The War Room:  Representatives of Ukraine and Russia were meeting again today and The NY Times reports that the two sides were expressing cautious optimism.

  So far, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have gone nowhere and foreign leaders like France’s Emanuel Macron have not softened the determination of Vladimir Putin to take Ukraine for himself. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told “Fox News Sunday” that Russian diplomats have started to show willingness to have “real, serious negotiations” to end the war, in part because of the crushing sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy, but she cautioned that Putin is still intent on fighting the war.

  In the meantime, the brutal Russian assault continues as does stiff Ukrainian resistance. Explosions were heard across the capitol city of Kyiv this morning. Video reveals devastated Ukrainian cities and in one case, a Russian tank shelling an apartment building in Kyiv. Firefighters were rescuing residents.

  China today is denying US reports that Russia has asked for military and economic help in the war. “The U.S. side has been spreading false information against China one after another on the Ukraine issue with sinister intentions,” a Chinese spokesman said.

  At least 35 people were killed and 100 wounded yesterday after the Russians fired a volley of cruise missiles at a western Ukrainian military base only miles from the Polish border. The base has been used for training about 1,000 fighters who came from out of the country to help defend Ukraine.

  Ukrainian officials said that warplanes taking off from western Russia and the Black Sea fired about 30 missiles, 22 of which were knocked down by Ukraine’s air defenses.

  A Russian airstrike also killed nine civilians in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv yesterday, the region’s governor said in a video statement. That would be one of the deadliest attacks on a residential area in that city since the war began. 

  The United Nations said on Sunday that at least 596 civilians have died since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including 43 children, but that appears to be a very conservative count. Authorities in the city of Mariupol alone have reported 2,100 civilian deaths. Among them is a pregnant woman carried from the rubble of a maternity hospital. Her baby died as well.

  Despite the near certainty of arrest some Russians continue to hit the streets in protest, over the weekend in at least 20 cities. An estimated 14,000 Russian citizens have been arrested since the start of the war.

Economic War: Foreign sanctions imposed in response to the war in Ukraine have frozen around $300 billion of the $640 billion Russia had accumulated in its rainy-day fund, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, told state TV yesterday.

  It’s hard to believe anything the Russians say, but any time they admit to bad news for their side there’s a temptation to believe them.

Political War: Ukrainian authorities say the Russians have abducted a second city mayor in what appears to be a campaign to replace democratically-elected officials in occupied territory with pro-Russian toadies. This time it was the mayor of the southern town of Dniprorudne.

  After arresting the mayor of the southern city of Melitopol last week, Russia installed a new “acting mayor” yesterday as it sought to cement its control over one of the few major Ukrainian cities that its forces have seized. The new mayor, Galyna Danylchenko, released a video asking residents of the city of about 150,000, to adjust to “the new reality” and to end their resistance to Russian occupation.

Death on Deadline: Over the weekend the inevitable happened. A journalist covering the war in Ukraine was killed.

  Brent Renaud, 51, a respected award-winning freelancer and documentarian, was shot by Russian soldiers near a checkpoint in Irpin outside Kyiv while riding in a car. His colleague, Juan Arredondo, was wounded.

  Many reporters are right up at the front in the danger zone. Even in the cities under artillery and missile fire, they risk getting killed.

  Often working with his brother, Craig, Renaud had covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Haiti earthquake, and drug violence in Mexico. At the time of his death he was filming the refugee situation in Ukraine.

The Obit Page: Actor William Hurt, who won an Oscar for his performance in 1985’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and was known also for his work in “The Big Chill,”  “Broadcast News,” and “Children of a Lesser God,” has died of prostate cancer at age 71. 

  In one of the steamiest scenes in the history of the movies, Hurt in the 1981 “Body Heat” plays an inept Florida lawyer who throws a chair through a plate glass window to get to the scheming and simmering seductive Kathleen Turner.

The Spin Rack: Police in New York and Washington are hunting a hooded man dressed in black who has been shooting homeless people in the streets of New York and Washington killing, two of them. Security video in New York caught the killer shooting a man in a sleeping bag with a bullet to the head. Another body was found in New York last night. — Saudi Arabia announced that it has executed 81 people in the kingdom’s largest mass execution in years. The official Saudi Press Agency, the Saudi Ministry of Interior said the people had been executed for “multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead.” 

Viral News: Former President Barack Obama has tested positive for Covid-19 after returning from wintering in Hawaii. On his Twitter account he said, “I’ve had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise.” 

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