US President Joe Biden flies off to Europe for emergency NATO summit

Moscow announced it intends to disarm its neighbour, and its “special military operation” is getting on to plan.

US President Joe Biden flies off to Europe today for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian armies are seated, towns are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is on fire.

Four weeks into a battle that has led a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million citizens from their homes, Russia has flunked to occupy a single major Ukrainian city, while Western sanctions have tabbed it from the world economy.

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After failing in what Western countries call was a try to seize Kyiv swiftly and depose the government, Russian troops have taken heavy losses, are chilled in place for at least a week on most fronts and face stock problems and intense resistance. They have spun siege moves and bombardment of towns, causing huge destruction and many civilian deaths.

Moscow announced it intends to disarm its neighbour, and its “special military operation” is getting on to plan. It denies targeting residents. The worst slam has been Mariupol, a southern port surrounded by Russian forces, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been protecting since the war’s early days, under constant bombardment and with food, water and heat stocks cut.

New satellite photographs from commercial company Maxar published overnight indicated huge destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with columns of smoke surging from residential apartment houses in flames.

No journalists have been eligible to announce from inside the Ukrainian-held parts of the town for more than a week, during which time Ukrainian officials announced Russia has bombed a theatre and an art school used as bomb shelters, burying hundreds of people alive. Russia rejects targeting those houses.

Biden is expected to reach Brussels on Wednesday evening. He will meet NATO and European leaders in an emergency conference at the Western military alliance’s headquarters. The leaders are predicted to roll out additional sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Sources announced the U.S. package would comprise estimates targeting Russian members of parliament.

Biden will also tour Poland, which has taken in most of the more than 3.6 million refugees who have left Ukraine and performed as the major route for Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine.