Ukraine
Putin appears at big rally as troops press attack in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally at a packed Moscow stadium Friday and lavished praise on his troops fighting in Ukraine, three weeks into the invasion that has led to heavier-than-expected Russian losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home.
Meanwhile, the leader of Russia’s delegation in diplomatic talks with Ukraine said the sides have narrowed their differences. The Ukrainian side said its position remained unchanged.
The invasion has touched off a burst of antiwar protests inside Russia, and the Moscow rally was surrounded by suspicions it was a Kremlin-manufactured display of patriotism. Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the eighth anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine. Those reports could not be independently verified.
Elsewhere, Russian troops continued to rain lethal fire on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and pounded an aircraft repair installation on the outskirts of Lviv, close to the Polish border. Ukrainian officials said late Friday that the besieged southern port city of Mariupol lost its access to the Azov Sea, and Russian forces were still trying to storm the city. It was unclear whether they had seized it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces are blockading the largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” with the goal of persuading Ukrainians to cooperate. He said the Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in central and southeastern Ukraine.
“This is a totally deliberate tactic,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation, which was recorded outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office behind him.
In a rare public appearance by Putin since the start of the war, he praised Russian troops: “Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other,” he said. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd.
Moscow police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium. The event included patriotic songs, including a performance of “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”
Seeking to portray the war as just, Putin paraphrased the Bible to say of Russia’s troops: “There is no greater love than giving up one’s soul for one’s friends.”
Taking to the stage where a sign read “For a world without Nazism,” he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a baseless claim that they are “neo-Nazis.” Putin continued to insist his actions were necessary to prevent “genocide” — an idea flatly rejected by leaders around the globe.
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Video feeds of the event cut out at times but showed a loudly cheering crowd that broke into chants of “Russia!”
Putin’s appearance marked a change from his relative isolation of recent weeks, when he has been shown meeting with world leaders and his staff either at extraordinarily long tables or via videoconference.
In the wake of the invasion, the Kremlin has clamped down harder on dissent and the flow of information, arresting thousands of antiwar protesters, banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instituting tough prison sentences for what is deemed to be false reporting on the war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation.”
The OVD-Info rights group that monitors political arrests reported that at least seven independent journalists had been detained ahead of or while covering the anniversary events in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
High above the conflict, three Russian cosmonauts arrived Friday at the International Space Station wearing bright yellow flight suits with blue accents matching the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Video of one of the cosmonauts taken as the capsule prepared to dock with the space station showed him wearing a blue flight suit. It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms were intended to send.
When cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was asked about the yellow suits, he said every crew chooses its own suits, and they had a lot of yellow material they needed to use “so that’s why we had to wear yellow.”
Since the war started, many people have used the Ukrainian flag and its colors to show solidarity with the country.
Read: Russian footholds in Mideast, Africa raise threat to NATO
Back in Moscow, Putin stood on stage in a white turtleneck and a blue down jacket and spoke for about five minutes. Some people, including presenters at the event, wore T-shirts or jackets with a “Z” — a symbol seen on Russian tanks and other military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war.
Putin’s quoting of the Bible and an 18th-century Russian admiral reflected his increasing focus in recent years on history and religion as binding forces in Russia’s post-Soviet society. His branding of his enemies as Nazis evoked what many Russians consider their country’s finest hour, the defense of the motherland from Germany during World War II.
The rally came as Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said that the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status.
“That is the issue where the parties have made their positions maximally close,” Medinsky said in remarks carried by Russian media. He added that the sides are now “halfway” on issues regarding the demilitarization of Ukraine.
Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, characterized the Russian assessment as intended “to provoke tension in the media.” He tweeted: “Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas.”
Zelenskyy again appealed to Putin to hold talks with him directly. “It’s time to meet, time to speak,” he said. “I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow.”
In other developments, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours in a bid by the U.S. to deter Beijing from providing military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion.
Earlier Friday, one person was reported killed in the missile attack near Lviv. Satellite photos showed the strike destroyed a repair hangar and appeared to damage two other buildings. Ukraine said it had shot down two of six missiles in the volley, which came from the Black Sea.
The early morning attack was the closest strike yet to the center of Lviv, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or join the fight. The war has swelled the city’s population by some 200,000.
Zelenskyy boasted that Ukraine’s defenses have proved much stronger than expected, and Russia “didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
But British Chief of Defense Intelligence Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull warned that after failing to take major Ukrainian cities, Russian forces are shifting to a “strategy of attrition” that will entail “reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower,” resulting in higher civilian casualties and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers continued to search for survivors in the ruins of a theater that was being used a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike Wednesday in Mariupol.
Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner, said at least 130 people had survived the theater bombing.
“But according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,” Denisova told Ukrainian television. “We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.”
Satellite images on Friday from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving Mariupol as people tried to evacuate, as well as devastation to homes, apartment buildings and stores.
Early morning barrages also hit a residential building in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people were evacuated from the building. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling.
Ukrainian officials said a fireman was killed when Russian forces shelled an area where firefighters were trying to put out a blaze in the village of Nataevka, in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Two others were killed when strikes hit residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defense of the region around Ukraine’s capital, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city and vowed: “We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet.”
Russian missiles hit near Lviv airport as strikes continue
Russian forces pressed their assault on Ukrainian cities Friday, hitting a building near a western city's airport with missiles, as world leaders pushed for an investigation of the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets, including airstrikes on schools, hospitals and residential areas.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on Telegram that several missiles hit a facility used to repair military aircraft and damaged a bus repair facility, though no casualties were immediately reported. The aircraft repair facility had suspended work ahead of the attack, the mayor said.
The missiles that hit Lviv were launched from the Black Sea, but two of the six that were launched were shot down, Ukrainian air force’s western command said on Facebook.
Not far from the Polish border and well behind the front lines, Lviv and the surrounding area has not been spared Russia's attacks, the worst of which killed nearly three dozen people last weekend at a training facility near the city. Meanwhile, the city's population has swelled by some 200,000 as people from elsewhere in Ukraine have sought shelter there.
Smoke could be seen rising from the western part of the capital Kyiv after an early morning barrage Friday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or what had been damaged.
In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety from the bombardment have been attacked. Rescue workers searched for survivors in the ruins of a theater that served as a shelter when it was blown apart by a Russian airstrike in the besieged southern city of Mariupol. And in Merefa, near the northeast city of Kharkiv, at least 21 people were killed when Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community center, a local official said.
In the northern city of Chernihiv, dozens of bodies were brought to the morgue in just one day.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that American officials were evaluating potential war crimes and that if the intentional targeting of civilians by Russia is confirmed, there will be “massive consequences.”
READ: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
The United Nations political chief, Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, also called for an investigation into civilian casualties, reminding the U.N. Security Council that international humanitarian law bans direct attacks on civilians.
She said many of the daily attacks battering Ukrainian cities “are reportedly indiscriminate" and involve the use of “explosive weapons with a wide impact area.” DiCarlo said the devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv ”raises grave fears about the fate of millions of residents of Kyiv and other cities facing intensifying attacks.”
In Mariupol, hundreds of civilians were said to have taken shelter in a grand, columned theater in the city's center when it was hit Wednesday by a Russian airstrike. More than a day later, there were no reports of deaths and conflicting reports on whether anyone had emerged from the rubble. Communications are disrupted across the city and movement is difficult because of shelling and other fighting.
Satellite imagery on Monday from Maxar Technologies showed huge white letters on the pavement outside the theater spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian — “DETI” — to alert warplanes to the vulnerable people hiding inside.
“We hope and we think that some people who stayed in the shelter under the theater could survive," Petro Andrushchenko, an official with the mayor’s office, told The Associated Press. He said the building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter designed to withstand airstrikes. Other officials said earlier that some people had gotten out.
Video and photos provided by the Ukrainian military showed that the at least three-story building had been reduced to a roofless shell, with some exterior walls collapsed.
Across the city, snow flurries fell around the skeletons of burned, windowless and shrapnel-scarred apartment buildings as smoke rose above the skyline.
“We are trying to survive somehow,” said one Mariupol resident, who gave only her first name, Elena. “My child is hungry. I don’t know what to give him to eat.”
She had been trying to call her mother, who was in a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. “I can’t tell her I am alive, you understand. There is no connection, just nothing," she said.
Cars, some with the “Z” symbol of the Russian invasion force in their windows, drove past stacks of ammunition boxes and artillery shells in a neighborhood controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
Russia's military denied bombing the theater or anyplace else in Mariupol on Wednesday.
In Chernihiv, at least 53 people were brought to morgues over 24 hours, killed amid heavy Russian air attacks and ground fire, the local governor, Viacheslav Chaus, told Ukrainian TV on Thursday.
Ukraine's emergency services said a mother, father and three of their children, including 3-year-old twins, were killed when a Chernihiv hostel was shelled. Civilians were hiding in basements and shelters across the embattled city of 280,000.
“The city has never known such nightmarish, colossal losses and destruction,” Chaus said.
The World Health Organization said it has verified 43 attacks on hospitals and health facilities, with 12 people killed and 34 injured.
In remarks early Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was thankful to President Joe Biden for additional military aid, but he would not get into specifics about the new package, saying he did not want Russia to know what to expect. He said when the invasion began on Feb. 24, Russia expected to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they took control of the eastern Donbas region.
READ: Ukraine mayor, 9 Russian conscripts released
Instead, he said, Ukraine had much stronger defenses than expected, and Russia "didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven leading economies accused Putin of conducting an “unprovoked and shameful war,” and called on Russia to comply with the International Court of Justice’s order to stop its attack and withdraw its forces.
Both Ukraine and Russia this week reported some progress in negotiations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that some negotiators were breaking into working groups.
Zelenskyy said he would not reveal Ukraine's negotiating tactics.
“Working more in silence than on television, radio or on Facebook,” Zelenskyy said. “I consider it the right way.”
While details of Thursday's talks were unknown, an official in Zelenskyy’s office told the AP that on Wednesday, the main subject discussed was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine.
In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral military status.
Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there.
The fighting has led more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine, the U.N. estimates. The death toll remains unknown, though Ukraine has said thousands of civilians have died.
Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
Ukrainian authorities struggled to determine the fate of hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering in a theater smashed by a Russian airstrike in the besieged city of Mariupol as officials said Russian artillery Thursday destroyed more civilian buildings in another frontline city.
Some hope emerged, as an official said some people had managed to survive the Mariupol theater strike.
A photo released by Mariupol's city council showed an entire section of the large, 3-story theater had collapsed after the strike Wednesday evening. Several hundred people had taken refuge in the building's basement, seeking safety amid Russia's 3-week, strangulating siege of the strategic Azov Sea port city.
At least as recently as Monday, the pavement in front of and behind the once-elegant theater was marked with huge white letters spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian, according to images released by the Maxar space technology company.
Rubble had buried the entrance to the shelter inside the theater, and the number of casualties was unclear, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on Telegram. Ukrainian parliament member Sergiy Taruta, a former governor of the Donetsk region where Mariupol is located, later said on Facebook that some people had managed to escape alive from the destroyed building. He did not provide any further details.
Also read: Zelensky lists 6 priorities at peace talks with Russia
Kyrylenko said Russian airstrikes also hit a municipal swimming pool complex in Mariupol where civilians, including women and children, had been sheltering. “Now there are pregnant women and women with children under the rubble there,” he wrote, thought the number of casualties was not immediately known.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for more help for his country in a video address to German lawmakers Thursday, saying thousands of people have been killed in the war that started almost a month ago, including 108 children.
He also referred to the dire situation in Mariupol. “Everything is a target for them,” he said, including “a theater where hundreds of people found shelter that was flattened yesterday.”
The address began with a delay because of a technical problem caused by “an attack in the immediate vicinity” of where Zelenskyy was speaking from, Bundestag deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt said.
Zelenskyy's address to the Bundestag came a day after he delivered a speech via video to the U.S. Congress that garnered several ovations as he called for more help.
The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday
Zelenskyy’s office said Russia carried out further airstrikes on Mariupol early Thursday morning, as well as artillery and airstrikes around the country overnight, including in the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. There was no immediate word on casualties.
In Kyiv, where residents have been huddling in homes and shelters, a fire broke out in an apartment building hit by remnants of a downed Russian rocket early Thursday, killing one person and injuring at least three others, according to emergency services. Firefighters evacuated 30 people from the top floors of the 16-story building and extinguished the blaze within an hour.
Also read: Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol
On Thursday, Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community center in Merefa, a city near the northeast city of Kharkiv, according to Merefa's mayor Veniamin Sitov. There were no known civilian casualties. The Kharkiv region has seen heavy bombardment as stalled Russian forces try to advance in the area.
Six nations have called for a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday afternoon, ahead of an expected vote Friday on a Russian resolution demanding protection for Ukrainian civilians “in vulnerable situations,” yet making no mention of Moscow's responsibility for the war.
“Russia is committing war crimes and targeting civilians,” Britain's U.N. Mission tweeted, announcing the call for the meeting that was joined by the U.S., France and others. “Russia's illegal war on Ukraine is a threat to us all.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin went on television Wednesday to excoriate Russians who don’t back him.
Russians “will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths,” he said. “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country.”
He said the West is using a “fifth column” of traitorous Russians to create civil unrest.
“And there is only one goal, I have already spoken about it — the destruction of Russia,” he said.
The speech appeared to be a warning that his authoritarian rule, which had already grown tighter since the invasion began on Feb. 24, shutting down Russian news outlets and arresting protesters, could grow even more repressive.
In a sign of that, Russian law enforcement announced the first known criminal cases under a new law that allows for 15-year prison terms for posting what is deemed to be “false information” about the Ukraine war. Among those charged was Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and blogger living abroad.
But it also came amid signs that talks were finally making progress.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after Tuesday’s meeting that a neutral military status for Ukraine was being “seriously discussed” by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming “more realistic.”
Wednesday's talks, held by video, appeared to wade more deeply into technicalities.
Zelenskyy adviser Mikhailo Podolyak said Ukraine demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and security guarantees for Ukraine from several countries.
“This is possible only through direct dialogue” between Zelenskyy and Putin, he tweeted.
An official in Zelenskyy’s office told The Associated Press that the main subject under discussion was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on a legally binding document with security guarantees for Ukraine. In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral status.
Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there.
Earlier Wednesday, Zelenskyy went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: “We need you right now.”
President Joe Biden announced the U.S. was sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. He also called Putin a “war criminal,” in his sharpest condemnation since the invasion began.
Although Moscow’s ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said earlier that the operation was unfolding “successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans.” He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to “squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.”
The fighting has led more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine, the U.N. estimates. The death toll remains unknown, though Ukraine has said thousands of civilians have died.
Nowhere has suffered more than the encircled city of Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.
Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate a hospital basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of a 22-day-old infant. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children.
“These are the people we could not save,” Drengar said.
END/AP/UNB/FA
13 diplomats in Dhaka show solidarity with Ukraine holding its flag together
The European Union (EU) and twelve other foreign missions in Dhaka have demonstrated their solidarity with Ukraine.
The heads of the mission posed for a group photo holding Ukraine's flag which was tweeted and posted on Facebook page on Wednesday.
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"EU joins 12 other missions in Dhaka in showing solidarity for the terrible suffering inflicted on the people of Ukraine by Russian aggression, contrary to the UN Charter and international law," EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley tweeted.
Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki, while addressing a seminar, expressed concern about the crisis in Ukraine saying that "unilaterally attempt" to change the status quo by force.
"Peace is of utmost importance for the stable development and economic growth of each country, and such a crisis must never happen in Asia and the Pacific region, "he added.
Ambassador of Sweden to Bangladesh Alexandra Berg von Linde said Russia’s "aggression" against Ukraine is causing severe human suffering.
"It’s a violation of one of the most fundamental rights of international law - the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against another country," she tweeted.
British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson tweeted with the photo and wrote, "Heads of Mission in Bangladesh from 13 countries of the 141 which voted in the UN General Assembly to condemn Russia’s illegal, unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine."
Read:Dhaka, Riyadh agree to develop "comprehensive partnership"
"Proud to show our solidarity with Ukraine and Ukrainian people together with 12 fellow Heads of Mission in Dhaka. Civilians are #NotATarget," Ambassador of Switzerland to Bangladesh Nathalie Chuard tweeted.
Deputy Chief of Mission at US Embassy in Dhaka Helen LaFave also joined senior representatives from twelve diplomatic missions in Dhaka to express support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s unprovoked attack.
"The United States and its partners continue to give urgently-needed security assistance, humanitarian aid, and economic support to the people of Ukraine," said the US Embassy in Dhaka on Thursday.
Ukraine, Russia continue talks over video
Ukrainian and Russian delegations held talks again Wednesday by video.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mikhailo Podolyak said Ukraine demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and legal security guarantees for Ukraine from a number of countries.
“This is possible only through direct dialogue” between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said on Twitter.
An official in Zelenskyy’s office told The Associated Press the main subject under discussion was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
Read: Ukraine sees room for compromise, as 20,000 escape Mariupol
Just before the war, Russia recognized the independence of two regions controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. It also extended the borders of those regions to areas Ukraine had continued to hold, including Mariupol, a port city now under siege.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on the signing of a legally binding document with security guarantees for Ukraine. In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral status.
Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there.
After Tuesday’s negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being “seriously discussed” by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming “more realistic.”
Russia’s onslaught continues amid optimism over talks
Russian forces destroyed a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of people were sheltering Wednesday and rained fire on other cities, Ukrainian authorities said, even as the two sides projected optimism over efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting.
The airstrike ripped apart the center of the once-elegant building, where hundreds of civilians had been living since their homes had been destroyed in the fighting, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Many people were buried in the rubble, the statement said, though there was no immediate word on how many had been killed or injured. Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word “children” written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building, the Maxar space technology company said.
“My heart breaks from what Russia is doing to our people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address, calling for more sanctions on Russia after the bombing.
The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.
In Kyiv, residents huddled in homes and shelters during a citywide curfew that was set to run until Thursday morning, as Russian troops shelled areas in and around the city, including a residential neighborhood 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the presidential palace. A 12-story apartment building in central Kyiv erupted in flames after being hit by shrapnel.
Read: 3 EU prime ministers visit Kyiv as Russian attacks intensify
And 10 people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office said.
Earlier Wednesday, Zelenskyy went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: “ We need you right now.”
U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. is sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and drones. He also called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in his sharpest condemnation of the Russian leader since the invasion began.
Read: Ukraine sees room for compromise, as 20,000 escape Mariupol
International pressure against the Kremlin mounted and its isolation deepened as the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, ordered Russia to stop attacking Ukraine, though there was little hope it would comply. Also, the 47-nation Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, expelled Russia.
While Moscow’s ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said the operation was unfolding “successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans.” He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to “squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.”
A senior U.S. defense official said the Russians were still making little tangible progress in much of the country, but have begun shelling the suburbs of Odesa, Ukraine’s third-largest city and a major naval and shipping hub. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. military assessments, said Russia’s aims weren’t clear, but Western officials have long worried about a ground assault on the coastal city.
The two sides resumed talks via video on Wednesday, with Zelenskyy adviser Mikhailo Podolyak saying Ukraine was demanding a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and legal security guarantees for Ukraine from several countries.
“This is possible only through direct dialogue” between Zelenskyy and Putin, he tweeted.
An official in Zelenskyy’s office told The Associated Press that the main subject under discussion was whether Russian troops would remain in the two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
Just before the war, Russia recognized the independence of two regions controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014 and extended the borders of those regions to areas Ukraine had continued to hold, including the strategically important port city of Mariupol, which has endured a brutal siege.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on the signing of a legally binding document with security guarantees for Ukraine. In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral status.
Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there.
After Tuesday’s negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being “seriously discussed” by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming “more realistic.”
Hopes for diplomatic progress to end the war rose after Zelenskyy acknowledged Tuesday in the most explicit terms yet that Ukraine is unlikely to realize its goal of joining NATO. Putin has long depicted Ukraine’s NATO aspirations as a threat to Russia.
