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Elon Musk Buys Twitter, Immediately Fires CEO and CFO

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Elon Musk

fired several Twitter Inc. executives after completing his takeover of the company, according to people familiar with the matter, capping an unusual corporate battle and setting up one of the world’s most influential social-media platforms for potentially broad change.

Mr. Musk fired Chief Executive Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal after the deal closed, the people said. Mr. Musk also fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top legal and policy executive, and Sean Edgett, general counsel. Spokespeople for Twitter didn’t comment.

Ask WSJ

The Musk-Twitter Deal

WSJ Financial Editor Charles Forelle sits down with Alexa Corse, WSJ reporter covering Twitter, at 1 p.m. ET Oct. 28 to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. What does the future hold for the platform? And what does this deal mean for Mr. Musk’s business empire?

Hours after those actions, Mr. Musk tweeted: “the bird is freed” in a seeming reference to Twitter, which has a blue bird as its logo.

Mr. Musk first agreed to buy Twitter in April for $44 billion, then threatened to walk away from the deal, before reversing course this month and committing to see through the acquisition. He previously indicated unhappiness with some of the top ranks at Twitter, at one point responding to a tweet from Mr. Agrawal with a poop emoji. He also used the site to mock Ms. Gadde, the top legal boss, tweeting an image overlaid with text that repeated allegations Twitter had a left-wing political bias.

It wasn’t immediately clear who would step into the top positions left vacant by Thursday’s exits. CNBC earlier reported the departures of Mr. Agrawal and Mr. Segal.

The deal, in which Twitter will again become a private company, adds to Mr. Musk’s expansive business reach, which includes running

Tesla Inc.,

the world’s most-valuable car company, and rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, among other endeavors. Mr. Musk, who had become Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, previously said he would pay for the acquisition mostly with cash, some contributed by co-investors, and $13 billion in debt.

There were signs this week indicating that Mr. Musk was moving closer to acquiring the social-media platform by Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline. Banks started sending money backing the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Musk also has changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit,” showed himself walking into the San Francisco headquarters of the social-media platform, and issued a statement on Twitter explaining his vision for the site to advertisers.

Closing the deal ends a monthslong saga of whether Mr. Musk would or wouldn’t purchase the company. The acquisition also puts one of the world’s most prominent social-media platforms under the control of the world’s richest person, with implications for the future of online discourse.

A self-described free-speech absolutist, Mr. Musk has pledged to limit content moderation in favor of emphasizing free speech. However, that approach risks causing conflicts with some advertisers, politicians and users who would prefer a more-moderated platform.

Elon Musk completed the deal for Twitter a day before a court-imposed deadline.



Photo:

Carina Johansen/NTB/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In a message to advertisers on Twitter on Thursday, Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”

Mr. Musk said the platform must be “warm and welcoming to all” and suggested Twitter could let people “choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play videogames ranging from all ages to mature.”

Mr. Musk’s decision to go through with the Twitter takeover came two weeks before a trial in Delaware was set to begin over the stalled deal. The judge presiding over the legal clash agreed to pause the litigation, granting a request by Mr. Musk for more time to complete the takeover. The judge gave Mr. Musk until Oct. 28 to follow through with his offer, or said she would schedule a November trial.

Mr. Musk offered in April to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share—higher than the company was valued at the time. In the months since the deal was struck, Twitter has faced efforts by Mr. Musk to abandon the deal, a whistleblower complaint in which Twitter’s former head of security accused the company of security and privacy problems, and unsuccessful talks to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Musk.

The New York Stock Exchange has suspended Twitter shares from trading, starting Friday. The stock closed Thursday at $53.70.

Mr. Musk’s takeover leaves big questions over the future of the platform, including how he might revamp its business model and how he might implement changes he has proposed for the way it polices content.

Like other social-media companies, Twitter heavily relies on digital advertising and has faced headwinds in recent months due to broad economic uncertainty. It will also be saddled with billions in debt as a result of the deal, and payments on those loans will add costs for a company that has posted a loss in eight of its past 10 fiscal years.

Twitter will be saddled with billions of dollars in debt as a result of the deal.



Photo:

Godofredo A. Vásquez/Associated Press

The deal turned into a wild business drama with little precedent. Mr. Musk moved to buy Twitter in April. After signing a merger agreement, however, he accused the company of misrepresenting the prevalence of fake and spam accounts on its platform, which Twitter denied.

He formally tried to abandon the deal in July, prompting Twitter to sue him to enforce the original merger agreement. Mr. Musk countersued.

In early October, Mr. Musk suddenly abandoned his legal battle with Twitter, with little public explanation. After his reversal, he tweeted that “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” He previously suggested he could create a social-media platform named X.com if he didn’t buy Twitter.

Eric Talley, a law professor at Columbia University, said after the most recent about-face that several factors were piling up against Mr. Musk, including rulings from the court denying some of Mr. Musk’s discovery requests. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who was overseeing the case in Delaware, had called some of his data requests “absurdly broad.”

“He has spent months with various attempts to figure out ways out of this deal,” Mr. Talley said. “All those windows had started to close and some of them closed completely.”

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top legal executive, whom Elon Musk mocked on the site, is among the ousted executives.



Photo:

Martina Albertazzi/Bloomberg News

Mr. Musk’s specific plans for the company remain unclear. He could return Twitter to public ownership after just a few years, the Journal previously reported.

By taking Twitter private, the billionaire entrepreneur likely can take more risks to jump-start the company’s business. “It’s going to be bumpy,” said Youssef Squali, lead internet analyst at Truist Securities. “He can take it away for a couple of years, really kind of re-engineer the whole thing,” Mr. Squali said.

Mr. Musk has suggested he wants to shift Twitter away from its advertising-heavy business model to other forms of revenue, including a greater emphasis on subscriptions. Advertising accounted for more than 90% of Twitter’s revenue in the second quarter of this year.

He said he would allow former President Donald Trump back on the platform, though Mr. Trump has said he doesn’t intend to return to it. Twitter banned Mr. Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, citing what the company called the risk of further incitement of violence.

“Twitter is obviously not going to be turned into some right wing nuthouse. Aiming to be as broadly inclusive as possible,” Mr. Musk said in a message that was among a trove released as part of the legal battle.

