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Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports is “provoking a large-scale food crisis,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday in his late-night video address, as he questioned countries that delayed placing sanctions on Moscow and postponed aid to his country.
“Russian officials are also openly threatening the world that there will be famine in dozens of countries,” he said. “And what could be the consequences of such a famine? What political instability and migration flows will this lead to? How much will you have to spend then to overcome the consequences?”
His comments came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is “not of a favorable opinion” of a move by Finland and, potentially, Sweden to join NATO.
On Saturday, a Senate delegation led by Republican leader Mitch McConnell met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
Here’s what else is going on:
- Russian state media is using “spine-chilling rhetoric“ to intimidate the West
- An oil shortage has sparked panic-buying in Kyiv.
- Experts warn the war is taking a toll on the Black Sea
- Russia extended Brittney Griner's pre-trial detention
Ukraine crowned winner of 2022 Eurovision Song Contest
Ukraine was crowned the winner Saturday of Eurovision Song Contest.
The contest tweeted the winner.
The Ukrainian band was the beneficiary of a last-minute wave of 439 votes from the television audience that put it in front.
Winning Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania” was written as a tribute to the frontman’s mother, but became an anthem for the war-torn country.
“Indeed, some stuff in here was written long before the war, and it was dedicated to my mother,” frontman Oleh Psiuk told The Associated Press.
Ukraine: Russians withdraw from around Kharkiv, batter east
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops are withdrawing from around Ukraine’s second-largest city after bombarding it for weeks, the Ukrainian military said Saturday, as Kyiv and Moscow’s forces engaged in a grinding battle for the country’s eastern industrial heartland.
Ukraine’s general staff said the Russian forces were pulling back from the northeastern city of Kharkiv and focusing on guarding supply routes, while launching mortar, artillery and airstrikes in the eastern province of Donetsk in order to “deplete Ukrainian forces and destroy fortifications.”
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine was “entering a new — long-term — phase of the war.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said Ukrainians were doing their “maximum” to drive out the invaders and that the outcome of the war would depend on support from Europe and other allies.
Rocket launcher fires near Svyatohirsk
Finland's president says he spoke with Putin over NATO bid
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about his country's move to join NATO, he said Saturday.
“The conversation was direct and straight-forward and it was conducted without aggravations. Avoiding tensions was considered important” Niinistö said in a news release.
Finland initiated the call, the release added.
"President Niinistö told President Putin how fundamentally the Russian demands in late 2021 aiming at preventing countries from joining NATO and Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have altered the security environment of Finland," the news release said.
"President Niinistö announced that Finland decides to seek NATO membership in the next few days."
G7 leaders will back Ukraine 'as long as necessary'
The foreign ministers of the world’s seven richest nations “will pursue our ongoing military and defense assistance to Ukraine as long as necessary,” they said in a joint statement Saturday.
“We reiterate our demand that Russia put an end to the war it started unprovoked and to end the tragic suffering and loss of life it continues to cause,” the ministers from the Group of 7 nations said.
“We are committed to helping Ukraine, a democracy and a UN member, uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to defend itself and resist future attacks or coercion, choose its own future and prosper,” the ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., the U.S. and the E.U., added.
Russian plan to annex Kherson is under way, U.K. defense ministry says
Russia's plan to annex the city of Kherson is under way, Britain's defense ministry said in an intelligence briefing Saturday.
The “Russian-imposed military-civilian administration” in the city in the south of Ukraine had announced it will ask to join Russia, the daily briefing posted to Twitter said.
“A central part of Russia’s original invasion plan was highly likely to use rigged referendums to place the majority of Ukraine’s regions under long-term pro-Russian authority,” it added.
Kherson is the only city to fall to Russia since the invasion and the ministry said this pointed to “the failure of Russia’s invasion to make progress towards its political objectives in Ukraine.”
Any public vote on the matter would "almost certainly" be manipulated by Russia, the briefing added.
McConnell and Senate delegation meet with Zelenskyy in Kyiv
A Senate delegation led by Republican leader Mitch McConnell met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Saturday.
Describing the senators as “true friend’s of Ukraine,” Andrii Sybiha, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office posted pictures of the meeting on his Facebook page.
"Today, our state has solid bipartisan and bipartisan support of American friends," he wrote. "And of the American people."
West has launched 'total hybrid war,' against Russia, Lavrov says
The West has announced a “total hybrid war” against Russia and it was hard to predict how long it would last, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.
Everyone would feel the consequences of this war, he said, adding that efforts by the West to isolate Russia were doomed to fail, a reference to sanctions over Ukraine.
“We have done everything we can to avoid a direct clash, but the challenge has been thrown to us so accepted it,” he said. “We have always been under sanctions so we are used to them.”
Ukraine is “an instrument or tool to constrain Russia’s peaceful development,” he added.
Russia’s media propaganda turns to ‘spine-chilling rhetoric’ to intimidate West
How many seconds does it take for a ballistic missile to reach London, Paris or Berlin?
That’s the question pundits on Russian state TV were pondering as the war in Ukraine entered its third month.
The eerie estimates were accompanied by a graphic showing the trajectories that Moscow’s intercontinental ballistic missiles would take to reach the capitals of European nations that supply Kyiv with the most military aid.
All the while, pro-Kremlin host Olga Skabeyeva and the experts on her “60 Minutes” show on the Russia-1 TV channel were nonchalantly joking about how the West should tune in.
With Russia’s military struggling, its rivals emboldened and the neighbor it invaded responding with defiance, NBC News watched dozens of hours of state media coverage to find the Kremlin and its mouthpieces increasingly reaching for new and more outlandish claims to justify the Ukraine invasion.