian involvement and dismissing images of bodies as fraudulent.
Russian diplomats and pro-Kremlin accounts on Monday amplified that view on social media, going so far as to suggest that the corpses seen in video footage were actors participating in a hoax to discredit Russia. State-controlled news programs, meanwhile, either ignored the apparent atrocities or echoed the official line.
The reaction was one of the starkest examples yet of the extreme propaganda the Kremlin is using to try to control the domestic narrative of a war that has obliterated Ukrainian cities and villages, killed thousands of Russian soldiers and turned Russia into a global outcast.
Some liberal Russian voices expressed grief over the reports and photos emerging from Bucha. The city’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told The Washington Post that around 270 residents had been buried in two mass graves. A Post photographer in Bucha on Sunday witnessed the corpses of eight civilians being placed in body bags. Two of them had their hands tied behind their backs.
Here’s what to knowRussia is “revising its war aims” to focus its offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.The International Committee of the Red Cross said a team helping with evacuation efforts was stopped about 12 miles west of Mariupol.In interviews with The Washington Post in recent days, residents recounted how they were terrorized by their new Russian overlords.Russian officials denied harming civilians in Bucha. The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to discuss the situation in Ukraine on Tuesday.The Washington Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel for updates.UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICTLondon’s National Gallery renames ‘Russian Dancers’ drawing as ‘Ukrainian Dancers’Return to menuLondon’s National Gallery has changed the name of a drawing by French impressionist Edgar Degas from “Russian Dancers” to “Ukrainian Dancers,” after mounting pressure on social media from Ukrainians calling on institutions to review how they label Ukrainian art and culture.The painting, which is not currently on display at the museum but can be viewed on the gallery’s website, is believed to have been created by Degas in 1899. It shows dancers clutching garlands of yellow and blue — the colors of Ukraine’s flag — and wearing the same colors in their hair.In an Instagram post last month, one user called on the gallery to “change the name” of the painting “to a historically correct one,” while others drew attention to the fact that “Ukraine’s culture has lived under being labelled Russian for so long.” “The dancers are not Russian and never were,” the post from Tanya Kolotusha, who describes herself as a Ukrainian living in London, read.“Hi Tanya, we have updated the painting’s title to better reflect the subject of the painting. Thank you,” the official Instagram account for London’s National Gallery wrote in response about two weeks ago.“The title of this painting has been an ongoing point of discussion for many years and is covered in scholarly literature; however there has been increased focus on it over the past month due to the current situation,” a spokesperson for the National Gallery said in a statement to the Guardian. “Therefore we felt it was an appropriate moment to update the painting’s title to better reflect the subject.”Updates continue below advertisementBucha massacre tests Europe’s ‘red lines’ on Russian energy Return to menuEvery barrel of oil and ton of gas is “soaked in the blood” of those killed, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament said. Lithuania’s foreign minister warned other E.U. countries not to become “accomplices.”Updates continue below advertisementIn Mykolaiv, Russia continues a pattern: Shelling hospitalsReturn to menuMYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Mothers with newborn babies, a woman with a heart condition and elderly people who couldn’t walk on their own hurriedly evacuated to the basement at a Mykolaiv hospital on Sunday night as the booming thuds of artillery drew closer.They made it down to shelter just in time. Five minutes after patients and staff had crowded into the cramped underground hallway, a suspected cluster munition landed right next to the building. The blast shattered nearly all of the windows.It made for an eventful first night for Bohdan, who was born in the makeshift bomb shelter after his mother, Vitalina, and others from the maternity ward made the most harrowing journey to safety, from the hospital’s top floor.“The Russians are animals; there’s no other explanation,” said Bohdan’s grandmother Vlada.Updates continue below advertisement‘The video is brutal’: Zelensky cites Bucha in push for more sanctionsReturn to menuThis video was posted on Twitter on April 2 and verified and edited by The Washington Post. (Video: Twitter, Photo: Twitter)In his first address to European lawmakers since horrific images from a Kyiv suburb drew international outrage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Romanian Parliament that current sanctions on Moscow are “not enough.” He urged the European Union to provide weapons, close its ports to Russian ships and stop importing Russian energy.Zelensky also screened a graphic 90-second compilation of photographs and footage that he said showed the aftermath of Russian occupation in the suburb, Bucha.