Civilians trapped inside Mariupol, Ukraine, desperately scrounged for food and fuel as Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the port city Thursday. This amid international condemnation over an airstrike a day earlier that killed three people at a maternity hospital.
Western and Ukrainian officials called the hospital attack on Wednesday a war crime by Moscow.
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.
More than 1,300 people have died in the 10-day siege of the frigid city of Mariupol, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Residents of the southern seaport of 430,000 people have no heat or phone service, and manxjmtzywy 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.
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.
- Map: Where the fighting is happening in Ukraine
- At least 17 wounded in Mariupol maternity hospital airstrike, Ukrainian officials say
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, are turning on one another: "People started to attack each other for food."
The local fire department and the city's State Technical University were bombed.
On resident, 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 Russians 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."
Invasion will backfire on Russia: Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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," Zelensky 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."
Russia accused of airstrike on maternity hospital
21 hours agoDuration 2:40Russia has been accused of attacking a maternity and children's hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, endangering the lives of civilians. Russia insists it isn't targeting civilians, but this isn't the first time Moscow has been accused of deliberately hitting hospitals during a conflict. 2:40
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before.
"Just as we overcame these difficulties in the previous years, we will overcome them now," he said at a televised meeting of government officials. He did, however, acknowledge the sanctions create "certain challenges."
- AnalysisWith Russia pressing on and Ukraine digging in, how will Putin's war actually end?
- Russian POW viral videos may break international law. What about sharing them?
In addition to those who have fled Ukraine, millions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Thursday that about two million people — half the residents of the metro area of the capital — have left the city.
"Every street, every house … is being fortified, the territorial defence is joining. 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. But Putin's forces have used airpower and artillery to pummel Ukraine's cities.
Zelensky said 35,000 people managed to get out on Wednesday from several besieged towns and more efforts were underway on Thursday.
Early in the day, the Mariupol city council posted a video showing buses driving down a highway. It said a convoy bringing food and medicine was on the way. But as night fell, it was unclear if those buses had reached the city.
- U.S. says Russia may seek to use chemical, biological weapons in Ukraine
- What we know about the battle for the skies over Ukraine
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.
Putin choosing to target civilians: Trudeau
French President Emmanuel Macron called the airstrike on the hospital "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 neighbour 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."
Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau was also in Warsaw on Thursday to meet with Polish leaders and Harris. He said Putin had made a choice to "specifically target civilians" and any further targeting of civilians in Ukraine is going to be met with the "severest of responses."
- Americans say they support Russian oil ban — even if it costs them
- Abandoned shopping mall offers sanctuary, friendship for Ukrainian refugees amid the fear
"Putin's callous disregard for human life is absolutely unacceptable. It is very clear that he has made the choice to specifically target civilians now," Trudeau told reporters.
Russia hits back against criticism
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as "pathetic shrieks" from Russia's enemies, and denied Ukraine had even been invaded.
Canadian commander who helped train Ukrainian soldiers has 'immense confidence' in them
10 hours agoDuration 7:53Lt.-Col. Melanie Lake shares her experience training Ukrainian soldiers as commander of the Canadian military training mission dubbed Operation Unifier, from March to October 2021. 'I'm immensely proud and inspired by them,' she says. 7:53
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.
Russia has alleged that Western-looking, U.S.-backed Ukraine posed a threat to its security. Western officials suspect Putin would like to install a government friendly to Moscow in Kyiv as part of an effort to draw the former Soviet state back into its orbit.
Chornobyl worker's daughter fears for his safety after plant loses power
21 hours agoDuration 2:30The Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine has lost power, and the daughter of one plant worker says she's worried for her father's life — and the safety of the plant itself. 2:30
In Vienna, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had scheduled inspections of Ukraine's nuclear facilities. Rafael Grossi would give no details on how or when the inspections would take place.
Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four power plants across the country, plus the closed plant in Chornobyl, scene of a 1986 nuclear disaster. Fighting around Chornobyl and another plant have raised global fears of another disaster.
Anger in Kharkiv
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, 91-year-old Alevtina Shernina sat wrapped in a blanket, an electric heater at her feet, as cold air blew in through a damaged window. She survived the brutal Second World War siege of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Russia.
Her daughter-in-law, Natalia, said she was angry that Shernina "began her life in Leningrad under the siege as a girl who was starving, who lived in cold and hunger, and she's ending her life" in similar circumstances.
"There were fascists there and there are fascists here who came and bombed our buildings and windows," she said.
