Russia marks Victory Day after intensified attacks

More than 10,000 Russian service members joined the military parade in Moscow’s Red Square on Monday to celebrate the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany on the eastern front. During his Victory Day speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the invasion of Ukraine a “preemptive rebuff” of security threats to Russia from the West. He drew similarities between the Ukraine war and the Red Army’s battle against Nazi troops. Putin observed a minute of silence for fallen troops and encouraged some of the soldiers who returned from Ukraine, saying, “You are fighting for the homeland.”

What’s happening in Ukraine? More than 60 people died Saturday after a Russian bomb struck a school in the eastern village of Bilohorivka, where many people had sheltered in the basement. Russian shelling also killed two boys in the nearby town of Pryvillia. Authorities said they evacuated the last of the civilians who had sought shelter with Ukrainian fighters inside a steel plant in the city of Mariupol on Saturday. The United States banned U.S. accounting and consulting firms from providing services to Russia and cut off advertising from Russia’s three largest TV stations, among other sanctions announced Sunday. In a surprise visit Sunday, U.S. First Lady Jill Biden met with her Ukrainian counterpart, Olena Zelenska, at a school in the western town of Uzhhorod.

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