A Ukrainian soldier stands among the rubble after shelling a residential area in Kyiv, Ukraine March 18. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)
On Friday, fierce battles and shelling continued in different parts of Ukraine. Here’s what you should know:
Areas of influence: Around 6:30 a.m. local time, multiple explosions were heard and smoke was rising in western Ukraine. city of Lviv, according to the CNN team on site. Mayor Andriy Sadovyy said that Russian missiles hit an aircraft repair plant, which is located near the Lviv airport. According to the Ukrainian armed forces, Russia fired six missiles at the city, but two of them were intercepted by air defense systems.
One person was killed and four others were injured in a fire after the remnants of a downed rocket hit a five-story residential building in the Podolsky district. Kyiv This was announced on Friday by the Emergency Situations Service of Ukraine.
At least two people were killed and six were injured in a rocket attack on the city Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, according to the head of the Donetsk regional administration Pavlo Kirilenko.
Russian losses: At least five Russian servicemen, including the commander of the Kostroma airborne troops, have been killed in action in Ukraine, Russian regional state broadcaster GTRK Kostroma reported Thursday.
Evacuations: According to the government of Ukraine, nine corridors were agreed on Friday for the evacuation of civilians from cities hard hit by Russian attacks. For the second day in a row, one of the agreed corridors links the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol with Zaporozhye, which remains under Ukrainian control.
Call Biden-Sea: On Friday, a telephone conversation took place between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden. Since the beginning of the war, China has tried to take a neutral position. He did not condemn Russia’s actions and declined to call the attack an invasion. Chinese diplomats have criticized NATO expansion and accused the US of fueling the conflict. But they also called for a diplomatic solution.
While China and Russia are not military allies, they have been polishing their partnership in trade, technology, and military exercise coordination in recent years, while increasingly vocal about what they see as Western interference in their internal affairs. – rejection of sanctions imposed by the US, and often vote as a bloc in the UN.
According to US intelligence and diplomacy officials, Russia has asked China for military and economic support, and Beijing has been somewhat open to the request. It’s not yet clear whether China intends to provide such assistance to Russia, US officials familiar with the intelligence told CNN, but Biden will lay out the possible consequences of such action during a phone call with Xi, according to the White House.