Lavrov welcomed Zelenskyy’s comment and said “the businesslike spirit” starting to surface in the talks “gives hope that we can agree on this issue.”
“A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees,” Lavrov said on Russian TV. “There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed.”
Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were highly uncertain, however, given the gulf between Ukraine’s demand that the invading forces withdraw completely and Russia’s suspected aim of replacing Kyiv’s Westward-looking government with a pro-Moscow regime.
The fighting has led more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine, by the United Nations’ estimate. The overall death toll remains unknown, though Ukraine has said thousands of civilians have died.
Speaking to Congress, Zelenskyy said Russia “has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death.” But Biden has rejected Zelenskyy’s requests to send warplanes to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country because of the risk of triggering war between the U.S. and Russia.
Amid the vast humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Red Cross has helped evacuate civilians from besieged areas and has delivered 200 tons of aid, including medical supplies, blankets, water and over 5,200 body bags to help “ensure the dead are treated in a dignified manner.”
Nowhere has suffered more than Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.
Local authorities said Russian forces took hundreds of people hostage at a Mariupol hospital and were using them as human shields.
Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate a hospital basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of an infant 22 days old. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children, given their size.
“These are the people we could not save,” Drengar said.
Nearly 30,000 people managed to escape the city Tuesday in thousands of vehicles by way of a humanitarian corridor, city officials said. Zelensky said 6,000 more left on Wednesday, including 2,000 children, but evacuations elsewhere were stopped because of Russian shelling.
Kyiv regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces had intensified fighting in the Kyiv suburbs and a highway leading west, and across the capital region, “kindergartens, museums, churches, residential blocks and engineering infrastructure are suffering from the endless firing.”
In other developments, the mayor of the city of Melitopol, who was seized by Russian forces five days ago, has been freed, said Zelenskyy chief of staff Andriy Yermak. No details were given about how he became free.
Ukraine also appeared to have successes, with satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP showing helicopters and vehicles ablaze at the Russian-held Kherson airport and air base after a suspected Ukrainian strike on Tuesday.
3 EU prime ministers visit Kyiv as Russian attacks intensify
The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to the embattled Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday in a show of support for Ukraine even as bombardment by the Russian military edged closer to the center of the city.
The three leaders went ahead with the hours-long train trip despite worries within the European Union about the security risks of traveling within a war zone.
“It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made. It is here, that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Twitter.
The long journey over land from Poland to Kyiv by Morawiecki, Poland’s deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Prime Ministers Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic and Janez Jansa of Slovenia sent the message that most of Ukraine still remains in Ukrainian hands.
But underlining the deteriorating security situation in Kyiv, a series of strikes hit a residential neighborhood in the city again on Tuesday.
Zelenskyy posted a video on Facebook of him sitting around a table with the leaders briefing them on the war’s developments. After the meeting, he said he was sure “with such friends” Ukraine would be able to defeat Russia.
Read: Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict
“And most importantly, we absolutely trust the leaders of these countries and, therefore, when we speak of security guarantees, of our future in the European Union, or speak of sanctions policy, we know 100% that everything we are discussing will really lead to that positive goal for our country, for our security and for our future,” Zelenskyy said.
Fiala said the main purpose of the visit was to tell Ukraine it is not alone.
“We know you’re fighting for your lives ... but we also know you’re fighting for our lives, our freedom,” Fiala said. “Probably the main goal of our visit, the main message of our mission, is to say that you’re not alone. Our countries stand by you. Europe stands by you.”
The Central European leaders said they were on an EU mission. But officials from the 27-nation bloc insisted that the trio had undertaken the trip independently.
All three countries were once part of the communist bloc and now belong to both the EU and NATO.
Jansa described the visit as a way to send a message that Ukraine is a European country that deserves to be accepted one day into the EU. Two weeks earlier, Zelenskyy made an emotional appeal to the European Parliament on that very subject.
“We are fighting also to be equal members of Europe,” Zelenskyy told EU lawmakers on March 1. “I believe that today we are showing everybody that is what we are.”
Jansa said the war has awoken Europeans to idea that the bloc represents fundamental ideas that are under threat — and which Ukrainians are defending with their lives.
Ukraine sees room for compromise, as 20,000 escape Mariupol
Ukraine said it saw possible room for compromise in talks with Russia despite Moscow’s stepped up bombardment Tuesday of Kyiv and new assaults on the port city of Mariupol, from where an estimated 20,000 civilians managed to flee through a humanitarian corridor.
The fast-moving developments on the diplomatic front and on the ground came as Russia’s invasion neared the three-week mark and the number of Ukrainians who have left the country amid Europe’s heaviest fighting since World War II eclipsed 3 million.
After delegations from Ukraine and Russia met again Tuesday via video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early Wednesday that Russia’s demands were becoming “more realistic.” The two sides were expected to speak again Wednesday.
“Efforts are still needed, patience is needed,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation. “Any war ends with an agreement.”
Zelenskyy, who was expected to address the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, thanked President Joe Biden and “all the friends of Ukraine” for $13.6 billion in new support.
