Fears of a nuclear catastrophe worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were raised overnight into Friday when Russian shelling hit Europe's largest power plant, causing a fire that was later extinguished.
Russian forces now occupy the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine, the country's nuclear inspectorate said, adding that the nuclear facilities are intact and undamaged. Nuclear scientists called the attack "astonishing" and unprecedented.
The incident came as Russian forces made gains in Ukraine's south, seizing one key port city and encircling another.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to grow with more than 1 million people displaced so far. Ukraine and Russia tentatively agreed in talks Thursday to create humanitarian corridors to allow the safe passage of civilians. The Biden administration is offering temporary immigration protections to Ukrainians already in the United States.
Ukrainian security official says 840 kids have been injured
KYIV, Ukraine — The head of Ukraine’s security council called on Russia to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the elderly to escape the fighting.
Oleksiy Danilov said Friday more than 840 children have been wounded in the war. A day earlier, the Ukrainian government put the death toll among children at 28.
He spoke ahead of the latest talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations, planned for this weekend.
“The question of humanitarian corridors is question No. 1,” Danilov said on Ukrainian television. “Children, women, elderly people — what are they doing here?”
Russian troops have encircled and blockaded several large cities in the south of the country, including Mariupol, trying to cut Ukraine off from the Black and Azov seas.
Ukrainian officials have asked for help from the Red Cross in organizing corridors, describing the situation in the blockaded cities as “close to a catastrophe.”
Zelenskyy accuses NATO of giving 'green light' to continued shelling of Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at NATO on Friday, saying in a speech that the 30-nation alliance “gave a green light” for the continued shelling of the country after the group rejected calls for a no-fly zone.
“All the people who will die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, your disunity,” Zelenskyy said, according to an NBC News translation. “All that the NATO alliance was able to do to this day is arrange for the 50 tons of fuel for Ukraine.”
Perhaps the country could use that fuel to burn the “Budapest Memorandum,” he said, referring to the 1994 agreement between the United States, Russia and Britain “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian leader has called on the U.S.-led alliance, which was founded after World War II to counter the Soviet Union, to impose a no-fly zone over the country.
Earlier Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “horrific,” but said that the alliance’s core task was to keep its 30 nations “safe.”
“We have made it clear that we are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground or in Ukrainian airspace,” he said, adding that the only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into the country and shoot down Russian jets that don’t abide by it.
“If we did that, we could end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war,” he said.
U.S. debates how to aid possible Zelenskyy government in exile
Democratic and Republican lawmakers are eager to send billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as the government there desperately tries to repel a Russian invasion and secure the safety of more than 1 million refugees fleeing the war-torn nation.
But with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army steadily advancing, members of Congress and U.S. national security officials are now discussing the challenges of assisting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government if the capital Kyiv falls and Moscow installs a puppet regime.
It’s a grim scenario that Biden administration officials are hesitant to acknowledge publicly — especially with Zelenskyy and his troops holding off the Russians longer than many expected — but it’s one that is increasingly being debated in Washington.
“One of the challenges that we’re going to face is where is going to be the seat of Ukrainian government, and is that going to have to relocate to Lviv or someplace west of the Dnieper River? Or is that going to have to relocate to some place outside of Ukraine?” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said in a phone interview Friday.
Read the full story here.
UN: At least 1,006 civilian casualties, 331 dead
The deaths of at least 331 civilians, including 19 children, have been recorded in Ukraine since Russia attacked the country, the United Nations human rights office said Friday — but it noted the "real toll is much higher."
There have been 1,006 civilian casualties in Ukraine since Russia invaded Feb. 24, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
That count is just the reports that have been corroborated by the agency. It said that fighting has delayed reports and that many other reports are pending corroboration.
Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons that affect wide areas, like artillery shelling, rockets and airstrikes, the The U.N. human rights office said.
The number of refugees who have fled Ukraine to other countries since the attack began has reached 1.2 million, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi tweeted Friday.
Twitter bans over 100 accounts that pushed #IStandWithPutin
Twitter has banned more than 100 accounts that pushed the pro-Russian hashtag #IStandWithPutin for participating in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” days after the hashtag trended on Twitter amid the invasion in Ukraine.
A Twitter spokesperson said Friday that it is still investigating the origins and links between the accounts and that it banned the accounts for violating its “platform manipulation and spam policy.”
The accounts with the most retweets about the hashtag on Wednesday only had a few dozen followers and used stock photos as profile pictures, which led disinformation researchers to question how the tweets went viral.
Read the full story here.
Sky News correspondent says he was injured after crew attacked by Russian 'reconnaissance squad'
The chief correspondent for Sky News said a Russian “reconnaissance squad” opened fire on his news crew early this week, wounding him and striking his camera operator’s body armor while they were reporting northwest of Kyiv.
In a dispatch published Friday on the U.K. outlet’s site, chief correspondent Stuart Ramsey said the crew came under “full attack” while trying to reach the town of Bucha, where they were traveling to see a Russian convoy that had reportedly been destroyed the day before.
NBC News has not independently confirmed Ramsey’s account. A graphic video included in the story captures what appears to be shells striking their vehicle and the crew shouting that they’re journalists.
The attack occurred while they driving down a deserted stretch of road, Ramsey said. There was a small explosion and the car's tire burst, he said, adding: “And then our world turned upside down."
“Bullets cascaded through the whole of the car, tracers, bullet flashes, windscreen glass, plastic seats, the steering wheel, and dashboard had disintegrated,” he wrote.
Ramsey said he was shot in the lower back. Camera operator Richie Mockler was hit twice in his vest. The three other members of their crew escaped uninjured.
The team is now back in the U.K., the outlet reported.
CNN to stop broadcasting in Russia amid expanding media restrictions
A growing number of journalism organizations have announced they will limit work inside Russia amid a government crackdown on news coverage of the invasion the Kremlin finds disagreeable.
CNN and Bloomberg News announced operation changes on Friday.
"CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward," a CNN spokesperson said in a statement Friday.
And Bloomberg News said it would suspend work inside the country.
“We have with great regret decided to temporarily suspend our news gathering inside Russia,” Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said Friday. “The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country.”
Other media outlets have also pulled back or gone dark. BBC News said it would suspend reporting work in Russia after it passed a law making it an offense to disseminate what it described as "fake" information about the country's armed forces.
Russia's communications regulator restricted access to Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other foreign-based media, the RIA state news agency reported.
On Friday the independent Moscow Times said it would halt publishing in its homeland. The independent Echo of Moscow radio broadcaster and TV Rain also said they were halting operations. German outlet Deutsche Welle was completely unavailable.
'Heartbreaking to watch': Scenes from the Ukrainian exodus
It has become an unlikely soundtrack to the unfolding conflict in Ukraine.
A 10-second TikTok video a frightened but defiant teenager in Kyiv posted the day Russia invaded her homeland has captured the heart of the embattled nation.
And as the full weight of the Russian invasion bore down on Ukraine, for many refugees the sight of Elizabeth Lysova, 17, lip-syncing and gesticulating to the David Guetta dance track “Who’s That Chick” has been a balm amid many tearful goodbyes.
The caption accompanying her video, which has been viewed almost 15 million times since Feb. 24, reads: “When Russian attacked us so we r leaving at 8 a.m.”
Now, Lysova is one of the more than 1.2 million Ukrainians who have fled their country.
“When I did this TikTok, I was kind of in a state of shock,” she told NBC News. “It went viral. But then it got to me and I started realizing what was happening, and that my friends and I and my family were in bomb shelters and hiding. I felt terrified for everyone and myself as well. It’s not a regular thing, to be scared for your life.”
