Satellite images show destruction of Ukraine

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said Thursday it was banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, which begin on Friday.

“At the IPC we are very firm believers that sport and politics should not mix. However, by no fault of its own the war has now come to these Games and behind the scenes many Governments are having an influence on our cherished event," IPC President Andrew Parsons said in a statement.

It was also a matter of safety and security, with the situation in the athletes' village becoming "untenable" as tensions escalate, he said.

He said Paralympic committees from multiple countries had threatened not to compete, and that if Russian and Belarusian athletes were allowed to take part, "nations will likely withdraw" and "we will likely not have a viable Games."

“To the Para athletes from the impacted countries, we are very sorry that you are affected by the decisions your governments took last week in breaching the Olympic Truce. You are victims of your governments’ actions," he said.

The decision comes less than a day after the IPC initially permitted athletes from both countries to compete as neutrals under the Paralympic flag and the Paralympic anthem. It will affect 83 athletes from the two countries, Parsons said.

As more than a million people fled Ukraine this week, some Ukrainian volunteers were traveling in the opposite direction — returning to the country to join the ranks of those defending it.

One volunteer, Valery, left his home in France last week, determined to see his aging parents in Kyiv before war broke out. The next morning, he awoke to air raid sirens marking the beginning of Russia's invasion.

Within a day of Russia's initial attack, he had joined the Ukrainian armed forces. CNN is identifying him only by his first name for his safety.

"What can I do when Russian aircraft are throwing bombs on the capital city? I just couldn't stay inside, indoors, in four walls doing nothing. So I came, and I joined," he told CNN on Wednesday.

Like tens of thousands of volunteers, he received weapons from the government as he joined the defense effort.

"First when I joined, first when I received the weapon, I felt this sense of nausea," he said.  "If you go outside and see the eyes of the people who are queueing up to get guns as well, there's a lot of hope, and there is a lot of determination to defeat the enemy."

At a Ukrainian cathedral in Paris, the parish has been gathering donations and compiling a database of hosts for Ukrainian refugees. One man, Andre, told CNN he was collecting funds to buy body armor for his two best friends before they head to join the fight in Ukraine.

Videos from the embattled city of Kherson show residents defiantly waving the Ukrainian flag in front of what appear to be Russian troops and tanks.

This comes after the city's mayor, Ihor Kolykhaiev, indicated on Wednesday that Kherson had fallen under Russian control following several days of heavy fighting.

The videos, posted online on Wednesday, show what appear to be Russian troops and tanks in front of the Kherson Regional Administration building, with one of the soldiers holding Ukrainian flags.

Shouting is heard, but it's unclear who is speaking.

"They are f***ing walking away with our flag," a man is heard saying in the video. "A**holes!" 

The video then shows a group of civilians begin walking toward the soldiers outside the Regional Administration building.  "They went to get the flag," the man says.

The civilians appear to reclaim the flags from the soldiers. “Oh, they put down the flag, sh**," he continues. "Our people took the flag! Beauties!"

As the soldier returns to the line of tanks, the civilians raise the Ukrainian flags to jubilant cheers from onlookers.

CNN has geolocated and verified the videos’ authenticity.

Battle for Kherson: The strategically important port city of nearly 300,000 residents is located on an inlet from the Black Sea in southern Ukraine.

The mayor said Wednesday on Facebook that the Ukrainian military is no longer in Kherson, and its inhabitants must now carry out the instructions of “armed people who came to the city’s administration” — indicating that the city has fallen under Russian control. 

The announcement on his Facebook page follows several days of pressure on Kherson by Russian forces who had surrounded the city.  

As police in Russia clamp down on anti-war protests emerging around the country, many citizens do not fully know what is happening in Ukraine.

State-controlled television shows almost no reports of Russian bombing and shelling in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Instead, it focuses on so-called Ukrainian "nationalists" and "neo-fascists."

But Russian young people like 25-year-old Arina, who lives in Moscow, aren't watching TV. She's on the internet, reading blogs and listening to vloggers. She, too, is having difficulty comprehending why this war is happening and what it will mean for her own life as a young Russian.

"It is very difficult to predict anything, of course, the situation is horrible," Arina, who asked CNN to only use her first name for her safety, said. "Among some of my friends, there is a lot of anxiety about the future, a lot of fear, because we don't know how it will affect us."

But Arina's mother sees it completely differently, believing the war is a "necessary measure" against Western threat, Arina said. She checked out a guide suggesting how young Russians can talk with their parents and others about the war in Ukraine — and read it just in time before it was removed online.

Arina and her mother "had a very fierce argument," she said. "We have very different sources of information: I learn everything from the independent media, which have mostly long been blocked in Russia, and she watches TV."

Divided reaction: As Arina and her friends follow news about Ukraine on social media, Russians have had contradictory reactions, she said.

"The first one is, everyone says, 'Yes, we should be ashamed.' The second one is, 'No, let's not be ashamed of ourselves and let's not pin decisions on ourselves that were not made by us.'"

Read more here.

Tasya, 19, stood with her friends on a cold morning in St. Petersburg as they joined protesters' chants against the Russian invasion of Ukraine: "Nyet Voine!" ("No to War!").

"It's always safer to stand together with others ... to look over your shoulder, in case you need to run," said Tasya, who asked that her last name not be used for her safety. At some point, Tasya said her friends left the protest to go home or somewhere else to warm up, leaving her standing alone in the street.

