Rescuers searched for survivors Thursday through the rubble of a theater in the beleaguered city of Mariupolwhich Ukraine said was attacked in a Russian air offensive while people were sheltering there from the bombing.
Russia has denied attacking the theater, but its forces have destroyed cities and killed many civilians during its assault on Ukraine, now entering its fourth week.
Mariupol has suffered the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war, with hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in basements without food, water or electricity as Russian forces shell it with artillery fire and air strikes.
A municipal adviser, Petro Andrushchenko, said the number of victims of the suspected attack on the theater on Wednesday was not known, but the shelter had held.
“The rubble is now being removed. There are survivors,” he told Reuters by telephone.
Commercial satellite images showed that the word “children” had been written on the ground on a piece of land in front of the building before it was attacked.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the accusation that Russia bombed the theater a “lie” and reiterated the Kremlin’s denials about attacks by its forces on civilian targets.
“The Russian armed forces do not bomb towns and cities,” he said at an appearance.
Mariupol’s municipal council later claimed that more than 350,000 people were still sheltering in the city and that 30,000 had already managed to escape.
The assault on Ukraine began when troops crossed the border or arrived by sea and air on February 24. However, Western countries say that their expectations of a quick victory and the fall of the president’s government Volodymyr Zelensky they have dissipated and their invasion force has bogged down.
Widely separated parts
The war has settled into a pattern of city-destroying sieges. The United Nations said 3.2 million civilians, mostly women and children, have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries. However, the Russians have failed to capture a major city in the face of vigorous resistance from Ukrainian forces.
British military intelligence said in an update on Thursday that the invasion had “largely stalled on all fronts” and that Russian forces were suffering heavy losses.
A fourth straight day of talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators took place via video link, but Western officials said the two sides were staying away.
“Both sides are taking it seriously, but there is a very, very big gap between the positions in question,” an official said.
A Zelensky adviser said Ukraine is sticking to its core stance of retaining sovereignty over areas occupied since 2014 by Russian and pro-Russian forces.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putinhas shown little sign of letting up, even though punitive Western sanctions are hurting his country’s economy.
In a televised address, he lambasted his country’s “traitors and scum” who help the West, saying the Russian people will spit them out like mosquitoes.
kyiv and its Western allies believe Russia launched the war to subjugate a neighbor Putin calls an artificial state. Moscow says it is carrying out a “special operation” to disarm and “de-Nazify” him.
On the diplomatic front, the White House said that the president of the United States, Joe Bidenwill speak to Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday as Washington tries to persuade Beijing not to provide support to Russia.
Zelensky delivered a speech by videoconference to the German Bundestag, in which he invoked the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall, in an apparent attempt to embarrass pro-Russian politicians in Germany, Moscow’s biggest energy buyer.
bloody sheet
Kyiv’s northeastern and northwestern suburbs have suffered heavy damage, but the capital remains steadfast, under curfew and subjected to deadly nightly rocket attacks.
A building in the capital’s Darnytsky district was badly damaged by what authorities described as debris from a missile shot down early in the morning.
As residents cleaned windows and carried away bags of belongings, a man knelt weeping over the body of a woman lying near a door, covered in a bloody sheet.
Viacheslav Chaus, governor of Chernihiv, a city on the northern front line, said 53 civilians had been killed there in the last 24 hours. The figure could not be independently verified.
Russia has assaulted Ukraine from four directions, sending two massive columns toward kyiv from the northwest and northeast, pushing in from the east near the second-largest city, Kharkiv, and spreading south from Crimea.
Ukrainian officials said they believe Russia is running out of troops to fight on and may soon admit its failure to topple the Ukrainian government.
Moscow says it is close to agreeing on a formula that maintains Ukraine’s neutrality, one of its longstanding demands.