He appealed for more weapons and more sanctions to punish Russia, and repeated his call to “close the skies over Ukraine to Russian missiles and planes.”
He said Russian forces on Tuesday had been unable to move deeper into Ukrainian territory but had continued their heavy shelling of cities.
Over the past day, 28,893 civilians were able to flee the fighting through nine humanitarian corridors, although the Russians refused to allow aid into Mariupol, he said.
In other developments, the leaders of three European Union countries — Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia — visited the embattled capital Tuesday, arriving by train in a bold show of support amid the danger.
Meanwhile, large explosions thundered across Kyiv before dawn from what Ukrainian authorities said were artillery strikes, as Russia’s bombardment of the capital appeared to become more systematic and edged closer to the city center, smashing apartments, a subway station and other civilian sites.
Zelenskyy said Tuesday that barrages hit four multi-story buildings in the city and killed dozens. The strikes disrupted the relative calm that returned after an initial advance by Moscow’s forces was stopped in the early days of the war.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment, said that the Russians were using long-range fire to hit civilian targets inside Kyiv with increasing frequency but that their ground forces were making little to no progress around the country. The official said Russian troops were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of the capital.
Read:3 EU prime ministers visit Kyiv as Russian attacks intensify
The official said the U.S. has seen indications that Russia believes it may need more troops or supplies than it has on hand in Ukraine, and it is considering ways to get more resources into the country. The official did not elaborate.
Before Tuesday’s talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would press its demands that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO, adopt a neutral status and “demilitarize.”
In a statement that seemed to signal potential grounds for agreement with Moscow, Zelenskyy told European leaders gathered in London that he realizes NATO has no intention of accepting Ukraine.
“We have heard for many years about the open doors, but we also heard that we can’t enter those doors,” he said. “This is the truth, and we have simply to accept it as it is.”
NATO does not admit nations with unsettled territorial conflicts. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said in recent weeks that he realizes NATO isn’t going to offer membership to Ukraine and that he could consider a neutral status for his country but needs strong security guarantees from both the West and Russia.
The U.N. said close to 700 civilians in Ukraine have been confirmed killed, with the true figure probably much higher.
Two journalists working for Fox News were killed when the vehicle they were traveling in was hit by fire Monday on the outskirts of Kyiv, the network said. Fox identified the two as video journalist Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who was helping Fox crews navigate the area. Another journalist was killed Sunday in Ukraine.
New efforts to bring civilians to safety and deliver aid were underway around the country. The Red Cross said it was working to evacuate people in about 70 buses from the northeastern town of Sumy, near the Russian border.
The exodus from Mariupol marked the biggest evacuation yet from the southern city of 430,000, where officials say a weekslong siege has killed more than 2,300 people and left residents struggling for food, water, heat and medicine. Bodies have been buried in mass graves.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to Zelenskyy, said that about 20,000 people managed to leave Mariupol on Tuesday in 4,000 private vehicles via a designated safe corridor leading to the city of Zaporizhzhia.
On a day when thousands managed to leave Mariupol, Russian troops seized the city’s largest hospital, said regional leader Pavlo Kyrylenko. He said the troops forced about 400 people from nearby homes into the Regional Intensive Care Hospital and were using them and roughly 100 patients and staff as human shields by not allowing them to leave.
Kyrylenko said shelling had already heavily damaged the hospital’s main building, but medical staff have been treating patients in makeshift wards in the basement.
Read: Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict
Doctors from other Mariupol hospitals made a video to tell the world about the horrors they’ve been seeing. “We don’t want to be heroes and martyrs posthumously,” one woman said. She also said it’s insufficient to simply refer to people as the wounded: “it’s torn off arms and legs, gouged out eyes, bodies torn into fragments, insides falling out.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army’s general staff said Tuesday evening that Russian troops had launched another assault on the strategically important city.
Fighting has intensified on Kyiv’s outskirts in recent days, and air raid sirens wailed inside the capital. The mayor imposed a curfew extending through Thursday morning.
Tuesday’s artillery strikes hit the Svyatoshynskyi district of western Kyiv, adjacent to the suburb of Irpin, which has seen some of the worst fighting of the war.
Flames shot out of a 15-story apartment building and smoke choked the air as firefighters climbed ladders to rescue people. The assault blackened several floors of the building, ripped a hole in the ground outside and blew out windows in neighboring apartment blocks. Rescue workers said at least one person was killed.
“Yesterday we extinguished one fire, today another. It is very difficult,” a firefighter who gave only his first name, Andriy, said outside the building, tears falling from his eyes. “People are dying, and the worst thing is that children are dying. They haven’t lived their lives and they have already seen this.”
City authorities also tweeted an image of the blown-out facade of a downtown subway station that had been used as a bomb shelter and said trains would no longer stop at the station.
A 10-story apartment building in the Podilsky district of Kyiv, north of the government quarter, was damaged. Russian forces also stepped up strikes overnight on Irpin and the northwest Kyiv suburbs of Hostomel and Bucha, said the head of the capital region, Oleksiy Kuleba.
“Many streets have been turned into a mush of steel and concrete. People have been hiding for weeks in basements, and are afraid to go out even for evacuations,” Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.
