With the Russian forces besieging more and more Ukrainian cities, the country’s civilians are increasingly in the cross-hairs. On Saturday night, the Russians reportedly shelled an art school in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol which was sheltering 400 civilians. The attack came just days after Russian forces bombed a theater providing cover for more than a thousand residents in the same city.
The exact casualties resulting from those two strikes are not known. The fog of war makes it difficult to assess reliable casualty figures. “Officials say the building has been destroyed and people could be trapped under the rubble,” the BBC noted.
The encircled city of Mariupol, which is home to more than 400,000 residents, has been a frequent target of Russian strikes, cutting off their access to food, running water, and other necessities.
City authorities said that “the siege has killed at least 2,300 people and some of them had to be buried in mass graves,” Germany’s DW News reported Saturday.
The Russian ground forces in the south have managed to capture large part of Ukraine’s towns and cities on the Black Sea coast. Further west, the Russian warships blockaded Odessa, a port that handles country’s 65 percent of foreign trade.
After three weeks of slow advance, the Russia ground offensive on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv has come to a grinding halt over the weekend, news reports suggested.
After introducing hypersonic missiles to the Ukraine conflict by firing the weapon at several targets yesterday, the Russian military continued its use on Sunday, Moscow says.
The Associated Press reported used the hypersonic missile for the second day:
The Russian military reported Sunday that it has carried out a new series of strikes on Ukrainian military facilities with long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles, a day after announcing it had used its latest hypersonic missile for the first time in combat.Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the Kinzhal hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv. The strike marked the second day in a row that Russia used the Kinzhal, a weapon capable of striking targets 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
According to the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR, ten million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes since the conflict began three weeks ago. “Some 6.5 million were displaced internally, while almost 3.4 million refugees have left Ukraine,” Germany’s DW News reported Sunday. “Poland has taken in more than 2 million refugees. Nearly 220,000 refugees have made their way to Germany,” the broadcaster added.
In backing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine offensive, China was on the “right side of the history,” Chinese foreign minister claimed on Sunday.
Communist China, which in 2020 invaded parts of India and continues to violate Taiwan’s air defense space with fighter jets and nuclear-capable bombers, has “always stood for maintaining peace and opposing war,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared.
Reuters reported the Chinese foreign minister’s delusional comments:
China stands on the right side of history over the Ukraine crisis as time will tell, and its position is in line with the wishes of most countries, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said“China will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and opposes any unfounded accusations and suspicions against China,” Wang told reporters on Saturday evening, according to a statement published by his ministry on Sunday.Wang said the most important message Xi sent was that China has always been a force for maintaining world peace. (…)“China’s position is objective and fair, and is in line with the wishes of most countries. Time will prove that China’s claims are on the right side of history.”
Since Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine, China has been Kremlin’s biggest ally on the world stage. Beijing has refused to recognize U.S. and Western sanctions on Moscow and has been running Russian war propaganda on state-controlled Chinese media landscape.
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