First lady Jill Biden said Monday that her "heart has ached" seeing videos of innocent victims of the war.

"Sick kids fleeing on makeshift medical trains, the unthinkable bombing of a maternity ward. Parents weeping over their children’s broken bodies in the streets. The senselessness is staggering," she said.

Speaking at the 2022 International Women of Courage Award Ceremony in Washington, Biden continued: "We also know that there are horrors happening around the globe that never make the evening news. There are children’s broken bodies and women who bear the scars of war all around the world."

Her comments came hours after Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry announced that a pregnant woman injured in the Mariupol hospital attack, whose image circulated the world, had died. The expectant mother was photographed while being wheeled on a stretcher from the maternity hospital where she was supposed to give birth. Her unborn baby died, as well, officials said Monday.

Protesters occupied a building reported to belong to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in London on Monday.

Nine people were killed and nine more were wounded in an airstrike on a TV tower outside the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, the regional governor, Vitalii Koval, said Monday. 

Koval announced the death toll in an on-camera briefing and said people were still under the rubble. 

Zelenskyy is expected to outline the urgent needs of his country, particularly air defense support, in his virtual address to the Congress, said Iuliia Mendel, his former press secretary.

Speaking Monday to MSNBC, Mendel said Zelenskyy “will explain the situation on the ground and will explain everything that Ukraine is doing to finish the conflict” in his address, planned for Wednesday.

“I know that Ukraine is very grateful for every type of help that was gotten from the West and from the U.S. and for the $13.6 billion of support that will go both to the Ukrainian army and for humanitarian help to Ukraine," she said. "But definitely, President Zelenskyy is looking for the support to stop this brutal bombing and shelling.”

Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked NATO to "close the skies" over parts of Ukraine — a move U.S. officials and other allies have warned could lead to a direct conflict with Russia. The White House and NATO allies denied the request, despite Zelenskyy's insistence that their refusal would cost innocent people their lives. 

"If it's not possible," Mendel said of a no-fly zone, "probably we are looking forward to seeing the military jets supplied to Ukraine."

"The victims are being counted in thousands already, thousands. They destroy civilian infrastructure, houses, hospitals, kindergartens and just kill ordinary people here," she added. "No time to wait. Time is people's lives."

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Here in the middle of former President Donald Trump’s Midwest base, in a state where a sense of economic malaise lands hard on rural and working-class voters, many Republicans see higher gas prices as a small price to pay to help defend Ukraine.

“I don’t think we’re doing enough,” Mary King, an unemployed caregiver, said of President Joe Biden’s ban on Russian oil last week. She spoke while waiting for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance to hold a campaign event in this industrial city along the Ohio River. 

“Ask the public what they are willing to sacrifice,” King added. “I pray every day to St. Nicholas to save the children in Ukraine who are in danger.”

The sentiment was much the same upstate in Strongsville, a solidly Republican suburb of Cleveland that has one of the largest Ukrainian populations in Ohio. The comments of more than a dozen Ohio Republicans interviewed about the U.S. response to Russia’s war against Ukraine represent a departure from the “America First” mindset that helped Trump easily win the state twice.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned Monday that the U.S. needs to handle the Russian invasion of Ukraine properly to project strength to the rest of the world. 

Speaking at a roundtable discussion on the conflict and potential war crimes at the University of South Carolina School of Law, Graham said Iran is most likely looking at Ukraine "as an opportunity to break out" and said that if the U.S. doesn’t stand with Ukraine, Iran will think America is weak.

"Then you're going to have every Sunni Arab nation in the Mideast want to enrich at the same level," Graham said. "I can't think of a worse outcome for the planet. That is coming. If we get Ukraine wrong, China's licking their chops. This is a dress rehearsal for Taiwan."

Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a dozen ballistic missiles that struck Iraq's Kurdish regional capital, Erbil. The missiles, which targeted the U.S. Consulate’s new building, caused only material damage, and one civilian was injured, the Kurdish interior ministry said.

Graham also said he doesn't support a no-fly zone over Ukraine but that he would if Russia launches a chemical attack.

"That would be a war crime of a monumental proportion," he said. "And all the treaties we've tried to construct around the use of chemical weapons will be considered a joke if he doesn't pay a price. So I would be for a no-fly zone then, just to protect the sanctity of the idea that chemical weapons are need to be banned."

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk pushed back on the Russian Ministry of Defense's claims that its military had allowed humanitarian aid to reach Mariupol, saying that shelling has prevented any aid from being delivered.

The head of Russia's National Defense Control Center, Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, said Monday that "almost all firing points of nationalist formations," referring to the Ukrainian army, had been destroyed in the city's suburbs, allowing corridors to open for aid and evacuees, according to the Russian state-run Interfax news service. 

But Vereshchuk said in an interview Monday that more vehicles are ready to pick up civilians and deliver aid, but Russia was still shelling the approaches to Mariupol, "preventing humanitarian cargo from entering."

"Our column from Berdiansk has not yet reached Mariupol. What the Russian Ministry of Defense writes is not true," she said. "No humanitarian aid got there. The cargo is just leaving and we demand a cease-fire, we demand that our cargo be allowed."

More than 1,700 people were evacuated to safety Monday through humanitarian corridors in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president's office.

Announcing the development on the messaging app Telegram, Tymoshenko added, "We also managed to deliver five buses with humanitarian aid."

With the humanitarian crisis growing by the day in Ukraine, 10 safe routes had been planned for Monday for trapped residents of hard-hit areas, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier that more than 130,000 people had been evacuated in the past six days, including 5,500 people Sunday.

Those escaping faced dire conditions in their besieged cities. In Mariupol, a southeastern port city, residents had been without water, heat, food and other supplies for more than a week.