Evacuation efforts continue in Ukraine, with a total of 6,266 people being evacuated from cities on Friday, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. Of this number, 771 people originally came from the besieged southern port of Mariupol. Meanwhile, Russian forces said they had hit a large oil refinery in Ukraine on Saturday morning using high-precision weapons. Here’s what you need to know: Evacuations continue: Seven evacuation corridors along key routes are expected to open in Ukraine on Saturday, Verestsuk said in a Facebook post on Saturday. He said the list includes the route from the besieged southern city of Mariupol to the government-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, as well as routes from Berdiansk, Rubizhne, Nizhny, Severodonetsk, Popasna and Lysychansk. Russia attacks Ukrainian oil refinery: Russian forces targeted a large Ukrainian oil refinery in a series of raids on Saturday morning, according to a spokesman for the country’s army. The refinery in the central city of Kremenchuk was hit by “high-precision long-range air and sea weapons,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. He said the Russian military had destroyed petrol and diesel storage facilities supplied by Ukrainian troops in the eastern and central parts of the country. Russia has also hit military airfields in Poltava and Dnipro, cities east of Kremenchuk, using high-precision air-to-air missiles, Konashenkov said. Moscow warns London: Russia would consider British long-range artillery and anti-ship systems “legitimate targets” if the United Kingdom delivers these weapons to the Ukrainian army, Russia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom has said. “Any arms deliveries are destabilizing,” Ambassador Andrei Kelin told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. “They are worsening the situation and making it more bloody.” Russian officials have long protested the delivery of advanced military weapons to Ukraine by the United States and the United Kingdom. Some of these weapons, particularly anti-tank weapons, have allowed Ukrainian troops to slow down Russian progress. Cold Call in Russia: In an attempt to tear down the digital iron curtain of Russian President Vladimir Putin, some people are cold calling or sending messages to strangers in Russia to counter the Kremlin’s propaganda for the war in Ukraine. They hope the truth will better inform Russian citizens and perhaps even help end the conflict.
