PARIS — French authorities say a convoy of rescue vehicles and emergency equipment is to leave Paris on Wednesday to be provided to Ukraine’s emergency service.
A statement from the French foreign and interior ministries says 100 firefighters and rescue staff will dispatch the vehicles and equipment to Romania, at the border with Ukraine. They include 11 fire engines, 16 rescue vehicles, and 23 trucks transporting 49 tons of health and emergency equipment.
It comes in addition to a convoy of 21 new ambulances, which left on Tuesday.
The statement says the operation is meant to support rescuers from Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service “mobilized day and night to provide relief to victims.”
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BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated that his country will not support a no-fly zone over Ukraine or send troops to intervene in the war launched by Russia.
Scholz told German lawmakers on Wednesday that “NATO will not become a party to the war. We are in agreement on this with our European allies and the United States.”
Still, the German leader said Ukraine could rely on Germany’s help, citing the financial and military aid already provided, the harsh sanctions on Russia and the reception of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Scholz said Germany would not support a boycott of Russian oil, coal and gas, but is seeking to wean itself off those imports by seeking out other suppliers and ramping up the use of renewable energy.
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LVIV, Ukraine – The Kyiv city administration says Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian capital overnight and early Wednesday morning, damaging buildings in two districts.
Kyiv authorities said on Telegram that a shopping mall, some private sector buildings and high-rises came under fire in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.
Four people sustained injuries.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge in the encircled city of Chernihiv, the region’s governor, Viacheslav Chaus, said.
The destroyed bridge had been used for evacuating civilians and delivering humanitarian aid. It crossed the Desna River and connected the city to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
Chernihiv authorities said Tuesday that the encircled city has no water or electricity and called the situation there a humanitarian disaster.
Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv on Wednesday morning, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russian forces have sought to encircle and take the capital’s suburbs.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Russian military forces destroyed a laboratory at the Chornobyl nuclear plant that worked to improve management of radioactive waste, the Ukrainian agency responsible for the Chornobyl exclusion zone said Tuesday.
The Russian military seized the decommissioned plant at the beginning of the war last month. The exclusion zone is the contaminated area around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown in 1986.
The state agency said the laboratory, built at a cost of 6 million euros with support from the European Commission, opened in 2015.
The laboratory contained “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilized world,” the agency said in its statement.
Radionuclides are unstable atoms of chemical elements that release radiation..
Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said Monday that radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.
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WASHINGTON — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied that Russia’s invasion has stalled.
Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved in Ukraine, he said: “Well, first of all not yet. He hasn’t achieved yet.” But he insisted the military operation was going “strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.”
Peskov reiterated that Putin’s main goals were to “get rid of the military potential of Ukraine” and “ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian centre to a neutral country.”
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces not only blocked a humanitarian convoy trying to reach besieged Mariupol with desperately needed supplies on Tuesday but took captive some of the rescue workers and bus drivers.
He said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.
“We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror,” Zelensky said in his nighttime video address to the nation.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians seized 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles. She said their fate was unknown. The figures couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
More than 7,000 people were evacuated from Mariupol on Tuesday, but about 100,000 remain in the city “in inhuman conditions, under a full blockade, without food, without water, without medicine and under constant shelling, under constant bombardment,” Zelensky said.
Before the war, 430,000 people lived in the port city on the Sea of Azov.
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Thxjmtzywis satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows burning and destroyed apartment buildings in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 22, 2022. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies via AP)
