March 22, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the administration has not seen China provide military equipment to Russia since President Joe Biden spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping last Friday. 

“I can't make predictions going forward. What I can tell you is we have not seen since those meetings or since the President's conversation with Xi, the provision of military equipment by China to Russia, but of course, this is something we are monitoring closely,” Sullivan told reporters Tuesday.

Russia has requested military support and economic assistance support from China, two US officials told CNN last week. China has conveyed some openness to offering help to Russia, according to a US diplomatic cable to allies. Both Russia and Beijing have denied that there have been any such requests. 

On Friday, Biden sought to dissuade Xi from assisting Russia, warning his Chinese counterpart during a 110-minute long video call of the "implications and consequences" for Beijing if it were to provide material support to Moscow.

United States national security adviser Jake Sullivan previewed President Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to Brussels and Poland, outlining the President’s schedule and setting a series of priorities for the trip.

According to Sullivan, Biden will attend an emergency NATO summit in Brussels, joined by leaders of the other 29 NATO allies, before addressing the 27 leaders of the European Union at a session of the European Council. From there, Biden “will have the opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine,” and “join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement.”

The President is also expected to make a slew of new announcements, including “a joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas at long last,” as well as “longer term adjustments to NATO force posture on the Eastern Flank.” Biden will also make further commitments on human rights “to respond to the growing flow of refugees” flowing from Ukraine, Sullivan said.

In Poland, Biden “will engage with US troops who are now helping to defend NATO territory, and he will meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response,” and hold a bilateral meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Sullivan did not say whether the President would meet personally with refugees while traveling to Poland.

In his remarks to reporters Tuesday, the national security adviser outlined the administration’s priorities while traveling to Europe, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has thus far manifestly failed” in subjugating neighboring Ukraine, enhancing Russian power in the region, or degrading Western influence.

In a series of tweets Tuesday, Biden outlined priorities and stops for his trip.

A Russian missile hit and destroyed the Pavlohrad-2 train station in Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, says Valentin Reznichenko, the Regional Head of War and Civil Administration.

The strike killed one person, derailed 15 freight cars and destroyed a stretch of track, Reznichenko said. Station operations have been suspended indefinitely, he added.

Pavlohrad is an important crossroads for Ukraine’s railway system. It is a railroad cargo hub and transport link to several eastern regions which are active frontlines in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan broadly previewed actions the United States would take in conjunction with other world leaders during US President Joe Biden’s trip to Brussels, Belgium, Thursday.

“What I will say is that one of the key elements of that announcement will focus not just on adding new sanctions, but on ensuring that there is a joint effort to crack down on evasion, on sanctions busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken, or get around the sanctions,” he continued, calling that “an important part of this next phase.”

There will be new sanctions designations and targets, Sullivan added, but “a big part of it is about effective enforcement and evasion, applying the lessons that we've learned from other circumstances where we have, in fact, imposed sanctions on countries.”

Biden is set to join world leaders for an extraordinary NATO summit Thursday, as well as a meeting of the G7 and the European Council.

On Monday, after intense fighting, Ukrainian forces regained control of Makariv, a town west of Kyiv that had been battered by Russian airstrikes.

It's tempting to view this small victory for Ukrainian forces as a shift of momentum in the battle for Kyiv: In better times, this suburb would be only an hour's drive to Khreshchatyk, the capital's central boulevard.

Kyiv once appeared to be the primary objective of what the Kremlin must have envisioned as a swift regime-change operation. The capital has been rocked by explosions in recent days, but it is far from encircled.

On the Azov Sea, the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol — despite being surrounded and mercilessly pummeled, block by block, by Russian firepower — still eludes Russian control. Its defenders rejected an ultimatum to surrender by Monday morning, thwarting a Russian effort to finalize a land bridge linking Crimea with the separatist republics of the eastern Donbas region.

Nearly a month after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian military has perceptibly shifted its messaging. The Russian military's advances have been stymied, the Ukrainians say, forcing a shift in Russian tactics.

