Russians strike near Kyiv, block aid convoy; port city reels

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Russia bombarded cities across Ukraine on Saturday, pounding Mariupol in the south, shelling the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, and thwarting the efforts of people trying to flee the violence.

In Mariupol, which has endured some of the worst punishment since Russia invaded, efforts to bring food, water and medicine into the port city of 430,000 and to evacuate civilians, were prevented by unceasing attacks. More than 1,500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according to the mayor's office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves.

Talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire again failed Saturday, and while the U.S. announced plans to provide another $200 million to Ukraine for weapons, a senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow could attack foreign shipments of military equipment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.

“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

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AP video shows tank and sniper fire in besieged Mariupol

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — A tank emblazoned with a giant Z backs up clumsily in the besieged city of Mariupol, crashing into destroyed buses before letting loose a shell. Ukrainian fighters later destroyed it, notching up one small victory.

An Associated Press journalist witnessed tanks firing on a 9-story apartment block and was among a group of medical workers who came under sniper fire Friday in the city completely surrounded by Russian soldiers.

The video he shot shows shells exploding as they hit the apartment block, already severely damaged, setting balconies on fire. It wasn’t possible to tell whether the Russian positions had first received fire from the targeted locations.

At another point, a medical worker was hit in the hip by sniper fire. She survived, but conditions in the hospital were deteriorating. Windows rattled from nearby tank and artillery fire, electricity was reserved for operating tables, and the hallways were lined with people with nowhere else to go.

One of them was Anastasia Erashova, who wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child. Shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother’s child. Erashova’s scalp was encrusted with blood.

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Live updates: Zelenskyy warns against 'pseudo-republics.'

The latest developments on the Russia-Ukraine war:

LVIV, Ukraine – Russia is trying to create new “pseudo-republics” in Ukraine to break his country apart, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

Zelenskyy called on Ukraine’s regions, including Kherson, which was captured by Russian forces, not to repeat the experience of Donetsk and Luhansk. Pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in those eastern regions in 2014.

“The occupiers on the territory of the Kherson region are trying to repeat the sad experience of the formation of pseudo-republics,” Zelenskyy said. “They are blackmailing local leaders, putting pressure on deputies, looking for someone to bribe.”

City council members in Kherson, a southern city of 290,000, on Saturday rejected plans for a new pseudo-republic, Zelenskyy said.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict

A relentless assault on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol continued Saturday, as Russian forces shelled the city's downtown, including an area around a mosque that was sheltering more than 80 people — some children.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow has warned the United States that Moscow could attack convoys carrying military equipment to Ukraine, calling them "legitimate targets.” U.S. President Joe Biden announced additional aid to Ukraine of up to $200 million for weapons, military services, education and training.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday accused Russia of trying to create new “pseudo-republics” to break his country apart. He called on Ukraine’s regions not to repeat the experience of two eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014.

Russian units fanned out to prepare for an assault on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv. Zelenskyy said Russia would need to carpet-bomb Kyiv and kill its residents to take the city.

Now in its third week, the war has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine.

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Concern grows over traffickers targeting Ukrainian refugees

SIRET, Romania (AP) — One man was detained in Poland suspected of raping a 19-year-old refugee he’d lured with offers of shelter after she fled war-torn Ukraine. Another was overheard promising work and a room to a 16-year-old girl before authorities intervened.

Another case inside a refugee camp at Poland’s Medyka border, raised suspicions when a man was offering help only to women and children. When questioned by police, he changed his story.

As millions of women and children flee across Ukraine’s borders in the face of Russian aggression, concerns are growing over how to protect the most vulnerable refugees from being targeted by human traffickers or becoming victims of other forms of exploitation.

“Obviously all the refugees are women and children,” said Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, the UNHCR’s head of global communications, who has visited borders in Romania, Poland and Moldova.

“You have to worry about any potential risks for trafficking — but also exploitation, and sexual exploitation and abuse. These are the kinds of situations that people like traffickers … look to take advantage of,” she said.

