Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 20: Even as Russia admitted to have used more hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities on Sunday accused Russia of having bombed an art school in the besieged city of Mariupol where some 400 people, including women and children, had taken shelter.
Mariupol authorities said the school building was destroyed and people could still be under the rubble. Mariupol has been one of the main targets of Moscow’s attacks. Russian shelling has hammered the eastern Ukrainian port for days, and the city has seen a near total communication blackout. The school, which is located in the east of the city, had been destroyed, the council said in a statement. “Peaceful civilians are still under the rubble,” the city council said.
Russia said it had again fired its newest hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, destroying a fuel storage site in the country’s south. “Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region,” the Russian defence ministry said.
In the encircled northern city of Chernigiv, the mayor says dozens of civilians have been killed by “indiscriminate artillery shelling,” and that a hospital has been hit. It was the second time in less than a week that city officials reported a public building where residents had taken shelter coming under attack. A bomb hit a Mariupol theatre with more than 1,300 believed to be inside on Wednesday, local officials had said.
There was no immediate word on casualties from the reported strike on the art school, Ukrainian officials have not given an update on the search of the theatre since Friday, when they said at least 130 had been rescued. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, has been under bombardment for at least three weeks and has seen some of the worst horrors of the war in Ukraine. At least 2,300 people have died, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves, and food, water and electricity have run low.
The Russian defence ministry also said it killed more than 100 members of Ukrainian special forces and “foreign mercenaries” when it targeted a training centre in the town of Ovruch in northern Ukraine with sea-based missiles. “Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region,” the defence ministry said. The ministry said the base had been used for the main supplies of fuel for Ukrainian armoured vehicles in the country’s south.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s siege of the port city of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”, while local authorities said thousands of residents there had been taken by force across the border. “To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation. “The more Russia uses terror against Ukraine, the worse the consequences for it.”
In recent days, Russian forces have battled their way into the city, cutting it off from the Azov Sea and devastating a massive steel plant. The fall of Mariupol would be an important but costly victory for the Russians, whose advance is largely stalled outside other major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.
Meanwhile, Slovakia’s Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad says the first multinational NATO units with the Patriot air defence systems have been moving to his country. Nad said on Sunday the transfers would continue in the next days.
Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said Ukraine would receive a new shipment of US weapons within days, including Javelin and Stinger missiles.
Ukrainian President has signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” under martial law. Ukrainian privately-owned media channels have so far continued to operate since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Evacuations from Ukraine’s besieged cities proceeded on Saturday along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, with a total of 6,623 people were evacuated, including 4,128 from Mariupol who were taken northwest to Zaporizhzhia. Russian forces intensified their attack in the battered port city of Mariupol, with heavy fighting on Saturday leading to the closure of a major steel plant.
Officials said one of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works, Azovstal, has been badly damaged as Russian forces lay siege to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. “One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated,” tweeted Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko. She posted a video of explosions on an industrial site, with thick columns of grey and black smoke rising from the buildings.
“We will return to the city, rebuild the enterprise and revive it,” Azovstal’s director general Enver Tskitishvili wrote on messaging app Telegram, without specifying the extent of the damage. He said when the invasion began on February 24, the factory had taken measures to reduce the environmental damage in the event of being hit. “Coke oven batteries no longer pose a danger to the lives of residents,” he wrote. “We have also stopped the blast furnaces correctly.” Azovstal is part of the Metinvest group, which is controlled by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov. Considered pro-Moscow before the war began, Akhmetov has since accused Russian troops of committing “crimes against humanity against Ukrainians.”
China claimed it stands on the right side of history over the Ukraine crisis as time will tell, and its position is in line with the wishes of most countries, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said. “China will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and opposes any unfounded accusations and suspicious against China,” Wang told reporter.
The Swiss president Ignazio Cassis said Russia’s war in Ukraine was driven by “devastating madness”, and Switzerland is prepared to pay the price for defending freedom and democracy.
The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it would be a mistake to normalise relations with President Vladimir Putin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “To try to re-normalise relations with Putin after this, as we did in 2014, would be to make exactly the same mistake again,” Johnson told a Conservative Party conference.
Ukraine’s president said Russia was trying to starve his country’s cities into submission but warned Saturday that continuing the invasion would exact a toll on Russia for “generations.” The remarks came after Moscow held a mass rally in support of its bogged-down forces.
Zelensky on Sunday ordered to suspend activities of 11 political parties with links to Russia. The largest of them is the Opposition Platform for Life, which has 44 out of 450 seats in the country’s Parliament. The party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who has friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Also on the list is the Nashi (Ours) party led by Yevheniy Murayev. Before the Russian invasion, the British authorities had warned that Russia wanted to install Murayev as the leader of Ukraine. Speaking in a video address early on Sunday, Zelensky said “given a large-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and links between it and some political structures, the activities of a number of political parties is suspended for the period of the martial law.” He added that “activities by politicians aimed at discord and collaboration will not succeed.”