The prospect of Mr. Musk taking over Twitter, as well as the subsequent uncertainty over the deal, roiled many Twitter employees. Twitter has told employees that they will hear from Mr. Musk on Friday, according to an internal note reviewed by the Journal.

—Erin Mulvaney contributed to this article.

Write to Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8



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World

Iran Protests Are Proving a Durable Challenge to the Islamic Republic

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Three weeks after antigovernment protests erupted across Iran—sparked by the death of a woman detained for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code—the movement has proved more durable than previous challenges to Tehran’s leaders and could pose a continuing threat.

Students across the country rallied outside universities on Sunday, chanting slogans including “death to the dictator,” and schoolgirls marched in the streets of Tehran waving their veils in the air, a gesture that has become a central expression of dissent. The governor of Kurdistan province on Sunday ordered universities closed, likely to avoid more protests. Stores across the country stayed closed as part of a widening strike of shopkeepers.

The demonstrations are unlikely to topple the government, at least in the short term, activists and political analysts said. But the deep disaffection they represent and the fact that they target a key pillar of the Islamic Republic and its foundational ideology make them a significant test.

Since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman taken into custody by Iran’s morality police in September, protesters who initially focused on women’s rights have broadened their aims, calling for more freedom in life and politics and the ouster of the country’s Islamic leadership.

At the heart of the protests is the Islamic head covering, or hijab, which has been mandatory for Iranian women since 1983, four years after the Islamic revolution that brought the Islamic clerics to power.

“This moment is significant because it has unleashed the potential for longer-lasting civil disobedience,” said Narges Bajoghli, a Johns Hopkins University anthropologist who studies Iran. “Given that half the population must veil, this issue cuts across class, ethnicity and social position.”

Protests broke out in Iran in 2009 against the result of the country’s election.



Photo:

Ben Curtis/Associated Press

Mass protests in the streets of big cities—dispersed by the authorities with force—have given way to sporadic but frequent and widespread demonstrations involving women removing their headscarves. It is a type of everyday resistance that is difficult for authorities to stop.

The spontaneous, unpredictable nature of the movement creates a form of whack-a-mole for security forces who are already stretched thin in Tehran and beyond, while images of pro-government toughs using force against unveiled schoolgirls is amplifying public anger.

The hijab is central to the Islamic Republic’s raison d’être. It is the most visible symbol of adherence to its ultraconservative interpretation of Islam, in which women’s dignity must be protected by modest clothing. And it is a political tool to control half of the population in the public sphere.

The movement has upended the Iranian authorities’ playbook for suppressing protests. Tehran has used violence to put down previous uprisings, even as other Middle Eastern governments tumbled. Iranian leaders have managed to consolidate their hold on power and go back to business as usual.

Previous mass protests were rooted in allegations of election fraud or economic hardship, and never captured the support of enough Iranians to overwhelm the government or force it to make significant concessions.

The latest protests have unprecedented support from Iranians across class, gender and age, and come after years of economic hardship that has driven millions of Iranians into desperation.

Protesters in Tehran chant slogans during a demonstration over the death of a woman who was detained by the morality police.



Photo:

Associated Press

Universities and schools have become the most recent hotbeds of opposition, with girls as young as high-school age and preteens removing headscarves and telling Education Ministry officials and paramilitary commanders to “get lost.”

Artists have jumped in with work that supports civil disobedience. Last week, an anonymous artist poured red paint in famous fountains in Tehran in a work he called “Tehran Drowned in Blood,” according to photos and footage posted by activist network 1500tasvir.

“Baraye,” a song composed from tweets about Iranian women’s struggle for freedom by singer Shervin Hajipour, has become an anthem of the uprising.

Iranian public-opinion surveys are often unreliable. But the number of people espousing staunch support for the Islamic Republic appears to be shrinking.

According to a poll in March by Gamaan, an independent research group based in the Netherlands, 18% of Iranians want to preserve the values and ideals of the Islamic Revolution. The survey involved about 17,000 respondents living in Iran. A 2020 study by the group found 72% of Iranians opposed mandatory veiling.

The crackdown by security forces on demonstrators has fueled more public anger. Dozens have been killed, including at least three teenage girls whose faces have become rallying images of the movement. On Saturday, state television was hacked by a group of activists who posted the pictures of the three girls during a live broadcast, and projected onto the screen an image of Supreme Leader

Ali Khamenei

in flames.

“Every family, to some extent, has been harassed by the state,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former Iranian lawmaker now based in the U.S. as executive director of the Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy, a pro-democracy activist group. “This dissatisfaction and anger has been there, beneath the skin of society, for a number of years.”

Protesters near a rally in Tehran in 2009.



Photo:

/Associated Press

Adding to the uncertainty of the leadership, there have long been rumors of the declining health of 83-year-old Mr. Khamenei, who has been in power since 1989. Were he to die, the forced shuffle of power would likely embolden protesters further and potentially create cracks in the leadership.

Protesters have responded to government violence by adapting. Many have sought refuge inside universities or taken to rooftops to chant slogans such as “Death to the dictator.” Others prepare for clashes with law enforcement.

“We are no longer frightened,” said a protester in Tehran who had been beaten by members of the Basij militia during a recent rally for not covering her hair.

When preparing for a protest, the woman said she wears dark clothing, removes her jewelry, covers her tattoos and dons a surgical mask. She said she packs extra clothes, water, a lighter and vinegar in case she and fellow demonstrators are hit with tear gas or worse.

“I don’t usually take my phone with me, and if I do, I make sure to delete all the information that would cause trouble for me,” she said.

The Islamic Republic has clashed with the population in the streets numerous times since its inception in 1979, and with increased frequency.

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Student protests in 1999 and the Green Movement in 2009, which protested against alleged vote rigging, as well as demonstrations in 2017 and 2019 against the government’s economic policies, all mostly called for reforms within the existing system. Now, Iranians are calling for a wholesale overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

The current movement has no designated leaders and no coordinating body. That is both a strength and a potential weakness, said Mohammad Ali Kadivar, associate professor at Boston College and an expert on pro-democracy movements in Iran.

