Holocaust survivor, 96, is killed in Ukraine: LIVE UPDATES
Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp memorial said Friday that Boris Romanchenko -- a Holocaust survivor who was 96 years old -- has been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Ukraine also refused to surrender Mariupol after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an ultimatum to surrender the city by 5 a.m. Monday.
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It is not that his spies are necessarily incompetent. Vladimir Putin apparently just thinks they are.
Two members of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, who were supposed to have prepped the ground for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are reportedly under house arrest. Colonel-General Sergei Beseda and his deputy apparently dropped the ball. Or are being blamed for an operation that by most accounts is bogged down.
Questions are likely being asked. "Why didn't Ukrainains welcome Russian soldiers? Where did the money earmarked for that operation go? Was it unwisely spent or stolen by those in charge of it?" There were no crowds greeting the invading force with flowers, as some in Russia had anticipated.
The U.S. government needs to stop listening to Russia's Vladimir Putin, Rep. Dan Crenshaw told "Jesse Watters Primetime" Monday.
Crenshaw said that too often, America's leaders are reactionary to Putin's considerations and definitions of what constitutes direct U.S. involvement in Ukraine, which could trigger NATO Article V and lead to World War III.
The Biden administration has appeared cautious so as not to provoke a Russian response directly toward NATO states, but that tact has been conversely criticized by Ukrainian officials who are calling for more specific assistance.
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Dozens of Ukrainian children have already been killed and up to six million more are in "imminent danger" as Russian forces continue their assault on Ukrainian cities, the humanitarian organization Save the Children warned Monday.
"We are extremely alarmed by reports that bombs and intense shelling have damaged more than 460 schools across the country, and over 60 now lay in complete ruins," Pete Walsh, Save the Children’s Country Director in Ukraine, said in a statement on Monday. "School should be a safe haven for children, not a place of fear, injury or death."
Ukrainian authorities said Sunday that Russian forces bombed an art school sheltering 400 people in Mariupol, a port city on the Azov Sea that has been under siege for weeks.
"To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday evening. "The more Russia uses terror against Ukraine, the worse the consequences for it."
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Pro-Kremlin newspaper Pravda was reportedly hacked when it posted large casualty numbers for Russian troops in Ukraine.
A story featured on the website reported that the Russian military has seen 9,861 people killed and 16,153 wounded during its invasion of Ukraine, but the outlet quickly deleted the figured and later claimed they were posted a result of hacking.
It is not clear the source of the numbers that were posted, with Russia having not released a figure since acknowledging that 498 of their forces had been killed during what they continue to call a "special operation in Ukraine."
Fox News' Thomas Ferraro contributed to this report.
As Russia continues its deadly assault on Ukraine, a small group of American veterans is rescuing the country's orphans in areas under attack and bringing them to safety.
The children are being brought from the heart of the war zone to Lviv in western Ukraine where they are screened and evaluated. Many have had to fend for themselves amid a lack of power, food and cold temperatures in the midst of repeated Russian airstrikes.
More than 460 orphans have been rescued so far, said Jeremy Locke, a retired Army Green Beret and the chief operations officer for the Aerial Recovery Group, a team of battle-tested U.S. veterans leading the mission.
President Biden attempted to dispel the belief that Ukraine is fighting Russia without sophisticated equipment, arguing they have what they need to effectively fight the invasion.
“The idea that they don’t have enough sophisticated equipment is just simply not accurate," Biden said during remarks at the Business Roundtable quarterly meeting Monday. "They have every piece of equipment that makes rational sense based on our military and NATO’s military, for them to be able to do what they’re doing.
"They’re wreaking havoc on the on the Russian military, whether it’s their tanks or their helicopters or their aircraft.”
Biden's comments come as many have continued for the U.S. to allow for the transfer of MiG fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine, a move the administration has not backed down from arguing is too risky to be perceived as escalatory by the Russians.
Project Dynamo, a group of U.S. veterans and civilians who have helped Americans and allies escape Afghanistan and Ukraine, rescued retired Sgt. 1st Class Robert "Bob" Platt, Platt's wife, and the couple's cats from a town northeast of Kyiv on Saturday night.
Platt lived in a town that put him "squarely behind enemy lines with, no kidding, Russians in his backyard and tanks parked on his street," Project Dynamo co-founder Bryan Stern told Fox News Digital.
Operatives on the ground planned to evacuate Platt and his family on Thursday, but the team came under Russian artillery fire when they were just five miles away from Platt and had to turn back.
"Bob had told me, he says, 'Look, Brian, it's too hot here. You need to go. Just leave. We'll be in Russian-occupied Ukraine,'" Stern said of his conversations with Platt last week. "And I said, ‘This is the deal. We don't leave our people behind, not happening. You have two very simple jobs: Stay positive and stay alive. Leave the rest to me.’"
