AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

The AP Interview: Zelenskyy seeks peace despite atrocities

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that he is committed to pressing for peace despite Russian attacks on civilians that have stunned the world, and he renewed his plea for more weapons ahead of an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east.

He made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press a day after at least 52 people were killed in a strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, and as evidence of civilian killings came to light after Russian troops failed to seize the capital where he has hunkered down, Kyiv.

“No one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation. It’s all understandable. And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well,” Zelenskyy said. But “we don’t want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution.”

Wearing the olive drab that has marked his transformation into a wartime leader, he looked visibly exhausted yet animated by a drive to persevere. He spoke to the AP inside the presidential office complex, where windows and hallways are protected by towers of sandbags and heavily armed soldiers.

“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That’s why it is important to stop this war,” Zelenskyy said.

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War Crimes Watch: A devastating walk through Bucha’s horror

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — There is a body in the basement of the abandoned yellow home at the end of the street near the railroad tracks. The man is young, pale, a dried trickle of blood by his mouth, shot to death and left in the dark, and no one knows why the Russians brought him there, to a home that wasn’t his.

There is a pile of toys near the stairs to the basement. Plastic clothespins sway on an empty line under a cold, gray sky. They are all that’s left of normal on this blackened end of the street in Bucha, where tank treads lay stripped from charred vehicles, civilian cars are crushed, and ammunition boxes are stacked beside empty Russian military rations and liquor bottles.

The man in the basement is almost an afterthought, one more body in a town where death is abundant, but satisfactory explanations for it are not.

A resident, Mykola Babak, points out the man after pondering the scene in a small courtyard nearby. Three men lay there. One is missing an eye. On an old carpet near one body, someone has placed a handful of yellow flowers.

A dog paces by a wheelbarrow around the corner, agitated. The wheelbarrow holds the body of another dog. It has been shot, too.

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More flee as Ukraine warns of stepped-up Russian attacks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine on Saturday, a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station where thousands clamored to leave before an expected Russian onslaught.

In the wake of the attack in Kramatorsk, several European leaders made efforts to show solidarity with Ukraine, with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visiting Kyiv — the capital city that Russia failed to capture and where troops retreated days ago. Johnson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a surprise visit in which he pledged new military assistance, including 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems.

Zelenskyy noted the increased support in an Associated Press interview, but expressed frustration when asked if weapons and other equipment Ukraine has received from the West is sufficient to shift the war’s outcome.

“Not yet,” he said, switching to English for emphasis. “Of course it’s not enough.”

Zelenskyy later thanked Johnson and Nehammer during his nightly video address to the nation. He also thanked the European Commission president and the Canadian prime minister for a global fundraising event that raised more than 10 billion euros ($11 billion) for Ukrainians who have had to flee their homes. He added that democratic countries are united in working to stop the war. “Because Russian aggression was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone. … The entire European project is a target for Russia.”

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Pakistan’s embattled PM ousted in no-confidence vote

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s political opposition ousted the country’s embattled prime minister in a no-confidence vote early Sunday, which they won after several of Imran Khan’s allies and a key coalition party deserted him.

The combined opposition that spans the political spectrum from the left to the radically religious will form the new government, with the head of one of the largest parties, the Pakistani Muslim League, taking over as prime minister.

Anticipating his loss, Khan, who charged the opposition colluded with the United States to unseat him, has called on his supporters to stage rallies nationwide on Sunday. Khan’s options are limited and should he see a big turnout in his support, he may try to keep the momentum of street protests as a way to pressure Parliament to hold early elections.

Khan earlier had tried to sidestep the vote by dissolving Parliament and calling early elections but a Supreme Court ruling ordered the vote to go ahead.

The vote comes amid cooling relations between Khan and a powerful military who many of his political opponents allege helped him come to power in general elections in 2018. The military has directly ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 75 years and wields considerable power over civilian governments, who worry a disgruntled army could unseat them.

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Jackson, COVID and a retirement show Congress’ partisan path

WASHINGTON (AP) — A milestone Supreme Court confirmation that endured a flawed process. The collapse of a bipartisan compromise for more pandemic funds. The departure of a stalwart of the dwindling band of moderate House Republicans.

Party-line fights on Capitol Hill are as old as the republic, and they routinely escalate as elections approach. Yet three events from a notable week illustrate how Congress’ near- and long-term paths point toward intensifying partisanship.

THE SENATE’S SUPREME COURT BATTLE

Democrats rejoiced Thursday when the Senate by 53-47 confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black female justice. They crowed about a bipartisan stamp of approval from the trio of Republicans who supported it: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah.

