Russia is hit by an oil import ban and Ukraine "won't beg" to join NATO.
As citizens evacuated besieged Ukrainian cities in a desperate evacuation effort, the US led a Western attack on Moscow's economic lifeline on Tuesday, barring imports of Russian oil.
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President Joe Biden declared a restriction on Russian oil, gas, and coal imports into the United States claiming that Ukraine will "never be a success for Putin". By the end of this year, Britain plans to phase out Russian oil imports.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that he will no longer push for Ukraine's accession to NATO, a delicate topic that was one of Russia's claimed reasons for invading its pro-Western neighbour. In response to a question about NATO membership, Zelensky replied through a translator that he does not want to be president of a "country on its knees pleading for something."
US intelligence officers have described Russian President Vladimir Putin as an "angry" isolated leader seeking global clout, dissatisfied that his invasion of Ukraine did not go as planned, and issuing provocative nuclear threats at the West.
A Polish offer to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine via a US air base was rejected by the US, which said the proposal presented "severe concerns" for the whole NATO alliance. Those jets would subsequently be transferred to Ukraine, while the Polish air force would receive F-16 fighters as replacements, according to the planned scheme
The European Union has promised Ukraine 500 million euros in humanitarian help, alleging that it has already taken in two million refugees fleeing Russia's invasion and intends to take in millions more.
Russia's long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating has been reduced to 'C' from 'B', according to international rating firm Fitch Ratings.
McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks halted business in Russia in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which has been widely criticized internationally.
After pausing reporting while examining stringent new media restrictions, the BBC stated that it would resume English-language broadcasts from Russia. The business claimed in a fresh statement that it had "evaluated the new legislation alongside the pressing necessity to report from within Russia."
On Tuesday, the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported that the number of people fleeing Ukraine in eastern and central Europe has surpassed two million, despite intensified efforts to establish safe evacuation corridors from cities under siege.
The UN's atomic watchdog said that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is no longer transmitting data, expressing worry for personnel working under Russian security at the Ukrainian facility. The agency claimed in a statement that IAEA chief Rafael Grossi reported that, “remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring devices installed at the Chornobyl NPP had been lost."