NEW YORK (1010 WINS/AP) -- Russian forces pressed their assault on Ukrainian cities Friday, with new missile strikes and shelling on the capital Kyiv and the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, close to the border with NATO countries such as Poland. As the war launched by Russia’s Vladimir Putin ground into its fourth week, President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping will speak Friday in a call to “assess where President Xi stands” on the war, the White House said. The U.S. has warned China of “consequences” if it provides military or economic assistance for Russia's invasion.
Friday, March 18, 2022
9:30 a.m. - Zelenskyy thanks US for new aid, but mum on specifics: ‘This is our defense’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was thankful to U.S. President Joe Biden for the additional military aid but said he would not say specifically what the new package included because he didn’t want to tip off Russia.
“This is our defense,” he said in his nighttime video address to the nation. “When the enemy doesn’t know what to expect from us. As they didn’t know what awaited them after Feb. 24,” the day Russia invaded. “They didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
Zelenskyy said Russia expected to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when it seized Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they took control of the eastern Donbas region. But Ukraine is now a different country, with much stronger defenses, he said.
He said it also was not the time to reveal Ukraine’s tactics in the ongoing negotiations with Russia. “Working more in silence than on television, radio or on Facebook,” Zelenskyy said. “I consider it the right way.”
Ukrainian firefighters extinguish a blaze at a warehouse after a bombing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 17, 2022.AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda
8 a.m. - Biden, China's Xi to speak; China accuses US of fueling conflict with arms to Ukraine
President Biden and China's Xi Jinping are set to speak on Friday as the White House warns Beijing that providing military or economic assistance for Russia's invasion of Ukraine will trigger severe consequences from Washington and beyond.
Planning for the call has been in the works since Biden and Xi held a virtual summit in November, but differences between Washington and Beijing over Russian President Vladimir Putin's prosecution of his three-week-old war against Ukraine are expected to be at the center of the call.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would question Xi about Beijing's “rhetorical support” of Putin and an “absence of denunciation" of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.
“This is an opportunity to assess where President Xi stands,” Psaki said.
China on Friday again sought to highlight its calls for negotiations and donations of humanitarian aid, while accusing the U.S. of provoking Russia and fueling the conflict by shipping arms to Ukraine.
“China has called for every effort to avoid civilian casualties all the time,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a daily briefing. “Which do the civilians in Ukraine need more: food and sleeping bags or machine guns and artillery? It’s easy to answer.”
President Joe Biden meets virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, on Nov. 15, 2021.AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
7 a.m. - Russian strikes hit Kyiv and outskirts of Lviv
Russian forces struck Ukrainian cities from a distance again on Friday, hitting sites in the capital Kyiv and the outskirts of the western city of Lviv as their ground offensive inched forward under fierce Ukrainian resistance.
The early morning barrage of missiles near Lviv was the closest strike yet to the center of the city, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or fight.
A cloud of smoke raises after an explosion in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022.AP Photo
Black smoke billowed for hours after the explosions, which hit a facility for repairing military aircraft near the city’s international airport, only four miles from the center. One person was wounded, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyy, said.
Multiple blasts hit in quick succession around 6 a.m., shaking nearby buildings, witnesses said. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea, but the Ukrainian air force's western command said it had shot down two of six missile in the volley. A bus repair facility was also damaged, Lviv's mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.
A Ukrainian soldier watches as smoke raises after an explosion near the airport, in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022.Ismail Coşkun/IHA via AP
Early morning barrages also hit a residential building in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people were evacuated from the building. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling.
Two others were killed when strikes hit residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
In Kharkiv, a massive fire raged through a local market after shelling Thursday. One firefighter was killed and another injured when new shelling hit as emergency workers fought the blaze, emergency services said.
In Chernihiv, at least 53 people were brought to morgues over 24 hours, killed amid heavy Russian air attacks and ground fire, the local governor, Viacheslav Chaus, told Ukrainian TV Thursday.
A police officer walks at the site of a bombing that damaged residential buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022.AP Photo/Felipe Dana
6 a.m. - Schwarzenegger tells Putin in video: ‘You can stop this war’
Film icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is hugely popular in Russia, told Russians in a video they're being lied to about the war in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian soldiers' lives for his own ambitions.
In the nine-minute video, Schwarzenegger said Russian soldiers were told they’d be fighting Nazis in Ukraine, or to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine or that they were going on military exercises, and that they’d be greeted like heroes. He said many of the troops now know those claims were false.
“This is an illegal war,” Schwarzenegger said, looking straight into the camera while seated at a desk in a study. “Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.”
The former California governor brought up painful memories about how his own father was lied to as he fought with Adolf Hitler’s forces during World War II, and how he returned to Austria a broken man, physically and emotionally after being wounded at Leningrad.
He asked Russians to let their fellow citizens know about “the human catastrophe that is happening in Ukraine.”
He then addressed Putin directly, saying: “You started this war. You are leading this war. You can stop this war.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Policemen stand guard at the site where a bombing damaged residential buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022.AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