The leaderless nature makes it difficult for the government to decapitate the movement. The arrest in 2011 of opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi practically ended the Green Movement. But it also makes the movement less agile in making tactical changes, and if the government at a later stage wants to negotiate, it needs leaders to do that with, Mr. Kadivar said.

The real strength of the movement lies in its inclusion of marginalized groups, Mr. Kadivar said. Ms. Amini, whose death sparked the protests three weeks ago, was a Sunni-Muslim Kurdish woman in a majority Shia country. “Everything about her identity was marginalized,” he said. “The leadership of women is new, and the cross-ethnic solidarity wasn’t there before.”

Unions of bus drivers, oil workers and teachers have in the past gone on strike in protest against poor economic conditions, and if they coordinate efforts, they could dramatically shift the balance of power, said Roham Alvandi, an associate professor at the London School of Economics with expertise in Iranian history.

“The question is if they can translate these protests into something like a general strike,” Mr. Alvandi said, adding that the uprising is still in its early days. “If they can, then I think this is pretty much the end of this regime.”

So far, the unions aren’t known to have coordinated large-scale action.

Protesters are also younger than they ever have been. In recent days, footage has emerged of Iranian children and high-school students confronting government officials and stomping on pictures of Mr. Khamenei and his predecessor,

Ruhollah Khomeini.

“The Islamic Republic is going to have a hard time governing this generation,” Mr. Kadivar said.

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

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Business

BAE, U.S. in Talks to Restart M777 Howitzer Production After Ukraine Success

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British arms maker

BAE Systems

BAESY 2.41%

PLC said it was considering restarting production of the M777 howitzer, as the big gun’s performance on Ukrainian battlefields revives interest in the weapon.

BAE said several countries had expressed an interest in buying M777s, production of which is currently being wound down. The inquiries come after Ukrainian forces have been using the artillery piece to deadly effect against Russian troops in recent months.

The company said it was now in talks regarding the restart with the U.S. Army, which runs the weapon’s program. The U.S. government must approve any foreign sales. The U.S. Army declined to comment, referring queries on the matter to BAE.

The M777’s potential resurrection exemplifies how the war in Ukraine could reshape the global armaments industry. High-profile weaponry including the U.S. M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, and the Anglo-Swedish NLAW portable antitank missile, which have proven very effective against Russian forces, are likely to win new orders, analysts say. Meanwhile, the poor performance of many Russian arms is expected to dent their sales on global markets.

The M777 has allowed Ukraine’s forces to fire a wider variety of projectiles than was possible with older weapons.



Photo:

Sergey Kozlov/Shutterstock

The howitzer, a class of mobile, long-barreled, battlefield gun, has long been a cornerstone of modern artillery. However, it has taken on a more prominent role in the war in Ukraine than in other recent conflicts such as the one in Afghanistan or the second war in Iraq.

The performance of the M777 in particular has been enhanced by the increasing use of precision GPS-guided shells, rather than traditional unguided shells. The M777 is also one of the most plentiful pieces in Ukraine’s Western-supplied artillery, which includes at least 170 of the guns received from the U.S., Australia and Canada.

Easy for troops to operate and less expensive than many other similar types of Western artillery, the M777’s reliability and versatility have drawn attention among military specialists and analysts.

“The demonstration of the effectiveness and utility of a wide variety of artillery systems is what is coming out of the Ukraine conflict,” said Mark Signorelli, a vice president of business development at BAE, one of the world’s largest defense companies.

BAE said that if inquiries from prospective M777 buyers, which include countries in Central Europe, turned into actual orders, it could lead to up to 500 new howitzers.

Easy for troops to operate and less expensive than similar types of artillery, the M777’s reliability and versatility have drawn the attention of military specialists.



Photo:

David Moir/REUTERS

“Inquiries don’t always turn into contracts,” said Mr. Signorelli. To restart the M777 production line profitably, the company needs at least 150 unit orders, he added.

The U.S. Army isn’t expected to add to its stockpile of M777s. The Army and Marines have purchased more than 1,000 of the guns, which entered service in 2005.

The M777 was primarily manufactured in the U.K. but often assembled in the U.S., and the program is currently in the final stages of producing its last orders, for India.


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Maximum firing range:

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14 to 24.2 miles

4 rpm

4.2 tons

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U.K. / U.S.

Max firing range:

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14 to 24.2 miles

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Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said that Himars and other Western rocket-launch systems have probably been more important in destroying Russian logistics and control centers.

“But when it comes to engaging Russian military forces directly in the field, the M777s, one assumes, are carrying a larger burden,” he said.

The M777 has positives and negatives when compared with rival guns. Unlike the German Panzerhaubitze 2000 and French Caesar howitzer, which are also being used in Ukraine, the M777 has to be towed. It also has a lower fire rate than those other European weapons, according to an officer in Ukraine’s military intelligence.

However, the M777 has found favor with Ukrainian forces for its greater accuracy and ease of use, he said.

The M777 fires standard Western ammunition, meaning Ukraine is less reliant on dwindling supplies of Russian-made shells, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program and a former artillery officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. The M777 can also fire a wider variety of projectiles, including guided shells, than the Soviet artillery that had been in Ukraine’s armory, he added.

The M777 howitzer was also used by U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan.



Photo:

LIU JIN/Agencerance-Presse/Getty Images

The U.S., the U.K. and Sweden have given the howitzer new capabilities by creating GPS-guided shells that are far more precise than earlier-generation unguided projectiles.

The 155mm Excalibur shells, developed by

Raytheon Technologies Corp.

and BAE, can strike within less than 10 feet of a target, even at their maximum range of around 30 miles, according to Pentagon and company documentation. Targeting of traditional artillery shells grows increasingly imprecise with firing distance because of wind and other factors. Even modern unguided Western-made artillery shells can land as much as 500 feet from a target located 15 miles away.

That kind of precision, previously achievable only with laser-guided projectiles or expensive air-to-ground explosives, is changing combat. U.S. Himars rocket launchers and larger M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems use similar GPS-guided missiles that have wrought crippling damage on Russian forces.

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While the rockets used in U.S. guided missile systems cost $150,000 each, the sort of standard shell used in an M777 is $800, Mr. Cancian said, citing Department of Defense budget documents. A guided Excalibur shell is around $68,000, he said.

But as the U.S. and its allies supply Ukraine they are depleting their own inventories. The war has, for instance, run down U.S. stocks of ammunition used in howitzers, and the Pentagon has been slow to replenish its arsenal.

Dormant supply lines often can’t be switched on overnight, and surging production of active lines can take time.

BAE estimates that it would take some 30 to 36 months to restart full production of the M777, not least because the company needs a new supplier of titanium material and suppliers to produce the weapon’s lightweight components.

—Gordon Lubold contributed to this article.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Modern unguided Western-made artillery shells can land as much as 500 feet from a target located 15 miles away. A previous version of this article incorrectly said their inaccuracy could be as much as one mile. (Corrected on Oct. 9)

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Business

Elon Musk Unveils Prototype of Tesla’s Humanoid Robot Optimus, Says It Will Cost Less Than a Car

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Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, a little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever AI day. At the time, a dancer in a costume appeared onstage. This time, Mr. Musk presented a prototype at the gathering that unfolded late Friday in Palo Alto, Calif.

The early prototype, which still had wires showing, took a few steps, waved to the crowd, and performed some basic dance moves.

Tesla’s robot is expected to cost less than a car, with a price point below $20,000, Elon Musk said.



Photo:

Tesla

Mr. Musk quipped the robot could do a lot more, but limited its activity for fear it could fall on its face. The robot’s appearance on stage marked the first time it operated without a tether, Mr. Musk said.

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” he said, with the aspiration of being able to make them at high volume and low cost. “It is expected to cost much less than a car,” he said, with a price point below $20,000. Customers should be able to receive the robot, once ordered, in three to five years, Mr. Musk said. It isn’t yet for sale.

He later showed off a nonfunctioning, sleeker model that he said was closer to the production version.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus,” he said, saying that the concept could evolve over time. “It won’t be boring.”

The battery-powered robot should be able to handle difficult chores, Tesla said, including lifting a half-ton, 9-foot concert grand piano. Mr. Musk added it would have conversational capabilities and feature safeguards to prevent wrongdoing by the machine.

Elon Musk last year unveiled the idea of the robot Optimus with a dancer in a costume.



Photo:

TESLA/via REUTERS

“I’m a big believer in AI safety,” said Mr. Musk, who has previously expressed concerns about how such technology could be used. He said he thinks there should be a regulatory authority at the government level.

The Tesla boss painted a vision of Optimus as helping Tesla make cars more efficiently, starting with simple tasks and then expanded uses. He has also suggested the robot could serve broader functions and potentially alleviate labor shortages.

“It will, I think, turn the whole notion of what’s an economy on its head, at the point at which you have no shortage of labor,” Mr. Musk said Aug. 4 at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting. On Friday, he added: “It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”

Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, part of an effort to shape perception of the company as more than just a car maker. The Tesla CEO said the robot is expected to cost less than a car. Photo: Tesla

When he first unveiled the Optimus concept, Mr. Musk said such a robot could have such an impact on the labor market it could make it necessary to provide a universal basic income, or a stipend to people without strings attached.

Tesla has also encountered problems with automation. Early efforts to rely heavily on automated tools to scale up vehicle production suffered setbacks, and the company had to rely more heavily than planned on factory workers. Mr. Musk later tweeted: “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

One of the big questions around Tesla’s humanoid robot is its central purpose, said

Chris Atkeson,

a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor. If Tesla’s main goal is to improve manufacturing, a quadruped likely would have been easier to build than a humanoid robot, in part because additional legs make it easier to balance, he said.

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Mr. Musk, who has been instrumental in popularizing electric vehicles and pioneered landing rocket boosters with his company SpaceX, also has a record of making bold predictions that don’t immediately pan out. Three years ago at an event about automation, he projected that more than a million Tesla vehicles would be able to operate without a driver by the middle of 2020, positioning the company to launch a robot taxi service. That hasn’t happened.

Mr. Musk for some time has said Tesla aimed to be more than just a car company and reiterated that message on Friday. He called the company “a series of startups.”

Mr. Musk billed the latest event, like last year’s, as one aimed at recruiting engineers in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics and chips.

Tesla has long bet on automation to keep the company ahead of competitors. The company’s cars are outfitted with an advanced driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, that helps drivers with tasks such as maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles on the road and staying centered in a lane.

Tesla engineers detailed some of the AI work the company is doing, including to underpin its driver-assistance technology. Mr. Musk said the company’s development of a powerful, AI-focused computer could allow Tesla to offer the number-crunching capability as a service to others, not unlike cloud-computing offerings provided by the likes of

Amazon.com Inc.

The company is developing and selling an enhanced version of Autopilot that brings more automated driving into cities. Tesla calls the system Full Self-Driving, or FSD, although it doesn’t actually make vehicles autonomous and the company tells drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while operating the car.

Tesla said Friday that it now has 160,000 customers with the software. Mr. Musk said rollout of the technology beyond the U.S. and Canada depends on gaining regulatory approval, though it should be feasible from a technology perspective by year-end.

Tesla has steadily raised the price of FSD, which now retails for $15,000. AI has been at the heart of Tesla’s efforts to develop more advanced driver-assistance features and, eventually, fully autonomous vehicles.

Tesla said the software that is used to take on more driving functions also underpins operations of the humanoid robot.

Tesla’s pursuit of automation has increasingly come under scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety, opened a probe into Autopilot last year after a series of crashes involving Teslas that struck first-responder vehicles stopped for roadway emergencies.

Two U.S. senators have also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Tesla has been deceptive in its marketing of Autopilot and FSD.

The electric-car maker has long said that driving with Autopilot engaged is safer than doing so without it. Tesla points to internal data showing that crashes were less common when drivers were using Autopilot, though some researchers have criticized the company’s methodology.

Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at Meghan.Bobrowsky@wsj.com and Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com

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World

Inside the Russian-Occupied Ukrainian City Living Under Threat of Nuclear Disaster

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In the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city that hosts Europe’s largest nuclear-power plant, residents are taping up windows in fear of a radioactive leak and sticking close to home as fighting rages around the complex and Moscow-installed authorities gear up for a possible annexation of the region by Russia.

Residents in Enerhodar, a city that has been under Russian occupation for more than five months, paint a picture of a pitched battle on the front lines in Ukraine’s south that risks sparking Europe’s biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Enerhodar has become the focus of an international crisis as Russia and Ukraine trade blame for attacks on the city’s sprawling Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The plant is being defended by hundreds of Russian soldiers—effectively transforming it into a military garrison—who are facing off against Ukrainian soldiers stationed just a few miles away.

There has been no reported damage to the reactors and no radioactive release so far, but Ukraine said plant staff had to close one of six reactors over the weekend after a high-voltage power line was severed and three radiation monitors damaged.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant is being defended by hundreds of Russian soldiers.



Photo:

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

“God forbid something irreversible happens,” Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said in a video address Sunday. “No one will stop the wind that will spread radioactive pollution.”

The city, with a prewar population of 53,000 and whose name means “the giver of energy,” has been running out of food supplies and begun circulating the Russian ruble as reserves of Ukraine’s hryvnia currency run out, residents say.

Andriy, a former car salesman and a 36-year-old resident of Enerhodar, said that occupying authorities told residents the area around the plant is mined and that unexploded ordnance from cluster munitions litters the city.

“They told us that the Ukrainians were shelling the plant and that it was necessary to seal window frames with Scotch tape so that if they hit the warehouse of radioactive waste, the dust would not enter our homes,” he said by phone. “They say that the first day will be the most dangerous, so you have to stay at home and not go out. Everyone is afraid that something will happen to the plant.”

Occupation authorities in Enerhodar have begun circulating the Russian ruble as reserves of Ukraine’s hryvnia currency run out.



Photo:

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

Andriy said Russian forces positioned beside the plant are firing artillery from the city at Ukrainian forces positioned across the Dnipro River near Nikopol. At night he sees what look like tracer bullets in the sky as the Russians fire antiaircraft guns from the territory of the station.

Communications with Enerhodar residents are steadily worsening as the occupying authorities tighten their control and fear spreads among locals. Many people worry that their phones have been tapped. Russia is also gradually disconnecting Ukrainian telecom providers and attempting to roll out Russian cell service. Sim cards from major Ukrainian providers no longer work properly.

“People are afraid,” said the Ukrainian mayor of Enerhodar,

Dmytro Orlov,

who fled after the occupation. “Workers of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant go to work not knowing if they’ll return home after their shift, or whether everything is fine with their loved ones while they’re away.”

One Enerhodar woman in her early 60s said shelling of the city has become much more frequent in recent days, adding that she has seen trucks and armored personnel carriers driving regularly toward the plant complex. The woman said residents are trying to go about their daily lives, buying produce from local markets because supermarket prices have become too high, and increasingly paying in Russian rubles circulated by occupation authorities as supplies of Ukraine’s hryvnia run out.

Himars—long-range rocket launchers from the U.S.—have helped Ukraine target Russian ammunition stores, command posts and fuel depots, slowing down Moscow’s forces. As Washington sends more weapons, WSJ looks at why Kyiv is asking for other advanced tools. Photo composite: Eve Hartley

People fear speaking in public, she said, afraid that a passerby could inform on them to the occupation authorities. The woman said her son, a city council member before the war, is now in hiding after having failed to escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory. He was sleeping in friends’ garages and basements, escaping both the Russian-installed government and the constant shelling.

“Most people keep their opinions to themselves because you can’t know what your interlocutor might do,” said Yury, a local resident. He added that many Russian-installed officials and security service members now appear in civilian clothing, making residents even more afraid of inadvertently saying something that could be used against them.

“Sometimes people you know disappear,” the woman said. “We think they probably said something wrong.” Mr. Orlov, the mayor, said several hundred residents of the city have been abducted and are being held in Russian custody, and months have passed in some cases with no information about their whereabouts. The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

When Russia took control of Enerhodar in early March, residents like Andriy and Yury came out to stage protest rallies and shout “Ukraine!” and “Go home!” at the occupying troops. The last protest, on April 2, was violently dispersed by Russian troops and outward signs of dissent quickly disappeared as Russia installed a collaborationist administration in the city and clamped down, residents say.

The Russian-installed head of the surrounding Zaporizhzhia region, Evgeny Balitsky, on Monday announced a coming referendum on whether the region should join Russia. Andriy, the local resident, said police are checking courtyards and building entrances for posters and leaflets against the referendum and searching for anyone who distributes them.

The woman in her 60s said fear is rising that battles raging in the area could cause damage that would leak radioactive chemicals.

“It’s scary to live near the plant,” she said. “Some fear that storage facilities have already been destroyed and are emitting radiation, and we just don’t know about it. People are afraid that if it explodes, we will all die here.”

She said most residents still hold out hope that Ukraine, which has announced a major counteroffensive on southern areas taken by Russia, will liberate Enerhodar too. But the occupation is becoming entrenched.

“It feels like most people are on Ukraine’s side,” she said. “But they are getting tired of waiting.”

A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform standing guard near the nuclear-power plant in early August.



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ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

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Business

Melvin Capital to Close Funds, Return Cash to Investors

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Melvin Capital plans to close its funds and return the cash to its investors, capping a stunning reversal for a firm that lost big on the surge in meme stocks last year and on wagers on growth stocks this year.

In a letter to investors that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,

Gabe Plotkin,

Melvin’s founder, wrote that he reached his decision after conferring with Melvin’s board of directors during a monthslong process of reassessing his business.

“The past 17 months has been an incredibly trying time for the firm and you, our investors,” he wrote. “I have given everything I could, but more recently that has not been enough to deliver the returns you should expect. I now recognize that I need to step away from managing external capital.”

Asset bubbles are easy enough to define, but not so simple to identify. WSJ’s Gunjan Banerji explains what bubbles are exactly, how they form and what happens when they burst. Illustration: Jacob Reynolds for The Wall Street Journal

Melvin had been, until last year, one of the top-performing hedge funds—its track record of about 30% a year after fees before 2021 was among the best on Wall Street. It was especially known for its prowess in shorting, or betting against, stocks. In 2015, gains from Melvin’s shorts made up two-thirds of the fund’s 67% returns before fees. Mr. Plotkin bought a minority stake in the National Basketball Association’s Charlotte Hornets, plus a $44 million oceanfront mansion in Miami Beach.

But Melvin’s short positions blew up in January 2021 when individual investors on online forums such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets banded together to push up prices of shares, like those of

GameStop Corp.

, that Melvin was betting against. At the worst point that month, Melvin, which managed $12.5 billion at the start of last year, was hemorrhaging more than $1 billion a day.

While Melvin had made up some of those losses by the end of the year, its focus on fast-growing companies dealt it further setbacks this year as investors soured on such stocks in the face of rising interest rates. Stock pickers also have blamed losses this year on macroeconomic factors like inflation and the war in Ukraine that have hit the market, instead of companies’ own fundamentals. Melvin’s losses widened.

Melvin this year through April had lost 23%, on top of a 39.3% loss in 2021—a huge hole investors expected could take years to make up if Mr. Plotkin didn’t shut down in the interim. Since its start, it has averaged an 11.9% return.

Still, several investors on Wednesday said they were surprised by the decision.

Melvin’s executives as recently as last week had been asking clients for their thoughts on what new fee arrangements seemed fair to them and to Melvin, people familiar with the firm said. Mr. Plotkin in April tried to do away with Melvin’s so-called high-water mark, a standard industry arrangement in which hedge funds don’t collect performance fees until their clients are made whole from prior investment losses. The proposal was part of a broader restructuring effort meant in part to retain and motivate his team, but it met with resistance.

Some investors were so incensed by the proposal they said they planned to redeem all their money at the first opportunity. Mr. Plotkin withdrew his plan days later and apologized to investors, saying he would consult with all of Melvin’s clients as the firm worked to figure out a new path forward.

Investors had been sharing various proposals they thought would be fair, including one by which Mr. Plotkin would keep the current terms until the end of the year and then implement a modified high-water mark that would have let Melvin collect lower performance fees, people familiar with the firm said.

Mr. Plotkin wrote in the letter, “I have worked tirelessly for 20 years to try to be the best I could be and to build and lead an exceptional team of professionals…Being a steward of your capital requires an unrelenting focus. I am proud of what our team has accomplished since 2007.”

He wrote he expected to return nearly all of his clients’ money by late July. Firmwide, Melvin managed $7.8 billion as of April.

Write to Juliet Chung at juliet.chung@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the May 19, 2022, print edition as ‘Melvin To Close Funds, Pay Back Investors.’

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World

Almost 400 health facilities destroyed or damaged by Russian troops, Zelensky says

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(andiyshTime/Telegram)

Medals, road-signs and statues have served as some of the early symbols of Russia’s seizure of parts of southern Ukraine, and especially Mariupol. 

This week, medals were awarded “for the Liberation of Mariupol” by the leader of self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, and a senior official in Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, Andrei Turchak.  

The DPR has been hard at work changing road signs from Ukrainian into Russian — especially those at the entrance to Mariupol.

The southeastern port city has been under siege for several weeks, with efforts now concentrated on the Avostal steel plant. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces were “not stopping” their shelling of the plant.

The plant is now being evacuated as civilians and soldiers remain trapped inside, with the “next stage” underway, according to Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President’s office. More than 300 evacuees from the Mariupol area arrived in the city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Transport of the DPR promised Thursday that work on the replacement of road signs in what they call liberated territories will continue. A statue has also gone up in Mariupol, depicting an elderly woman grasping the Soviet flag.  

Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to the elected mayor of Mariupol, spoke bitterly about the rising number of Russian officials visiting Mariupol, including the Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior official at the Kremlin — describing them as “curators of Mariupol’s integration into Russia.” 

Referring to the new statue, Andrushcheko said the Russians had opened a monument “to an old lady with a flag on Warriors Liberators Square, which they stubbornly call the Leninist Komsomol.” 

Andrushchenko also distributed new photographs Friday, saying that “in recent days, all the monuments of the Soviet period have been ‘restored’: the so-called ‘fists’ with eternal fire — and the signs that say ‘To victims of Fascism’ in the Russian language. [Also the] monument to ‘Komsomol members and communists’ in the Primorsky district.”

Although he is not in Mariupol, Andruschenko maintains links with people still there and says the Russian flag has also gone up at the city hospital, and posted a photo.

“The occupiers allowed doctors to work for the people of Mariupol. Medical staff and doctors live directly in the hospital, there is only outpatient treatment. The hospital is provided with light through generators, water — by water carriers.”

He also posted a brief video shot from a vehicle on Prospect Myru showing the collection of debris. Like other Ukrainian officials, Andrushchenko claimed that “the work of retrieving corpses from the rubble is entrusted to Mariupol residents. Their payment — food.”

On the road to Zaporizhzhia from Mariupol, a road most of those trying to escape Mariupol must take, is the town of Tokmak, also under Russian occupation. The entrance sign to the town has been repainted in the Russian tricolor. 

Elsewhere in the south of Ukraine, the ruble is gradually being introduced, According to a community group on Facebook, government employees in the town of Yakymivka have been told that if they want to be paid in Ukrainian hryvnia “the occupiers will take two-thirds of the salary.” 

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World

Yemen Houthis attack Saudi energy facilities, refinery output hit

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RIYADH, March 20 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group fired missiles and drones at Saudi energy and water desalination facilities, causing a temporary drop in output at a refinery but no casualties, the Saudi energy ministry said on Sunday.

Drone strikes hit a petroleum products distribution terminal in the southern Jizan region, a natural gas plant and the Yasref refinery in the Red Sea port of Yanbu, the ministry said in a statement.

“The assault on Yasref facilities has led to a temporary reduction in the refinery’s production, which will be compensated for from the inventory,” it said, referring to Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco (2222.SE) and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec).

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Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told a call about the firm’s earnings there was no impact from the attacks on its supply to customers. read more nL2N2VN03N]

The Saudi led-coalition battling the Houthis earlier said the assaults on Saturday night and Sunday morning had also aimed at a water desalination plant in Al-Shaqeeq, a power station in Dhahran al Janub and a gas facility in Khamis Mushait.

