WASHINGTON — Top officials in the U.S. Congress reached agreement Monday on legislation that would ban Russian oil imports to the U.S. and end Russia’s permanent normal trade relation status in response to the intensifying war in Ukraine.
That’s according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations in Congress.
Voting could come swiftly but no schedule has been set.
The White House has been reluctant to ban Russian oil imports as gas prices at the pump spike for Americans, but has not ruled out the option.
Ending the normal trade relation status could result in steep tariffs on other Russian imports.
— AP congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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UNITED NATIONS — Calling what’s happening to the 7.5 million children of Ukraine “a moral outrage,” the head of the U.N. children’s agency urged the U.N. Security Council to remind all parties of their legal obligation to protect youngsters and spare them from attack.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told a council meeting Monday that at least 27 children have been killed and 42 injured since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to the U.N. human rights office, and “countless more have been severely traumatized.”
With the escalation of the conflict, she said, homes, schools, orphanages and hospitals have come under attack as well as water and sanitation facilities, which provide key civilian needs. She also expressed deep concern at the safety and well-being of nearly 100,000 children, half of them with disabilities, who live in Ukrainian institutions and boarding schools.
She called on the parties to refrain from fighting near these facilities and to avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
Russell said children must be protected from the brutality of war, saying the image of a mother, her two children and a friend trying to flee to safety lying dead on a street after being hit by a mortar “must shock the conscience of the world.”
For children fleeing Ukraine, she said, UNICEF has started operating “Blue Dot” safe places at border crossings where youngsters are first registered and which provide “a one-stop safe space for children and their families.”
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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations is unable to meet the needs of millions of civilians caught in conflict in Ukraine today and is urging safe passage for people to go “in the direction they choose” and for humanitarian supplies to get to areas of hostilities, according to the U.N. humanitarian chief.
Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths told a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday that his office has sent a team to Moscow to coordinate with the Russian military to try to scale-up the delivery of humanitarian aid to the level needed. He said this followed a phone call Friday between U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
The first U.N.-Russia meeting has been held, he said, welcoming cooperation by both sides and expressing hope of “further progress in the hours ahead.”
Griffiths said the U.N. and its partners have already provided food to hundreds of thousands of people and the World Food Program “is setting up supply chain operations to deliver immediate food and cash assistance to 3-5 million people inside Ukraine,” and the Ukrainian Red Cross has distributed hygiene and food kits, warm clothing and medicine to thousands of people.
The U.N. humanitarian chief also expressed deep worry at the consequences of “this unnecessary conflict” on “vulnerable people living half a world away” affected by spiking food prices and uncertain supplies and record-level prices. “People in the Sahel, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Madagascar, and beyond already face profound food inseucirty,” Griffiths said, and high gas prices means “life becomes harder still in places like Lebanon.”
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BERLIN — The U.N. nuclear watchdog says Ukraine has informed it that a new research facility producing radioisotopes for medical and industrial uses has been damaged by shelling in Kharkiv.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the Ukrainian regulator told it that Sunday’s incident didn’t cause any increase in radiation levels at the site. It said the nuclear material at the facility is “always subcritical” and there is a very low stock of it, so the IAEA’s assessment is that the reported damage would have no “radiological consequence.”
However, it adds to a string of concerns the Vienna-based IAEA has over nuclear facilities and material in Ukraine.
It reported “another worrying development” Monday at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, Ukraine’s biggest, which was seized last week by Russian forces. The IAEA said the Ukrainian regulator has informed it that it’s not currently possible to deliver spare parts or medicine to the plant.
The IAEA reiterated that “having operating staff subject to the authority of the Russian military commander contravenes an indispensable pillar of nuclear safety.”
The Ukrainian regulator said eight of the country’s 15 reactors were operating, including two at Zaporizhzhia.
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NEW YORK — Stoli Group is renaming its Stolichnaya vodka brand as part of a broader effort to distance itself from Russia. In a news release, Luxembourg-based Stoli Group said the vodka will now be sold and marketed as Stoli. Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, founded Stoli Group in 1997 but was exiled from Russia four years later and moved production to Latvia. “More than anything, I wish for Stoli to represent peace in Europe and solidarity with Ukraine,” Shefler said in a statement. Stoli Group said a state-owned company in Russia continues to make a vodka called Stolichnaya which is sold in a limited number of markets. But Stoli Group owns the trademark rights to the Stolichnaya name in 150 countries, including the U.S. Stolichnaya means “from the capital city” in Russian.
AP
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