Ukraine yesterday accused Russia of bombing a theater in Mariupol that was sheltering more than 1,000 civilians after US President Joe Biden branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”
The latest assaults on civilians across Ukraine came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a searing appeal for help to the US, which responded by pledging US$1 billion in new weapons to fight Russia’s invading army.
Officials across Ukraine are struggling to count the civilian dead — with authorities saying that 103 children have been killed since the invasion began — who have been targeted in homes, hospitals, ambulances and food lines.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via CNA
In the port city of Mariupol — where more than 2,000 people have died so far — a Russian bomb hit the Drama Theatre, which city council officials said had been housing more than 1,000 people.
“The only word to describe what has happened today is genocide, genocide of our nation, our Ukrainian people,” Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko said in a video message on Telegram. “We have difficulty understanding all of this, we refuse to believe, we want to close our eyes and forget the nightmare that happened today.”
Satellite images of the theater on Monday shared by private satellite company Maxar showed the words “children” clearly etched out in the ground in Russian on either side of the building.
Officials posted a photograph of the building, whose middle part was completely destroyed, with thick white smoke rising from the rubble after they said a bomb was dropped from an airplane.
“It is impossible to find words to describe the level of cynicism and cruelty, with which Russian invaders are destroying peaceful residents of a Ukrainian city by the sea,” an official statement read.
The Russian Ministry of Defence denied that it had targeted the theater, saying that the building had been mined and blown up by members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.
So far the destruction that has marked other cities has been halted outside the capital, Kyiv, which has been emptied of about half of its 3.5 million people.
Dull booms echoed across the capital’s deserted streets on Wednesday, with only an occasional vehicle passing through sandbagged checkpoints, and few permits granted to break its latest curfew.
In an address to the US Congress, Zelenskiy invoked Pearl Harbor, the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and Martin Luther King Jr as he showed lawmakers a video of the effect of three weeks of Russian attacks.
Zelenskiy, dressed in military green, demanded that Washington and its NATO allies impose a no-fly zone so that “Russia would not be able to terrorize our free cities.”
Switching to English, Zelenskiy addressed Biden directly, saying: “I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”
Biden and NATO have resisted Zelenskiy’s pleas for direct involvement against Russia, warning that it could lead to a third world war.
The Ukrainian leader told NBC that “may have already started.”
On Wednesday, Biden stepped up his condemnation of the Russian leader, describing Putin as a “war criminal.”
The Kremlin called the comment “unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.”
Moscow yesterday warned the US that it had the might to put Washington in its place and accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who is deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said that the US had stoked “disgusting” Russophobia in an attempt to force Russia to its knees.
“It will not work — Russia has the might to put all of our brash enemies in their place,” Medvedev said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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