Russian forces intensified their assault on Ukrainian cities on Friday, with new missile strikes and shelling on the outskirts of Kyiv and Lviv, in western Ukraine, as world leaders demanded an investigation into the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, and residential areas.
The early-morning missile barrage on the outskirts of Lviv was the closest hit yet to the city’s core, which has become a crossroads for people leaving other parts of Ukraine as well as those entering to bring help or fight.
After the explosions at a plant for repairing military aircraft near the city’s international airport, approximately six kilometers (four miles) from the center, black smoke billowed for hours. Maksym Kozytskyy, the regional governor, confirmed that one person was injured.
Witnesses reported multiple explosives struck in quick succession about 6 a.m., rattling nearby buildings. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea; however, two of the six missiles were shot down by the Ukrainian air force’s western command. According to Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, a bus maintenance facility was also damaged.
Despite its proximity to the Polish border and distance from the front lines, Lviv and its environs have not been spared Russia’s bombardment. In the worst-case scenario, over three dozen people were murdered last weekend in a strike near the city. Lviv’s population has grown by 200,000 people as refugees from around Ukraine have sought refuge there.
Early morning shelling also struck a residential building on Kyiv’s outskirts, killing at least one person, according to rescue services, who reported 98 people had been evacuated from the structure. According to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, and Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, two more people were killed when attacks damaged residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.
Hospitals, schools, and institutions where people took refuge have been attacked in the city after city across Ukraine. Rescuers looked for survivors in the ruins of a theater that acted as a shelter after it was blown up by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine’s besieged southern city. At least 21 people were murdered in Merefa, near Kharkiv, when Russian artillery damaged a school and a community center on Thursday, according to a local official.
After shelling in Kharkiv on Thursday, a large fire burned through a local market. As firefighters battled the blaze, additional shelling killed one firefighter and injured another, according to emergency services. Hundreds of remains were taken to the mortuary in Chernihiv, Ukraine, in only one day.
American officials are evaluating probable war crimes, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also stated that if Russia’s intentional targeting of people is verified, there will be “huge consequences.”
Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo the UN’s political leader, also urged for an investigation into civilian casualties, reminding the Security Council that international humanitarian law prohibits direct assaults on civilians.
Many of the daily attacks on Ukrainian cities are apparently “indiscriminate” and involve the use of “explosive weapons with a wide impact area,” according to her. The destruction in Mariupol and Kharkiv, according to DiCarlo, “raises severe concerns for the destiny of millions of citizens of Kyiv and other cities facing increased bombardment.”
According to Kirilenko, about 35,000 civilians had departed Mariupol in the preceding two days.
When a Russian airstrike hit Mariupol on Wednesday, hundreds of residents were alleged to have sought refuge in a majestic, columned theater in the city’s heart. Their fate remained unknown on Friday, with conflicting reports on whether anyone had been rescued from the rubble. Shelling has crippled communications throughout the city, making mobility difficult.
“We hope and believe that some of the individuals who stayed in the shelter beneath the theater will be able to live,” Petro Andrushchenko, a mayor’s office official, told reporters on Thursday. He claimed the structure featured a pretty modern bomb shelter in the basement that could resist airstrikes. Some people had gotten out, according to other officials.
The at least three-story building has been reduced to a roofless shell, with some outer walls collapsing, according to video and photographs given by the Ukrainian military. Maxar Technologies’ satellite imagery from Monday revealed enormous white signs on the sidewalk outside the theater spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian — “DETI” — to alert warplanes to the vulnerable people inside.
As smoke ascended above Mariupol’s skyline, snow flurries fell around the bones of charred, windowless, and shrapnel-scarred residential buildings.
“We’re just trying to get by,” said one Mariupol resident on the outskirts of the city on Thursday, using only her first name, Elena. “My child is starving.” I’m at a loss on what to feed him.”
She had been attempting to contact her mother, who lived in another city. “You realize why I can’t tell her I’m alive.”There is no relationship, nothing,” she stated emphatically.
In a neighborhood controlled by Russian-backed separatists, cars passed by stacks of munitions boxes and artillery rounds, some with the “Z” emblem of the Russian invading force in their windows.
On Wednesday, Russia’s military denied striking the theater or any other location in Mariupol.
According to the local governor, Viacheslav Chaus, at least 53 persons were transported to morgues in Chernihiv over the course of 24 hours, murdered amid heavy Russian air and ground fire.
A mother, father, and three of their children, including 3-year-old twins, were killed when a Chernihiv hostel was shelled, according to Ukraine’s rescue services. Civilians were hiding in basements and shelters all around the 280,000-strong metropolis.
“The city has never experienced such dreadful, massive losses and destruction,” Chaus added.
According to the World Health Organization, 43 attacks against hospitals and health facilities have been confirmed, with 12 persons dead and 34 injured.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to President Joe Biden for extra military aid early Friday, but he refused to go into detail about the new package, claiming that he did not want Russia to know what to anticipate. When the invasion began on February 24, he added, Russia expected to find Ukraine in the same way it did in 2014, when Russia grabbed Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they gained control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Instead, he claimed, Ukraine’s fortifications were far stronger than predicted, and Russia “had no idea what we had for defense or how we were preparing to meet the hit.”
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven major countries issued a unified statement accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of waging an “unprovoked and humiliating war,” and urging Russia to heed the International Court of Justice’s ruling to halt its offensive and evacuate its forces.
Both Ukraine and Russia announced progress in negotiations this week. Ukraine’s bargaining tactics, according to Zelensky, will not be revealed.
“I’m working in silence more than on TV, radio, or Facebook,” Zelensky stated. “I believe it is the proper method.”
While the exact specifics of Thursday’s meetings are unknown, an official in Zelensky’s office told reporters that the primary topic discussed on Wednesday was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist districts in eastern Ukraine after the battle and where the borders would be.
Ukraine is pushing on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations, as well as legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate talks.
Ukraine was willing to consider a neutral military stance in exchange, according to the official.
Russia has demanded that NATO promise that Ukraine will never be admitted to the alliance or that NATO forces will be stationed there.
According to the United Nations, more than 3 million people have fled Ukraine as a result of the violence. Although Ukraine claims thousands of civilians have been killed, the death toll remains unknown.
