Follow real-time updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
One day after Ukraine and Russia tentatively agreed to create “humanitarian corridors” to access besieged Ukrainian cities, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN Friday evening “the work on the logistics is now in progress” to set up temporary routes to evacuate civilians and resupply certain cities with food and medicine.
Zelensky’s advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told CNN Russia did not agree to create permanent humanitarian corridors, but Ukraine hopes to establish temporary routes that could be free of fighting for several hours at a time.
Podolyak also acknowledged it will be difficult to trust Russia’s military to respect ceasefires near agreed-upon corridors because “its current tactics [are] aimed at spreading panic among people.” Russia has ramped up bombardments of cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv in recent days, destroying apartment complexes and endangering civilians. He suggested international organizations could act as mediators to monitor the status of any humanitarian corridors.
— Joe Walsh
Samsung Electronics is halting shipments to Russia, the tech company told Reuters and Bloomberg Friday, joining a litany of companies that have stopped selling their products in the country since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.
Forbes has reached out to Samsung for comment.
Several other companies have distanced themselves from Russia in recent days. Apple paused product sales in Russia on Tuesday, Microsoft took similar action on Friday, and platforms like YouTube and Facebook have imposed restrictions on Russian state-controlled media outlets.
— Joe Walsh
CNN will halt broadcasting in Russia, the cable network said Friday, making it the latest Western news outlet to scale back its presence in the country amid tightening government restrictions while it prosecutes an invasion of Ukraine.
A CNN spokesperson told Forbes the network “will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward.” A source at CNN said the outlet doesn’t plan on pulling its staff out of Russia.
The Russian government has sought to tightly control how media outlets report on the war with Ukraine, passing a law that threatens journalists with prison sentences of up to 15 years if they report what the Kremlin deems to be fake information about the invasion. Two of the country’s only remaining independent broadcasters left the airwaves earlier this week amid pressure from Russian authorities. Earlier Friday, access to Facebook and the BBC’s website was blocked, and the BBC said it would suspend local reporting in Russia.
— Joe Walsh
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said NATO “gave the green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages” by refusing to implement a no-fly zone over his country, in a speech late Friday night translated by Reuters. Zelensky also called a summit of NATO countries earlier Friday “weak” and “confused,” pushing the alliance to take further action.
As Russia escalates its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, Zelensky has repeatedly urged Western leaders to force Russian warplanes to stay out of Ukraine’s airspace. The United States and its allies have categorically rejected the idea and warned enforcing a no-fly zone would require Western militaries to confront and shoot down Russian aircraft, leading to the risk of a broader war between nuclear-armed powers. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday “we have a responsibility to ensure [the war] does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine. That would be even more devastating and dangerous.”
Beyond the risks, some military experts argue a no-fly zone’s impact on the war in Ukraine could be fairly muted, since most Ukrainian civilian deaths so far appear to have been caused by artillery fire and missile strikes rather than attacks from aircraft.
“Contrary to what so many in the commentariat seem to believe, a no-fly zone is not a military half-measure. It is a combat operation designed to deprive the enemy of its airpower, and it involves direct and sustained fighting,” the national security website War on the Rocks wrote.
— Joe Walsh
The federal government is considering ways to reduce U.S. imports of Russian oil, Council of Economic Advisors Chair Cecilia Rouse said Friday, though the Biden Administration still appears hesitant to pursue a strategy that could cause prices to spike even higher.
Rouse said during a White House press briefing “we are looking at options that we can take right now if we were to cut the U.S. consumption of Russian energy, but what’s really most important is that we maintain a steady supply of global energy.”
However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed back on the idea of restricting Russian oil Friday, telling reporters “there’s no strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy.” He didn’t rule out the idea, but warned sanctions against Russian energy exports—a key part of Russia’s economy—could add fuel to the fire of the recent sharp rise in oil prices, an argument the Biden Administration has often articulated this week.
Earlier Friday, Bloomberg reported the Biden Administration has discussed the possibility of a ban on Russian oil with both federal staffers and the petroleum industry, citing unnamed sources. But oil is fungible, and Bloomberg reports the administration is concerned any Russian crude oil that the United States stops importing may just go to other countries, causing U.S. prices to increase without any tangible impact on Russia’s bottom line.
Last year, the United States imported around 72.6 million barrels of Russian crude oil, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s statistics, a small fraction of the roughly 2.2 billion barrels of crude oil imported into the U.S. from all countries in the same year, with Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia ranking as the top foreign sources of oil. (Russia accounted for about 20% of the 861 million barrels of refined petroleum products the U.S. imported last year, but imports are small compared to domestic production.)
Even though sanctions from Western countries haven’t directly targeted oil imports, some of the other severe economic penalties imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine could disrupt the country’s energy sector. Russia has reportedly struggled to find buyers for its oil, as traders steer clear of the country to avoid violating financial industry sanctions.
— Joe Walsh
The Ukrainian State Emergency Service believes around 100 people are still trapped in the rubble of a heavily bombarded apartment building in an area north of Kyiv, but an official told CNN rescue crews have been unable to reach them due to constant shelling from Russian forces.
Drone footage published Thursday showed large chunks of a multi-story apartment complex essentially leveled by shelling in Borodyanka just north of Kyiv, as Russian forces attempt to advance toward Ukraine’s capital.
“We are ready to evacuate people as soon as there is an agreement on a ‘green corridor,'” State Emergency Service spokesperson Viktoriya Ruban told CNN, appearing to refer to “humanitarian corridors” Russian and Ukrainian officials agreed to in principle during talks on Thursday.
The agreement appears to involve temporary ceasefires to evacuate survivors of besieged cities, though exact logistics have not been confirmed and no corridors have been set up yet.
Russia blocked access to Facebook across the country Friday in what Russian regulators said was retaliation for the social media giant restricting access to Russian media, and soon after blocked Twitter as well, according to Interfax. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, restricted access to posts from state-sponsored media outlets like RT and Sputnik earlier this week, while Twitter took steps to limit the reach of tweets linking to Russian state-affiliated news sources.
Read more about the bans here.
— Anna Kaplan
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Friday that Russia nearly caused a “nuclear catastrophe” during an overnight attack that sparked a fire in the administration building at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Thomas-Greenfield called Russia’s decision to attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “madness” that threatened the security of both Ukrainians and Russians if there had been a meltdown and release of radiation.
The State Department also condemned the attack in a statement to Forbes. “The intentional targeting of civilians or civilian objects, including nuclear power plants, is a war crime, and we are assessing the circumstances of this operation,” a State Department spokesperson said. “But — regardless of the legality — this action was the height of irresponsibility, and the Kremlin must cease operations around nuclear infrastructure.”
Russian forces now control the facility after intense fighting overnight. The fire has been put out and the International Atomic Energy Agency hasn’t found any evidence radioactive material was released into the environment.
Ukrainian workers running the plant have reportedly been forced to remain on the job at gunpoint.
— Nicholas Reimann and Anna Kaplan
The State Department sent a message Friday to U.S. embassies in Europe, asking for staffers not to retweet a tweet from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv calling Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in Ukraine a “war crime,” NBC News and CNN report, citing an internal email.
“All – do not/not retweet Embassy Kyiv’s tweet on shelling of the facility being a possible war crime,” the message reportedly said. “If you have retweeted it – un-retweet it ASAP.”
The State Department did not comment on the email, but a spokesperson said in a statement to Forbes “the intentional targeting of civilians or civilian objects, including nuclear power plants, is a war crime,” and that the department is “assessing the circumstances” of the Russian operation.
NBC News reports the State Department also sent a memo to its public affairs offices in Europe asking them not to endorse the message of the tweet. The U.S. Embassy Kyiv’s tweet said the shelling takes Putin’s “reign of terror one step further,” and had not been taken down as of 2:15 p.m.
— Anna Kaplan
The United Nations said it had counted 331 civilian deaths and 675 civilian injuries in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion as of Thursday, adding the real number was likely to be higher.
The UN’s toll includes 312 adult deaths and 19 child deaths, and 644 injured adults and 31 injured children. It said the figures “could rise considerably further” as Russian attacks were delaying the verification of Ukrainian casualties, including the alleged “hundreds of civilian casualties” in the Ukrainian government-controlled area of Donetsk. Volnovakha was heavily damaged Thursday by Russian forces that used airstrikes and artillery shelling to attack the city, according to Forbes Ukraine.
Most civilian casualties were caused by “explosive weapons with a wide impact area,” including shelling from heavy artillery, multi-launch rocket systems and missiles and airstrikes, the UN said.
