300 killed in strike on Mariupol theatre, Ukraine says as it forces Russians back from Kyiv
- More than 1,300 people had been sheltering inside the theatre after their homes were destroyed in Russia’s siege of the city, according to local accounts
- Ukrainian troops began recapturing towns east of Kyiv and Russian forces, which had been trying to seize the capital, were falling back
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Ukrainian authorities in the besieged ruins of Mariupol said Friday that about 300 people died when a Russian air strike blew up a theatre where hundreds of civilians were sheltering – a catastrophic loss of civilian life that, if confirmed, is likely to further crank up pressure on Western nations to step up military aid.
In a vain attempt to protect those inside the grand, columned theatre from missile and air strikes that Russia has rained down on cities, an enormous inscription reading “CHILDREN” in Russian was posted outside the building and was visible from the air.
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For days, the government in the battered port city was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 attack. The post on its Telegram channel Friday cited eyewitnesses. It was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the theatre ruins or how witnesses arrived at the horrific figure of lives lost.
Still, the emerging picture of gruesome casualties could refocus attention on the refusal thus far of countries from the Nato alliance to supply warplanes or fly patrols over Ukraine’s airspace. The country’s embattled president has repeatedly pleaded for those measures to protect against such strikes.
Soon after the attack, Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner, said more than 1,300 people had been inside, many whose homes were destroyed in Russia’s siege of the city. The building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter, and some survivors did emerge from the rubble after the attack.
The new reported death toll came a day after US President Joe Biden and other leaders promised after meeting in Brussels that more military aid for Ukraine is coming. But they stopped short of providing heavy weaponry that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants. Nato nations fear that providing planes, tanks and other hardware that Zelensky says is urgently needed could increase the risk of them being drawn into direct conflict with Russia.
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But the US and the European Union did announce a move to further squeeze Russia: a new partnership to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy and slowly squeeze off the billions of dollars the Kremlin gets from sales of fossil fuels.
Despite the efforts to target Russia’s economy to push the Kremlin to change course, the misery for civilians grows ever more acute in cities that, day-by-day, increasingly resemble the ruins that Russian forces left behind in previous campaigns in Syria and Chechnya.
Those who can are trying to flee, emptying out their cities. In relentlessly shelled Kharkiv, mostly elderly women came to collect food and other urgent supplies. In the capital of Kyiv, ashes of the dead are piling up at the main crematorium because so many relatives have left, leaving urns unclaimed.
Meanwhile, the vulnerable – the elderly, children and others unable to join millions of refugees heading westward – face food shortages in a country once known as the breadbasket for the world.
Fidgeting with anticipation, a young girl in Kharkiv watched intently this week as a volunteer’s knife cut through a giant slab of cheese, carving out thick slices – one for each hungry person waiting stoically in line.
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Hanna Spitsyna took charge of divvying up the delivery of food aid from the Ukrainian Red Cross, handing it out to her neighbours. Each got a lump of the cheese that was cut under the child’s watchful gaze, dropped chunk by chunk into plastic bags that people in line held open like hungry mouths.
“They brought us aid, brought us aid for the elderly women that stayed here,” Spitsyna said. “All these people need nappies, swaddle blankets and food.”
Unable to sweep with lightning-quick speed into Kyiv, their apparent aim on February 24 when the Kremlin launched the war, Russian forces are instead raining down shells and missiles on cities from afar. Kyiv, like other cities, has seen its population dramatically reduced in the vast refugee crisis that has seen more than 10 million displaced and at least 3.5 million fleeing the country entirely.
Russia’s military claimed Friday that it destroyed a massive Ukrainian fuel base used to supply the Kyiv region’s defences, with ships firing a salvo of cruise missiles, according to the Interfax news agency. Videos on social media showed an enormous fireball explosion near the capital.
The outskirts of Kharkiv were shrouded by foggy smoke Friday, with shelling constant since early in the morning. In a city hospital, several wounded soldiers arrived, with bullet and shrapnel wounds, a day after doctors treated a dozen civilians. Even as doctors stabilised the direst case, the sound of shelling could be heard in the surgery ward.
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Later on Friday, Ukrainian troops began recapturing towns east of Kyiv and Russian forces who had been trying to seize the capital were falling back on overextended supply lines, one of the strongest indications yet of a shift in momentum in the war.
The mayor of a suburb east of Kyiv said Ukrainian troops had recaptured a nearby village and thousands of civilians were leaving the area in response to a call from the authorities to get out of the way of the counter-attack.
03:51
‘We will not stand by’: Nato heads of state meet to address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
A month into their assault, Russian troops have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city. An offensive Western countries believe was aimed at swiftly toppling President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government was halted at the gates of Kyiv.
The Russians instead have been bombarding, encircling and besieging cities, laying waste to residential areas and driving around a quarter of the 44 million population from their homes.