In the country’s east, Russian forces launched more than 60 strikes overnight Monday into Tuesday on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, according to regional administration chief, Oleh Sinehubov. The strikes hit the city’s historical center, including the main marketplace.
He said the bodies of dozens of civilians were pulled from destroyed apartment buildings.
On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian forces repelled Russian troops who tried to storm Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, from their positions in Piatykhatky, a suburb 15 kilometers (9 miles) to the north, the regional administration chief, Oleh Sinehubov, said on Telegram. He said the Kharkiv’s defenders were able “to push the enemy back beyond its previous position,” in what he described as a “shameful defeat” for Russia.
'I will go back to help’: Women head home to aid war effort
While over 3 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, a small but growing number are heading in the other direction. At first they were foreign volunteers, Ukrainian expatriate men returning to fight and people delivering aid. Now, increasingly, women are also going back.
Motivated by a desire to help loved ones in trouble, or to contribute to the defense and survival of their country and compatriots in ways large and small, these women are braving the bombs that have increasingly pounded Ukraine since Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24.
Many are not refugees but Ukrainian women who had been living and working abroad. Others had already chosen to stay put in their country but were forced to cross the border to shop for needed goods as supplies dried up under the onslaught at home.
“I will go back and help. I am a health worker, so the hospitals need help,” said Iryna Orel, 50, lugging her luggage as she boarded a train from Przemysl, Poland, to Lviv in western Ukraine. “And I will stay until the end.”
With Ukraine’s government ordering men to stay and fight, the vast majority of people fleeing Ukraine have been women, children and the elderly. For those who can’t or won’t leave, the perils they face are many, and images such as those of a mortally wounded pregnant woman rushed on a stretcher from a maternity hospital in Mariupol testify to the dangers.
Still, some women have chosen to head back toward the gunfire and bloodshed to contribute in whatever way they can.
Reached by phone after arriving in the port city of Odesa, which has so far remained under Ukrainian government control, Orel said she was frightened at first by the air raid sirens and sounds of explosives, but “sitting and shaking with fear does not help.”
READ: Ukraine's capital barraged; 3 EU nation leaders to visit
She envisions her role as providing medical care, but other women might choose to help defend the country militarily, she said.
“Women can fight,” she said. “Many women are patriotic to defend Ukraine — why not?”
Women rushing into war zones or taking part in war efforts is nothing new. Female soldiers were a visible part of the Ukrainian military before the war, including in combat roles. Some women, like many men, are taking up arms for the first time. Plus, gender equality in the workplace as well as the military has traditionally been more common in post-Soviet states like Ukraine than many other parts of the world.
Since the invasion, Polish border guards have tallied over 195,000 crossings of people from Poland to Ukraine, more than four in five Ukrainian nationals, spokeswoman Anna Michalska said Tuesday. That includes people who come and return — to buy food and other supplies in Poland and go back, or who bring relatives across and return. So some people are counted a number of times.
Poland has taken in more than 1.8 million refugees — over 60% of the total exodus of 3 million people since the invasion, according to U.N. agencies. The U.N. refugee agency had initially predicted some 4 million refugees would flee — a figure that may soon be eclipsed.
“What to say, really? Three million refugees in the space of just over two weeks. This is frightening and it doesn’t stop,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said in an interview in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he was visiting to assure Afghans that despite the horrors of the war raging in Ukraine they have not been forgotten.
“Everybody’s asking how many refugees will come out of Ukraine,” he said. “The answer is very simple: I simply don’t know.”
Aid deliveries are making their way into Ukraine, as well as reported flows of weapons and fighters ready to use them. The International Committee for the Red Cross said 200 tons of medical supplies and relief items had arrived in the country, including water, mattresses, blankets, food, first aid kits, plastic tarps and more than 5,000 body bags.
Less noticed has been the entry or cross-border shuttling of women who are either trying to bring help or stay in the country to continue their lives as best they can.
“I am returning to Ukraine to help people evacuate,” said Maria Khalica, who lives in Italy and was headed to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. “I am in a more stable state now than my friends, who are under rocket attacks and bombs.”
“I know that Kyiv is also going to be occupied and we are taking the last chance to help other people” there, Khalica said, adding that she believes Russian forces will eventually seize the capital.
Some women are returning to join their families and others to help in any way they can, either as health workers or with the army.
“We plan to return to the family and we will decide with the family what to do next” said Olga Simanova, 56, who traveled from Germany to return to her family’s hometown of Vinnycja.
Meanwhile, the number of those fleeing continues to grow.
James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, said some 1.4 million children have fled Ukraine since the invasion — or about 73,000 per day on average.
READ: UN says women pay highest price in conflict, now in Ukraine
That, he said, amounts to “55 every minute. So we are almost — since war started on the 24th of February — (at a point where) a child has become a refugee out of Ukraine every second.”
They have fled to countries across Eastern Europe: Romania has taken in more than 450,000, Moldova more than 337,000, Hungary over 263,000 and Slovakia some 213,000, according to the latest UNHCR tally on Tuesday. The Polish capital of Warsaw, alone, has taken in about 300,000 refugees, about a 15% increase of its population of more than 1.7 million.