The Ukrainian government puts the death toll far higher than the UN. Ukraine’s emergency service said Wednesday more than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed since Russia’s invasion of the country last week.
–Lisa Kim
The Russian advance in southern Ukraine made its way to the city of Mykolaiv on Friday, but forces were pushed back from the city’s center to its outskirts, according to regional governor Vitaliy Kim.
Kim said in a video message that most of the Russian machinery was “destroyed and kicked out of the city,” according to a translation tweeted by former Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba.
A U.S. official told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing Friday American intelligence had observed fighting near Mykolaiv.
Russian forces appear to be having the most success taking the southern portion of Ukraine, which is the site of Kherson, the largest Ukrainian city to fall so far in the war. Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine is reportedly without access to power or water amid a Russian siege. Capturing Mariupol would create a landbridge connecting Russian forces in Crimea to the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
Odessa, a major Black Sea port in southwestern Ukraine and the country’s third-largest city, remains under Ukrainian control.
— Nicholas Reimann
Russian troops remain about 15 miles north of Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, as Ukrainian attacks combined with a destroyed bridge have slowed their advance, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Friday. “We certainly believe that the Ukrainians blowing up that bridge absolutely had an effect on stopping and curtailing the movement of that convoy,” the official said. “But we also believe that they have hit the convoy at other places as well in direct attacks.”
Another senior U.S. defense official said about $240 million worth of aid from a $350 million U.S. security assistance package approved last week has been delivered to Ukraine, and the rest should arrive within the next few weeks. It’s the largest presidential drawdown package in history, according to the State Department, and it contains equipment Ukrainian forces have already been trained on. A total of 14 countries have provided security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion began, according to the official, who declined to specify the countries by name.
Among other updates:
— Anna Kaplan
The Swiss government on Friday announced a new round of sanctions targeting Russia, including banning all transactions involving the Russian Central Bank.
The sanctions mainly impact Russia’s ability to secure financing and conduct international trade, such as suspending the use of public financing for investments in Russia and prohibiting the export of goods for use in Russia’s oil and aerospace industries.
Switzerland took up the sanctions in line with penalties already approved by the European Union, including freezing the assets of dozens of Russian oligarchs with ties to Vladimir Putin.
The country on Tuesday closed its airspace to Russian flights as part of an earlier round of sanctions.
The Swiss government said in a statement it believes the sanctions are “compatible with Switzerland’s neutrality” while “due consideration is being given to humanitarian activities.”
— Nicholas Reimann
The United Nations Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting at 11:30 a.m. Friday in New York to discuss the Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power facility in Europe, according to multiple reports.
Russian forces have seized the plant after a battle with Ukrainians early Friday morning that included shelling, which caused a fire at one of the facility’s buildings and prompted concerns the attack would lead to a catastrophic nuclear meltdown.
Fighting at the plant has since subsided and the International Atomic Energy Agency reported there was “no release” of radioactive material from the facility.
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine tweeted Friday that Russia’s attack on the plant constituted a “war crime.”
— Nicholas Reimann
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday Russia has no plans at this point to sign any documents formalizing a tentative agreement that appeared to allow for temporary, localized ceasefires in Ukraine.
Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted Thursday that a second round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials yielded a “solution” to create “humanitarian corridors” allowing survivors the chance to safely evacuate from besieged cities through temporary ceasefires.
The agreement marked the first progress made so far in two rounds of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials since the start of the war, but there wasn’t any headway made on Ukraine’s top two goals: a nationwide ceasefire and armistice.
Formal documents could provide more certainty to the tentative agreement made Thursday, though Russia has put little value in existing international agreements since invading its neighbor last week, and the nation is now under investigation by the International Criminal Court for potential war crimes over shelling civilian targets.
Russian officials did acknowledge Thursday’s agreement was very important, according to pool reports, and plans have been made for a third round of talks.
— Nicholas Reimann
NATO foreign ministers rejected the idea of establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine on the grounds it would cause the war to spread beyond that country, the alliance’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference Friday,
“We are not part of this conflict,” Stoltenberg said, “and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine.”
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said Friday any demands for the alliance to implement a no-fly zone are “irresponsible” as it would require the alliance getting involved in military conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly urged the alliance to create a no-fly zone over the country as Russia escalates bombardment of major cities in Ukraine.
