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

The U.S. government has intelligence that shows some Russian senior officials "likely disagreed" with Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, a U.S. official told ABC News.

"Their disillusionment is probably amplified by the Russian military's underperformance, which includes many friendly fire casualties, including shoot-downs of Russian aircraft by Russian air defense, wide-scale missile launch failures, and stiffer than expected resistance from the Ukrainian people," the official said.

The information is based on a declassified assessment from earlier this month, a source familiar with the intelligence told ABC News.

White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield told reporters this intelligence speaks to a “larger sense that this has been a failure for Russia."

"I think we've seen reporting that morale amongst the Russian military is low and I think that would not come as a surprise to anyone who's seen what the Russian military is, is enduring here," Bedingfield said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon.

-ABC News' Mary Bruce and Justin Gomez

About 631 residents of the bombed-out city of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine were able to evacuate on Thursday, according to a Ukrainian official.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the residents fled the city in private vehicles after 45 buses reserved to drive them out failed to make it into the city. Vereshchuk said another 600 civilians still in Mariupol plan to try to evacuate again on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday in an address to lawmakers of Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium that more than 90% of all buildings in Mariupol have been completely destroyed by Russian strikes.

"Thousands of peaceful Mariupol residents died, people are buried just in the city, in the courtyards of high-rise buildings, or rather, what is left of the high-rise buildings," Zelenskyy said.

-ABC News' Christine Theodorou

About 500 Ukrainian refugees were camped out Thursday outside the port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico, waiting to get into the United States after taking a circuitous route out of their war-torn country more than 10,000 miles away.

The number of Ukrainian refugees at the U.S. southern border entry point grew overnight from about 200 on Wednesday.

Immigration attorneys and humanitarian groups told ABC News that more and more Ukrainians have been showing up at the U.S. border this week, many of them getting there by flying to Mexico City, Mexico, and either taking a connecting flight to Tijuana or driving there.

Among the campers are also many Russians who oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, some telling ABC News they believe they would have been killed had they stayed in their homeland.

Ukrainians have asked for asylum in the United States and in many cases, have been allowed into the country under an exemption to Title 42, the federal policy that halted asylum claims during the pandemic. Some of the refugees allowed in the United States are being housed in San Diego, while others have spread out across the country.

Humanitarian groups are questioning the handling of the Ukrainians and Russians at the border versus all the other migrant groups fleeing horrific situations, including those coming from Haiti and Central America.

-ABC News' Will Carr

Russian troops are giving back control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to Ukraine, according to a letter from Russia's nuclear power company, Rosatom.

The site had been under the control of Russian forces since the invasion began on Feb. 24.

The letter is dated March 31 and was signed by Ukraine's nuclear regulator, Energoatom.

-ABC News' Fidel Pavlenko