“I apologize,” he said. “The video is brutal, but it’s a reality.”The video showed dead bodies sprawled in the street — some with bound hands, others straddling bicycles as though they’d been cut down as they rode. In one picture, a woman’s lifeless hand could be seen with red nail polish. Footage of mass graves showed limbs sticking out of the dirt.Ukrainian officials have been able to identify about 300 victims so far, Zelensky said, but he expects the final toll to be far higher. The Russian Defense Ministry quickly dismissed photos and videos out of Bucha as a Ukrainian “production.” It said Russian forces withdrew from the suburb “as early as March 30” and suggested bodies lacked the telltale signs of corpses left out for at least several days.But satellite photos of the street in one widely shared video indicate the bodies were present for weeks, according to satellite company Maxar Technologies. That would mean the deaths predated Russian forces’ exit.Maxar said it photographed Bucha’s Yablonska Street, where a viral video posted online Saturday shows at least 9 bodies strewn along the road. The Washington Post verified the footage.Maxar on Monday shared a New York Times analysis that found the satellite company’s images contradicted Russian claims.Updates continue below advertisementUkrainian residents recount how they were terrorized by new Russian overlordsReturn to menuRussians arrived in columns of armored vehicles and occupied these hamlets for about 10 days before Ukrainian military forces ejected them. In interviews with The Washington 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. In places like Irpin and Bucha, residents are also describing abuse, torture and killings at the hands of occupying Russian soldiers.Villagers here in the Mykolaiv area said soldiers repeatedly threatened them at gunpoint. They broke into the stores and looted ice cream and other produce, locals said. Some people said their cars were stolen. Others described the soldiers forcing them out of their homes so they could live there.Updates continue below advertisementThe latest on key battlegrounds in UkraineReturn to menu Russian-held areas and troop movement BELARUS RUSSIA POL. Chernihiv Separatist- controlled area Kyiv Lviv Kharkiv UKRAINE Mariupol Odessa ROMANIA 200 MILES Control areas as of April 4 Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting THE WASHINGTON POST Russian-held areas and troop movement BELARUS RUSSIA Chernihiv POLAND Chernobyl Kyiv Sumy Lviv Kharkiv UKRAINE Separatist- controlled area Odessa Mariupol Berdyansk ROMANIA Kherson Crimea Annexed by Russia in 2014 100 MILES Active nuclear power plants with power-generating capabilities Black Sea Control areas as of April 4 Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting Russian-held areas and troop movement BELARUS RUSSIA Chernihiv POLAND Chernobyl Kyiv Sumy Lviv Kharkiv Separatist- controlled area UKRAINE Mykolaiv Mariupol Berdyansk Kherson ROMANIA Odessa Kherson Crimea Annexed by Russia in 2014 Active nuclear power plants with power-generating capabilities Control areas as of April 4 100 MILES Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting Northern Ukraine: Officials in northern Ukraine continued to report Monday that Russian forces have withdrawn. The governor of the Zhytomyr region said Russian forces had left his area. The Sumy regional governor said the same. The Ukrainian military said over the weekend that some villages in the Chernihiv region were cleared.Eastern Ukraine: Russia appears to be refocusing its attacks on southern and eastern Ukraine, including the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. Pro-Kremlin separatists controlled some territory there before Russia’s invasion.Kharkiv: A spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces continue to shell the large northeastern city and may be preparing a renewed offensive to “take” the hub — an early target just 25 miles from the Russian border.Mariupol: As many as 130,000 people remain trapped in this port city where shelling has destroyed most infrastructure, Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Monday. Fighting continues, he said, while residents remain cut off from water, electricity and communications. A humanitarian convoy has struggled to reach the city for four days and hit more roadblocks Monday when team members were stopped and held just west of Mariupol, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.Mykolaiv: The governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said Monday that Russian strikes badly damaged the southern front-line area of Ukraine, with projectiles hitting more than 2,000 buildings — including homes, hospitals and other health facilities. The strikes have killed at least 161 people, including six children, he said, adding that at least 85 towns and villages were without electricity. His figures could not be independently verified. The mayor of Mykolaiv city said Monday that 10 people were killed and 46 wounded in shellings that hit civilian buildings.David Stern and Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.Updates continue below advertisementBucha to be ‘front and center’ of U.N. Security Council meetingReturn to menuBritish United Nations Ambassador Barbara Woodward voiced support Monday for the United States’ call to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council after images emerged appearing to show Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha.Woodward, the April president of the U.N. Security Council, said during a news conference that “we will look to take that forward here in the coming days.” She added, “As the images from Bucha came through over the weekend, we were all appalled.”The Security Council is set to discuss Ukraine on Tuesday, and Woodward said she