Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian authorities said on Friday about 300 people died when a Russian airstrike last week blew up a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians were taking shelter – a catastrophic loss of civilians who, likely to go further if confirmed Increase pressure on Western nations to increase military aid.
In a vain attempt to protect residents from missile and air strikes that Russia rained down on cities, a huge inscription reading “CHILDREN” in Russian had been placed in front of the great columned theater to make it visible from the air.
For days in the besieged ruins of Mariupol, the government was unable to provide casualty figures for the March 16 attack. The post on its Telegram channel on Friday cited eyewitnesses, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether rescue workers had finished excavating the theater ruins or how witnesses came to the horrific number of lives lost.
Still, the emerging picture of atrocious casualties could draw attention to the NATO-allied countries’ previous refusal to supply warplanes or fly patrols to protect Ukraine’s airspace, despite repeated pleas from the country’s embattled president.
The extent of the devastation in Mariupol, where bodies lay unburied between bomb craters and buildings were hollowed out by relentless attacks, has made information difficult to obtain. But shortly after the attack, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner said more than 1,300 people took cover in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed in the Russian siege. The building had an air raid shelter in the basement, and some survivors emerged from the rubble after the attack.
The new reported death toll came a day after US President Joe Biden and allied leaders promised more military aid would come to Ukraine. But they stopped short of providing the heavy weapons that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said were badly needed. NATO countries fear that the deployment of planes, tanks and the no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace could increase the risk of being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia.
The US and European Union on Friday announced a move to further squeeze Russia economically: a partnership to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and the billions of dollars the Kremlin gets from selling fossil fuels, slowly drying up.
Even without a direct conflict between Russia and NATO forces, Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II brought relations to a breaking point. The Kremlin is bristling at the ever-tightening noose of sanctions against Russia’s economic, monetary and business leaders accused of supporting President Vladimir Putin. His Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday described the pressure from the West as “a real hybrid war, a total war”.
“And the goals are not hidden,” he continued, “they are publicly stated – to destroy, break, annihilate, strangle the Russian economy and Russia as a whole.”
In Ukrainian cities, which day by day look more and more like the ruins left behind by Russian forces in previous campaigns in Syria and Chechnya, the misery of the civilian population is becoming more acute.
Those who can try to flee and empty their cities. In Kharkiv, which was relentlessly shelled, it was mainly older women who came to fetch food and other urgently needed supplies. In the capital Kyiv, the ashes of the dead are piling up in the main crematorium because so many relatives have left and urns have not been collected.
Meanwhile, in a country once known as the breadbasket of the world, the vulnerable — the elderly, children and others who cannot join millions on the westward journey — face food shortages.
A young girl in Kharkiv, fidgeting with anticipation, this week watched intently as a volunteer’s knife sliced through a giant cheeseboard, slicing out thick slices — one for each hungry person stoically waiting in line.
Hanna Spitsyna took over the distribution of food deliveries from the Ukrainian Red Cross and distributed them to her neighbors. Everyone got a piece of cheese that was cut under the child’s watchful eye and tossed piece by piece into plastic bags that people in line held open like hungry mouths.
“They brought us help, brought us help for the elderly women who stayed here,” Spitsyna said. “All these people need diapers, swaddle blankets and food.”
Unable to advance into Kyiv at lightning speed, the obvious target on February 24 when the Kremlin began the war, Russian forces instead rain down shells and rockets on cities from afar. Kyiv, like other cities, has dramatically reduced its population amid the massive refugee crisis that has left more than 10 million displaced, including at least 3.5 million who have fled the country entirely.
According to the Interfax news agency, the Russian military on Friday claimed it had destroyed a huge Ukrainian fuel base used to supply supplies to defend the Kyiv region, with ships firing a volley of cruise missiles. Videos on social media showed a massive fireball explosion near the capital.
The outskirts of Kharkov were shrouded in foggy smoke on Friday, with constant shelling since early morning. Several wounded soldiers with gunshot and shrapnel wounds arrived at a city hospital a day after doctors treated a dozen civilians. Even as doctors stabilized the most severe case, the sound of grenades could be heard in the operating room.
At a NATO emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday, Zelenskyy video-begged Western allies for planes, tanks, missiles, air defense systems and other weapons, saying his country was defending “our common values.”
The invasion has exacerbated an energy and moral dilemma for European nations that heat homes and power industries on Russian fossil fuels. Concerned that the billions they are paying could be used by the Kremlin in its war effort, they are hastening to find alternatives.
Germany announced on Friday it has struck deals with new suppliers that will significantly reduce its reliance on Russian coal, gas and oil in the coming weeks. Biden said the new US-EU gas supply partnership will help undermine Putin’s use of energy sales to “coerce and manipulate his neighbors” and “power his war machine.” Under the plan, the US and other nations will increase liquefied natural gas exports to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters this year.
While millions of Ukrainians have fled west, Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcibly moving hundreds of thousands of civilians into Russia from devastated cities to urge Kyiv to surrender. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, had been taken against their will to Russia, where some could be used as “hostages” to pressure Kyiv to surrender.
The Kremlin gave almost identical numbers for those being resettled, but said they were from the predominantly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and wanted to go to Russia. Pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control in these regions, where many people support close ties with Russia, for nearly eight years.
For other developments:
– In Chernihiv, where a crucial bridge was destroyed in an airstrike this week, a city official, Olexander Lomako, said a “humanitarian disaster” was unfolding as Russian forces attack food warehouses. He said about 130,000 people remained in the besieged city, about half the pre-war population.
“Russia said it will offer safe passage to 67 ships from 15 countries stuck in Ukrainian ports over the threat of shelling and mines starting Friday.
– The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was informed by Ukrainian authorities that Russian shelling is preventing the rotation of workers in and out of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It said Russian forces had shelled Ukrainian checkpoints in the town of Slavutych, home to many of Chernobyl’s nuclear workers, “to put them at risk and prevent further rotation of personnel to and from the site.”
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Rosa reported from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine