World

(NEW YORK) — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have rippling effects in populations far outside the two countries in conflict — especially in the global food supply, experts are warning.

The war in Ukraine could plunge millions into malnutrition if governments, donors and funders do not act now to prevent a shortage of the nutritional staples typically exported out of the region, according to an op-ed published Thursday in Nature.

Women and children in low- and middle-income countries are particularly vulnerable, according to the op-ed, which was authored by 10 nutrition and food supply experts from all over the world. The nutritional needs of children are high, relative to their body size, and women’s nutritional needs are especially high when pregnant and breastfeeding.

“Impacts of malnutrition might be less immediately visible than those of hunger. But left untreated, they can be multi-generational and irreversible,” the authors wrote.

The biggest concern is the long-term implications malnutrition will have on children, Saskia Osendarp, executive director of the Micronutrient Forum and co-coordinator of Standing Together for Nutrition, a consortium of nutrition, economics, food and health system experts, told ABC News. This could include cognitive development, school performance, and, later in life, social capital and the increased risk of chronic diseases, she said.

Nutrient deficiencies, particularly in the first 1,000 days in a child’s life — beginning from conception and lasting until the child’s second birthday — can have “irreversible, lifelong consequences,” Osendarp said.

Existing gender inequality and power imbalances — which are often exacerbated during crises — result in women having less agency to direct resources toward feeding themselves and their children, the experts said. Increased prices, the reduced availability of food or difficulties accessing it will directly affect the quality of people’s diets, and increased prices and trade problems will reduce the reach of humanitarian services that prevent and treat acute malnutrition, the experts said.

When food prices increase, households switch to cheaper staple foods and processed foods instead of buying more nutritious — and generally more expensive– foods, such as fruits, vegetables, dairy meat, decreasing the quality of their diets, Osendarp, one of the authors of the op-ed, said.

“So they may be able to cope and to to keep their caloric intakes at a level to some point, but then they will suffer from nutrient deficiencies,” she said.

In addition, budgets currently devoted to improving people’s nutritional status could be redirected to other, more urgent needs as a result of the war, according to the op-ed.

The World Food Programme estimated that in 2022, 323 million people would be in urgent need of assistance when it comes to obtaining sufficient food and nutrients.

Ukraine is considered on one of the breadbaskets of the world and is a top 10 global exporter of a number of key agricultural products, including wheat, barley, corn, sunflower oil, soybeans and poultry. An estimated 70% of the country is used for farmland — land that is currently being devastated by assaults by Russian forces.

Countries in Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable, while Somalia and Benin have a total dependence on imports of mostly Russian and Ukrainian wheat, according to a rapid assessment by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Several countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for more than half their wheat imports.

The number of malnourished people, especially women and children, is expected to increase as a result of record-high price hikes and disruptions in the trade of food, fertilizer and fuel, according to the paper.

Cities such as Odessa and Mariupol, where about 70% of Ukraine’s exports are moved from, have now been blocked due to incessant Russian shelling, according to USAID.

This is not an isolated crisis, Osendarp said. Two years into the pandemic, governments are still recovering from the global economic stressors of the virus as well as climate change-related events, such as severe droughts in the Horn of Africa, as well as increased conflict in other war-torn regions, such as Ethiopia and in Yemen, she said.

The authors called for the cessation of trade restrictions that affect access to nutrition and for the use of social protection measures, such as food or cash transfers, specifically tailored to address malnutrition. Protection of financial commitments already made for nutrition, both within nations and globally, and increased investment in humanitarian resources beyond the promises already made will also be necessary, they said.

Without an immediate humanitarian response, it is almost guaranteed that the numbers of malnourished children and mothers will increase and will affect generations to come, Osendarp said.

“It will affect millions and millions of mothers and children, and we can just simply not afford to lose that generation,” she said.

ABC News’ Guy Davies and Dragana Jovanovic contributed to this report.

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(DURBAN, South Africa) — Communities in Durban, South Africa, are still sifting through debris, trying to salvage the little they can save after devastating floods killed almost 450 people and destroyed millions of dollars in infrastructure.

The weekend weather forecast is predicting more rain in Durban, adding a sense of urgency to the cleanup operations.

ABC News visited several sites where landslides swept through homes, taking everything in its path.

Torrential rains last week — the worst in recorded history — triggered record floods and mudslides, killing 448 people and injuring hundreds more.

At least 40,00 people have been left homeless after the KwaZulu-Natal province received the equivalent of four months of rain in 24 hours, prompting the government to put the country back into a national state of disaster — only a few weeks after suspending a two year COVID-19 related state of national disaster.

“These are the worst floods we’ve ever seen. In over 24 hours, there was 300 to 400 mm of rain,” Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said at a news conference on Tuesday, crediting climate change as a catalyst for the extreme weather. At the high end of the range, that would equal about 15 inches of rainfall.

While the government has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, South Africans have also opened their hearts, with donations and help streaming in from across the country.

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(SAINT-DENIS, France) — French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, his far-right rival in the presidential elections, faced off in a highly anticipated televised debate Wednesday, clashing on topics from the cost of living to Le Pen’s softer stance on Russia.

Macron and Le Pen took the top two spots in the preliminary round of voting earlier this month, just as they did in 2017. The debate of that year proved disastrous for Le Pen, who struggled under questioning. That year Macron ultimately won a sweeping victory in 2017, winning 66% of the vote.

During the two-and-a-half hour long debate on Wednesday, Le Pen’s performance under pressure was much improved. Even so, Le Pen faced a string of attacks from Macron regarding her stance on Russia. Macron criticized Le Pen’s stance on the Russian annexation of Crimea, which she previously spoke out in favor of and which led her to being banned from entering Ukraine in 2017.

“Why did you do it?” he said. “And I say this with great gravity tonight. Because for our country, this is bad news, because you depend on the Russian power and you depend on Mr. Putin.”

Macron described Russia as Le Pen’s “banker” because of a loan her party received in 2014 from a Czech-Russian bank. Le Pen said Macron’s allegations were false.

Le Pen has sought to soften her National Rally party’s image and ease voters’ concerns about a far-right president. Macron, meanwhile, has been a notably absent figure on the campaign trail.

Le Pen described herself as the “common sense” candidate during Wednesday night’s debate.

“I truly want to make purchasing power the priority of my next five-year term, if the French have confidence in me,” she said. Macron, known for his strong grasp of policy detail, but also a tendency to patronize, attempted to dismantle Le Pen’s claims that if elected she would immediately develop France’s nuclear power production and boost wages by 10%.

The pair also clashed on France’s relationship with the EU and Le Pen’s hard-line stance on immigration, with Macron saying she would ban the right of Muslim women to wear headscarfs in public.

Overall, however, there appeared to be no losers in Wednesday night’s debate, with neither side landing a knockout blow ahead of the final round of voting this weekend.

Polling in France has shown an upswing in Le Pen’s popularity and decline in Macron’s, though the French president — who has been accused of arrogance by pundits and voters in the past — retains a narrow lead in most reported opinion polls.

The war in Ukraine has dominated the headlines this campaign cycle, and Le Pen has faced criticism in France for a softer approach to Russia and past support for President Vladimir Putin. While she has said she is in favor of the broad package of sanctions announced by the French government, she has publicly opposed restrictions on oil and gas imports from Russia, citing concerns about the rising cost of living in France that has become a critical issue in the campaign.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with French television channel BFMTV ahead of the debate on Wednesday, went as far as to urge Le Pen to reconsider her position on Russia.

“If the candidate were to understand that she was wrong, our relationship could change,” Zelenskyy said. While ensuring not “to have the right to influence” the French electoral campaign, Zelenskyy recognized that “obviously, I have relations with Emmanuel Macron and I would not want to lose them.”

Ultimately the final outcome of the election may well be decided by matters closer to home, however, with Macron’s team touting his experience in power at a time of stability, while Le Pen’s campaign has targeted the incumbent for, they say, being out of touch with ordinary people.

The far-right candidate focused her campaign on purchasing power, a topic expected to be one of the main factors in deciding the outcome of the election. Le Pen’s project, however, still centers on the fight against immigration. The National Rally candidate has presented several flagship proposals, including a bill to drastically limit immigration, the abolition of the right of soil, and restricting the routes for people to claim asylum in France.

“Fear is the only argument that the current president has to try and stay in power at all cost,” Le Pen said in a clip posted by her campaign Tuesday.

Much will depend on which candidate the supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon turn to in the final round. Mélenchon secured 22% of the first round of voting in third place, and while he publicly told his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, her populist vision may prove more enticing to a base dissatisfied with Macron, a centrist with a background in the financial sector.

The debate was the first and only time voters will have a chance to see the candidates face off ahead of the final round of voting on April 24.

ABC News’ Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.

Russian forces have since retreated from northern Ukraine, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. The United States and many European countries accused Russia of committing war crimes after graphic images emerged of dead civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv. The Russian military has now launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, as it attempts to capture the strategic port city of Mariupol and secure a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Apr 21, 6:44 am
Putin claims ‘success’ in Mariupol siege

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Thursday that his siege of Mariupol had been a success, congratulating his defense minister and thanking Russian troops.

“The completion of the combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” Putin said. “I congratulate you. Convey words of gratitude to the troops.”

Putin’s claim of victory came as he ordered troops to abandon their assault on the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant, the last holdout for Ukrainian troops in the port city.

A Ukrainian commander of the regiment at the site said Ukrainian troops there are ready to surrender, if their safety can be guaranteed by a third party and they are allowed to take the bodies of their dead with them.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office called for negotiations inside Mariupol to get anyone left in the factory out of the area alive.

Apr 21, 5:13 am
Putin cancels Mariupol plant attack, orders site blocked off

Russian President Vladimir Putin canceled his military’s attack on a Mariupol steel plant, one of the last areas in the port city held by Ukrainian forces, ordering his troops to instead seal all exit routes from the sprawling plant.

“I consider the proposed assault on the industrial zone impractical,” Putin told Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, during a meeting televised on Thursday by Russian state media, according to a translation of the Kremlin’s official transcript.

The Mariupol city council claimed Tuesday that there are at least 1,000 civilians, mostly women with children and the elderly, seeking shelter in the Azovstal Steel and Iron Works plant. It was unclear how many Ukrainian troops were defending the site.

Putin in the televised meeting ordered his troops to “block” the industrial zone. He repeated the claim that Moscow would let troops leave unharmed if they lay down their weapons and surrender.

“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground on these industrial facilities,” Putin said. “Block this industrial area so that the fly does not fly.”

Apr 20, 4:37 pm
Delegations walk out on Russian official

During a G20 meeting of economic and finance ministers on Wednesday, delegations from several countries, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, walked out of the room while Russia’s delegate began his remarks, the White House confirmed.

Canada’s Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, tweeted a photo of several officials, including herself, Yellen, U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, outside of the meeting room, standing in solidarity with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko.

“It’s an indication of the fact that President Putin and Russia has become a pariah on the global stage,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

The Treasury also unveiled new sanctions Wednesday against dozens of Russian and Belarusian people and institutions, including a key commercial bank and a virtual currency mining company.

“This is part of our stepped-up effort to crack down on those attempting to evade our unprecedented sanctions,” Psaki said.

The State Department has also imposed visa restrictions on over 600 Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainian separatists backed by the Kremlin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Apr 20, 3:59 pm
UN chief seeks peace talks with Putin, Zelenskyy

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres wrote separate letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday asking to meet “to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine,” a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the head of the president’s office, tweeted that Ukraine is ready to hold a special round of negotiations in Mariupol.

Apr 20, 3:25 pm
Thousands more Russians enter Donbas: US official

Four more Russian battalions, each made up of roughly 800 to 1,000 troops, have crossed into Ukraine over the last 24 hours, a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday. Three of those battalions — or up to 3,000 troops — moved to the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the official said.

Four flights carrying military aid, including artillery, from the Biden administration’s most recent $800 million package arrived in Ukraine over the last 24 hours, the official said. More supplies are set to arrive over the next day, the official said.

When ABC News asked why the U.S. decided to send artillery, the official responded: “We’re mindful of the importance of artillery in the fight that they’re in right now and in the fighting in the days to come because of the terrain, and because of what we think they’re going to be up against with Russian forces.”

Another reason was “the fact that it wouldn’t require an onerous amount of training for the Ukrainians to know how to use them” and the ability to ship them quickly, according to the official.

Apr 20, 2:12 pm
Humanitarian corridor from Mariupol didn’t work as planned Wednesday

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Wednesday’s humanitarian corridor from Mariupol didn’t work as planned but evacuation efforts will continue Thursday morning.

“Due to the lack of control over their own military on the ground, the occupiers were unable to ensure a proper ceasefire,” Vereshchuk said in a statement.

There also wasn’t “timely transportation of people to the point where dozens of our buses and ambulances were waiting,” Vereshchuk said.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.

Russian forces have since retreated from northern Ukraine, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. The United States and many European countries accused Russia of committing war crimes after graphic images emerged of dead civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv. The Russian military has now launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, as it attempts to capture the strategic port city of Mariupol and secure a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Apr 21, 5:13 am
Putin cancels Mariupol plant attack, orders site blocked off

Russian President Vladimir Putin canceled his military’s attack on a Mariupol steel plant, one of the last areas in the port city held by Ukrainian forces, ordering his troops to instead seal all exit routes from the sprawling plant.

“I consider the proposed assault on the industrial zone impractical,” Putin told Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, during a meeting televised on Thursday by Russian state media, according to a translation of the Kremlin’s official transcript.

The Mariupol city council claimed Tuesday that there are at least 1,000 civilians, mostly women with children and the elderly, seeking shelter in the Azovstal Steel and Iron Works plant. It was unclear how many Ukrainian troops were defending the site.

Putin in the televised meeting ordered his troops to “block” the industrial zone. He repeated the claim that Moscow would let troops leave unharmed if they lay down their weapons and surrender.

“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground on these industrial facilities,” Putin said. “Block this industrial area so that the fly does not fly.”

Apr 20, 4:37 pm
Delegations walk out on Russian official

During a G20 meeting of economic and finance ministers on Wednesday, delegations from several countries, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, walked out of the room while Russia’s delegate began his remarks, the White House confirmed.

Canada’s Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, tweeted a photo of several officials, including herself, Yellen, U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, outside of the meeting room, standing in solidarity with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko.

“It’s an indication of the fact that President Putin and Russia has become a pariah on the global stage,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

The Treasury also unveiled new sanctions Wednesday against dozens of Russian and Belarusian people and institutions, including a key commercial bank and a virtual currency mining company.

“This is part of our stepped-up effort to crack down on those attempting to evade our unprecedented sanctions,” Psaki said.

The State Department has also imposed visa restrictions on over 600 Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainian separatists backed by the Kremlin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Apr 20, 3:59 pm
UN chief seeks peace talks with Putin, Zelenskyy

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres wrote separate letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday asking to meet “to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine,” a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the head of the president’s office, tweeted that Ukraine is ready to hold a special round of negotiations in Mariupol.

Apr 20, 3:25 pm
Thousands more Russians enter Donbas: US official

Four more Russian battalions, each made up of roughly 800 to 1,000 troops, have crossed into Ukraine over the last 24 hours, a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday. Three of those battalions — or up to 3,000 troops — moved to the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the official said.

Four flights carrying military aid, including artillery, from the Biden administration’s most recent $800 million package arrived in Ukraine over the last 24 hours, the official said. More supplies are set to arrive over the next day, the official said.

When ABC News asked why the U.S. decided to send artillery, the official responded: “We’re mindful of the importance of artillery in the fight that they’re in right now and in the fighting in the days to come because of the terrain, and because of what we think they’re going to be up against with Russian forces.”

Another reason was “the fact that it wouldn’t require an onerous amount of training for the Ukrainians to know how to use them” and the ability to ship them quickly, according to the official.

Apr 20, 2:12 pm
Humanitarian corridor from Mariupol didn’t work as planned Wednesday

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Wednesday’s humanitarian corridor from Mariupol didn’t work as planned but evacuation efforts will continue Thursday morning.

“Due to the lack of control over their own military on the ground, the occupiers were unable to ensure a proper ceasefire,” Vereshchuk said in a statement.

There also wasn’t “timely transportation of people to the point where dozens of our buses and ambulances were waiting,” Vereshchuk said.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

It’s been a year since Eric Church dropped Heart & Soul, the massive, chart-topping triple album that produced hit singles like “Hell of a View.”

