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"It's time to meet, time to talk," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Russia in a Saturday video message, CNN reports.
reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address Japanese lawmakers via video link at 6 p.m. Wednesday, local time.
Al Jazeera reports that the thousands of people fleeing Russia since it invaded Ukraine include young men trying to avoid being forced into military service.
"They’re afraid they’ll all be grabbed and thrown into the meat-grinder," Elena Popova, coordinator of the Russia-based Movement of Conscientious Objectors, told Al Jazeera. "They feel their freedom is under immense pressure."
CNN reports that Ukrainians with diabetes have a new worry -- how to get their insulin in a war zone. An insulin shortage has led to an increase in conditions related to uncontrolled diabetes.
The U.S. State Department is demanding access to WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was detained in Russia for allegedly smuggling drugs, The Associated Press reports.
“We are closely engaged on this case and in frequent contact with Brittney Griner’s legal team," the State Department said in a statement Friday. "We insist the Russian government provide consular access to all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia, including those in pre-trial detention, as Brittney Griner is.
“We have repeatedly asked for consular access to these detainees and have consistently been denied access," it added.
Griner, 31, faces up to 10 years in prison.
Ukrainian officials say they have yet to find any casualties in the ruins of a theater hit by a Russian airstrike this week in the southern city of Mariupol as Russian forces continue to fire on Ukrainian cities and negotiators from both countries seek to find common ground.
As of Friday, 130 people have been rescued from the theater's basement, Ukrainian officials said, as the search continues for the hundreds more who could be trapped in the makeshift bomb shelter that was hit Wednesday.
Mariupol's city council said on Telegram that "according to initial information, there are no dead. But there is information about one person gravely wounded."
A Russian priest has been fined the equivalent of $330 for calling Russia's invasion of Ukraine a war, .
Yevhenia Nazarova of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service since the Russians invaded on Feb. 24.
Lviv city hall placed 109 strollers, or prams, in the city's central square to mark the children killed in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. .
Haliburton says it has suspended future business in Russia in line with U.S. sanctions. The oilfield service company said it had no active joint ventures and halted shipments of sanctioned parts weeks ago. It joins BP, Shell and Norway’s Equinor in suspending or abandoning their Russian operations, according to Reuters.
Nearly , according to the International Organization for Migration, and that is in addition to the more than 3 million people who have left the country.
Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station.
Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov lifted off from Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft and docked at the station about three hours later, joining two Russians, four Americans and a German.
A family-owned gun company in Florida says it is sending 400 semi-automatic rifles to Ukraine. The guns, from KelTech, were originally from a $200,000 order by a longtime Ukrainian customer, but Adrian Kellgren told The Associated Press the customer has gone silent.
“The American people want to do something,” Kellgren, a former U.S. Navy pilot, said to the AP. “We enjoy our freedoms, we cherish those things. And when we see a group of people out there getting hammered like this, it’s heartbreaking.”
U.S. Commerce Department watching flights to and from Russia.
“We are publishing this list to put the world on notice—we will not allow Russian and Belarusian companies and oligarchs to travel with impunity in violation of our laws," says in a statement.
The U.S. secretary of state and the foreign minister of Ukraine discuss ways to end the war.
: Ivan Fyodorov, the mayor of Melitopol in southern Ukraine, was taken prisoner by invading Russian forces on March 11 and held in captivity in a facility “fully controlled by the Russian military,” he said. Several days later, the Ukrainian government managed to secure his release in exchange for six Russian prisoners of war. , a co-production of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and VOA.