had “no doubt that the situation in Bucha will be absolutely front and center of the meeting.” Russia had requested to meet Monday to rebut allegations that its troops committed a mass assault on civilians in what Ukrainian officials have called war crimes.Woodward defended rejecting that request, saying back-to-back meetings were not needed and the extra day allows for a more informed meeting that will be “the most important counter to Russian disinformation.” She said the visuals, which appeared to show deceased civilians and mass graves after Russia’s retreat from Bucha, “were harrowing, appalling, probable evidence of war crimes and possibly of genocide.”Suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council would require the support of at least two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members. Woodward said she expected to accomplish that, noting 141 nations had voted to condemn the invasion.“We want to keep the pressure on Russia,” she said, “so that we can support all of the work that’s going on to see Russia leave Ukraine.”Updates continue below advertisementSullivan says Russia ‘revising’ war aims to focus on Ukraine’s east, southReturn to menuNational security adviser Jake Sullivan said U.S. intelligence indicates Russia is “revising its war aims” to focus its offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine, rather than attacking most of the country as it has so far, and he warned that the next phase of the war would probably be measured in months or longer.Russian forces are retreating from Kyiv to Belarus, and it is likely that dozens of additional Russian battalion tactical groups will be deployed instead to the front line in Ukraine’s east, Sullivan told reporters Tuesday.“We assess Russia will focus on defeating Ukrainian forces in the broader Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which encompasses significantly more territory than Russian proxies already controlled before the new invasion began in late February,” Sullivan said. “Russia could then use any tactical successes it achieves to propagate a narrative of progress.”Sullivan added that Russia could extend its presence even deeper into Ukraine and that it would probably try to hold the Ukrainian city of Kherson to control access to water. Meanwhile, cities such as Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv and Lviv remain under threat, he said.“Moscow will likely continue to launch air and missile strikes across the rest of the country to cause military and economic damage and, frankly, to cause terror,” Sullivan said. “Russia’s goal in the end is to weaken Ukraine as much as possible. … The next stage of this conflict may very well be protracted. We should be under no illusions that Russia will adjust its tactics, which have included and will likely continue to include wanton and brazen attacks on civilian targets.”Updates continue below advertisementBiden administration does not consider Russia’s actions in Ukraine genocide, national security adviser saysReturn to menuNational security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the Biden administration does not consider Russia’s actions in Ukraine a genocide, although it is monitoring the situation.Earlier Monday, Biden called Putin a “war criminal” but stopped short of calling the mass deaths genocide. Some world leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, have used “genocide” to describe Russia’s actions.“So this is something we, of course, continue to monitor every day based on what we have seen so far,” Sullivan told reporters Monday at a news briefing. “We have seen atrocities. We have seen war crimes. We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide. But again, that’s something we will continue to monitor.”Sullivan added that there is “not a mechanical formula” for making such a determination. He noted that the State Department recently determined that the mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar amounts to genocide.“That was a lengthy process based on an amassing of evidence over a considerable period of time and involving, frankly, mass death [and] the mass incarceration of a significant portion of the Rohingya population,” Sullivan said. “And we will look to a series of indicators along those lines to ultimately make a determination in Ukraine. But as the president said today, we have not arrived at that conclusion yet.”U.S. seizes superyacht of Russian billionaire close to Putin Return to menuSpanish and U.S. law enforcement agents boarded the $90 million Tango early Monday as the ship docked at the Marina Real in the port of Palma de Mallorca, in Spain’s Balearic Islands. Spanish authorities executed a court order freezing the vessel after the Justice Department obtained a seizure warrant in federal court in Washington alleging U.S. bank fraud, money laundering and sanctions violations.Germany’s Merkel responds to Zelensky criticism over NATO aspirationsReturn to menuBERLIN — Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, responded on Monday to criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about her handling of Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.Zelensky singled out Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, in remarks over the weekend following the emergence of footage appearing to show Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv. He said the European leaders had led efforts to deny Ukraine access to NATO during the alliance’s 2008 summit in Bucharest and invited them to travel to Bucha to see firsthand what he described as the failures of their Russia policy.“I invite Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see what the policy of concessions to Russia has led to in 14 years,” he said. “To see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women.”Merkel “stands by her decisions in connection with the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest,” a spokeswoman for the former chancellor told the German Press Agency, or dpa. But the spokeswoman also said the former chancellor supports efforts by the German government and the international community to “put an end to the barbarism and the war by Russia against Ukraine.”Merkel, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, did not run for a fifth term as chancellor and stepped down in December after 16 years in power. She was succeeded by Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party, who served as finance minister and vice chancellor in her final coalition government.Germany, France expel dozens of Russian diplomats, citing ‘brutality’ in BuchaReturn to menuBERLIN — Germany on Monday declared 40 Russian diplomats “undesirable persons” and said they had five days to leave the country, a move prompted by scenes of what it described as “unbelievable brutality” in Bucha, near Ukraine’s capital.Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the diplomats had “worked against our freedom” and posed a threat to the cohesion of German society. The decision was communicated, she said, to the Russian ambassador in Berlin, Sergei Nechayev.The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced a similar decision Monday, which could affect about three dozen diplomats.“France decided this evening to expel many Russian personnel with diplomatic status assigned to France whose activities are contrary to our security interests,” the ministry wrote in a statement. “This action is part of a European approach. Our first responsibility is always to ensure the safety of French people and Europeans.”The expulsion orders came as European governments grappled with how to punish Russia for what leaders on the continent described as “war crimes.” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said earlier Monday that the Russian ambassador in his country had been asked to leave.In contrast to the European Union’s consensus over diplomatic penalties, the bloc has been divided over what to do about imports of Russian fossil fuels. France on Monday joined such countries as Poland in saying that the E.U. should embargo Russian oil and coal, while leaders in Germany and Austria, for instance, continued to resist such a measure.World is ‘bearing witness’ to Bucha images, says U.S. envoy to PolandReturn to menu“This is an effort to terrorize and intimidate the people of Ukraine who are standing up for their nation…These images may have local roots, but they have global reach. We are all bearing witness…Poland over 28 days has taken in 2.4 million people.”- Mark Brzezinski, U.S. Ambassador to Poland (Video: Washington Post Live, Photo: Washington Post Live)U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski said the world is “bearing witness” to the gruesome scenes out of Bucha.Reports and photos are emerging from the suburb northwest of Kyiv, where Ukrainian authorities in recent days have described mass graves and where a Post photographer witnessed volunteers placing and carrying away bodies in bags.“This is an effort to terrorize and intimidate the people of Ukraine, who are standing up for their nation, for their people, to fight back against invaders,” Brzezinski said in an interview with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. “These images may have local roots, but they have global reach. We are all bearing witness.”In discussing a potential cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, Brzezinski said he does not know “whether that would result, actually, in a cessation of hostilities. Or, actually, is that something that could metastasize into quickly open conflict again?”“We have to be careful about any kind of pledge or promise that we hear from the Russians because we need to remember what we heard from them in the lead-up to this attack,” Brzezinski added in The Washington Post Live interview. “That nothing was underway, nothing was being planned, no attack was going to occur.”Russia denies and deflects in reaction to Bucha atrocities Return to menuAs the world expresses outrage over mounting evidence that Russian troops slaughtered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, officials in Moscow are denying Russian involvement and dismissing images of bodies as fraudulent.Russian diplomats and pro-Kremlin accounts on Monday amplified that view on social media, going so far as to suggest that the corpses seen in video footage were actors participating in a hoax to discredit Russia. State-controlled news programs, meanwhile, either ignored the apparent atrocities or echoed the official line.The reaction was one of the starkest examples yet of the extreme propaganda the Kremlin is using to try to control the domestic narrative of a war that has obliterated Ukrainian cities and villages, killed thousands of Russian soldiers and turned Russia into a global outcast.Some liberal Russian voices expressed grief over the reports and photos emerging from Bucha. The city’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told The Washington Post that around 270 residents had been buried in two mass graves. A Post photographer in Bucha on Sunday witnessed the corpses of eight civilians being placed in body bags. Two of them had their hands tied behind their backs.