To celebrate, Eric just shared a new acoustic version of another single off the project, “Heart on Fire.” The original version of the song was the first track on the first disc of the three-disc album. It was also the first song Eric wrote for Heart & Soul.

Originally released as a high-octane rock song with a music video that tips its hat to big moments from Eric’s career to date, the new version of “Heart on Fire” is much simpler. Sitting alone on a stool in front of a microphone, Eric sings a stripped-down version of the song, accompanying himself only on acoustic guitar.

The acoustic version of the song premiered on Wednesday — exactly one year after the middle disc, &, dropped on April 20, 2021.

The one-year anniversary of Heart happened on April 16, and the one-year-anniversary of Soul will follow on April 23.

Eric is currently on tour, and he’s also planning a couple of stand-alone stadium dates this summer: One in Milwaukee over Memorial Day weekend, and another in June, featuring Morgan Wallen and Ernest as opening acts.

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(NEW YORK) — A preliminary report released Wednesday found no abnormalities before last month’s China Eastern Airlines plane crash that killed all 132 people on board, the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration said.

“There was no abnormality in the radio communication and control command between the crew and the air traffic control department before deviating from the cruise altitude,” the report said, before the Boeing 737-800 suddenly nosedived into the ground from 30,000 feet in the air.

At a briefing on the report Wednesday, Chinese aviation officials said that their investigation has not found a cause and the crash continues to be a mystery to investigators who will continue an in-depth investigation with the help of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other international groups.

The report said that cabin crew and other maintenance personnel had met all requirements and the plane had certified airworthy and was up to date on inspections.

It also detailed that there was no dangerous weather forecast in the area of the crash and there were no declared dangerous goods on the aircraft.

The “black boxes” — the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — that can tell exactly what was going on aboard the aircraft were badly damaged in the crash, authorities said, and investigators are still trying to recover data from them to determine what happened.

According to the report, the plane took off at 1:16 p.m. local time and cruised at an altitude of nearly 29,000 feet until around 2:20 p.m. when regional radar found that the aircraft began to “deviate” from that altitude. Radar then recorded the aircraft at around 11,000 feet traveling at 117 degrees.

Local air traffic control called the crew, but did not receive a reply. Shortly after, the radar signal of the plane disappeared.

The crash site in a mountainous area in Teng County, Wuzhou, Guangxi left a crater nearly 500 square feet large and 10 feet deep. Wreckage from the plane has been searched and collected by investigators.

ABC News’ Gio Benitez and Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Russia’s military issued another warning to Ukrainian forces in a Mariupol steel plant on Wednesday, telling them to lay down their arms and leave, according to Russian state media.

Russia claimed a ceasefire would begin at the Azovstal steel plant at 2 p.m. Moscow time to allow Ukrainian fighters to safely leave. Ukrainian forces rejected a similar offer on Tuesday.

The Mariupol city council claimed Tuesday that there are at least 1,000 civilians seeking shelter in the plant, mostly women with children and the elderly. Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed the number of Ukrainian marines and Azov fighters at site.

A Russian official, Dmitry Polyansky, accused Ukrainian troops of using civilians at the plant as human shields.

“One month into the siege of Azovstal plant, those same radicals and neo-Nazis suddenly declared that allegedly there had been civilians inside the plant all that time, even though until yesterday, they had never uttered a word about it,” Polyansky told the U.N. Security Council during a session on Ukraine on Tuesday.

In a video posted online, Serhiy Voyna, the commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade and commander for Ukraine’s marines in Mariupol, made an appeal to world leaders, asking for an extraction from the plant to the territory of a third-party state.

“This could be the last appeal of our lives. We are probably facing our last days, if not hours. The enemy is outnumbering us 10 to 1. They have advantage in the air, in artillery, in their forces on land, in equipment and in tanks,” Voyna said.

Voyna spoke to the Washington Post via satellite phone on Tuesday, and said his forces would not make the same mistake made by others and trust Russian guarantees of safe passage, only to see them open fire.

Voyna said more than 500 Mariupol military battalion soldiers are wounded.

“We are only defending one object, the Azovstal plant where, in addition to military personnel, there are also civilians who have fallen victim to this war. We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of ‘extraction’ and take us to the territory of a third-party state,” Voyna said.

