American journalist killed at checkpoint, Russian airstrike kills 35, wounds 134: LIVE UPDATES

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for an end to Russian “brutality.”

The Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces says military downed 7 Russian aircraft and an unmanned aerial vehicle on March 13 using anti-aircraft missiles, the Kyiv Independent reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his condolences for the death of American journalist Brent Renaud and discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a call with President Biden on Sunday.

“They reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine,” a White House readout of the call said.

After his call with Biden, Macron also talked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday.

Many Western leaders have shunned contact with Putin after he launched the invasion on Feb. 24, but Macron has kept a line of communication with the Kremlin open.

On Saturday, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a 75-minute phone conversation with Putin, the latest of several calls between Macron and the Russian president.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his side is pushing for a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin during ongoing negotiations.

“Representatives of our countries’ delegations speak in video format every day. Our delegation has a clear task – to do everything to ensure a meeting of the presidents. The meeting that I am sure people are waiting for,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted to his Facebook page Sunday evening.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said he would meet with Putin in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett visited Moscow to meet with Putin earlier this week and has been trying to mediate and end to the war.

Zelenskyy also reiterated pleas for a no-fly zone over Ukraine after Russian forces targeted a military training facility just 15 miles from the Polish border, killing 35 people.

“Last year, I made a clear warning to NATO leaders that if there were no tough preventive sanctions against Russia, it would start a war. We were right,” Zelenskyy said.

“And now I repeat again – if you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries.”

At least 864 people were arrested for protesting the invasion of Ukraine across 37 Russian cities on Sunday, according to the human rights group OVD-Info.

One protester, 31-year-old pianist Luka Zatravkin, was arrested Moscow’s Pushkin Square after handcuffing himself to the first McDonald’s to ever open in Russia.

“Why am I talking about McDonald’s in the first place? Because this chain of restaurants became the first breath of free air back in 1990,” Zatravkin wrote on his Telegram account, according to OVD-Info.

Nearly 15,000 Russians have been arrested in demonstrations since Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Elsewhere in Europe, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Warsaw, London, Berlin, Rome, and other cities.

In Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces, thousands of residents have been protesting Russia’s occupation.

Ukrainian nationals and anti-war protesters also staged a demonstration in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday.

Ukraine restored a damaged power line to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Sunday, four days after the line was broken, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

IAEA Director Rafael Mariano General Grossi praised the “positive development” but expressed concern for the 211 technical personnel and guards at the site, which is under the control of Russian forces.

“Earlier today, the Ukrainian regulator informed the IAEA that staff at [Chernobyl] were no longer carrying out repair and maintenance of safety-related equipment, in part due to their physical and psychological fatigue after working non-stop for nearly three weeks,” IAEA said Sunday.

Workers haven’t rotated since Russia invaded on Feb. 24 and communication between the power plant’s staff and officials has been cut off.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a fourth “negotiating session” will be held on Monday between Russia and Ukraine. 

“We will not concede in principle on any positions. Russia now understands this. Russia is already beginning to talk constructively,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video posted online Sunday. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

A third round of face-to-face peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Belarus earlier this week ended with an agreement on safe corridors for refugees, but without any other major breakthroughs. 

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Sunday that while she believes Putin is “intent on destroying Ukraine,” unprecedented sanctions from the West may be forcing him to the bargaining table. 

“That pressure is beginning to have some effect,” Sherman told “Fox News Sunday.” “We are seeing some signs of a willingness to have real serious negotiations.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia would stop its invasion “in a moment” if Ukraine met a list of demands, including recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.

About 80 million Russians who use Instagram were told that their access to the social media platform will be cut off at midnight on Sunday. 

Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, informed users Friday that the service would be shut down and told them to move their photos and videos off the platform. 

It comes after Meta, Instagram’s parent company, announced last week that it would temporarily allow “for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.'”

In response, Russian prosecutors asked a court to designate Meta as an “extremist organization.”

Nick Clegg, the President of Global Affairs at Meta, said the temporary policy change only applies to people in Ukraine. 

“I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country,” Clegg said. 

Russia has already blocked other social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. 

Reuters contributed to this report. 

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby on Sunday said that Russia appears to be “broadening its target set” following a series of airstrikes in western Ukraine that are creeping closer toward the Polish border, the beginning of NATO’s eastern flank.

Kirby appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and addressed the latest Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian airbase located just 13 miles east of Ukraine’s border with Poland, a NATO member. Kirby said it was Russia’s third airstrike on military facilities and airfields in western Ukraine in the last couple of days.

