Poland

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland announced steps Wednesday to end all Russian oil imports by year’s end, while Germany issued a warning about natural gas levels and called on people to conserve, new signs of how Russia’s war in Ukraine has escalated tensions about securing energy supplies to power Europe.

MEDYKA, Poland (AP) — The number of people who have fled Ukraine since Russian troops invaded has surpassed 4 million, the United Nations reported Wednesday as shelling continued in places where Moscow had vowed to ease its military operations.

“I do not know if we can still believe the Russians,” refugee Nikolay Nazarov, 23, said as he crossed Ukraine’s border into Poland with his wheelchair-bound father.

MEDYKA, Poland (AP) — The number of Ukrainians who have fled the Russian war reached the dramatic new landmark of 4 million people, the United Nations announced Wednesday, as Moscow kept up its attacks — even in places where it had vowed to ease its military operations.

“I do not know if we can still believe the Russians,” said Nikolay Nazarov, a young man who fled from Kharkiv with his father in a wheelchair as he crossed the border into Poland.

WARSAW, March 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with top Ukrainian government officials in Warsaw on Saturday, and branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a "butcher" during a meeting with refugees who have fled the war in Ukraine to the Polish capital.

On the second day of a visit to Poland, Biden dropped in on a meeting between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will try to use his three-nation tour of the Middle East and North Africa to reassure wary Israelis and Arabs that the Biden administration is committed to the region’s security at a time when Washington is confronting multiple foreign policy challenges.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Twenty-five years ago, Joe Biden visited Poland’s capital with a warning: Even though the Soviet Union had collapsed, some of NATO’s original members were not doing enough to ensure the alliance’s collective defense.

“Now it is time for the people of Western Europe to invest in the security of their continent for the next century,” said Biden, then a U.S. senator.

RZESZOW, Poland/WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - A call this month between Jill Biden and her Polish peer, Agata Kornhauser-Duda, helped speed medical assistance to the frontlines of the refugee crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Kornhauser-Duda, the wife of Polish President Andrzej Duda, spoke to Biden, the wife of U.S. President Joe Biden, about Poland's stretched response to millions of desperate people fleeing the war in neighboring Ukraine. They spoke on March 11 at Kornhauser-Duda's request, the White House said.

RZESZOW, Poland (AP) — President Joe Biden visited U.S. troops stationed near Poland’s border with Ukraine on Friday and was getting a first hand look at the growing humanitarian response to the millions of Ukrainians who are fleeing to Poland to escape Russia’s assault on their homeland.

Biden’s first stop was with members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, visiting a barber shop and dining facility set up for the troops, where he invited himself to sit down and share some pizza. The Americans are serving alongside Polish troops.

MEDYKA, Poland (AP) — The president of Poland compared Russia’s attacks on Ukraine to Nazi forces during World War II, saying Tuesday that besieged Mariupol looks like Warsaw in 1944 after the Germans bombed houses and killed civilians “with no mercy at all.”

President Andrzej Duda, who will host President Joe Biden later this week in a Warsaw rebuilt from the ashes of that war, spoke as traumatized people bearing witness to the horrors inflicted on Ukraine by Russian forces continued to flee. They arrived by the thousands in Poland and other neighboring nations.

PRZEMYSL, Poland, March 19 (Reuters) - Ukrainian mothers and their young children found shelter in an ornate theatre in the Polish border town of Przemysl on Saturday, where they were able to get some rest after their harrowing journey.

For Tanya, a 34-year-old from Berdychiv in northern Ukraine, it was a relief to finally have some help with her five young children after their long trip to Poland.

Tanya, who did not give her last name, had stayed in her home until it was no longer possible to shield her children from the war.