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(SAINT-DENIS, France) — French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, his far-right rival in the presidential elections, will face off in the highly anticipated televised debate Wednesday, which could prove crucial in swaying voters ahead of the final round of voting this weekend.

Macron and Le Pen took the top two spots in the preliminary round of voting earlier this month, just as they did in 2017. The debate of that year proved disastrous for Le Pen, who struggled under questioning. Macron ultimately won a sweeping victory in 2017, winning 66% of the vote.

This campaign cycle has been notably different, however. The war in Ukraine has dominated the headlines, Le Pen has sought to soften her National Rally party’s image and ease voters’ concerns about a far-right president, while Macron has been a notably absent figure on the campaign trail.

Polling in France has shown an upswing in Le Pen’s popularity and decline in Macron’s, though the French president retains a narrow lead in most reported opinion polls.

Le Pen has faced criticism in France for a softer approach to Russia and past support for President Vladimir Putin. While she has said she is in favor of the broad package of sanctions announced by the French government, she has publicly opposed restrictions on oil and gas imports from Russia, citing concerns about the rising cost of living in France that has become a critical issue in the campaign.

Le Pen was previously banned from entering Ukraine in 2017, when she spoke out in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

While Le Pen has pledged if elected to take France out of NATO’s integrated command, she said she would not intend to leave the organization altogether, nor renounce Article 5, which refers to the “mutual protection between members of the Atlantic Alliance.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with French television channel BFMTV aired Wednesday, went as far as to urge Le Pen to reconsider her position on Russia.

“If the candidate were to understand that she was wrong, our relationship could change,” Zelenskyy said. While ensuring not “to have the right to influence” the French electoral campaign, Zelenskyy recognized that “obviously, I have relations with Emmanuel Macron and I would not want to lose them.”

The final outcome of the election may well be decided by matters closer to home, however, with Macron’s team touting his experience in power at a time of stability, while Le Pen’s campaign has targeted the incumbent for, they say, being out of touch with ordinary people.

The far-right candidate focused her campaign on purchasing power, a topic expected to be one of the main factors in deciding the outcome of the election. Le Pen’s project, however, still centers on the fight against immigration. The National Rally candidate has presented several flagship proposals, including a bill to drastically limit immigration, the abolition of the right of soil, and restricting the routes for people to claim asylum in France.

“Fear is the only argument that the current president has to try and stay in power at all cost,” Le Pen said in a new clip posted by her campaign Tuesday.

Much will depend on which candidate the supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon turn to in the final round. Mélenchon secured 22% of the first round of voting in third place, and while he publicly told his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, her populist vision may prove more enticing to a base dissatisfied with Macron, a centrist with a background in the financial sector.

The debate, airing at 8 p.m. local time (3 p.m. EST), is the first and only time voters will have a chance to see the candidates face off.

ABC News’ Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Prince Harry is a self-described “proud papa” speaking out about a new milestone hit by Lilibet, the 10-month-old daughter he shares with his wife, Duchess Meghan.

While attending the Invictus Games in the Netherlands, Harry revealed that Lili, as she is known, is learning how to walk.

“Her current priorities are trying to keep up with her brother; she took her first step just a few days ago!” Prince Harry, 37, told People magazine. “Proud papa, here.”

Lili’s brother is Archie, who will turn 3 next month.

While Lili and Archie did not attend this year’s Invictus Games with their parents, Harry said he “can’t wait” for them to attend in the years ahead. The Invictus Games are a Paralympic-style competition for wounded service members that Harry, a military veteran, launched eight years ago.

“I showed Archie a video of wheelchair basketball and rugby from the Invictus Games in Sydney, and he absolutely loved it,” Harry told People.

“I showed him how some were missing legs and explained that some had invisible injuries, too,” he said. “Not because he asked, but because I wanted to tell him. Kids understand so much, and to see it through his eyes was amazing because it’s so unfiltered and honest.”

Harry and Meghan’s attendance at the Invictus Games in the Netherlands marked the couple’s first public appearance together in Europe since they stepped down from their senior royal role two years ago.

Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrived in the Netherlands after making a quick stop in the United Kingdom to visit Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.

The visit was the first time the couple saw the queen together in-person since moving in 2020 to California, where they now live with Archie and Lili, who is named after the queen.

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