The U.S. has previously ruled out enacting a no-fly zone. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday at a press briefing that it “would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and causing a — prompting a potential direct war with Russia, something — the exact step that we want to avoid.”
— Lisa Kim
Speaking at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels Friday, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said things are likely to get worse for Ukraine in the near future, with Russian forces expected to bring in “heavier weaponry” as they continue attacks across the country. “The days to come are likely to be worse, with more death, more sufferings, and more destruction,” he said.
“We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law,” Stoltenberg said. Cluster bombs are widely condemned in the international community due to the risk of civilian casualties in densely populated areas. Stoltenberg called on the International Criminal Court to make a decision to open an investigation into the use of these types of weapons in Ukraine.
Stoltenberg described the conflict as the “worst military aggression in Europe for decades” and called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stop this war immediately.” The chief reiterated that NATO is “not part” of the conflict but is committed to defending itself and ensuring hostilities do not spread beyond Ukraine. Stoltenberg said the alliance’s relationship with Russia has been “fundamentally changed” in the long-term as a result of the invasion.
– Robert Hart
Russia’s attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine is a “war crime,” the U.S. embassy in Kyiv said on Friday. “It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant,” the embassy tweeted, after Russian forces reportedly seized control of the Zaporizhzhia power plant.
The embassy added: “Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further” and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of nuclear terrorism. In addition to Zaporizhzhia, Russia has also seized the Chernobyl site.
The accusation by a U.S. entity goes a step further than previous criticisms of Russian aggression in Ukraine, which have alluded to, but stopped short of, explicit accusations of war crimes. Russia has been accused of using prohibited weapons like vacuum bombs and cluster munitions in Ukraine and of intentionally targeting civilians.
A fire broke out at the plant overnight Friday when a Russian projectile hit the complex, sparking fears of a nuclear incident and international condemnation. Three Ukrainian troops were killed and two security staff at the plant injured, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear company and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, which said the projectile did not hit a reactor and no radioactive material had been released. However, the situation “remains very challenging,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi.
– Robert Hart
The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday voted overwhelmingly to create a high-level investigation into alleged human rights violations committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thirty-two out of the council’s 47 members backed the probe, which aims to hold responsible parties accountable if violations have occurred. Russia—which denies committing any human rights violations like targeting civilians in Ukraine—was one of two countries to vote against the investigation. Eritrea also voted against establishing the probe, and remaining countries including India, Kazakhstan, Sudan and Cuba, abstained. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the decision and said “Russian war criminals will be held accountable.”
States are elected to serve three year terms on the UNHRC by members of the UN’s General Assembly. The council’s inclusion of countries accused of human rights violations is controversial and widely criticized by Western governments. Russia is no exception and rights groups pointed to alleged war crimes before it was reelected in 2020. Russia’s membership on the council has become another flashpoint following its invasion of Ukraine, where it has been accused of targeting civilians, nuclear facilities and using prohibited weapons including cluster munitions and vacuum bombs.
– Robert Hart
Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney said the next salvo of EU sanctions will take “more Russian banks” out of SWIFT, a crucial part of the global financial system, according to RTE. Several Russian banks have already been cut off from SWIFT in earlier waves of sanctions and Coveney did not specify which banks are set to be barred.
Coveney said the bloc will be “significantly adding” to its sanctions on Russia today, which are about “isolating” the country on the international stage, and he expects it will ban imports like steel, timber, aluminum and potentially even coal, noting the latter could have an impact on already volatile fuel prices in Europe. Russian flagged ships will also likely be banned from entering EU ports, Coveney added.
“These are big decisions by the European Union that are going to have an impact on Ireland and EU countries,” Coveney said. “But they’re decisions that need to be taken to send very, very strong messages to Russia that this madness must stop.”
– Robert Hart
NATO Secretary General Jens Stontenberg on Friday condemned Russia’s “brutal” invasion of Ukraine and its attacks on civilians. He said Russian attacks on the Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine “demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it.” However, Stoltenberg stressed that NATO “is not part of the conflict,” despite support to Ukraine and “unprecedented” sanctions against Russia. “We don’t seek war, conflict with Russia…. NATO is a defensive alliance,” he said.
Speaking at the same press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed that while NATO does not seek conflict, it is “ready for it… if conflict comes to us.” U.S. and European allies are set for a day of talks on Saturday.
