March 19, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said US President Joe Biden should visit Ukraine while in Europe at a NATO summit in Brussels next week.

"Why don't — very good friend of mine, very good friend of Ukraine, Joe Biden, the leader of the global world, who demonstrate now the leadership — why don't he come visit here next week as a symbol of our solidarity?" Poroshenko, wearing a military vest and flanked by soldiers in Kyiv, said to CNN's Jim Acosta.

The President will travel to Brussels, Belgium, to participate in a NATO summit on March 24 and will also join a European Council meeting, according to the White House.

The President will travel to Brussels, Belgium, to participate in a NATO summit on March 24 and will also join a European Council meeting, according to the White House.

Biden will "discuss ongoing deterrence and defense efforts," during the NATO summit and reaffirm the US' commitment to its NATO allies, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday.

"He will also join a scheduled European Council summit to discuss our shared concerns about Ukraine, including trans-Atlantic efforts to impose economic costs on Russia, provide humanitarian support to those affected by the violence and address other challenges related to the conflict," she said.

Poroshenko also said Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "crazy maniac" and said Ukrainians have "bulletproof unity."

Poroshenko called for increased sanctions against Russia. "We need to give additional steps to increase the sanctions and to increase the supply of weapons to Ukraine to make Putin [go back] to Russia," he added. 

"We're not only fighting for Ukrainian soil. We're fighting for European security, freedom, and democracy and for global security. And for you also, for the United States," Poroshenko said. "My request is please, help us to save the world. Help us to save Europe. Help us to save you."

A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station Friday wearing bright yellow flight suits trimmed with blue, raising questions about whether the three were showing solidarity with Ukraine by wearing its national colors and rebuking their own government’s invasion. 

While it is possible that the suits are a sign of solidarity with Ukraine, there are also other possible explanations.

The head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, posted pictures of media coverage speculating the cosmonauts were supporting Ukraine, and said, "Here some bandit cowards and their Anglo-Saxon sponsors don't know what else to come up with in their information war against Russia." He added that the crew were not representing Ukraine but wearing colors from their alma mater: Bauman Moscow State Technical University. 

Cosmonauts typically pick their flight suits months in advance, which would pre-date Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s unclear when the cosmonauts for this selected a yellow-and-blue color scheme. 

“For Soyuz flights, typically the crew meets with the company that makes the suits months before flight and they are allowed two custom suits,” a NASA astronaut who has flown on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS told CNN. “Typically, one suit is the same across the crew and the second suit is something personal.” 

When the three cosmonauts arrived at the space station Friday, they spoke to callers on the phone, one of whom asked about the yellow color, Commander Oleg Artemyev, responded jokingly, “We actually had a lot of yellow material, so we had to use it. So that’s why we had to wear yellow.”  

Artemyev and fellow cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov will spend the next six-and-a-half months aboard the space station. 

Pope Francis visited 19 Ukrainian refugee children at the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital in Rome on Saturday afternoon.

The young patients fled Ukraine during the first few days of the war, which started on Feb. 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine, and are receiving treatment for oncological and neurological diseases among others, as well as severe injuries from blasts, Vatican Press Director Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

“The Pope stopped in the rooms and visited all the little ones present, before returning to the Vatican," it read.

According to the Vatican, 50 Ukrainian refugee children have passed through the hospital since the conflict began.

Italy has offered to help rebuild Mariupol's damaged theater during a call on Friday, according to Ukraine's minister of culture.

Italian Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini wrote on Twitter following his video call with Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko that the Italian Council of Ministers approved a proposal to provide Ukraine the resources to rebuild the theater on Wednesday.

Hundreds of Ukrainians, including many children, were taking shelter inside the theater when it was bombed on Wednesday.

"Minister Franceschini assured that Italy has full solidarity with Ukraine. He expressed support for our state and offered cooperation with our creative teams during the war," Tkachenko wrote on Telegram after the call. "Together, our Ministries in Ukraine and Italy will rebuild the Mariupol Drama Theater immediately after Ukraine's victory over the Russian occupiers." 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Franceschini on Twitter Wednesday, saying that Italy "set a good example to follow. Together we will rebuild the country to the last brick." 

While the Mariupol Drama Theater is not an official UNESCO World Heritage site, Tkachenko wrote on his official Facebook page that the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage is providing "immediate support to Ukraine" and "expressed readiness to grant the status of enhanced protection of the main cultural heritage sites in accordance with the norms of the Haas Convention of 1954 and its protocols." 

This comes as more international cultural institutions have cut ties with Russia as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine.

During a Saturday telethon in Ukraine, Tkachenko said that "more than 70 organizations have abandoned cultural cooperation with Russia," including the Cannes Film Festival, the La Scala Theater and other large art exhibitions.

A new satellite image shows the state of the destruction of a theater in Mariupol when it was bombed three days ago.

An image taken Saturday by the Maxar Technologies satellite imagery provider shows about two-thirds of the building completely destroyed, with just the western façade still standing.

The theater was being used as a shelter as well as the city’s main humanitarian assembly, according to authorities. Estimates of the number of people inside at the time of the attack range from 800 to 1,300.

Early reports the morning after the strike suggested the building’s bomb shelter had survived, but reports of efforts to rescue survivors have been difficult to ascertain.

Communications in the besieged city have been sporadic for days, and rescue work has been hampered by the danger of near-continuous shelling, according to reports from inside the city.

Initial reports suggested many survivors had to dig themselves out of the rubble.

Various Ukrainian officials have put the number of survivors at 130, with one person described as having serious injuries.

There is a steady amount of traffic coming out of Kyiv and a long line to get into the city, a CNN team witnessed on Saturday.

Despite an attack on a neighborhood in the Ukrainian capital yesterday, supply lines into Kyiv are still functioning, hence the long lines coming back into the city. 

CNN saw several supply trucks as well as Ukrainian military vehicles drive into the capital on Saturday.

Yesterday, the Armed Forces of Ukraine issued an upbeat assessment of their defense of Kyiv, saying Russia’s two main routes for attacking the capital city have been blocked. 

Kyiv residents had also been under curfew for 35 hours covering Tuesday to Thursday morning.

A Ukrainian digital broadcaster said one of its reporters in the southeast of the country has gone missing and is believed to be held by Russian forces.

The broadcaster, Hromadske, said reporter Victoria Roshchina was last heard from on March 12, a day after filing a story from the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar.

Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova said Saturday the government believed she had been kidnapped by Russian forces in the town of Berdiansk, which is on the Black Sea coast and also under Russian occupation.

Hromadske is a small broadcasting station that started in 2013 and is associated with the Maidan protests in Kyiv that began that year.

Roshchina’s disappearance comes amid reports of other activists and officials being held against their will in other parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

In Kherson region, a senior council official in the town of Nova Kakhovka was abducted three days ago, according to the town’s mayor. The wife of Dmytro Vasyliev said on her Facebook page that her husband had been detained because of his negative attitude toward Russia.

Ukrainian officials have said Russia wants to create a Kherson People’s Republic in the style of the pro-Russian statelets set up around Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 and are demanding local councillors promote the move.

More: Elsewhere in Ukraine, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was freed from detention by Russian forces as part of a prisoner swap, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said in a statement Thursday. Fedorov was taken to Luhansk after his detention and held for five days.

Also, Viktor Tereshchenko, mayor of the Velykoburlutska community in Ukraine's northeastern region of Kharkiv, has been released, according to a video message from Kharkiv Regional State Administration's head Oleh Syniehubov on Friday. On Thursday, Syniehubov said Tereshchenko was "captured" by Russian forces.

And on Sunday, Yevhen Matveyev, the leader of Dniprorudne, a small city north of Melitopol, was abducted by Russian troops, according to Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. CNN could not independently confirm the claim.

According to human rights organization ZMINA, about 17 people have been detained by Russian forces in Ukraine since the start of the war.

As night falls on Saturday in Ukraine, these are the latest developments in the war:

US says Russia has used hypersonic missiles: US officials confirmed to CNN that Russia launched hypersonic missiles against Ukraine last week, the first known use of such missiles in combat.

Russia's Ministry of Defense said Saturday powerful hypersonic "Kinzhal" missiles destroyed a military ammunitions warehouse in western Ukraine on Friday.

Zelensky tells Russia "it's time to talk": In a video message early Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian military's actions were worsening the situation for their own country, and that honest negotiations "without stalling" were the only way to mitigate the damage.

Status of forces: Russia has so far been "surprised by the scale and ferocity" of Ukrainian resistance and has been "forced to change its operational approach," the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update on Saturday.

While Russia continues to make "incremental gains" in Ukraine's south and has used "brutal, savage techniques'' in the way it has targeted civilians, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Saturday.

Rescue operations underway: Rescue efforts are taking place in Mykolaiv on Saturday morning at the scene of a missile strike on a barracks housing soldiers, regional boss Vitalli Kim said. Dozens of troops are reported to have been killed in the attack by Russian forces, according to journalists from CNN Swedish affiliate Expressen who were at the scene.

Approximately 1.5 million children have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began and are at risk of being trafficked, according to UNICEF, the United Nations' children's agency.

“Countless others” are displaced inside the country as the war wages on, the agency said in a Saturday news release.

“Displaced children are extremely vulnerable to being separated from their families, exploited, and trafficked," Khan continued. "They need governments in the region to step up and put measures in place to keep them safe.”

Between Feb. 24 and March 7, UNICEF said they identified more than 500 unaccompanied children crossing from Ukraine into Romania. The overall figure of unaccompanied children spilling over neighboring borders is “likely much higher,” the statement added. 

To scale up protection, the UN and civil society partners have set up information hubs in neighboring countries such as Poland, identified as “Blue Dots” to provide essential services for families.

UNICEF also urges Ukraine’s neighboring governments to scale up child protection screenings at the borders and at key areas, such as train stations, where refugees pass through. 

“In addition, UNICEF is calling on governments to improve cross-border collaboration and knowledge exchange between and among border control, law enforcement and child protection authorities and to quickly identify separated children, implement family tracing and reunification procedures for children deprived of parental care,” according to the statement.