"Then a group of cops walked past me ... and suddenly one of them looked at me and then they turned around, walked towards me and detained me," she said of the February 24 protest.

Protests are continuing across Russia as young citizens, along with middle-age and even retired people, take to the streets to speak out against a military conflict ordered by their President — a decision in which, they claim, they had no say.

Now, they are finding their voice. But Russian authorities are intent on shutting down any public dissent against the attack on Ukraine. Police clamp down on demonstrations almost as quickly as they pop up, dragging some protesters away and roughing up others.

Police in St. Petersburg arrested at least 350 anti-war protesters on Wednesday, taking the total number of protesters detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.

Intellectuals speak out: Members of Russia's "intelligentsia" — academics, writers, journalists and others — have issued public appeals decrying the war, including a rare "open letter" to Putin signed by 1,200 students, faculty and staff of MGIMO University, the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations, affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which produces most of Russia's government and foreign service elite.

The signers proclaim they are "categorically against the Russian Federation's military actions in Ukraine."

"We consider it morally unacceptable to stay on the sidelines and keep silent when people are dying in a neighboring state. They are dying through the fault of those who preferred weapons instead of peaceful diplomacy," the letter says.

Read the full story:

On Wednesday morning, as Russia's unprovoked war on Ukraine entered its seventh day, I turned on RT, the Russia-controlled network that has in recent days been banned in Europe and dropped by television carriers across the world.

Founded in 2005, RT, which operates multiple channels, including RT America, has served as one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's largest megaphones across the world. It offers insight into how the Kremlin would like to portray the world and its role in it.

For several hours I watched the channel and was struck by how brazenly its hosts and personalities worked to mislead its audience and deflect from the issues at hand. The main thrust of RT's coverage presented Russia as a mere victim of Western aggression, a country forced to launch a limited "military operation" after its hand was forced by a high-and-mighty NATO that showed no interest in taking Moscow's security concerns seriously.

Here's a breakdown of what I observed on the network.

Russia the "liberator": Peter John Lavelle, the host of RT's signature talk program, "Crosstalk," put it like this: He said that the failed "liberal order" implemented by the West was to blame. "It is so irritating," Lavelle said on his show. "The way it is being framed: Ukraine's democracy. Well, it has nothing to do with Ukraine's democracy — if you can say it even has one... This is about security... There is only security for other countries."

Missing from coverage: Noticeably left out of the coverage was a focus on how unbearable life has been for Ukrainians whose cities are under attack by unrelenting Russian forces. I did not see much coverage showing the damage that Russian forces have caused as they try to seize control of the country. Or coverage about the residents of cities such as Kyiv who live in terror and sleep underground in bomb shelters. Or coverage about the hundreds of thousands who have simply chosen to flee the country for their safety. Those inconvenient facts were not the emphasis of the narrative RT pushed.

Also left out of RT's coverage: The ramifications the West's sanctions and other actions are having on Russia's economy.

Read the full analysis:

The mayor of the southern Ukrainian city Mariupol called Wednesday the most difficult day yet of the Russian invasion, amid heavy shelling and growing numbers of wounded civilians in hospitals.

In a statement posted late Wednesday on Telegram, Mayor Vadym Boychenko addressed the citizens of Mariupol and said Ukrainian forces fought back valiantly against those who were shooting at homes.

CNN has not been able to independently verify the reports of Russian soldiers shooting at civilian homes.

Boychenko also said critical infrastructure was compromised in the city, and that citizens are without water and electricity until utility services restore them on Thursday.

“And you dear citizens of Mariupol are great heroes," he wrote. "All of us are fighting for our freedom, for our country, for our one-and-only Mariupol. We aren’t attacking anyone. We are simply sitting at home. That means God is with us. That means truth is with us. That means victory will be on our side."

He also thanked doctors, utility service workers, Ukrainian armed forces and all citizens.

“Together we really will survive this. We will be victorious. I think we deserve it. We are Ukrainians. We love our country. We love our city. Glory to the heroes! Glory to Ukraine!” he said.

Injuries mount: Russian and Russian-backed troops had surrounded the city of some 400,000 residents from three sides as of Wednesday afternoon, as the Kremlin looks to complete a land border that would link Crimea with southern Russia. 

Early Wednesday morning, Boychenko said there were 128 people in hospitals, with doctors working nonstop "for the lives of Mariupol residents."

The US State Department criticized the Kremlin on Wednesday for cracking down on Russian media and for its disinformation campaign on the invasion of Ukraine.

“At home, the Kremlin is engaged in a full assault on media freedom and the truth, and Moscow’s efforts to mislead and suppress the truth of the brutal invasion are intensifying,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

Earlier this week, the Russian Prosecutor General blocked access to two independent media outlets, Echo of Moscow and TV Rain, accusing them of reporting "false" information about the invasion.

"The outlets were baselessly accused of ‘calling for extremist activity and violence’ and sharing ‘deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel in Ukraine,’” Price said, adding that Echo of Moscow “has been respected for its even-handed treatment of breaking news since its founding 32 years ago."

Price did an interview with Echo of Moscow earlier this week.

Price added that Russia's Parliament will meet on Friday to consider a bill to criminalize 'unofficial' reporting on the invasion.

"The people of Russia also have a right to know about the human costs of this senseless war to their own soldiers," Price said. "We call upon Putin and his government to honor Russia's international obligations and commitments, to immediately cease this bloodshed, withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s territory, and to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of their own citizens."