MARIUPOL, Ukraine
Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the port city of Mariupol on Thursday, while satellite photos appeared to show that a massive convoy that had been mired outside the Ukrainian capital split up and fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv, with artillery pieces moved into firing positions.
International condemnation
escalated over an airstrike in Mariupol a day earlier that killed three people
at a maternity hospital. Western and Ukrainian officials called the attack a
war crime. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian refusal to
permit evacuations from the port city amounted to “outright terror.”
As the West seeks new ways to
punish Moscow, U.S. President Joe Biden planned to announce Friday that the
United States, the European Union and the Group of Seven leading industrialized
nations would move to revoke Russia’s “most favored nation” trade status,
according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to preview the announcement. The loss of the trade status would allow
tariffs to be imposed on Russian imports and increase the isolation of the
Russian economy.
Meanwhile, the highest-level
talks held since the invasion began two weeks ago yielded no progress, the
number of refugees fleeing the country topped
2.3 million, and Kyiv braced for an onslaught, its mayor boasting that the
capital had become practically a fortress protected by armed civilians.
Satellite imagery from Maxar
Technologies showed that 40-mile (64-kilometer) convoy of vehicles, tanks and
artillery has broken up and been redeployed, the company said. Armored units
were seen in towns near the Antonov Airport north of the city. Some of the
vehicles have moved into forests, Maxar reported, with towed howitzers nearby
in position to open fire.
The convoy had massed outside
the city early last week, but its advance appeared to have stalled amid reports
of food and fuel shortages. U.S. officials said Ukrainian troops also targeted
the convoy with anti-tank missiles.
A U.S. defense official
speaking on condition of anonymity said some vehicles were seen moving off the
road into the tree line in recent days, but the official could not confirm
whether the convoy had dispersed.A relative mourns the body of senior police sergeant Roman Rushchyshyn in the village of Soposhyn, outskirts of Lviv, western Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022
In Mariupol, a southern
seaport of 430,000, the situation was increasingly dire as civilians trapped
inside the city scrounged for food and fuel. More than 1,300 people have died
in the 10-day siege of the frigid city, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna
Vereshchuk.
Residents have no heat or
phone service, and many have no electricity. Nighttime temperatures are
regularly below freezing, and daytime ones normally hover just above it. Bodies
are being buried in mass graves. The streets are littered with burned-out cars,
broken glass and splintered trees.
“They have a clear order to
hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it,” Zelenskyy
said in his nightly video address to the nation. He said the Russians began a
tank attack right where there was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor.
On Thursday, firefighters
tried to free a boy trapped in the rubble. One grasped the boy’s hand. His eyes
blinked, but he was otherwise still. It was not clear if he survived. Nearby,
at a mangled truck, a woman wrapped in a blue blanket shuddered at the sound of
an explosion.
Grocery stores and pharmacies
were emptied days ago by people breaking in to get supplies, according to a
local official with the Red Cross, Sacha Volkov. A black market is operating
for vegetables, meat is unavailable, and people are stealing gasoline from
cars, Volkov said.
Places protected from bombings
are hard to find, with basements reserved for women and children, he said.
Residents, Volkov said, are turning on one another: “People started to attack
each other for food.”
An exhausted-looking
Aleksander Ivanov pulled a cart loaded with bags down an empty street flanked
by damaged buildings.
“I don’t have a home anymore.
That’s why I’m moving,” he said. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It was hit, by a
mortar.”
Repeated attempts to send in
food and medicine and evacuate civilians have been thwarted by Russian
shelling, Ukrainian authorities said.
“They want to destroy the
people of Mariupol. They want to make them starve,” Vereshchuk said. “It’s a
war crime.”
All told, some 100,000 people
have been evacuated during the past two days from seven cities under Russian
blockade in the north and center of the country, including the Kyiv suburbs,
Zelenskyy said.A man walks with a bicycle in a street damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022.
Zelenskyy told Russian leaders
that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western
sanctions have already dealt a severe blow, causing the ruble to plunge,
foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply.
“You will definitely be
prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address.
“And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens —
everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a
row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their
shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children.”
Russian President Vladimir
Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before.
″We will overcome them,” he
said at a televised meeting of government officials. He did, however,
acknowledge the sanctions create “certain challenges.”
In addition to those who have
fled the country, millions have been driven from their homes inside Ukraine.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 2 million people, half the population of
the metropolitan area, have left the capital.
“Every street, every house …
is being fortified,” he said. “Even people who in their lives never intended to
change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their
hands.”
On Thursday, a 14-year-old girl
named Katya was recovering at the Brovary Central District Hospital on the
outskirts of Kyiv after her family was ambushed as they tried to flee the area.
She was shot in the hand when their car was raked with gunfire from a roadside
forest, said her mother, who identified herself only as Nina.
The girl’s father, who drove
frantically from the ambush on blown-out tires, underwent surgery. His wife
said he had been shot in the head and had two fingers blown off.
Western officials said Russian
forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days and are seeing
heavier losses and stiffer Ukrainian resistance than Moscow apparently
anticipated. But Putin’s forces have used air power and artillery to pummel
Ukraine’s cities.
Early in the day, the Mariupol
city council posted a video showing a convoy it said was bringing in food and
medicine. But as night fell, it was unclear if those buses had reached the
city.
A child was among those killed
in the hospital airstrike Wednesday. Seventeen people were also wounded,
including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the
rubble. Images of the attack, with pregnant women covered in dust and blood,
dominated news reports in many countries.
French President Emmanuel
Macron called the attack “a shameful and immoral act of war.” Britain’s Armed
Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by
indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, “it is a war crime.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala
Harris, on a visit to Ukraine’s neighbor Poland, backed
calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion,
saying, “The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in
terms of this aggression and these atrocities.”
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as “pathetic
shrieks” from Russia’s enemies, and denied Ukraine had even been invaded.
Lavrov and his Ukrainian
counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, held talks in a Turkish resort in their first
meeting since the invasion.
The two sides discussed a
24-hour cease-fire but made no progress, Kuleba said. He said Russia still
wanted Ukraine to surrender but insisted that will not happen.
Lavrov said Russia is ready
for more negotiations, but he showed no sign of softening Moscow’s demands. -
AP
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