KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine said it retook a strategically important suburb of Kyiv on Tuesday, as Russian forces squeezed other areas near the capital and pressed their attack on the embattled southern port of Mariupol.

Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and black smoke rose from a spot in the north. Intensified artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several suburban areas of the capital, a crucial target.

Residents sheltered at home or underground under a 35-hour curfew imposed by city authorities that runs to Wednesday morning.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson faced senators’ questions for the first time Tuesday as Democrats push to quickly confirm the only Black female justice in the court’s 233-year history.

Jackson, a federal appeals court judge, sat and silently listened to more than four hours of senators’ opening statements on Monday, the first of four days of Judiciary Committee hearings on her nomination. As senators began 30-minute rounds of grilling on Tuesday, she faced their specific points, including charges by some Republicans that she has been too lenient in sentencing on criminal matters.

Tuesday’s hearing is the first of two days of questioning. On Thursday, the committee will hear from legal experts before an eventual vote to move her nomination to the Senate floor. Barring unexpected developments, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins hope to wrap up Jackson’s confirmation before Easter, though Breyer is not leaving the court until after the current session ends this summer.

After trying for years to match the GOP’s off-the-Hill judicial firepower, Democrats are distancing themselves from a prominent outside group backing Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Senate Republicans want to use Jackson’s confirmation hearing as a forum to slam Demand Justice — a liberal organization that advocates for adding seats to the Supreme Court and pushed for Jackson’s nomination — as a pernicious “dark money” group acting as puppet master to her selection. It’s a playbook Democrats have employed in the past against conservative nominees and the organizations that work to promote them, such as the Federalist Society, but Democrats insist there’s a major difference: they don’t work directly with Demand Justice.

“I honestly don’t know that much about them,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “If you pick the ACLU, or the [Center for American Progress] those are groups that we’ve worked with. They’re not to us what the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are to” Republicans.

The Javelin antitank missiles that figured in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment for deliberately delaying military aid to Ukraine are now wreaking havoc on the Russian invaders.

The lightweight but lethal weapon has, military experts said, helped the underdog Ukrainians inflict major damage on Moscow’s much-vaunted military and stymie their advance.

Not only has the United States-made weapon become a symbol of resistance, it’s been dubbed “Saint Javelin” in a meme circulating on the web created by Canadian marketer Christian Borys, which shows Mary Magdalene, a saint of the Orthodox church, cradling a Javelin in her arms.

President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Katenji Brown Jackson called the high court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade recognizing a constitutional right to abortion “settled law,” noting it has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the court and “relied upon.”

Under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jackson was asked if she agreed with statements that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett made about abortion law precedent during their confirmation hearings.

Kavanaugh, during his hearing, said Roe “is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court” and had been “reaffirmed many times” over the intervening decades, most prominently by the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Feinstein noted.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Tuesday that there is “clear evidence” that the Russian military is conducting war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia is the aggressor here and I think we have seen here at the Pentagon — we’re certainly seeing clear evidence that the Russian military is conducting war crimes,” Kirby told “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday.

“We think it’s important for the investigative process to continue. We’re going to contribute to that. But obviously, relations with Russia are not at a premium nor should they be given the unprovoked and illegal aggression that Russia has put on the people of Ukraine,” he continued.