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In America, a few days in March 2020 echo two years later

The conversations went like this: It will be just a few days. It can be kept at bay. There will be some inconvenience, sure, but the world will merely be paused — just a short break, out of an abundance of caution, and certainly not any kind of major grinding to a halt. Certainly not for two years.

Certainly not for hundreds of thousands of Americans who were among us at that moment in mid-March 2020 — who lived through the beginning, watched it, worried about it (or didn’t), and who, plain and simple, aren’t here anymore.

“Just a temporary moment of time,” the man who was then president of the United States insisted. Just a few days. Just a few weeks. Just a few months. Just a few years.

The fact is that on March 12, 2020, no one really knew how it would play out. How could they?

Flattening the curve — such a novel term then, such a frozen moment of a phrase today — seemed genuinely possible two years ago this weekend, when Major League Baseball's spring training games trickled to an end with their season suddenly postponed, when universities told students to stay away, when Congress — astonishingly — began to talk about whether it would be able to work from home.

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US pays $2M a month to protect Pompeo, aide from Iran threat

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.

The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.

Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and the report says U.S. intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify. The threats have persisted even as President Joe Biden's administration has been engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran over a U.S. return to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

As a former secretary of state, Pompeo was automatically given 180 days of protection by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security after leaving office. But that protection has been repeatedly extended in 60-day increments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to “a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department,” the report said.

Hook, who along with Pompeo was often the public face of the Trump administration's imposition of crippling sanctions against Iran, was granted the special protection by Blinken for the same reason as Pompeo immediately after he left government service. That has also been repeatedly renewed in 60-day increments.

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Police: Man stabs 2 workers at New York’s MoMA and flees

NEW YORK (AP) — A man stabbed two employees inside the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Saturday afternoon, leaping over a reception desk to attack them after he was denied entrance for previous incidents of disorderly conduct, authorities said.

Police said a 24-year-old male and a 24-year-old female were stabbed multiple times and both were in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital later Saturday. People posted on social media that museumgoers ran for the exits in confusion and chaos after the stabbing.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism John Miller said the man's membership was revoked for two separate incidents of disorderly behavior at the museum in recent days. The department shared photos of him late Saturday night asking for the public’s help in finding him.

A letter informing the man of his expired membership was sent out on Friday, Miller said, and he showed up at the museum Saturday saying he intended to see a film that was playing.

“He became upset about not being allowed entrance, and then jumped over the reception desk and proceeded to attack and stab two employees of the museum multiple times,” Miller said.

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Russian footholds in Mideast, Africa raise threat to NATO

BEIRUT (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine dominates world attention. But with less global scrutiny, Putin is also busy advancing Russia’s presence in the Middle East and Africa -- an expansion that military and civilian leaders view as another, if less immediate, threat to security in the West.

Putin's strategy in the Mideast and Africa has been simple, and successful: He seeks out security alliances with autocrats, coup leaders, and others who have been spurned or neglected by the U.S. and Europe, either because of their bloody abuses or because of competing Western strategic interests.

— In Syria, Russia’s defense minister last month showed off nuclear-capable bombers and hypersonic missiles over the Mediterranean, part of a security partnership that now has the Kremlin threatening to send Syrian fighters to Ukraine.

— In Sudan, a leader of a junta that’s seized power in that East African country has a new economic alliance with the Kremlin, reviving Russia’s dreams of a naval base on the Red Sea.

— In Mali, the government is the latest of more than a dozen resource-rich African nations to forge security alliances with Kremlin-allied mercenaries, according to U.S. officials.

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AP PHOTOS: Day 17: Images of destruction, Ukrainian defiance

In besieged towns and cities around Ukraine on Saturday, smoke rose from destroyed buildings and burned-out cars. Soldiers patrolled deserted, debris-filled streets. And hospitals struggled to treat the injured, provide shelter and deliver babies.

Meanwhile, the exodus of refugees from the country continued. There were tearful goodbyes at train stations, and tears of joy when some family members were united across the border in Poland.

Among the images captured by Associated Press photographers on Day 17 of the war there were also pictures of defiance — from a welder working on tire-deflating spikes to a refugee with fingernails painted the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

News from © The Associated Press, 2022