"Due to the lack of success of the ground phase of the operation, the enemy continues to actively launch missile and bomb strikes on important military and civilian infrastructure using operational and tactical aircraft, high-precision missile weapons and indiscriminate munitions," the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement Tuesday.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the Russians are taking more of a standoff approach, launching salvos of missiles from outside of Ukrainian airspace.

Continue reading the full story here:

RELATED

Ukraine has denied Russia a victory for four weeks. A grim new phase could be coming

It's nighttime in Ukraine. These are the key takeaways from Tuesday so far:

Belarus could join war: The US and NATO believe that Belarus could “soon” join Russia in its war against Ukraine, US and NATO officials tell CNN, and that the country is already taking steps to do so. It is increasingly “likely” that Belarus will enter the conflict, a NATO military official said on Monday. 

Ukrainians fighting to reclaim territory: Ukrainians forces have now been trying to take back territory in the last few days that the Russians had gained, according to a senior US defense official, calling them “able and willing” to do so.

Ukrainian forces have regained control of Makariv, a town 30 miles west of Kyiv, the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a post on Facebook on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the mayor of Boryspil, a city to the east of the capital, is calling on residents to leave, saying "fighting is already raging around the region" in a video statement posted to Facebook. 

Dwindling supplies: Some towns in Ukraine don’t have more than three or four days’ worth of food, the aid agency Mercy Corps said Tuesday, warning that the humanitarian system in the country “is entirely broken down.”

Food and medical supplies have almost run out in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Oleg Nikolenko. 

Refugees: More than 3.5 million refugees have now fled Ukraine, according to the latest update from the UN Refugee Agency.

About half a million refugees who have fled the war in Ukraine to Poland require support for mental health disorders, and 30,000 are estimated to have severe mental health problems, the World Health Organization’s representative in Poland said Tuesday.  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Western sanctions on Russia are showing “effects, which will only get more dramatic every day.” However, the chancellor stressed that cutting off energy supplies from Russia must be “manageable” for European countries.

The Ukraine war “could be a longer dispute and therefore we must cope together,” Scholz said, speaking at a press conference alongside European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

Scholz said Germany’s stance on European Union-wide ban on Russian energy imports has not changed.

“This also applies to many other [European] countries who are even more dependent on [Russian] coal, oil and gas, even more than Germany,” he added.

“We decided to make us independent as quickly as possible from gas and oil imports from Russia,” the German leader said, adding that some “very intensive construction work and contracts” are necessary to make Germany less dependent on Russian energy.

Metsola said, “Europe must become completely independent from [Russian energy].”

“We must buy our energy from friends, not enemies, because at the end we are paying for this war every day,” she added.

“It is time to take a lead. We are not only talking about the green agenda, considering it from the environmental perspective, a climate perspective, but we are also seeing it from a perspective of security,” Metsola continued.

France has launched a national plan to prepare housing for at least 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, French Prime Minister Jean Castex told reporters Tuesday.  

“More and more of them [Ukrainians] are finding refuge in France or transiting through our territory,” Castex said, following an interdepartmental crisis meeting on the issue.  

More than 26,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in France since the beginning of the war, according to Castex. Among them, 10,500 have obtained temporary residency provided under the EU temporary protection policy, activated on March 3.  

The French Prime Minister also vowed to help Ukrainian refugees better integrate into France’s job market, with French classes provided at the country's employment agency.  

“We are entering a crisis that will last,” Castex said. “It’s our country’s honor to keep the warmest welcome possible for our Ukrainian friends.”

Russia has begun firing on the city of Mariupol from the Sea of Azov, according to a senior US defense official, using a group of approximately seven ships to launch attacks on the critical coastal city.

The official said a few of the ships may be a minesweeper and some amphibious landing ships, but some of the ships are surface combatants that have joined the attack on the besieged city over the last 24 hours.

The city has already been under an ongoing Russian bombardment from long-range missile launches and artillery outside the city.

Separately, the Russians have a total of about 21 ships in the Black Sea, the official said. Twelve of the ships are surface combatants, while the rest are amphibious ships.