Finland's president to address NATO membership; E.U. fails to ...

The Canadian government said it would also provide up to two weeks of temporary accommodations for those who may not have other places to stay.Nearly 6 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to data tracked by the U.N. refugee agency.“Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced and forced to flee their homes, and these charter flights will help make sure that those who want to come to Canada have the support they need,” Sean Fraser, Canada’s minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said in a statement.TSYRKUNY, Ukraine — To get to the crime scene, the police investigators drove about 30 minutes northeast of downtown Kharkiv — past neighborhoods in ruins, destroyed Russian military vehicles, a field littered with blast craters, and plumes of dark smoke rising a few miles in the distance, where fighting between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries was ongoing.The Ukrainians had expelled Russian forces from the town of Tsyrkuny, less than 20 miles from the Russian border, just three days earlier — part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has reclaimed a significant swath of territory in the Kharkiv region this month.Now the police investigators were eager to visit the village, where they had a report of two civilian bodies lying on the side of a dirt road. Meanwhile, Russian advances in the south and east appear to be stalled amid fierce Ukrainian resistance.Here are updates from key cities:Kharkiv region: Ukraine said Wednesday that its armed forces had recaptured the village of Pytomnyk while pushing Russian troops back in the Kharkiv region in the northeast part of the country, which has seen intense fighting and aerial bombardment.Kherson: This Russian-occupied region in southern Ukraine plans to ask President Vladimir Putin to make it a part of Russia, state news agencies said Wednesday, citing a pro-Moscow official in the region. It has seen intense fighting and battering by artillery and air bombardment.Officials in Kyiv and Washington have said Ukrainian troops are having success in counterattacks in the area, deterring Russian forces from pushing into the capital of the same name.Russia is having a harder time manufacturing military equipment and other goods because of U.S.-led sanctions blocking the country from importing computer chips, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a Senate hearing Wednesday.Two Russian tank manufacturers have had to idle production, according to Raimondo, whose department oversees the export controls enacted by the United States and its allies after Russia’s invasion began.“We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it’s filled with semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators,” Raimondo added, noting that she recently met with Ukraine’s prime minister.Russian drones shot down over Ukraine were full of Western parts“U.S. exports of technology to Russia have fallen by nearly 70 percent since we imposed these export controls,” she told the hearing, which was reviewing the Commerce Department’s latest budget request.The export controls were designed to “cripple their ability to continue a military operation. If Finland were to join, it would double NATO’s land border with Russia.At a news conference, Johnson said the U.K. security agreement is “formalizing and making clear something that needs to be made explicitly in the context of today — and that is in the event of an attack on either of us, we will come to each other’s support upon request.”Johnson did not detail what specific measures Britain would take, saying only, “the nature of that assistance will depend on the request of the other party.”Russia’s use of hypersonic weapons in Ukraine is “not a major game changer to this point,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.And the fact that Russia is brandishing its hypersonic arsenal in Ukraine does not mean Russian President Vladimir Putin is any closer to using a nuclear weapon, Austin added.“I think he’s trying to create a specific effect with the use” of hypersonics, Austin told members of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, noting that that type of weapon “moves at a speed that’s very difficult to interdict.”But Putin “has options,” Austin added. The military has asked Congress to increase funding for development of hypersonic weapons, which have long been in development but saw fresh notoriety in the wake of China launching tests last year and Russia utilizing hypersonic weapons in its invasion of Ukraine.Milley told lawmakers that Russia’s use of such weapons in Ukraine marks “the first time” that he has seen “hypersonic munitions in a combat situation.”The latest: Ukrainian forces said Wednesday that they pushed back Russian advances in the country’s second-most-populous city and regained control of Pytomnyk, a village to the north of Kharkiv.