It said the attacks and debris from intercepted projectiles caused material damage but no loss of life.

Saudi Civil Defence member is seen at the site of what Saudi-led coalition claims was a drone a attack by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group, that targeted the Al-Shaqeeq desalination plant and the Aramco facility, in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, March 20, 2022. Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

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Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the group fired ballistic and winged missiles as well as drones at Aramco facilities in the capital Riyadh, Yanbu and “other areas,” followed by attacks on “vital targets” in other Saudi regions.

The coalition said initial investigations showed the group used Iranian-made cruise missiles on the desalination plant and Aramco’s Jizan distribution centre. It said Saudi air defences intercepted a ballistic missile and nine drones.

State media posted images and videos of projectile debris, damaged cars and structures, and firefighters dousing flames.

POSSIBLE TRUCE

Saudi Arabia has struggled to extricate itself from the seven-year conflict which has killed tens of thousands and left millions of Yemenis facing starvation. Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia have also endangered the kingdom’s airports, oil facilities and caused some civilian deaths.

United Nations special envoy Hans Grundberg is discussing a possible truce during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which starts in April, his office said on Sunday. It was unclear if both sides had agreed on the U.N. plans. read more

The Houthis ousted Yemen’s government from the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014, prompting the alliance to intervene. The conflict is seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis say they are fighting a corrupt system and foreign aggression.

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Reporting by Moataz Mohamed, Yasmin Hussein and Omar Fahmy in Cairo and Saeed Azhar and Maha El Dahan in Dubai
Writing by Ghaida Ghantous
Editing by Frances Kerry and Mark Potter

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

After Mariupol children’s hospital bombing, WHO highlights pattern of Russian strikes on medical facilities

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The city in southeastern Ukraine has been besieged by Russian forces for days, its trapped residents forced to shelter underground, melt snow for water and scavenge for food. Now, even a hospital caring for pregnant women, newborns and children is not safe.

And Mariupol’s hospital wasn’t the only children’s medical facility that authorities said was damaged by Russian forces on Wednesday. Two hospitals in Zhytomyr, west of the capital, Kyiv, had their windows blown out in a Russian airstrike on a thermal power plant and civilian building in the city, the mayor said. One of them was a children’s hospital. There were no casualties and everyone was in a bomb shelter, according to the city’s mayor, Serhii Sukhomlyn.

But in the past two weeks Russian forces have repeatedly struck medical facilities in Ukraine, prompting claims they are being systematically targeted, despite Russian denials.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been 24 verified attacks on health care facilities in Ukraine so far.

“These attacks have led to at least 12 deaths and 17 injuries. At least 8 of the injured and 2 of the killed were verified to be health workers. The attacks took place between 24 February and 8 March,” WHO said Thursday.

“WHO strongly condemns these attacks. Attacks on health care violate international law and endanger lives. Even in times of conflict, we must protect the sanctity and safety of health care, a fundamental human right.”

A CNN crew in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, saw patients — including sick children — take cover in a hospital’s underground bomb shelter as air raid sirens wailed.

Stass, 12 years old and heavily bandaged, was unaware that his father was not with him in the hospital at that moment because he was burying the boy’s mother and sister. “I was in the neighbor’s basement when the bomb hit the roof on my side,” he said. “We ran to my granny’s house. Another hit there. My arm is broken. My dad and neighbor brought me here. I was in a coma for two days.”

In a late-night video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the Mariupol hospital bombing as an “atrocity and “proof of a genocide of Ukrainians,” as he renewed his calls on Western leaders to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

He also called on Russia to explain why it was carrying out strikes on hospitals. “Why were they a threat to the Russian Federation? What kind of country is the Russian Federation that is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity wards and destroys them?” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday alleged without evidence the bombed hospital in Mariupol was the radical Azov battalion’s base and that all patients and nurses had left.

Lavrov said Russia informed the UN Security Council meeting about this a few days before the attack. The Azov battalion is integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces but was formerly an independent ultra-nationalist militia.

“On March 7 or 6, I don’t remember exactly now, but at the meeting of the UN Security Council, our delegation presented facts that this maternity hospital had long been captured by the Azov battalion and other radicals,” Lavrov said.

“All the women in labor, all the nurses, in general, all the staff was driven out of there,” Lavrov added.

Video from the hospital after the bombing clearly showed there were both patients and staff there, including pregnant women.

‘Inhumane and cowardly’

French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal condemned the strike against the hospital in Mariupol as “inhumane” and “unjustifiable” in comments Thursday.

“I want to say in the name of the French government that the strike by Russia against Mariupol’s pediatric hospital was inhumane and cowardly. It’s women, children, healthcare workers who were targeted, it’s unjustifiable,” he said in an interview with French radio station RTL.

Calling again for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Attal predicted the worst was yet to come in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also condemned the strike in Mariupol, saying: “There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless.”

The United Nations said it was following up “urgently” on “shocking reports” of the bombing of the hospital.

“It bears reminding that we have called, WHO has called for an immediate halt to attacks on health care, hospitals, health care workers, ambulances — none of these should ever, ever be a target,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine “continues to deteriorate rapidly,” Dujarric added. More than 2.2 million people have crossed international borders escaping Ukraine since the invasion began, Dujarric said.

In Mariupol itself, the situation is becoming “increasingly dire and desperate,” the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday.

It warned that “hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water, heat, electricity, or medical care,” and said that “people urgently need respite from violence and humanitarian aid.”

“All the shops and pharmacies were looted four to five days ago. Some people still have food but I’m not sure for how long it will last,” the deputy head of sub-delegation of ICRC Sasha Volkov said in a interview recorded Wednesday and published on the ICRC website.

Many people in Mariupol have reported having no food for children, Volkov said. “People started to attack each other for food. People started to ruin someone’s car to take the gasoline out.”

Zelensky warned Russian propagandists they “will be held responsible for complicity with war crimes” in a video message Thursday.

“Russian citizens will hate you for consistently lying to them for many years. When they will feel the consequences of your lies, feel with their wallets, their dwindling opportunities, with the stolen futures of the Russian children,” he said, adding that the aggressor also pays a price in war.