“We have been consistently concerned about NATO’s eastern flank and that airspace … and we continue to look for ways to bolster defense of NATO allies, we continue to look for ways to try to protect that airspace,” Kirby said.

Click here to read more on Fox News.

Brent Renaud, an American journalist who was killed by Russian forces near Kyiv on Sunday, was working on a TIME Studios project about the global refugee crisis, the magazine confirmed.

“We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud. As an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Brent tackled the toughest stories around the world often alongside his brother Craig Renaud,” executives from the magazine said in a statement on Sunday. “It is essential that journalists are able to safely cover this ongoing invasion and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.”

A passenger train evacuating refugees, including 100 children, was hit by Russian shelling near the Brusyn station in the separatist-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine, the country’s national railroad wrote on Facebook.

One conductor was killed and other was injured during the attack. The railroad was working to evacuate the crew and passengers

“This is a terrible blow to those who rescue civilian Ukrainians every day and paved the ‘road of life’ for more than 2 million rescued,” the railway wrote on Facebook.

Buildings were destroyed in Ternivka, a town in western Ukraine about 120 miles south of Kharviv, a satellite image taken by ImageSat International on Sunday afternoon shows.

Russian forces have targeted both military and civilian infrastructure during Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A satellite image taken by ImageSat International around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday shows a destroyed railroad bridge near Voznesensk, a town in southern Ukraine that is about 175 miles south of Kyiv.

Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton paid tribute on Sunday to American journalist Brent Renaud, a Little Rock native who was shot and killed by Russian forces in a suburb of Kyiv.

“Arkansans are saddened today at the death of Brent Renaud in Ukraine. I join them in expressing deepest condolences to the Renaud family,” Sen. Cotton said in a statement. “And I reiterate to Vladimir Putin and his military leaders that the intentional targeting of innocent civilians, including reporters, is a war crime.”

Renaud, an award-winning journalist and former New York Times contributor, was killed when he came under fire from Russian forces, the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv Region said Sunday. Two others were wounded.

After Congress passed a spending bill this week that will send $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine, the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus called for the U.S. and NATO allies to send additional military assistance in the fight against Russia, including stinger missiles, S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, and U.S.-made aircraft. 

“We commend the Polish government for taking proactive steps to deliver MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force. We urge assistance to help facilitate this deal, commit to replenishing our allies’ fleets with American-made aircraft and help advance the transfer of Su-25 aircraft to Ukraine as well,” the group, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, said in a statement on Sunday. 

“We also believe that the U.S. should seriously consider strategies to provide further drone capability to the Ukrainians, as they have already used Bayraktar TB2 drones with success on the battlefield.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, saying they “coordinated further support for Ukraine.”

The U.S. shouldn’t fear World War III with Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces displayed an impressive level of “ineptness” in Ukraine, according to some U.S. senators. 

“I wouldn’t call it World War III,” Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said during “Fox News Sunday.” “I think  … it would end pretty quickly because with the conventional forces that he’s had there, you know, we haven’t seen this kind of ineptness in a long, long time. So I’m not as concerned about that.”

Click here to read more.

Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane said Russian forces are working to “encircle” Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and “hammer it as soon as it’s in range.” 

“Their intent here is to rubble as much of that city as they can, slaughter the people that are inside of it, and get a capitulation out of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy without having to go into the city,” Keane said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Click here to read more.

Senior U.S. military officials pushed for additional special operations personnel to be sent to Ukraine in the lead up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the request was denied amid White House fears it could provoke Russia, according to a report. 

As Russia stationed about 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine last year, U.S. military officials told lawmakers in December that a “few hundred” additional special operations personnel should be sent to the country to assist with military advice and training, Politico reported Sunday. 

The personnel would have trained Ukrainians on guerrilla tactics and unconventional warfare methods. The training would have been different from the formal training at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, sources told the outlet. 

Click here to read more.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed 85 children and wounded more than 100 others, a Ukrainian official said Sunday.

The casualties come as Russia’s “deliberate and brutal shelling of civilians continues,” Ukraine Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova said in a tweet. She said that 369 educational institutions have also been damaged, 57 of which were destroyed in attacks.

Pope Francis responded to the bloodshed in Ukraine on Saturday, calling for an end to the war and emphasizing the impact on children.

Click here to read more.