“These are enormous numbers,” said Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu, who was reaching out to Italy for financial aid. “The number of refugees represents 4% of the whole Moldovan population.”
Ukraine’s capital under fire; 3 EU nation leaders to visit
Russia’s relentless bombardment of Ukraine edged closer to central Kyiv on Tuesday, with a series of strikes hitting a residential neighborhood as the leaders of three European Union countries planned a bold visit to Ukraine’s embattled capital in a show of support.
Shortly before dawn, large explosions thundered across Kyiv from what Ukrainian authorities said was artillery strikes. The shelling ignited a huge fire and a frantic rescue effort in a 15-story apartment building. At least one person was killed and others remain trapped inside.
Shockwaves from an explosion also damaged the entry to a downtown subway station that has been used as a bomb shelter. City authorities tweeted an image of the blown-out facade, saying trains would no longer stop at the station.
As Russia stepped up its assault on Kyiv, the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia announced they would travel to Ukraine’s capital Tuesday on a European Union mission to show support for the country
“The aim of the visit is to express the European Union’s unequivocal support for Ukraine and its freedom and independence,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said in a tweet.
He will be joined by Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is Poland’s deputy prime minister for security and the leader of the conservative ruling party.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators also planned to hold a second day of talks as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 21st day.
Read: Russian strikes hit apartment building in Kyiv
When Russia launched the war nearly three weeks ago, fear of an imminent invasion gripped the Ukrainian capital, and residents slept in subway stations or crammed onto trains to flee. But as the Russian offensive bogged down, Kyiv saw a relative lull.
Fighting has intensified on the city’s outskirts in recent days, and sporadic air raid sirens ring out around the capital.
Tuesday’s early morning artillery strikes hit the Svyatoshynskyi district of western Kyiv, adjacent to the suburb of Irpin, which has seen some of the worst battles of the war.
Flames shot out of the 15-story apartment building as firefighters climbed ladders to rescue people. Smoke choked the air. A firefighter at the scene confirmed one person had died and that several had been rescued, but others remained inside as rescuers tried to reach them.
A 10-story apartment building in the Podilsky district of Kyiv, north of the government quarter, also was damaged by unspecified ammunition.
Russian forces also stepped up strikes overnight on Irpin and the northwest Kyiv suburbs of Hostomel and Bucha, said the head of the capital region, Oleksiy Kuleba.
“Many streets (in those areas) have been turned into a mush of steel and concrete. People have been hiding for weeks in basements, and are afraid to go out even for evacuations,” Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to extend martial law until April 24 and to require men ages 18 to 60 to stay in the country to fight. Zelenskyy submitted the extension in a bill to parliament, which is expected to vote on it this week.
Talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were due to resume Tuesday, after failing to make a break through — or to break down — on Monday. The two sides had expressed some optimism about the negotiations, which Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said would discuss “peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.”
Russia’s military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine’s, but its troops have faced stiffer-than-expected resistance, bolstered by arms supplied by the West.
U.S. officials say Russian troops have made little progress on the ground in recent days and were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv as of Monday. The Pentagon said Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but have not taken control of the air above Ukraine.
U.S. administration officials say Russia has asked China for help, and Beijing had signaled to Moscow that it would be willing to provide both military support in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off effects of Western sanctions.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned China against helping Russia during a meeting in Rome on Monday with a senior Chinese diplomat.
The Kremlin has denied asking China for military equipment to use in Ukraine.
Read: UN says women pay highest price in conflict, now in Ukraine
With each day the human cost of the grinding war continues to rise. The Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office on Tuesday released details of two deadly Russian attacks the day before. The office said an artillery strike had hit a university and open-air market in the northern city of Chernihiv, killing 10, and that a 65-year-old woman had been shot in a bus that was evacuating civilians from a Kyiv suburb.
A Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighborhood, killing one person, Ukraine’s emergency agency said.
Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework when they heard a loud explosion and ran to take shelter.
“The child became hysterical. Our windows and the balcony were shattered. Part of the floor fell down,” she said. “It was very, very scary.”
In an area outside Kyiv, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting and was hospitalized, the network said.
In Russia, the live main evening news program on state television was briefly interrupted by a woman who walked into the studio holding a poster against the war. The OVD-Info website that monitors political arrests identified her as a Channel 1 employee and said she was taken into police custody.
There was a rare glimmer of hope in the encircled port city of Mariupol after a convoy of 160 civilian cars left along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported Monday. Over the past 10 days or so, the lethal siege has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.
Previous attempts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the southern city of 430,000 were thwarted by fighting.
Ukraine’s military said it repelled an attempt Monday to take control of Mariupol by Russian forces, who were forced to retreat. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed fires burning across the city, with many high-rise apartment buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.
Ukraine claims its forces have killed 150 Russian troops and destroyed two Russian tanks in the battle for Mariupol.
The Kremlin-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya said on a messaging app that Chechen fighters were spearheading the offensive on Mariupol.
Elsewhere, the Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. The claim could not be independently verified.
The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. Millions more have fled their homes, with more than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what the U.N. has called Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.