Russia-Ukraine updates: US sanctions Russian military shipbuilder, diamond miner

Radiation levels remain stable in Russia despite fires in the occupied Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Russian public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said Monday.

Rospotrebnadzor said it was continuing to monitor the situation.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is a 1,000-square-mile restricted area of deserted, contaminated land around the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Russian forces seized the defunct plant and surrounding exclusion zone just hours after launching an invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management has warned that the radiation hazard is growing due to the blazes in the area, which it said have the potential to spread. The fires observed at more than 30 spots in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone over the past two weeks have exceeded 8,700 hectares in total, according to the agency.

However, Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on Monday that the situation was currently "more or less stable."

Russia is concerned by U.S. President Joe Biden's recent remark seemingly regarding the need for a change of administration in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

In an address on Saturday from Poland's capital, Warsaw, Biden made a comment that appeared to be directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.

"For god's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said.

After the speech, the White House released a statement clarifying that Biden wasn't calling for a regime change.

"The President's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change," a White House official said.

When asked by reporters on Monday about Biden's remark, Peskov replied: "Indeed, this statement makes us worry."

"We will continue to closely monitor statements made by the U.S. president," he added. "We are thoroughly recording them and will be continuing to do so."

The cost of direct damage to Ukraine's infrastructure amid Russia's ongoing invasion has already reached almost an estimated $63 billion, according to an analysis by the Kyiv School of Economics.

As of March 24, at least 4,431 residential buildings, 92 factories and warehouses, 378 institutions of secondary and higher education, 138 health care institutions, 12 airports, seven thermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants have been damaged, destroyed or seized in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's overall economic losses due to the war range from $543 billion to $600 billion, the Kyiv School of Economics said.

The Russian Ministry of Justice on Monday added German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) to a list of media organizations it has labeled as "foreign agents."

The justice ministry said in a statement that it made the decision "based on the documents received from the authorized state authorities," without providing further details. The designation requires media outlets to publish a disclaimer on all its publications.

"This latest, arbitrary decision by the Russian authorities was unfortunately to be expected," DW director Peter Limbourg said in a statement. "It is a further attack on press freedom and a fresh attempt to cut the Russian population off from free, independent media."

"It started with the forced closure of our studio in Moscow at the beginning of February, then our website in all languages was blocked in Russia. There then followed the gradual restriction of social media services and now DW has been labeled a 'foreign agent,'" he added. "This will not stop us from continuing to provide comprehensive and independent coverage of Russia and the region from our new studio in Latvia and from Germany. We will have to put a lot more effort into censorship circumvention tools in the future. This includes VPN clients like Psiphon or the Tor browser, which we already use."