Ukrainian national police said Sunday an American journalist was killed and at least two others were wounded when they came under fire by Russian forces near the capital city of Kyiv. 

The Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv Region tweeted photos Sunday purportedly showing a bloodied journalist, his U.S. passport, and his press badge enclosed in a U.S. peacekeeper holder. 

Both documents bore identification photos and the name Brent Renaud. 

Click here to read more.

An Orthodox Christian monastery in Ukraine sheltering hundreds of refugees, including children, was reportedly hit by an airstrike Saturday night.

“Window frames flew out as a result of the terrible force of the explosion in the Lavra’s temples,” a statement from Ukraine’s parliament said, according to the Washington Post. “An explosive wave smashed all the windows and doors in the Lavra hotels.”

The Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, said about 500 refugees, including 200 children, were taking shelter in the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra, located in the Donetsk region. The airstrike happened about 10 p.m. local time, the Washington Post reported. 

Click here to read more.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Sunday that the government will count on China to help it withstand crippling sanctions from the West as nearly half of its gold and foreign currency reserves remain frozen.

“We have part of our gold and foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese currency, in yuan, and we see what pressure is being exerted by Western countries on China in order to limit mutual trade with China,” Siluanov explained during a TV interview.

“But I think that our partnership with China will still allow us to maintain the cooperation that we have achieved, and not only maintain, but also increase it in an environment where Western markets are closing.”

Siluanov only one month ago claimed Russia could withstand sanctions thanks to a wealth of reserves and even considered offering Eurobonds to foreign investors once market volatility subsided, Reuters reported.

Russian forces took a second Ukrainian mayor captive, Ukrainian officials said Sunday. 

Russian “war criminals” abducted Yevhen Matveyev, mayor of Dniprorudne, a city in the Vasylivka Raion of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, according to Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba.

“Getting zero local support, invaders turn to terror,” Kuleba tweeted. “I call on all states & international organizations to stop Russian terror against Ukraine and democracy.

Click here to read more.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is ready to make the country’s “facilities” available to American forces should NATO end up embroiled in Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez said the president declared his intention during a recent meeting in Manila. Duterte has fostered closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but he condemned invasion of Ukraine and voted in support of a U.N. resolution to demand Russia’s immediate withdrawal. 

“He says if they’re asking for the support of the Philippines, it’s very clear that, of course, if push comes to shove, the Philippines will be ready to be part of the effort, especially if this Ukrainian crisis spills over to the Asian region,” Romualdez said in an online briefing with Manila-based journalists. 

“Give them the assurance that if ever needed, the Philippines is ready to offer whatever facilities or whatever things that the United States will need being a major — our number one ally.” 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Ukrainian authorities Sunday reported the death toll following a Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian airbase rose to 35 confirmed dead and 134 wounded.

The airbase is located in the Lviv Oblast, some 30 miles from downtown Lviv and only 13 miles from Poland’s border.

British Secretary of State for Housing Michael Gove announced the “Homes for Ukraine” program, which will pay U.K. sponsors around $450 a month to host a Ukrainian fleeing the war.

The program will allow Ukrainians to remain in the country for up to three years, Sky News reported. Refugees in the program will have access to public services, can claim benefits and can work in the U.K. during that time.”

There are a large number of people in this country, generous hearted and in a position to provide homes, and businesses and charities as well,” Gove said.

Ministers believe that hotels, landlords, B&B owners and Airbnb properties will provide the bulk of housing for the program.

Russian troops launched an airstrike on a Ukrainian military base just 15 miles east of the Polish border, officials said Sunday, in what appeared to be the westernmost attack of the war, according to a report. 

At least nine people were killed in the attack and 57 wounded, the government said, Reuters reported. 

NATO sometimes conducts joint military exercises with Ukraine at the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security training base in Yavoriv and U.S. and other foreign troops had been at the base before the invasion, according to Reuters. Poland is a member of NATO. 

Click here to read more.

The airstrike on a Ukrainian airbase Sunday occurred just 13 miles from the Polish border, marking the closest the conflict has come to a NATO ally.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy urged NATO allies to help stop the war, saying, “Do you understand that war is closer than you imagine? Russia is already on your border.”

“You have fighters that can protect our skies, and when I say ‘ours’ I mean not only Ukraine, because very soon this war may lose the prefix Russian-Ukraine,” Sadovy added.

The Russian strike occurred just before 6 a.m. local time, killing at least 9 people and injuring a further 57.The base is located within the Lviv Oblast some 30 miles from downtown Lviv.