His warning came after Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova on Wednesday called for a “new model” of investigative efforts to tackle alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Evacuation routes

Efforts to evacuate thousands of civilians trapped in Mariupol, which has been under attack by Russian forces for days, have so far been thwarted. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of violating agreed pauses in fire.

Disturbing pictures from an Associated Press photographer showed bodies being lowered into a mass grave in the city on Wednesday, some encased in body bags but others apparently wrapped only in blankets.

At least 1,300 civilians have been killed in Mariupol since the Russian invasion began, an adviser to the city’s mayor said Wednesday. CNN cannot independently verify these casualty figures.

The Ukrainian government said Thursday it was opening evacuation corridors in several parts of the country. As of 10 a.m. local time it was unclear whether the corridors — designed to allow civilians to escape to safer regions — had been agreed with Russia or international humanitarian agencies.

A meeting between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Lavrov in Turkey ended Thursday without an agreement reached on evacuation corridors or a ceasefire, Kuleba said.

At a news conference following the meeting, Kuleba said he had raised the prospect of establishing a corridor to allow civilians to flee from the besieged city of Mariupol but “unfortunately Minister Lavrov was not in a position to commit himself to it.”

Lavrov told a separate news conference that a ceasefire was never going to be agreed in the talks, adding that he had warned his Turkish and Ukrainian counterparts that Russia did not want to create a “parallel track” to talks already taking place alongside the Belarusian border.

Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukrainian Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, earlier said on Facebook the corridors would apply to three routes in eastern Ukraine — Sumy to Poltava, Trostianets to Poltava and Krasnopilllia to Poltava.

Another route is set to be opened from the eastern city of Izium to the city of Lozova in Kharkiv region. Additionally, she said, the Ukrainians planned to open corridors from Mariupol to Zaporizhzia.

Vereshchuk added that a corridor would be opened from districts north of the capital, Kyiv: Bucha, Borodianka, Irpin and Hostomel. Attempts to evacuate people from those districts Wednesday were only partially successful.

Nonetheless, Zelensky said “all in all almost 35,000 people were rescued” through the routes established Wednesday.

Putin attacks sanctions as more oligarchs targeted

Western nations unveiled a further tranche of sanctions against Russia on Thursday, with the country’s banking sector and a number of its ultra-rich citizens targeted.

The Bank for International Settlements, which effectively serves as the central bank of central banks, suspended Russia’s central bank and said it “will not be an avenue for sanctions to be circumvented.”

And seven further Russian oligarchs were added to the UK government’s list of sanctioned individuals, including Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.

Russian President Vladimir Putin complained on Thursday that Western nations have taken “unfriendly steps” towards Moscow by imposing sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s invasion.

“Their prices are rising, but it is not our fault. This is the result of their miscalculations. Nothing to blame on us,” Putin told a meeting of his government ministers in Moscow.

Putin acknowledged that sanctions will bite but said Russia has weathered such problems in the past. “The markets will gradually re-direct themselves and will understand that there are no such problems that we could not solve,” he said. He also insisted that food prices will rise if international economic pressure on Russia continues because it is a major global supplier of fertilizer.

His remarks come as Russia’s economy continues to reel in the face of tough Western penalties. On Wednesday the Kremlin said the United States has declared an “economic war” on Russia, one day after President Joe Biden announced his administration was banning Russian oil, natural gas and coal imports to the US in order to target “the main artery” of the Russian economy.

CNN’s Tim Lister and Olga Voitovych reported from Kyiv, while Laura Smith-Spark wrote from London. CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh, Henrik Pettersson, Mariya Knight, Hira Humayun, Angus Watson, Lindsay Isaac, Richard Roth, Matt Egan, Joseph Ataman and Anastasia Graham-Yooll contributed to this report.

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World

Russian military warns of strikes against facilities in Kyiv, according to statement via state media

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Refugees from Ukraine line up to get in to Poland at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on February 28. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images)

There are now more than half a million refugees from Ukraine in neighboring countries, the UN said Monday, with people desperately heading west towards central Europe after Russia’s invasion last week.

Here’s a snapshot of the situation at Ukraine’s borders:

Poland: More than 100,000 people crossed from Ukraine into Poland on Monday, according to Poland’s border guard, the highest figure received by Ukraine’s EU neighbors since the invasion began.

Since February 24, border authorities have cleared the entry of at least 377,400 people at its border crossings with Ukraine, according to a tweet Tuesday.

The longest line is at the Medyka crossing, border guard spokesperson Anna Michalska said.

On the Ukrainian side of that frontier, a 20-kilometer (12-mile) line of vehicles stretches through nearby villages. Residents told CNN the amount of people moving to the border has dropped in the past day.

The first few days of evacuations were chaotic, with many people walking vast distances to the border in cold conditions, they said. But now many volunteers from local villages have set up temporary shelter and are offering food.

A CNN team at the border has spoken to many non-Ukrainian citizens who say officials are still giving preferential treatment to Ukrainians crossing the border.

CNN has also met Ukrainian nationals who were waiting in line in their cars, but decided to abandon their vehicles and walk to the border instead, because they thought it would be faster.

Many men are escorting their families to the border, knowing they will likely be turned away and not be able to leave. Ukraine has banned military-aged men from leaving the country as it seeks to boost its armed forces.

Slovakia: Waiting times at Ukraine’s borders with Slovakia stretch up to 35 hours in Ubla, towards the northeast of Slovakia, and 12 hours in Vysne Nemecke, towards the southeast. Another crossing in Velke Slemence is seeing less congestion.

A total of 54,304 people had entered the country by Tuesday morning, according to the Slovak border police.

According to the agency’s spokesperson, guards have not turned around a single person since the beginning of the conflict, meaning any such incidents happened on the Ukrainian side. Roughly 15,000 people crossed through three crossings from Sunday morning to Monday morning, around a third of whom were non-Ukrainians, they said.

Romania: A total of 89,000 Ukrainian citizens have come through the Romanian border since the Russian invasion, with 50,000 then exiting to other countries, according to official border records.

Congestion has been seen at the border with Hungary, but police confirmed to CNN that the crossings are less busy today and people clearing the crossings faster.

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