The United States warned China on Thursday against any attempt to “support Russian aggression” against Ukraine, where new bombings left at least 27 dead in the east of the country.
US President Joe Biden will threaten his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday with retaliation if China “supports Russian aggression” by sending military aid, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Blinken also considered that Russia’s attacks against civilians constitute “war crimes” and accused Moscow of not making “significant efforts” on the diplomatic front to resolve the conflict.
US believes Russia has committed ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine
Those warnings come after a series of reports of bombings against civilian targets that have already left hundreds dead since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine ordered three weeks ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At least 27 people were killed Thursday in Russian artillery shelling in the Kharkov region (northeast).
These bombardments “destroyed a school and a cultural center” in the town of Merefa, leaving 21 dead and 25 wounded, “ten of them in serious condition,” reported the regional prosecutor’s office.
Six other people were killed in a cluster bomb attack in Kozacha Lopan, about fifty kilometers north of Kharkov, the mayor of a neighboring town said.
Meanwhile, kyiv, where the siege of Russian troops is tightening, came out of a 35-hour curfew this Thursday.
deny attack
The Russian Ministry of Defense denied having attacked the theater on Wednesday in the port city of Mariupol (southeast), besieged for more than two weeks by Moscow forces.
According to local officials, there were “more than a thousand” refugees in the theater. The NGO Human Rights Watch says there were at least 500, although it acknowledges that data is missing.
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The information arrives with drops and sometimes contradictory: Ukraine and Western countries accuse Russia of this attack, which attributes it to Ukrainian far-right militiamen.
According to satellite images of the theater captured on March 14 by the private company Maxar, on the front and back of the building, on the floor, the word “children” had been written in Russian.
The Mariúpol theater “was heavily bombed on Wednesday, although it served as a well-known and clearly identified refuge for civilians, including children,” denounced the head of European Union (EU) diplomacy, Josep Borrell, who referred also to reports of Russian attacks against the city of Mikolaiv.
“These deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are shameful, reprehensible and totally unacceptable,” Borrell said, adding that “the perpetrators of these grave violations and war crimes, as well as government leaders and military commanders, will be held accountable.”
On Wednesday, after this bombing, US President Joe Biden called Putin a “war criminal”.
Some 30,000 people have left Mariupol in the last week, although another 350,000 “continue to hide in shelters and basements” in the city, the mayor’s office said.
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According to Ukrainian sources, more than 1,200 people have died violently since the start of the war in that city. People who managed to flee explained that they had to drink melted snow and make a fire to cook what little food they had.
“It got worse every day. We had no electricity, no water, no gas, no food. You couldn’t buy anything anywhere,” a woman named Darya told AFP.
Zelensky recriminates
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski denounced that Russia is erecting a new “wall” in Europe, “between freedom and slavery”, in a video message broadcast in the lower house of the German Parliament.
Zelensky also criticized the Germans for having refused for years to break their economic ties with Russia, mainly in the energy sector.
NATO has rejected Ukraine’s calls to become directly involved in the conflict, fearing it could spark a Third World War between two belligerents with huge nuclear arsenals.
For now, it has provided military aid, and Biden announced Wednesday that the United States will also support Ukraine in acquiring new air defense systems.
Despite everything, Putin assured on Thursday that the operation is being carried out “successfully”.
Putin also further assured that the sanctions that excluded Russia from most of the western financial system had failed.
Globally, the war could cost world growth a point over a year if the effects on energy and financial markets last, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned. Europe will be the region hardest hit by the economic repercussions of the offensive, according to the organization.
Videoconference conversations
More than three million people have fled the country, most of them women and children, according to the UN, while Zelensky said Thursday that 108 minors had been killed in the conflict.
Representatives from kyiv and Moscow have held video conferences several times this week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the Russian delegation was “making great efforts” and is “ready to work day and night”, but that the Ukrainians are not “showing that much effort”.
The day before, he had pointed out that a “compromise” could be reached to end the conflict if Ukraine agrees to become a neutral country, based on the models of Sweden or Austria.
But the Ukrainian negotiator, Mikhailo Podolyak, pointed out that Ukraine’s model at the moment “can only be Ukrainian.”
Increasingly isolated, Russia withdrew from putting a humanitarian resolution on Ukraine to a vote in the United Nations Security Council on Friday, lacking the support of its closest allies, diplomatic sources said. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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