Outside Lviv, several hours after the morning morning strike of several missiles, which, according to the mayor, hit the repair room of military aircraft near the city’s international airport, also damaged the bus repair shop, for several hours there was black smoke. The victims were not immediately reported. The facility was suspended before the attack, Mayor Andrei Sadovy told Telegram.
A soldier standing guard near the scene said about 6 a.m. he heard three explosions soon. A resident nearby said his building was vibrating with explosions and panic.
The missiles that hit Lviv were launched from the Black Sea, but two of the six were shot down, the Western Command of the Ukrainian Air Force said on Facebook.
Not far from the Polish border and far beyond the front line, Lviv and its environs were not without Russian attacks. At worst, nearly three dozen people were killed last weekend as a result of a strike on a training base near the city. Meanwhile, Lviv’s population has increased by about 200,000 as people from other Ukrainian countries seek refuge there.
On the northern outskirts of Kiev also collapsed early in the morning. At least one person was killed in a shelling of the Hem, a district north of the center of Kiev, emergency services said. It was not immediately known what was the result of the bombing.
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Hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety from bombings were attacked throughout the city outside the city around Ukraine. Rescuers were searching for survivors in the ruins of the theater, which served as a shelter when it was destroyed by a Russian air strike in the besieged city of Mariupol in the south. And in Merefe, near the northeastern city of Kharkiv, at least 21 people were killed when Russian artillery destroyed a school and community center, a local official said.
Dozens of bodies were taken to the morgue in the northern city of Chernihiv in just one day.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Thursday that U.S. officials are assessing potential war crimes and that if a deliberate attack on civilians by Russia is confirmed, it will have “massive consequences.”
The political leader of the United Nations, Deputy Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, also called for an investigation into civilian casualties, reminding the UN Security Council that international humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks on civilians.
She said many of the daily attacks beating down Ukrainian cities were “reportedly indiscriminate” and involving the use of “explosive weapons with a wide range of impact”. DiCarlo said the devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv “raises serious fears about the fate of millions of residents of Kyiv and other cities facing intensified attacks.”
Hundreds of civilians in Mariupol are said to have taken refuge in a large theater with columns in the city center when it was hit by Russian airstrikes on Wednesday. More than a day later, there were no reports of casualties or conflicting reports as to whether anyone had come out from under the rubble. Due to shelling and other fighting, communication was disrupted.
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies on Monday showed huge white letters on the sidewalk near the theater that read “CHILDREN” in Russian – “DETI” – to warn combat aircraft about vulnerable people hiding inside.
“We hope and believe that some people who remained in the shelter under the theater were able to survive,” – told the Associated Press Peter Andrushchenko, a city official. According to him, the building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter designed to withstand air strikes. Earlier, other officials said some people had gotten out.
Video and photos provided by the Ukrainian military show that at least the three-story building has become dilapidated, with some exterior walls collapsed.
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Across the city, squalls of snow fell around the skeletons of burned, windowless and splintered apartment buildings as smoke rose above the horizon.
“We are trying to survive somehow,” said one Mariupol resident, who named only Alena. “My child is hungry. I don’t know what to give him to eat. “
She tried to call her mother, who was in town 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. “I can’t tell her I’m alive, you know. There is no connection, just nothing, ”she said.
Cars, some with the symbol of Russian invasion forces in the windows, drove past piles of boxes of ammunition and artillery shells in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
On Wednesday, the Russian military denied bombing a theater or other location in Mariupol.
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In Chernihiv, at least 53 people who died as a result of heavy attacks by Russian aircraft and ground shelling were taken to the morgue in a day, local governor Vyacheslav Chavus told Ukrainian television on Thursday.
The Ministry of Emergencies of Ukraine reported that the mother, father and three of their children, including 3-year-old twins, died as a result of the shelling of the Chernihiv dormitory. Civilians hid in basements and shelters across the city with 280,000 battles.
“The city has never known such nightmarish, colossal losses and destruction,” Chaus said.
The World Health Organization said it had inspected 43 attacks on hospitals and medical facilities, killing 12 people and injuring 34.
In a speech Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was grateful to President Joe Biden for additional military assistance, but he would not go into the details of the new package, saying he did not want Russia to know what to expect. He said that when the invasion began on February 24, Russia expected to find Ukraine just as it had in 2014, when Russia captured Crimea without a fight and supported the separatists when they took control of the eastern Donbass.
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Instead, he said, Ukraine had much stronger defenses than expected, and Russia “did not know what we had to defend and how we prepared for the strike.”
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries accused Putin of waging an “unprovoked and shameful war” and called on Russia to comply with the International Court of Justice’s order to stop the attack and withdraw its forces.
Both Ukraine and Russia reported some progress in the talks this week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that some negotiators were splitting into working groups.
Zelensky said he would not disclose Ukraine’s negotiating tactics.
“Work more in silence than on TV, radio or Facebook,” Zelensky said. “I think it’s right.”
While details of Thursday’s talks were unknown, an official in Zelensky’s office told the AP that Wednesday’s main topic of discussion was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be.
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The official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the fragile talks that Ukraine insists on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine.
In return, the official said, Ukraine is ready to discuss neutral military status.
Russia has demanded that NATO vow never to allow Ukraine into the alliance or the armed forces there.
As a result of the fighting, more than 3 million people fled Ukraine, according to UN estimates. The death toll remains unknown, although Ukraine said thousands of civilians were killed.
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Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanov of Lviv (Ukraine) and other AP journalists around the world contributed to the report.
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