MARIUPOL, Ukraine
The battle for Ukraine’s strategic port of Mariupol raged on Monday, as Ukraine rejected a Russian offer to evacuate its troops from the besieged city. Russian bombardment continued to hit it and other cities in Ukraine.
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| Ukrainian firefighters and servicemen search for people under debris inside a shopping center after bombing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday |
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said about 400 civilians were taking shelter at an art school in the
Sea of Azov port city when it was struck by a Russian bomb.
Warning that relations with
the U.S. are “on the verge of a breach,” Russia has summoned the U.S.
ambassador to protest President Joe Biden’s criticism of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s war in Ukraine, now
in its 26th day, shows no signs of abating. The invasion has wreaked
devastation, exacting a heavy toll on civilians. The U.N. says nearly
3.4 million people have fled Ukraine.
The key
port city has seen some of the heaviest fighting since the Russian
invasion. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are fighting block-by-block for
control of the city where at least 2,300 people have died, some buried in mass
graves.
Ukrainian forces had destroyed
a Russian patrol boat and electronic warfare complex, the Defense Ministry
said.
Ukrainian officials rejected a
Russian offer that its troops be granted safe passage out of the encircled
city, which would hand Mariupol over to Russia, uniting Russian forces in
southern and eastern Ukraine along the Sea of Azov.
It was not clear how many casualties there were in the Russian bombing of the art school, Zelenskyy said in a video address early Monday. That attack came just days after a bomb hit a theater Wednesday in Mariupol where more than 1,000 people were believed to be sheltering. It was unclear how many people were killed in that attack.
“Almost 90% (of the city) has been destroyed,” Mariupol resident Maria Fiodorova, 77, said Monday as she crossed the border into Medyka, Poland. “There are no buildings there anymore.”
The Ukrainian government said
that about 3,000 people from Mariupol were evacuated on Monday.
In a video address, Zelenskyy
hailed protesters in the occupied city of Kherson for courage in confronting
Russian troops who used stun grenades and fired in the air to break up a
demonstration.
Zelenskyy said that the war
has turned ordinary Ukrainians into heroes and “the enemy doesn’t believe it’s
all real.”
Zelenskyy said in his
nighttime video address to the nation that Russian forces shelled along a
humanitarian corridor on Monday, wounding four children who were among the
civilians being evacuated.
He said the shelling took
place in the Zaporizhzhia region, the initial destination of those fleeing
Mariupol.
The Ukrainian army announced
that it forced Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv suburb
after a fierce battle. By taking Makariv, located 55 kilometers (33 miles) west
of the capital, the Ukrainian forces deprived Russia of control over an
important highway and prevented it from encircling Kyiv from the northwest, the
Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
However, Russian forces were
partially able to take three northwest suburbs where there has been fighting
for weeks, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, the Russian
military says it will keep using state-of-the-art hypersonic Kinzhal missiles
to hit particularly important targets in Ukraine.
Russian shelling on Sunday
near the city center of the capital, Kyiv, killed eight people, according to
emergency officials. The attack damaged a nearby high-rise building and
devastated a shopping center, which Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.
Gen. Igor Konashenkov said had been targeted because it was used to store
rockets. The claim couldn’t be independently verified. - AP
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