Ukraine reports another Russian attack on a shelter in Mariupol

The Russian army bombed an art school where some 400 people were sheltering in the besieged city of Mariupol on Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities. Ukraine’s president said the suffocating Russian siege of the port city would be remembered for centuries.

It was the second time in less than a week that municipal authorities reported an attack on a public building where civilians had gathered to take refuge from the attacks. A bomb hit a Mariupol theater on Wednesday where there are believed to be 1,300 people, according to authorities.

There were initially no news of casualties from the reported attack on the art school, which The Associated Press could not independently verify. Ukrainian authorities have given no information about the search of the theater since Friday, when they said at least 130 people had been rescued.

The strategic city has been surrounded by Russian troops for three weeks, shelling it relentlessly, and has become a symbol of the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Local authorities say the siege has cut off water and power supplies and killed at least 2,300 people, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves. Food, water and heating are scarce.

“To do this to a peaceful city, which the occupiers have done, is an act of terror that will be remembered for centuries.Zelenskyy said in his evening address to the nation. “The more Russia uses terror against Ukraine, the worse the consequences”.

In recent days, Russian forces have pushed their way into the city, cutting it off from the Sea of ​​Azov and devastating a massive steel plant. The fall of Mariupol would be a major but costly victory for the Russians, who have seen most of their advances halted in other major cities after more than three weeks of the biggest ground invasion of Europe since World War II.

Russian bombardments have killed hundreds of men, women and children in different parts of Ukraine, while millions of civilians took to underground shelters or fled the country.

In the capital, kyiv, at least 20 babies born to surrogate mothers waited in a makeshift shelter so their foreign parents could travel to the war-torn country and bring them home. The little ones, some just a few days old, were cared for by nurses who could not leave the shelter due to the constant bombardment by Russian forces trying to surround the city.

Some 70 babies were evacuated from Sumy, another city hit by the fighting. The orphans, most of whom require constant medical attention, will be taken in by an unspecified foreign country, the governor of the northeastern Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, said.

At least five civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, were killed in new Russian attacks on the eastern city of Kharkiv, according to local authorities.

The British Ministry of Defense said that Russia’s inability to take control of Ukraine’s airspace “has significantly limited its operational progress” and has forced them to rely on weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace.

Up to 40 marines were killed early Friday in a rocket attack on the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, a Ukrainian military official told The New York Times. That would make it one of the deadliest attacks against Ukrainian forces.

In another incident, Russia said it attacked a Ukrainian fuel depot with a Kinzhal hypersonic missile in Kostiantynivka, near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, according to Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry. The Russian military announced the day before the first use of the Kinzhal in combat to destroy an ammunition depot in Diliatyn in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.

Russia has said the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighters, can hit targets 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away at 10 times the speed of sound. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Saturday that the United States could not confirm the use of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine.

Konashenkov said Kalibr cruise missiles launched by Russian warships had also been involved in the attack on the fuel depot in Kostiantynivka and in destroying an armor repair plant in the city of Nizhyn in northern Ukraine’s Chernigov region. .

Unexpectedly strong Ukrainian resistance has dashed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hopes of a quick victory after he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine on February 24.

Although the Kremlin has said that Russia conducts a “space military operation” directed against legitimate targets, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday that “savage, brutal techniques” against civilians had allowed Moscow’s troops to advance.

United Nations agencies have confirmed more than 847 civilian deaths since the start of the war, although they acknowledge that the real number is probably much higher. According to the UN, nearly 3.4 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees.

Estimates of Russian casualties are very disparate, but even the most conservative figures speak of a few thousand dead. The deaths of four Russian generals, reportedly out of an estimated 20 involved in the campaign, point to complications in the chain of command, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher on Russian security at the Virginia-based think tank CNA.

Russia would need 800,000 troops – nearly as many as its entire serving military – to control Ukraine in the long run in the face of armed opposition, said Michael Clarke, former director of the Royal United Services Institute, a Britain-based defense think tank.

“Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal – they could raid all the big cities, and the Ukrainians will rise up against the Russian occupation – there will be constant guerrilla warfareClarke said.

Ukraine and Russia have held several rounds of negotiations aimed at ending the conflict, but remain divided over various issues. Moscow is pressing for its neighbor to be demilitarized, while kyiv is willing to renounce its membership in NATO but demands security guarantees.

Evacuations from Mariupol and other besieged cities continued along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors agreed on Saturday by Ukraine and Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Versehchuk said, with authorities saying 6,623 people had left kyiv and other cities.

Vereshchuk said humanitarian aid planned for the southern city of Kherson, which Russia had seized at the start of the war, could not be delivered because Russian troops stopped the trucks midway.

Nearly 40,000 people have fled besieged Mariupol in the past week, local authorities said on Sunday. That is almost 10% of its 430,000 inhabitants. Civilians fled in their own vehicles despite the attacks and shelling.

The Mariupol city council claimed hours later that Russian soldiers had forcibly relocated several thousand city residents, mostly women and children, to Russia. He did not say where in Russia, and the AP could not immediately confirm the claim.

Some Russians have also fled their country amid a widespread crackdown on dissent. Since the invasion of Ukraine began, police have detained thousands of anti-war protesters, while government agencies have silenced independent media and blocked access to social media such as Facebook and Twitter.