April 5, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The US will announce new sanctions on Russia Wednesday in coordination with G7 nations and the European Union, according to a member of US President Joe Biden's administration, who said the sweeping package "will impose significant costs on Russia and send it further down the road of economic, financial, and technological isolation."

The new sanctions package will ban all new investment in Russia, increase sanctions on financial institutions and state-owned enterprises in Russia and sanction Russian government officials and their family members. 

The official added, "We had already concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, and the information from Bucha appears to show further evidence of war crimes. And as the President said, we will work with the world to ensure there is full accountability for these crimes. One of those tools is sanctions — and we have been working intensively with our European allies on further sanctions."

A Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) team in Ukraine has described a hospital bombing on Monday in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, in which they witnessed several injuries and one death, according to a news release.

The four-person MSF team visited Mykolaiv on Monday to meet with city and regional health authorities and visit the city’s oncology hospital. At around 3:30 p.m. local time, the area around the hospital came under fire, according to the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) statement released Tuesday.

“As they were leaving the area, the MSF team saw injured people and at least one dead body. However, we are not in a position to give exact numbers of dead and injured," Lacharité said in the statement.

"Fortunately our staff were able to take cover and were not hurt in the explosions, although the windows of their vehicle, parked outside the hospital entrance, were blown out by the blasts,” the statement said.

MSF also said the region's pediatric hospital was also hit by the blasts. No large crater was visible, according to MSF, but their team described numerous small holes in the ground throughout a large area.

CNN previously reported that Russia's bombardment of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea continued on Monday as it has for weeks, with strikes through the morning and afternoon there. A CNN team at a crossroads just south of Mykolaiv was just meters away from incoming artillery rounds on Monday, leaving their vehicle destroyed. 

A United Nations humanitarian supply convoy has arrived in Sievierodonetsk in east Ukraine, according to a press release from the UN.

The convoy included eight trucks of critical supplies, including food rations, canned goods, flour, solar-powered lamps, mattresses, plastic sheeting and blankets for approximately 17,000 people, as well as four hospital electricity generators.

The supplies came from the International Organization for Migration, INGO People in Need, the UN Refugee Agency, the UN Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme, the release states. 

“Eastern Ukraine continues to bear the brunt of the intensifying hostilities, with thousands of people cut off from gas and water supplies and residential buildings repeatedly hit by shelling in Sievierodonetsk, preventing people from safely evacuating and severely restricting their access to basic necessities,” the UN said in a statement. 

The items will be delivered to people through the Ukrainian Red Cross, “while deliveries will also be made to vulnerable people who remain in their homes or bunkers around Sievierodonetsk,” the UN said.

The United Nations on Tuesday said that the images of the atrocities carried out in the Ukrainian town of Bucha show “all the signs” that civilians were “directly targeted and directly killed.”  

Addressing a virtual press briefing, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) spokesperson Liz Throssell reiterated the UN’s “horror” at images that emerged showing civilian bodies strewn across the streets of the town located northwest of Kyiv.  

She made particular reference to “disturbing” images of people with their hands tied behind their back and of partially naked women whose bodies have been burnt, saying they “strongly suggest” the direct targeting of individuals. 

“We have been talking about war crimes in the context of shelling, bombardment, and artillery attacks. Now they need to be investigated. But you could argue there was a military context, for example, to a building being hit. It's hard to see what was the military context of an individual lying in the street with a bullet to the head or having their bodies burned,” Throssell continued. 

As the OHCHR is trying to currently gain access to Bucha, she didn’t have “exact information” to share regarding the situation on the ground. 

“Given the way that our office works, we are not saying that a specific incident is a war crime. We can't establish that yet. That is why there needs to be detailed forensic examinations, for example,” she added.  

Throssell paid tribute to the “crucial role” that journalists are playing in documenting these scenes, mentioning the “multiple teams” involved in “reporting, analyzing, and sending video footage.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations Security Council, asking the world's leading powers to hold Russia accountable and provide guarantees to Ukraine.

If you're just joining us, here's what you need to know.

Zelensky at the Security Council: The president said he wants full and transparent investigations along with "maximum access for journalists, maximum cooperation with international institutions, involvement of the International Criminal Court — complete and full accountability."

He added, "I'm sure that every member state of the UN should be interested in this. For what? In order to punish once and for all those who consider themselves privileged and believe that they can get away with anything. So, show all the other potential war criminals in the world how they will be punished if the biggest one is punished."

US pushes UN to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council: Following up on her announcement that she will call for Russia's expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council, the United States ambassador to the UN made the case in her speech Tuesday.

“Russia should not have a position of authority in a body whose very purpose is to promote respect for human rights. Not only is it the height of hypocrisy, it is dangerous,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said addressing the Security Council Tuesday.

“Every day, we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights,” she added. “Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council hurts the Council’s credibility. It undermines the entire UN. And it is just plain wrong.”

The number of countries expelling Russian diplomats continues to increase: Just on Tuesday, countries such as Italy, Spain, Sweden and others announced they were expelling a number of Russian diplomats.

UN estimates close to 1,500 Ukrainians killed and more than 2,100 injured so far: At least 1,480 civilians have been killed and at least 2,195 have been injured in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, said Rosemary DiCarlo, the United Nations' under secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights believes the actual figures of civilian casualties to be “considerably higher," she added.

The Ukrainian town of Borodianka has been completely destroyed by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, new videos show. 

CNN has geolocated and verified the authenticity of the videos that were first published on Tuesday. 

On March 1, a Russian airstrike destroyed at least two apartment complexes in Borodianka; it was the first report of damage in the village roughly 30 miles — 50 kilometers — northwest of Kyiv.  

Since then, the town has been the site of intense firefights and military strikes. Drone footage from March 4 shows the middle of another apartment complex collapsed into a heap of rubble from a military. Video posted to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's Telegram channel showed his fighters walking the streets of the village around that time.  

CNN previously reported that Russian forces took temporary control of a psychiatric hospital — it held nearly 700 patients — in Borodianka on March 5.  

At the time, regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said that the village had no water or electricity. 

"There is no Borodianka — it is almost completely destroyed," Kuleba said. "The city center is just awful. Borodianka is under the influence of Russian troops, they control this settlement." 

Now that Russian forces have retreated, the full scope of destruction is coming into view.  

"There is already information that the number of victims of the occupiers may be even higher in Borodianka and some other liberated cities," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Monday. In many villages of the liberated districts of the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the occupiers did things that the locals had not seen even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago." 

The complete and total destruction seen in the videos from Borodianka is only comparable to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. 

Both videos start near the two apartment complexes that CNN reported were hit on March 1. Every single building along Lenina Street — the main thoroughfare through the town — has been hit. 

Entire village blocks have been reduced to rubble. The burnt metal frames of military vehicles are also seen on the side of the debris-littered road. 

A crude sign — it's just spray-painted sheet metal — reads, "Civilian traffic is prohibited."  

UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said Tuesday that he met with Russian senior officials in Moscow on Monday “in the pursuit of a humanitarian ceasefire” and that he hopes to meet with Ukrainian officials for the same reason on Wednesday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had previously charged Griffiths on March 28 with meeting with the parties involved to seek arrangements for a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine.

Griffiths said he came away from these meetings “believing that we have a long road ahead of us.”

“But it must be traveled, and Madame President, we will travel it,” Griffiths said, addressing the UN Security Council and its current president, UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward.

Griffiths added that he hopes to travel to Ukraine on Wednesday to have discussions with senior Ukrainian government officials on the same issues.

The United Nations and its partner organizations continue to make “every effort to dramatically increase [their] support to affected civilians,” Griffiths said.

Here's a summary of the humanitarian aid that has been provided to Ukraine so far, according to the UN:

US Cyber Command has “stepped up” its efforts to help defend Ukraine from hacking threats since Russia’s invasion in late February, the command’s leader told lawmakers Tuesday in some of the most detailed comments yet on US military cyber assistance to Ukraine. 

The command at the end of last year sent “hunt forward teams” — or cyber specialists trained to analyze malicious cyber activity — to Ukraine for over two months to help Kyiv prepare for potential Russian cyberattacks, Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Cyber Command’s support for Ukraine has also included “remote analytic support” and helping defend critical computer networks from outside the country, Nakasone said in prepared testimony.

While there have been an array of Russia-linked hacking incidents against Ukrainian organizations since the war began, there haven’t been the level of destructive hacks against critical infrastructure that some analysts feared. 

One exception was a cyberattack at the onset of the war that knocked out internet service for tens of thousands of satellite modems in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. US officials are investigating that incident as a potential state-sponsored Russian hack, CNN previously reported.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations made a case for seeking the suspension of Russia from the Human Rights Council — something she and other UN Member states are calling for, which would require a vote in the General Assembly. 

Departing from her prepared remarks, she said she believes, like the Ukrainian president who spoke moments before her, that “this moment requires responsible world powers and global leaders to show some backbone and stand up to Russia’s dangerous and unprovoked threat against Ukraine and the world.”

She has just returned from Moldova and Romania, telling the Security Council “I saw with my own eyes the refugee crisis caused by Russia’s unconscionable war.” 

“We’ve all seen the gruesome photos. Lifeless bodies lying in the streets, apparently summarily executed, their hands tied behind their backs,” she added.

While authorities work to independently confirm the events in the images, she reiterated that the US “has assessed that members of Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.”

“And even before seeing the images from Bucha, President Zelensky, along with others in the region, were reporting that children were being abducted –and we heard him say that today. Also abducted are mayors, doctors, religious leaders, journalists, and all who dare defy Russia’s aggression,” she said.

She cited what she called credible reports including by Mariupol’s city council that Russia is funneling individuals through so-called “filtration camps” to relocate individuals to Russia. 

“I do not need to spell out what these so-called “filtration camps” are reminiscent of. It’s chilling and we cannot look away,” she said. 

“Every day, we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights,” she said.