An expert on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that President Biden is "playing our very strong hand in a very weak way" by squandering the power of the United States to deter Russian aggression.
Rebekah Koffler, who is a former DIA intelligence officer and author of "Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America," told Fox News Digital that the Russians understand the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war between Russia and the United States.
"We are on a geopolitical collision course with Russia," she said. "Our national interests are irreconcilable, the way that both countries define them."
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said that the U.S. has seen "clear evidence" that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.
"We see clear evidence that the Russians are committing war crimes," Kirby said during Monday's press briefing, adding that the U.S. is helping with the collection of evidence to document that crimes.
Kirby declined to speak to what the repercussions or what the U.S. response would be to the war crimes.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Monday that Russia is still struggling to meet their objectives on the ground in Ukraine and have stepped up their bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
"We’re on day 26, the Russians clearly have not achieved many or almost all of the objectives they were setting out to achieve," Kirby said. "When you look at what they have managed to do in 26 days, it’s not that impressive."
Kirby said Ukrainians are fighting bravely to keep hold of cities, pointing to the besieged city of Mariupol and noting that it still has not fallen into Russian hands.
“They have failed to achieve a lot of their objectives," Kirby said. "Because they are stalled… they are stepping up their long range fires… they are lobbing an awful lot of hardware into these cities to force their surrender."
Kirby noted that the increased bombardment is resulting in more civilian casualties and damage to key infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, arguing the shelling has been "largely indiscriminate."
He also lauded how the Ukrainian military has maximized its resources to prevent Russian forces from gaining air superiority, saying that the Pentagon assesses that Russia still does not have control of the sky after 26 days.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Monday that Russia has continued an effort to recruit foreign fighters, particularly from the Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, to join the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While that effort remains ongoing, Kirby cautioned that they have not seen any movement or influx of groups of foreign fighters into Ukraine.
President Biden warned that the Russians could be planning cyberattacks against the U.S., arguing that the moment calls for improvements to the country's cybersecurity.
"This is a critical moment to accelerate our work to improve domestic cybersecurity and bolster our national resilience," Biden said in a statement Monday. "I have previously warned about the potential that Russia could conduct malicious cyber activity against the United States, including as a response to the unprecedented economic costs we’ve imposed on Russia alongside our allies and partners. It’s part of Russia’s playbook. Today, my Administration is reiterating those warnings based on evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks.
"My Administration will continue to use every tool to deter, disrupt, and if My Administration will continue to use every tool to deter, disrupt, and if necessary, respond to cyberattacks against critical infrastructure."
Biden also called on the private sector to help increase its ability to fight off cyber threats from Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has combined all Ukrainian television stations into one platform to combat "misinformation by the aggressor state, distortion of information, as well as justifying or denying" information about Russian’s ongoing invasion.
The Ukraine government announced that "for the sake of national security and defense of Ukraine" it would "implement a single information policy," National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said in a translated statement.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, discussed with ‘America's Newsroom’ his time in Germany and Poland meeting Ukrainian refugees.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett chairs a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. (AP/Maya Alleruzzo)
A senior Israeli official has confirmed to Fox News a report that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett -- who has become a mediator in the war in Ukraine -- accepted an invite to travel to Kyiv.
The report said Bennett would only head to the Ukrainian capital if talks are taken seriously and that his presence has been requested by the Ukrainian government numerous times over the past ten days.
Bennett's office reportedly has instructed Israeli security services to draft plans for him to visit Kyiv on short notice.
Fox News' Yonat Friling contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is shown during a meeting in Moscow on Monday. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign in Ukraine is "stalled," U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Sunday, categorizing Moscow’s strategy as feeding their own troops into "a wood chipper."
"Their maneuver forces on the ground are essentially stalled," Austin said Sunday during an appearance on CBS’ "Face The Nation." "It's had the effect of him moving his forces into a wood chipper. You know, the Ukrainians have continued to attrit his forces, and they've been very effective, using the equipment that we provided them, you know, and armor weapons and aircraft weapons."
Austin, who recently returned from a trip to Bulgaria and Slovakia, said Putin has not been able to achieve his goals as rapidly as he anticipated, so he’s resorted to targeting cities, towns and civilians more heavily.
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A man walks in his apartment ruined after the Russian shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (AP/Efrem Lukatsky)
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretched into its 26th day, new photos show the devastation and death wrought by the conflict.
Heavy bombardment of Mariupol continued as Ukraine rejected an offer to surrender the strategic port city to Russia in exchange for their soldiers safe passage out.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned Monday the bombing of an art school in Mariupol where 400 civilians were taking shelter. "They are under the rubble, and we don't know how many of them have survived," he said.
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The Chernobyl nuclear facilities in Ukraine. (Maxar Technologies via AP)
Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said Monday that the radiation monitors around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have stopped working.
In a statement Monday, the agency also said there are no longer firefighters available in the region to protect forests tainted by decades of radioactivity as the weather warms. The plant was seized by Russia's military on Feb. 24.
The combination of risks could mean a “significant deterioration” of the ability to control the spread of radiation not just in Ukraine but beyond the country’s borders in weeks and months to come, according to Monday’s statement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp memorial said Friday that Boris Romanchenko -- a Holocaust survivor who was 96 years old -- has been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
"Boris Romantschenko survived the concentration camps Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen," it said in a tweet. "Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He was 96 years old. We are stunned."
The deputy mayor of the Ukrainian city home to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe has been kidnapped by the Russian military, prompting large swathes of Ukrainians to protest Sunday.
"Brave Ukrainians in Enerhodar hold a peaceful protest demanding to release deputy mayor Ivan Samoidyuk who was abducted by Russian invaders," Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, sharing a video of a crowd chanting outside the Enerhodar city council. "Russians thought they could impose their authoritarian rules in democratic Ukraine. Instead, they need to go home."
The protest was held in the occupied city of Enerhodar, near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine, with protesters demanding the release of Samoidyuk.
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Facebook is no longer accessible in Russia. (Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A court in Moscow on Monday has labeled Meta an "extremist organization" following Russia's ban on Facebook and Instagram, according to Reuters.
The Tverskoi District Court upheld a lawsuit filed by Russian state prosecutors calling for a ban on Meta platforms on its soil, the news agency added.
"The decision does not apply to the activities of Meta's messenger WhatsApp, due to its lack of functionality for the public dissemination of information," the court reportedly said.
Russia banned Facebook for restricting access to state media and targeted Instagram after Meta said it would allow users in Ukraine to post messages urging violence against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his army, according to Reuters.
A Ukranian soldier looks at a destroyed vehicle in the grounds of the Retroville shopping mall following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on Monday. (Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukraine is facing a shortage of defensive and tactical supplies and scrambling to scrape together gear to sustain its defense, with some charities helping to pick up the slack.
Ihor Koval, 58, was born in Ukraine and served in the Soviet Army prior to its dissolution in 1992. He later moved to America and raised a family, but he returned to help supply troops on the front lines of the 2014 conflict that erupted in the Donetsk region and continued to do so in the following years.
Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 prompted him to return again, but he now helps organize the collection and transportation of supplies to the front lines through his charity, Evil Cannot Enter Heaven.
"It’s a very big shortage of military supply for new recruits," Koval told Fox News Digital. "We spent all our money, we ordered all the weapons, and prices – I haven’t been to stores, but I hear that prices have gone through the roof."
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Navy veteran Adrian Kellgren of KelTec joins 'Fox & Friends' to discuss his company's donation of over $200,000 worth of rifles to help Ukrainian fighters.
Videos have emerged on Twitter purportedly showing Russian troops in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson opening fire at protesters.
A loud explosion and the sounds of gunfire could be heard in the clips, with one showing locals tending to a person lying on the ground near pools of blood.
The videos could not be independently confirmed.
Current Russian military activity in Ukraine. (Fox News)
Russia's military is claiming Monday that it has killed 80 foreign and Ukrainian troops after striking a training facility in the Rivne region in northwest Ukraine.
"High-precision air-launched cruise missiles have struck a training centre for foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian nationalist formations," Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said, according to Reuters.
Konashenkov claimed that 80 foreign and Ukrainian troops were killed in the attack, the Associated Press reports.
A local Ukrainian military official confirmed a twin Russian missile strike on a training center in the Rivne region but did not provide any details on casualties, the AP added.
A Ukrainian-American couple who is stranded in Kyiv with their newborn baby is making bread and spreading messages of hope as Putin's assault on the war-torn nation has prompted millions to flee their homes.
Sergii and Daria Nosenko joined "Fox & Friends First" Monday to discuss what life is like on the ground in Ukraine as they navigate their everyday, and how they remain so positive while living in a warzone.
"Staying with your loved ones is the general remedy in every situation," Sergii told co-hosts Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier. "So we kind of like holding hands and making bread and waking up early in the morning taking care of the baby."
"It's kind of light against darkness and good against evil situation, you know, and then we are in the middle of it, and we're kind of proud, and we want to share it with the world and tell people, never, never lose hope. Everything will be alright."
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Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Jansa listens during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Czech Republic Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Kyiv, Ukraine, last Tuesday. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Slovenia, a NATO member, is planning to send its diplomats back into Ukraine this week after pulling them out at the onset of the Russian invasion.
Prime Minister Janez Jansa has urged other European Union nations to do the same. He said on Twitter late on Sunday that “Ukraine needs diplomatic support.”
Jansa visited Kyiv last week along with the prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic. He has said after the visit that Ukraine was feeling abandoned and urged the EU to send a bloc’s representative there.
Jansa said the return of Slovenia’s diplomats will be organized on voluntary basis.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general claimed Monday that a Russian shell has hit a chemical plant in Sumy, causing a leak in a 50-ton tank of ammonia that took hours to contain.
Sumy regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said the leak spread 1.5 miles in all directions from the Sumykhimprom plant, according to the Associated Press.
The plant is on the eastern outskirts of the city, which has a population of about 263,000 and has been regularly shelled by Russian troops in recent weeks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed during a video address Monday that Ukraine would eliminate the Russian pilot who attacked an art school in Mariupol over the weekend where around 400 civilians were taking shelter.
“They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived,” he said. “But we know that we will certainly shoot down the pilot who dropped that bomb, like about 100 other such mass murderers whom we already have downed.”
Zelenskyy said 7,295 Ukrainians were evacuated from zones of combat on Sunday, including nearly 4,000 from Mariupol. He also hailed people in the southern city of Kherson for taking to the streets Sunday to protest the Russian occupation, showing “Ukrainian courage, armless against the occupiers.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence said Monday that "heavy fighting continues north of Kyiv" as the "bulk of Russian forces remain more than 15 miles" from the center of the city.
The development comes as Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported heavy damage in Kyiv from a recent airstrike.
"According to the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office of Ukraine, eight people died and large-scale destruction was caused," it said in a tweet. "Russia continues to attack civilians."
Kyiv's mayor also has imposed a 35-hour curfew in the city set to begin tonight and run through Wednesday morning.
President Biden will stop in Poland during his visit to Europe this week amid urgent talks with NATO and European allies, the White House announced.
Biden will keep his initial itinerary by traveling to Brussels, Belgium, before he heads to Warsaw, Poland, on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday night.
Poland has been directly impacted by the Ukraine-Russia War, having taken in over two million of Ukraine's three million refugees. Poland also houses U.S. troops.
In Warsaw, Biden will meet with President Andrzej Duda to discuss how the U.S. and its allies can do mo to help "the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created," Psaki said.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of a third world war if peace talks with Russia fail during a television interview that aired Sunday.
Zelenskyy said that "any format" should be used in order to have a possibility of negotiating with Russia, in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have a possibility of negotiating, possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third World War," Zelenskyy said.
He added: "If there is just 1 percent chance for us to stop this war, I think that we need to take this chance, we need to do that. I am ready for negotiations with him. I was ready over the last two years, and I think that without negotiations, we cannot end this war." (READ MORE)
KYIV, UKRAINE - MARCH 17: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes a speech on evaluation the 22nd day of the Russia-Ukraine war during virtually addressing in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 17, 2022. (Photo by Ukrainian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of war crimes after an overnight siege of Mariupol resulted in Russian forces bombing an art school.
Zelenskyy described the attack as "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come."
In a nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine renewed calls for peace, calling ongoing talks with Russia "necessary." He also said Ukraine would not surrender.
Ukraine has informed the IAEA that many of the staff that were forced to stay at the Chernobyl nuclear power plan amid Russia's takeover of the facility have been allowed to return home.
A group of 46 employees rotated into the facility and started a shift Sunday, according to reporting from Fox New's NaNa Sajaia. It is unclear how long the new employees will stay to operate the plant.
Spoke to the family, whose father was at the plant since February 24. He is now home and resting. According to him, the group of 46 employees started their shift today, however it is unclear how long the current group will operate the plant.
“It is a positive – albeit long overdue – development that some staff at the Chornobyl NPP have now rotated and returned to their families. They deserve our full respect and admiration for having worked in these extremely difficult circumstances,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said of the news.
Russian forces took control of the facility on February 24, with the staff there having to stick behind and continue to operate the plant without the ability to go home to their families.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk dismissed calls by Russia for Ukraine to surrender Mariupol to the Russians, according to Pravda Ukraine.
"There can be no talk of any surrenders, laying down of arms," Vereshchuk said, adding that they will "just open a corridor" for people to leave the city.
The comments come after Russia called on Ukraine to surrender the city by 5 am on March 21 as the two sides negotiated a humanitarian corridor that would allow civilians to depart the city if they choose, according to reporting from RIA Novosti. Ukrainian authorities have continuously asked for such a corridor in the past, a request Russia has said the would grant but has yet to follow through on.
Russian forces, who have the city surrounded, say those who stay will be "with the bandits."
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