US President Joe Biden flew to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit on Ukraine. Biden spoke to journalists and expressed concern about the use of chemical weapons: “I think it’s a real threat.”
Asked about the message that will lead to the meeting, he was evasive: “everything I have to say, I will say when I get there, face to face.”
Leaders are expected to issue additional sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Sources said the new US package would include measures against Russian lawmakers.
The US president will also visit Poland, which has taken in most of the more than 3.6 million refugees who fled Ukraine and has served as a major route for Western arms supplies to Ukraine.
Four weeks after a war that drove a quarter of the 44 million Ukrainians from their homes, Russia has failed to take over a single major Ukrainian city as Western sanctions exclude it from the world economy.
After failing in what Western countries say was an attempt to quickly take Kiev and overthrow the government, Russian forces have suffered heavy losses, are held up for at least a week on most fronts and face supply problems and fierce resistance. They turned to siege tactics and city bombing, causing mass destruction and many civilian casualties.
Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbor, and the “special military operation” is going according to plan. The country denies targeting civilians. Mariupol, a city to the south, is the hardest hit and remains completely surrounded by Russian forces, where hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltered since the early days of the war, under constant bombardment and with cuts in the supply of food, water and heating.
New satellite images from commercial company Maxar released overnight showed the massive destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with plumes of smoke rising from burning residential buildings. No journalist has been able to report from inside parts of the city under Ukrainian control for more than a week, during which time Ukrainian officials say Russia bombed a theater and an art school used as air-raid shelters, burying hundreds of people alive.
Russia denies targeting these buildings and accuses nationalist troops of using civilians as a shield.
Source: CNN Brasil
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