Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week on Wednesday, April 12, 2022, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.

Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians, authorities said, as residents in parts of eastern Ukraine braced for renewed attacks and awaited blocked supplies of food and other humanitarian relief.

A delegation of Ukrainian lawmakers visited Washington on Wednesday to push for more U.S. assistance, saying their nation needs more military equipment, more financial help and tougher sanctions against Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there was no reason to believe Russia's announcement that it would reduce military activity near Kyiv, the capital, as well as in the northern city of Chernihiv, given what's happening on the ground.

In an interview with independent Russian media outlets, Zelenskyy stressed that Ukraine's priority is ensuring its sovereignty and preventing Moscow from carving it up.

A promised cease-fire in the besieged port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror but a pro-Russian official said safe-passage corridors would open again for city residents on Sunday, March 6, 2022, while Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the ongoing resistance is putting Ukrainian statehood in jeopardy and likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war."

No radiation was released from a Russian attack at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said on Friday, March 4, 2022, as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation.

The exodus out of Ukraine is the swiftest this century, the United Nations said Thursday, as Moscow said it was ready for more talks to end fighting even as its forces pressed their assaults on the country’s second-largest city and two strategic seaports.

Ukraine’s leader decried Russia’s escalation of attacks on crowded cities as a blatant terror campaign, while U.S. President Joe Biden warned that if the Russian leader didn’t “pay a price” for the invasion, the aggression wouldn’t stop with one country.