Yet by historical standards, the three opposition party votes were paltry and underscored the recent trend of Supreme Court confirmations becoming loyalty tests on party ideology. That’s a departure from a decades-long norm when senators might dislike a nominee’s judicial philosophy but defer to a president’s pick, barring a disqualifying revelation.

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Shanghai hospital pays the price for China’s COVID response

BEIJING (AP) — A series of deaths at a hospital for elderly patients in Shanghai is underscoring the dangerous consequences of China’s stubborn pursuit of a zero-COVID approach amid an escalating outbreak in the city of 26 million people.

Multiple patients have died at the Shanghai Donghai Elderly Care hospital, relatives of patients told The Associated Press. They say their loved ones weren’t properly cared for after caretakers who came into contact with the virus were taken away to be quarantined, in adherence to the strict pandemic regulations, depleting the hospital of staff.

Family members have taken to social media to plea for help and answers and are demanding to see surveillance video from inside the facility after getting little to no information from the hospital.

The conditions and deaths at the hospital are a sharp rebuke of China’s strategy of sticking to a zero-COVID policy as it deals with the outbreak in Shanghai in which most of the infected people don’t have symptoms. With a focus on forcing positive cases and close contacts into designated collective quarantine facilities, the costs of zero-COVID may be outweighing the risk of getting sick.

On Saturday, Shanghai Vice Mayor Zong Ming said the lockdown could soon be lifted or eased in communities that report no positive cases within 14 days, after another round of citywide COVID-19 testing.

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In France, a nail-biting election as Macron’s rival surges

POISSY, France (AP) — From the market stall outside Paris that she’s run for 40 years, Yvette Robert can see first-hand how soaring prices are weighing on France’s presidential election and turning the first round of voting on Sunday into a nail-biter for incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.

Shoppers, increasingly worried about how to make ends meet, are buying ever-smaller quantities of Robert’s neatly stacked fruits and vegetables, she says. And some of her clients no longer come at all to the market for its baguettes, cheeses and other tasty offerings. Robert suspects that with fuel prices so high, some can no longer afford to take their vehicles to shop.

“People are scared — with everything that’s going up, with prices for fuel going up,” she said Friday as campaigning concluded for act one of the two-part French election drama, held against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages. The pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices that are hitting low-income households particularly hard subsequently roared back as dominant election themes. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.

Macron, now 44, trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker who, unlike Le Pen, is a fervent proponent of European collaboration was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.

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S&P downgrade indicates Russia headed for historic default

BOSTON (AP) — The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century.

S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within the 30-day grace period allowed.

S&P said in a statement that its decision was based partly on its opinion that sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine “are likely to be further increased in the coming weeks, hampering Russia’s willingness and technical abilities to honor the terms and conditions of its obligations to foreign debtholders.”

An S&P spokesperson said a selective default rating is when a lender defaults on a specific payment but makes others on time.

While Russia has signaled that it remains willing to pay its debts, the Kremlin also has warned that it would do so in rubles if its overseas accounts in foreign currencies remain frozen.

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Steelers QB Dwayne Haskins killed in auto accident

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Dwayne Haskins was working on a second chapter for his young NFL career. The 24-year-old quarterback was spending time with some teammates with the Pittsburgh Steelers, getting ready to compete for a starting job.

That’s when his life was cut short.

Haskins was killed early Saturday morning when he was hit by a dump truck while he was walking on a South Florida highway. Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Lt. Indiana Miranda said Haskins was pronounced dead at the scene.

“He was attempting to cross the westbound lanes of Interstate 595 when there was oncoming traffic,” Miranda said in an emailed statement.

Miranda didn’t say why Haskins was on the highway at the time. The accident caused the highway to be shut down for several hours, and Miranda said it’s “an open traffic homicide investigation.”

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Scheffler survives wild, windy cold day to lead Masters by 3

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The harsh cold and relentless wind. The lead late Saturday afternoon at the Masters. All the elements were there for Scottie Scheffler to start feeling the pressure of trying to win his first major at Augusta National.

Scheffler never looked worried until the final hole, and then only briefly.

His lead at four shots, his confidence level high, Scheffler’s wild drive to the left of the 18th fairway into the trees didn’t bother him nearly as much as the sight of the spotter poking around in the leaves in a desperate search for the golf ball.

“We saw the guy with the flag that always finds the balls kind of panicking,” Scheffler said. “I was like, ‘Oh, crap. Wonder what’s going on there?’ Fortunately, they found the ball. And then all I was trying to do was figure out how I was going to get it on the green.”

Like everything else this week, Scheffler figured it out.