Russia’s war with Ukraine entered its third week Thursday with no breakthroughs after foreign ministers from both countries met in Turkey. The two sides were unable to reach a ceasefire or an agreement to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis.
In the 14 days since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his soldiers to invade neighboring Ukraine, thousands of people have died, including pregnant mothers, infants, and the elderly. More than 2 million people have been forced out of their homes, fleeing with only what they could carry.
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Russian rockets have ripped through residential buildings and sliced through schools, city squares, farmhouses, churches, and more. Thousands of people have been hurt with their bloodied body parts left in the streets to rot. In several cities and towns across Ukraine, people have run out of food and access to clean water. They have no heat or electricity, with nighttime temperatures dipping into the single digits.
At the meeting in Antalya, Turkey, between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, Kuleba said Lavrov lacked the power to negotiate even a 24-hour ceasefire.
“The broad narrative he conveyed to me is that they will continue their aggression until Ukraine meets their demands, and the least of these demands is surrender,” Kuleba told reporters.
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Lavrov stuck to Putin’s original demands that included the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly and falsely claimed that Ukraine’s government is made up of Nazis and wants to replace the government with a pro-Putin one.
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Poland on Thursday and supported calls for an international war crimes investigation of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
“Absolutely there should be an investigation, and we should all be watching,” Harris said during a press conference in Warsaw.
Standing next to her was Polish President Andrzej Duda, who added, “It is obvious to us that in Ukraine Russians are committing war crimes.”
Duda added that Harris “is demonstrating decisive engagement and the commitment of the United States to the eastern flank and NATO as a whole,” and added, “We stand with Ukraine, and we will try to do our best to make sure Ukraine can be defended.”
Late Wednesday, House lawmakers passed a $1.5 trillion spending bill that included $13.6 billion for war-torn Ukraine and European allies. About $6.5 billion will go toward sending U.S. troops and weapons to Eastern European allies in response to Putin’s push into Ukraine. Another $6.8 billion will go toward helping refugees, providing economic aid to allies, helping federal agencies enforce sanctions against Russia, and protecting against cyber threats at home.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she spent 45 minutes talking to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine’s needs and “the crimes against humanity that Putin is committing.”
Russia launched an airstrike in the besieged port city of Mariupol Wednesday amid warnings from the West that Moscow’s invasion is about to take a maniacal turn.
A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol. The ground shook more than a mile away when the complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped the front of one building. Soldiers, police, and citizens tried to evacuate some victims, with video showing them carrying out a heavily pregnant woman who was bleeding.
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Zelensky said children, their parents, and hospital workers were trapped under the rubble.
“A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?” Zelensky said during a televised address. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
The White House has warned Putin might be on the precipice of using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine after Russia, without evidence, accused Ukraine of having chemical weapons labs.
As the days stretch on, the destruction is growing.
Moscow has increased its targeting of residential areas and civilian infrastructure with long-range missiles. Analysts told the New York Times that Russian forces are preparing to renew assaults against the capital city of Kyiv as well as major cities to the east and south.
Ukrainian forces have mostly focused on protecting Kyiv but have been able to keep the Russians at bay in other cities. The Ukrainian defensive positions around Chernihiv, a key city on the path to Kyiv, have been holding. Ukrainian forces have also been able to keep Russian forces from encircling Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
In the south, Ukraine has been able to slow Russia on the key port city of Odesa. The military said it would continue to defend the besieged port city of Mariupol even though the humanitarian crisis there grows exponentially by the day.
Since the start of the war, Russia has launched more than 700 rockets and missiles at Ukraine, the Pentagon said. They have mostly been fired in the eastern part of the country.
“If you were to draw a line from Kyiv, down to Odesa, straight line, almost all those strikes are occurring to the east of that line,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday.
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In the past couple of days, Russia has changed up its plan and has started to target areas west of the line, including Vinnystya and Zhytomyr, where a bus carrying refugees came under attack.
Military analysts believe Russia is targeting these areas to prevent Western nations from getting weapons and other supplies into Ukraine.
